Rose Ferrero Weekly Bulletin
Week Of: October 18-29, 2021
QUOTES OF THE WEEK WE SHARED WITH OUR STUDENTS
LCAP GOAL 2: PROFICIENCY FOR ALL & LCAP GOAL 5: Support For Teachers: Big Ideas for Science
Jo Boaler and the team at Youcubed, just announced the launching of a groundbreaking new tool for educators: Big Ideas in Data Science, a proposed set of ideas and tasks for teaching data science to students in kindergarten through tenth grade. Boaler and her team worked with Statistician Rob Gould at UCLA and Economist Steve Levitt at the University of Chicago, with input from many other experts, to create this resource to help guide schools and teachers as they incorporate data science into their mathematics instruction. The new webpage offers classroom tasks, discussion topics and teaching advice— just click on a grade band to see the content that is most relevant for you and your students.
According to Boaler, the need for data literacy has increased in recent years, not only to prepare students for 21st century jobs and support an informed citizenry, but also to address severe inequities that are prevalent in the US. This has implications throughout the school years: teachers of younger students have the important task of helping them develop data literacy, and as students move through the grades, they can start to learn the exciting and new discipline of data science. However, despite this clear and urgent need, no standards for data science have been developed. So today Boaler’s team is “planting a flag in the ground” and offering ideas for the development of data literacy and data science through the grades!
The big ideas released build on guidelines developed by the American Statistical Association, which outline a four-step cycle for data investigation that you will see on the new webpage:
- formulate statistical investigative questions
- collect/consider the data
- analyze
- interpret and communicate
For each grade range, the webpage shows the Big Ideas— descriptions of the most important content in data science that are intended to help teachers focus attention on ways to increase data literacy. Big ideas are those that are central to the discipline of data science, and that link understandings into a coherent whole. The reason for putting this together is to help teachers see the data science process and how it connects ideas to the content they already teach. The authors envision teachers teaching content they normally teach and connecting to data science big ideas because our materials help them to see the connections.
Teaching to big ideas in data science also means choosing tasks and data talks that give students experience inside the big ideas. For each grade range, the webpage links to tasks and data talks that we have curated throughout the youcubed site which are appropriate for addressing the content at that level. If you are not yet familiar with data talks, we highly recommend them to support student development in reading and understanding data visuals – an important form of data literacy. They are among the most popular data science resources on our website and our full collection can be found here. Other ideas and materials for teaching data science that we offer include:
Teachers have already shared many amazing stories of inspiration and change in classrooms where they are encouraging data literacy— if you have a great experience to share, please post it on social channels, they'd love to learn about it!
LCAP GOAL 5: Support For Teachers – Rose Ferrero Kindergarten Teachers Attend a Virtual RTI At Work Institute with Mike Mattos
At Rose Ferrero, we understand that our teachers cannot ensure the success of every student unless they can effectively intervene when students struggle. Research and evidence in the field is conclusive—RTI is the best way to intervene. RTI (Response to Intervention) also known as a multitiered system of support (MTSS)—is a systematic process that helps ensure all students receive the time and support needed to learn at high levels.
At Rose we want to ensure our teachers receive the highest-quality, personalized RTI training for teachers that there is. Therefore, we are brought Solution Tree's RTI at Work preeminent expert, Mike Mattos to our school.
This past week, our Kindergarten teachers were introduced to proven teaching strategies and tools they can rely on to help improve their interventions at all tiers of the RTI pyramid, as well as ways to keep the focus on what's really important—high levels of learning for all students.
This “at Rose Ferrero” virtual workshop provided our Kinder team with a comprehensive overview of the RTI at Work model. Mrs. Mallobox, Mrs. Pinedo, and Mrs. Sanchez were introduced to the essential elements the need to create a highly effective, multitiered system of support (MTSS) to ensure all their students learn at high levels. This includes how to:
- Build effective teams to know when and how to respond to students
- Prioritize essential learning outcomes for optimal focus on what students should learn
- Target assessments to help identify what they have learned or not
- Systematically respond when students need intervention and enrichment
Finally, they learned that a successful RTI model begins by asking the right questions to create a fundamentally effective learning environment for every student. RTI is not a series of implementation steps, but rather a way of thinking, including how to create a focused RTI model that works, shift to a culture of collective responsibility, and build team structures for collaboration, and to develop a system of convergent assessment to identify students for intervention, determine their unique needs, monitor their progress, and adjust learning opportunities based on their progress. Due to the level of satisfaction these teachers experienced this past week, we are looking to have six more teachers attend a virtual RTI at Work Institute before the end of this calendar year.
Soledad’s Rotary Club Continues its Contribution to Students: Third Grade Dictionary Giveaway Comes to Rose Ferrero
Last year this event was a “drive-up-and-pick-up” event, but this year all those mentioned above took the time to go through the dictionaries with the students – showing them around, so-to-speak, helping students find the longest word in the dictionary, where the sign language illustrations are, and even where students write their names in the dictionary, ensuring this is their dictionary for life. We have always looked forward to and appreciate, all the Rotary Club does for all the students in the community. This past Wednesday continued the tradition of the past, and we look forward to seeing them here at Rose next year (or sooner!)
Three Reminders for the Third Week of October:
1). Teachers: Please remember to be outside on the yard for the 10 minutes of Yard Duty you share with your Grade-level Team. Sometimes we are short Pupil Supervisors, and we are counting on your presence out on the yard to keep our students safe. Thanks.
2). Teachers: Please make sure to pick up your students on time from the cafeteria after lunch.
3). Teachers: As highlighted in the article in the last Friday Bulletin, students should only miss recess for violations that occur at recess – not for “academic issues.” However, you may keep a student in with you during any recess for classroom issues you feel warrant missing recess to have a discussion with the student regarding the importance of learning.