Clif Notes 4/15/19
50 Years Of Building The State & Now Global Workforce!
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week
Monday - 8am Start for Extra Help
Tuesday - Steering Committee Mtg.
Wednesday - Academic PLCs; Mandatory Senior Mtg.
Thursday - Blood Drive in Gym; Faculty Liaison Meeting
Friday - No School - Spring Break Begins
Upcoming:
4/19-28 - Spring Break
4/29 - School Re-Opens
5/1 - National BPA Competitions
5/2 - Senior Recognition Night
5/4 - Ignite the Night 5K
5/8 - Special Faculty Meeting W. District
5/8 - Interim Grade Due by 3pm
BIRTHDAYS
Lisa Cave 4/16
John Collins 4/16
Jennifer Hackett 4/20
Catherine DeFelice 4/21
Kyle Bressler 4/22
Monica Moore 4/23
Tara Napolski 4/26
Come Watch the National Guard Airlift
Congratulations Drama Club
ACE Presents to the Mayor
Hispanic Student Recognition
Delcastle Student Wins Widener University High School Leadership Award
hockessincommunitynews.com
Widener University, in partnership with WCAU-TV NBC10, recognized the 2019 winners of the Widener University High School Leadership Awards.
In its eighth year, the program recognized 163 students from high schools throughout the region for their ability to stand up for what is right, address a wrong and make a difference in their communities or schools. The honorees include:
— Harrison Dexter, of Wilmington. Dexter attends Cab Calloway School of the Arts and has made a difference by creating a service project to help his local police department train K-9 units to keep the community safe.
— Max Newman, of Wilmington. Newman attends Delaware Military Academy and has made a difference by guiding his peers and excelling as a company commander in the Delaware Military Academy Corps of Cadets.
— Mikei Johnson, of Wilmington. Johnson attends Delcastle Technical High School and has made a difference by maintaining academic and social leadership on her school’s student council and bowling team.
— John Kepley, of Wilmington. Kepley attends St. Elizabeth High School and has made a difference by standing up for what is right and making sure his peers do not feel left out.
— Alexis Smith, of Wilmington. Smith attends St. Georges Technical High School and has made a difference by leading a support group that provides education on coping skills for those who have experienced trauma and by empowering victims through advocacy.
— Hayley Miller, of Wilmington. Miller attends Thomas McKean High School and has made a difference by serving as the president of her school’s Best Buddies chapter and working hard to make a positive impact at her school.
— Molly Clark, of Wilmington. Clark attends Ursuline Academy and has made a difference by spearheading programs to promote change within her school and devoting her free time to volunteer around the community.
For more, visit bit.ly/2wSeiIl.
2019 Delaware PTA Annual Convention
Buffalo Wild Wings Fundraisor
Vouchers are available in the mail room or see Coach Batt in C-219. Hope to see you support the program at B-Dubs, this Monday night, anytime after 5:30! You must have a voucher to present to the wait staff for the team to get a percentage of your bill. The Wild Wings where we are hosting this event at is the “new” location on Route 4/7 near the I95 intersection just north of the Christiana Mall. ~ Coach Batt
End of Year Schedule
13th - Work in your room
14th - PD
17th - PD Online
18th - (Trade Off)/Online PD
SNOW HOURS Update!!!
It has been a while since the District Snow Hours Presentation. Here is a reminder about some pertinent information...
- ALL Snow Hours must be completed, documented, and turned into your supervisor by MAY 1st!!!
- As per Dr. Gehrt's email, you have the opportunity to use Snow Hours for ALL 3 make-up days = 22.5 total snow hours needed.
Below, I have also attached the Snow Hours Opportunities Doc that I posted on Schoology last week. It contains an example tracking sheet and the link to the Snow Hours Request Form as well.
As always, if you need more assistance or have questions please contact me.
~Tara
Delcastle Instructional Focus
Talking in the classroom
Content-Area Conversations
by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and Carol Rothenberg
Explorers and Settlers
As with busy bees and walking review, this instructional routine also requires students to move about the room. However, this approach offers a bit more crowd control because only half of the students are in motion. The teacher begins by reminding students about the differences between explorers, who sought out new lands, and settlers, who cultivated the land and built permanent communities. Assign half of the students to the role of explorers (a good way is to divide the alphabet by last name), and explain that they will seek out settlers to discuss a question.
Ms. Lee does this activity in a rotation of three or four discussion prompts in her 5th grade social studies class. After assigning the roles, she posts the following prompts on the board:
- Discuss the ways of life of the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest.
- Discuss the ways of life of the woodland peoples of the East.
- What did these two groups have in common?
- How did geography influence their different ways of life?
Ms. Lee used a countdown timer for each question so that the partners could monitor their discussion. As the timer approached zero, she invited the explorers to find a new settler and directed them to the next question.
There are variations of the explorers/settlers theme, including couch potatoes/aerobics instructors (physical education), electrons/protons (science), and carriers/borrowers (mathematics). Purposefully planning when using this strategy can scaffold language for students who are learning English. You can, for instance, assign students at early levels of proficiency to be explorers and then assign the settlers to be the first ones to speak. This approach provides an opportunity for English language learners to hear the language of other more proficient students and rehearse what they might say before they have to speak. When you ask them to repeat the process, it provides multiple opportunities for them to hear and use language related to the same question.
Inside/Outside Circles
In Chapter 3, Ms. Schmidt used inside/outside circles during her lesson in her 5th grade social studies class. This strategy also requires student movement and is intended to extend thinking through multiple conversations. Two concentric circles of students stand and face one another. The teacher poses a question to the class, and the partners talk for a brief time (usually 30–60 seconds). At the signal, the outer circle rotates one position to the left to face a new partner. The conversation continues for several rotations.
Mr. Garland uses inside/outside circles in his 10th grade English class to get discussion going about a thought-provoking question. "You've got to ask a good, meaty question," he cautions, "or they'll run out of things to say pretty quickly." His class will be reading a variety of titles to explore the essential question "When does the desire to obtain something or someone become destructive?" For several minutes, students explore this idea with a series of partners, while Mr. Garland listens in on the conversations. "It helps me to make connections to books I am going to discuss with them, and reminds me of what's in the heads of 15-year-olds."
Barrier Games
Much of what students are required to do in school is performance driven—solving math problems, completing science labs, and the like. A tremendous amount of academic discourse is needed to do such tasks, but English language learners sometimes rely on other methods of communication, such as gestures, to substitute for technical vocabulary. Barrier games are joint tasks completed by partners who have an obstruction blocking their field of view. For them to succeed, they must rely on clear communication and precise vocabulary. Here are some examples of barrier games:
- Sequencing a set of pictures in the correct order to illustrate the steps to making and glazing a ceramic pot
- Giving a partner directions to draw the life cycle of a butterfly
- Describing the difference between two similar illustrations of molecules
- Solving a crossword puzzle where each partner has half of the clues
Mr. Dare requires the students in his woodshop class to be able to correctly name each type of equipment used in the class. He assigns partners and places a low cardboard shield on the desk so that they cannot see the cards the other holds. One partner has an unlabeled photograph of a piece of shop equipment, while the other has written descriptions of each. The partners work together to describe and match each photo with its correct name and purpose. Only after students have completed this task are they allowed to operate any of the equipment.
Managing Talk in Groups
Some instructional tasks require the give-and-take of a slightly larger group of students. Collaborative learning among four students is a bit more active than partner activities, so the noise meter is useful when setting up these tasks. In addition, group tasks tend to be a bit longer than those accomplished in pairs, so a display of elapsed time gives students a way of monitoring their progress and adjusting their rate of work.
Continue reading next week....