ARMS Legend
Excellence Without Boundaries
Excellence in Leading. Teaching.Learning
Improve Student Achievement
Improve the Quality of Instruction
Create a Positive & Supportive Campus Culutre
Principal's Message
We have 10 days until STAAR and we have to, as it says below make every moment count. That is my message for this week.
Maximize, Maximize, Maximize - our students deserve our very best, our peers deserve our very best, our parents / community deserve our very best, and you deserve the very best!
Proudest Principal in DISD!
F. Taylor-Glenn
One Band. One Sound
April 24, 2017 Week 2 of 6th Six Weeks
BY MAY 2017, AT LEAST 80% OF ALL STAAR EXAMS TAKEN BY ARMS STUDENTS WILL MEET THE PHASE II PASSING STANDARD.
TEAM
GRIT
GROWTH
New Information
2017-18 ARMS Ambassador Committee
Current 6th Grade & 7th Grade Teachers please take a moment to consider the criteria when nominating a student:
- Evidence of a collaborative nature,
- commitment to learning / growing oneself,
- appropriate/sound decision making, leadership qualities,
- and overall student behaviors indicate being an ARMS Ambassador would be seen as a welcomed opportunity and position would be respected.
Please complete the survey link to submit your nomination. Once initial list is reviewed, second round would be interviews with myself and other Rangers staff members.
https://goo.gl/forms/LWxhbwxB4mQwkIii2
I thank you in advance for your time. This group of young people can not be assembled without you.
BRES Observation Highlights
Highlights were:
- Positive Narration during morning arrival and overall good work during transitions
- Students had their hands to themselves, good student behavior during transitions
- 6th & 8th Grade had 90-95% on overall adult supervision during transition, 7th Grade Hall 85-90%.
- We had highlights on our Reading and Math Lesson Plans and Instructional Planning Calendars for having all the key elements included.
We will incorporate the findings into our next steps as we are always thinking ahead for next year.
An area I would like everyone to think about as we focus on the last 1.5 months of school is how we positively narrated throughout the day. We did a great job of really showing and providing clarity on what that looks like in the morning (5 hellos, welcome, greeting at doors).
Observations reveal that as the day progresses our positive narration / verbal interactions lessen. I challenge you to keep this at the forefront as you are in the hallway 2-8th period. What can you remember to say to students, is it 5 good afternoons, 4 awesome classes to go....Make it your own, maybe you and your hall mates can come up with "what it sounds like on our hall."
2017 -2018 Committee Ideas
Next year the areas one can connect to have been broadened in a hope that the investment can be spread throughout many people. Find what you are passionate about and what brings joy to you and jump right in!!
https://goo.gl/forms/Rb3bat85aqexP7Lh2
May 15th, Monday - Unplugged Teacher Team Work Session
Please make sure your review the follow up email sent to the team and bring your laptops. Work session will kick off in the library @ 4:30pm. Outlook invite has already been sent.
ARMS Reminders
Extended Observations
The Extended Observation serves as an opportunity to capture what you have been working on throughout the year. The timing of the Extended is purposeful because it is during the time of the year when a teacher has had time to practice new instructional moves, fine tune certain moves, and build upon strengths.
As appraisers it is exciting to observe the instructional growth and thoughtfulness of our educators.
Administrative Assistant Day- Wednesday, 4/26
We have an incredible Support Team at ARMS. These individuals support the work of the daily running of the school; supporting teachers, students, parents, community and are at times the first face our parents and community see when they come to ARMS. There work may be behind the scene but the impact is tremendous. I truly am thankful for our team, for their commitment and focus on teamwork.
Ms. Zapata, Ms. Cardenas, Ms. Garcia, Ms. Tovar, Ms. Hasty, Ms. Chio, Ms. Marenco, Ms. Fuller, and Ms. Martinez-- in spirit :-).
DISD Board Approves 2017-18 Schedule
Operation Excellence: TG2 Spotlight
Spotlight on Ranger Staff: Operation Excellence : Team & Grit
We had a very good turnout on Saturday, for our Skyline Feeder Pattern's first ever Open House event. I sent an email to the other Skyline Feeder Pattern leadership on how proud I was of the teamwork from all of our Ranger staff! We also had so many student participants, it was wonderful!
The hard work paid off and we definitely showed the elementary students and parents, our students, and community members that we are a TEAM and striving for an excellent overall educational experience for all!! It was truly fantastic.
I want to give a special thank you to our fearless POD LEADERS- Ms. Conley, Ms. De La Rosa, Ms. C. Lewis, Mr. Kattan, Mr. Stephens, Mr.Gardner, Ms. Burns, Ms. Husband, Ms. Reddy, Mr. Garcia/Mr. Cofer, Ms. Tesfai, and Ms. J. Miller. When I came to the group with the task, they were positive and proactive. Their leadership was tremendous and it would not have happened without them! I am truly appreciative.
A special appreciation and thank you to Ms. Cardenas. She sent flyers down to the ES schools and communicated with the counselors, to ensure the Open House Information was shared. She worked hard at securing Dallas Public Library, Trio Program / Eastfield College, Montoya Boxing, and South Texas Dentist. She too stepped up and made sure we had community support and our feeder ES students were informed!
Thank you to the following staff members for being on hand on Saturday to help support the many moving parts and people :-). Thank you to Ms. Dashiele for having Parkland North Medical there to share important health and wellness information.
It was a busy day and you all were tremendous!!
