Principal Weekly Wrap Up
November 13, 2015
OAP Mission Statement:
Journal Writing- Week 9
Deliberate Optimism: Can we model what we are asking of our students? Reflective thinking and capturing our thoughts on paper.
Please join me this week in reflecting on the following question: What is the most recent inspirational quote that has inspired you? For me? "Nodding your head does not move the bus."
If you have observed someone on campus exhibiting our mission statement and would like for them to receive Rock Star status, please email me
Principal Award
Please nominate students to receive the principal award.
The award is designed to be used to celebrate and motivate students who model our mustang motto. In addition, the award is designed to honor students who have improved academically and or behaviorally. Please submit a name by Wednesday November 18th at 10:00 a.m.
Gallery Walk
November 9-13 , 2015
PTA Spirit Night at Cousin's BBQ
2nd graders comparing and contrasting
Choir students performing at our Veteran's Day Program
TED Talk Education:
Review Assembly Expectations During The Week Of November 16-20th (Please read below)
Assembly Scheduled for November 20th. Students will be recognized for attendance and achievement. Please extend an invitation to parents to attend.
2 weeks at a glance (see attachment)
Article Worth Reviewing: Two Case Studies of Data-Driven Improvement
(Originally titled “Going Quantitative (But Using Common Sense)”)
In this article in Educational Leadership, Rob Traver (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) describes how a teacher and a teacher team used data and SMART goals to improve teaching and learning.
• A high-school English teacher – Charlie was discouraged because when he read a new poem aloud and pointed out some of its features, only a handful of students responded and the energy level of discussions was low. He believed this was because (a) students lacked confidence in their literacy skills, and (b) students were hesitant to speak up when they weren’t sure what they were talking about. To get more students responding to poems with more confidence, he thought that having students write their ideas before speaking would reduce the level of risk and get more students participating.
So after reading the next poem, Charlie gave out index cards and suggested several prompts to get students writing:
The first thing that came to mind when I heard the poem was…
I heard this in the poem and I like it/don’t know what it means/thought it was weird/thought it was beautiful.
This poem reminds me of another poem we heard because…
After giving students a few minutes to jot down their thoughts, he asked several students to read what was on their cards, pass them to a classmate to read, or let him read them. He then asked students to respond to the responses or responded himself, and at the end of the class had students sign their cards and hand them in.
Tracking the number of students speaking up in each class, Charlie was pleased with the results – a lot more participation, and he met his SMART goal of going from the baseline of 5-6 students participating to 10-12. But looking more closely at the class-by-class and poem-by-poem data, he also noticed some anomalies. A contemporary poem about teens and their parents got a much higher participation rate; the participation rate increased across the board as his poetry unit progressed; and one class had a much lower discussion rate than the others. So he set to work figuring out how to get more participation from students in that class. “This is rather fun,” he said, “once you see how it works.”
“Going Quantitative (But Using Common Sense) by Rob Traver in Educational Leadership, November 2015 (Vol. 73, #3, p. 34-39), available for purchase at http://bit.ly/1iOtmhX; Traver can be reached at rtraver@wpi.edu.