Clif Notes 3/25/19
50 Years Of Building The State & Now Global Workforce!
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week - Happy Public School Week
Monday - 8am Start for Extra Help
Tuesday - Cross-Curricular Groups
Wednesday - SAT Exam - Extra Help
Thursday - Academic PLCs - Extra Help
Friday - 50th Anniversary Gala at The Rail;
End of 3rd Marking Period
Upcoming:
4/1 4th Marking Period Begins
4/2 Faculty Meeting
4/3 Grades Due by 3pm
4/5 Ignite the Night 5K
4/6 Freshman Orientation
4/10 Report Cards to Students
Last GALA Call!!!!
Thursday is going to be the last day to purchase your GALA ticket! This is going to be a wonderful event with Delcastle Alumni, business partners, current and prior staff members. If you know any alumni, co-op employers or prior staff, please share this information. Tickets can be purchased in person with Tina Ramsey before 2:00 pm or online at https://delcastlehighschool.ludus.com/ . The last day to purchase tickets for the 50th Anniversary Gala will be 12:00 pm on Thursday, March 28.
CTSO Fundraiser
It's a Zoup! Fundraiser for BPA, SkillsUSA & HOSA National Competitions.
Come out and support all our students traveling to their national events by either having dinner at Zoup or taking it home. PRIZES, give-aways and smiles are all a part of this night. Attached is the flyer needed to help our students. Just print and take with you that evening.
When: Tuesday, April 2nd from 5-8pm
Where: Zoup! Kirkwood Highway, Midway Shopping Center ~ Denison
Another Great Presentation
On March 6, the ACE students from Tech Drafting did a fabulous job presenting at the ACE Mentoring Breakfast. As a result, the Delcastle and Hodgson students had an opportunity to present their plans for the City of Wilmington's Constitution Yards a second time to Tom Ogden, a representative for Mayor Purzycki, at Delcastle on Thursday, March 21. He was extremely pleased with the presentations and stated that the Mayor would love to see the students' presentations. Congratulations to the ACE students and Mr. Baeriswyl. Excellent job!
Freshman Orientation
As mentioned at the faculty meeting last week, we will need some volunteers for Freshman Orientation. It is Saturday, April 6th from 7:30 to 11:30. This event is EPER not trade off time. Volunteers should email Ms. Prickett and will be accepted on a first come first accepted basis.
Thanks! ~ Dr. O
Wireless Change
Chromebook Lockdown Browser (Kiosk Mode) Directions!!!
Please take a look at the Slides below for directions on how students put their Chromebooks into lockdown mode for assessments***.
***NOTE: For certain STATE assessments, you may need to use TestNav instead.
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
Managing Cultural Diversity
Another challenge to managing effective group work can be norms of behavior, whether they are individual differences in personality or more general differences in cultural practices. In some cultures it is considered inappropriate for boys and girls to work together. Students from other cultures may be used to working independently and may be uncomfortable working in a group. Because we live in a society where people work together at some point in virtually all careers and walks of life, it is important for students to be able to step outside this comfort zone and engage in whatever configuration they may find themselves. Teaching students to participate effectively while still recognizing, valuing, and allowing for these differences can be a delicate balance. As we create an environment that fosters teamwork, we can hold frank discussions about cultural and personal differences and the reasons for learning to work both independently and collaboratively. We can also vary the structures for learning, sometimes grouping girls with girls and boys with boys, for example. And for those students who prefer to work independently, we can negotiate with them, allowing them to work independently for part of a project or for certain projects and progressively moving them into more collaborative situations.
Setting Clear Expectations and Outcomes
In Chapter 3, we discussed the importance of making the purpose of each lesson clear to students in order to focus their attention and help to build schemas and understanding. Setting clear expectations and outcomes is also an important factor in managing group work effectively. Many of us have had the unfortunate experience of designing what we thought was an exciting and interesting collaborative task for our students, only to watch it go over like the proverbial lead balloon. Upon reflection, we may realize that the reason for the failure was not so much the lesson design but that students did not understand what we expected them to do. Asking students to work together is far more complicated than simply assigning the odd-numbered questions at the end of the chapter. It requires making the procedures of the task as well as the expectations for quality and substance of the outcome crystal clear for all students. This may mean showing models of completed work, writing the directions in addition to telling the students what to do, or modeling how to do the task (as we saw with the fishbowl). Posters of the steps involved in each collaborative task are one way of helping students learn what they are supposed to do.
Mr. Lopez, a 2nd grade teacher, and Ms. King, a 10th grade world history teacher, both use the same procedures to make sure students know what the assignment is. They write the steps of the task on an overhead or chart, tell the students what they will be doing, and then ask a student to tell the class what the first step is. They then ask another student to tell the class what the first student said. This repetition encourages all students to listen and has the added benefit for English language learners, who may have difficulty in comprehending multistep directions, of giving them multiple opportunities to hear the directions.
Managing Talk in Pairs
Partner talk is the bread and butter of a classroom filled with the talk of learning. Teachers most commonly invite students to "turn to a partner" to discuss the topic of the moment. As noted in Chapter 4, this simple partner-talk method should be used frequently to allow students lots of opportunities to apply new learning. But work accomplished in pairs is also done during collaborative learning activities designed to move students to an increased level of independence.
Continue reading next week....