Ms. C. Lewis, Ms. Romero, Ms. Ward, Ms. Zapata, Ms. De la Rosa, Ms. Gill, Ms. Jones, Mr. Babeu, Ms. Salazar, Mr. Gardner, Sgt. Salter, Ms. Burns, Mr. Kattan, Ms. Parambath, Ms. A. Lewis, Ms. Husband, Ms. T.Brown, Ms. Lawson, Ms. Klien, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Dewbre, Ms. Roach, Ms. K. Williams, Ms. Joliffe, Ms. Tesfai, Mr. Deering, Coach Cofer, Coach Wagers, Ms. Crabtree, Ms. Linwood, Ms. Nix, Ms. Hunt, Ms. Walker, Ms. Coley, Ms. Luckey, Mr. Villegas, Ms. L. Williams, Ms. Motley, Mr. Zeke, Mr. Jimison.
Thank you to our Rangers who assisted but could not be in attendance- Ms. Conley, Ms. Reddy, Mr. Hoff, and so many more.
- We had performances from LCC, Choir, and Dance - simply excellent and the participants and staff truly enjoyed the shows.
- Student tour leaders and club and organization helpers were on hand as well.
- The clubs and organization section was filled with information about LCC, Creative Writing, Japanese and Anime, Orchestra, Rangers Dance Repertoire Company, Chess, Alpha Mu Sigma Step Team, and all of our Sports!
- Ms. Tesfai and Ms. Joliffe wowed participants with their robot demonstrations.
- Ms. Wagers and Mr. Cofer gave attendees a great look into our PE and Athletics programs.
- Our content team rooms for Math, Science, RLA, and Social Studies had student work and instructional activities for a hands on experience.
Please see the Good News Section for the many pictures and a video of our Choir.
Spotlight on Ms. Walker & Ms. Luckey: Operation Excellence: Team and Leadership
The dynamic duo does it again!
We had over 200 attendees, parents and students, at the SSI Parent meeting to discuss the urgency, interventions, and retest information for our students who will be retesting soon.
The library was standing room only and Ms. Walker walked the parents and students through the plan, support, and urgency of the days ahead. Everyone was encouraged and informed when they left on Saturday.
I want to say thank you also to Mr. Villegas for translating and Ms. Morrison and Ms. Coley for being on hand to help.
Spotlight on a Team of Rangers: Operation Excellence- Team!
I would like to Spotlight the team of Rangers who played any part in making the 8th Grade SSI STAAR Parent Informational Meeting and planning for the Interventions a huge success!
Thank you Ms. Luckey, Ms. Linwood, Ms. Addison, Ms. Crabtree, Ms. Taylor-Glenn, Ms. Morrison, Ms. Coley, Mr. Villegas, Ms. A. Lewis, and all of the 8th Grade Instructional Meeting!! The parents and students left informed as well as encouraged. Thank you!!
Spotlight on Ms. Joliffe: Operation Excellence - Team and Teaching
Super Duper THANKS Ms. Joliffe, for your consistent willingness to spearhead students in outside learning environments. The AU/TC Kiddo’s are relishing in your Robotics Course, which fits right into the STEAM focus for future academic career goals. Ms. Joliffe you create extra waves in your instruction to ensure that ALL students succeed! You Are Amazing!
Operation Excellence Teaching Highlights
Instructional Highlight: Mrs. Morrison
TEI Roster Verification Inforamtion
Dallas Holocaust Museum, DISD Night
2017-2018 Calendar Start and End Dates
How Can We Help Struggling Students Build Strong Vocabularies?
“[T]he size of a person’s vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of his or her reading comprehension,” say Tanya Wright (Michigan State University/East Lansing) and Gina Cervetti ((University of Michigan/Ann Arbor) in this article in Reading Research Quarterly. “Despite the consistency of this predictive relationship, there is evidence that schooling has a limited impact on students’ vocabulary development.” Students who enter school knowing fewer words are likely to continue with relatively small vocabularies and struggle with text comprehension throughout school. Students who start with larger vocabularies, on the other hand, have broader general knowledge, need to spend less time accessing memory of words (which frees up working memory to grasp the meaning of a text), read and enjoy their reading more, and build stronger vocabularies – a reciprocal relationship that tends to widen the achievement gap.
Are there ways to turn around these discouraging findings? Wright and Cervetti reviewed 36 studies of the impact of vocabulary instruction on reading comprehension and found:
• Teaching word meanings almost always improved comprehension of texts containing the words taught.
• Teaching word meanings doesn’t seem to improve comprehension of texts that don’t contain the target words.
• Instruction involving students in some active processing was more effective than dictionary and definition work at improving comprehension of texts containing the words taught. One caveat: researchers don’t know how much active processing is enough.
• Teaching one or two strategies (e.g., context clues or morphology) for solving word meanings doesn’t seem to improve generalized reading comprehension.
• Having students actively monitor their understanding of vocabulary and having them use multiple, flexible strategies for solving word meanings “are promising areas for future research,” conclude Wright and Cervetti.
“A Systematic Review of Research on Vocabulary Instruction That Impacts Text Comprehension” by Tanya Wright and Gina Cervetti in Reading Research Quarterly, April/ May/June 2017 (Vol. 52, #2, p. 203-226), http://bit.ly/2pJVret; Wright can be reached at tswright@msu.edu.
Bullying Hotspots in Schools
In this article in Edutopia, Stephen Merrill reports on a new study from the National Center for Education Statistics on bullying among students 12-18 years old. A total of 21 percent of students said they had been bullied in the following ways: 13 percent made fun of, called names, or insulted; 12 percent subject of rumors; 5 percent pushed, shoved, tripped, or spat on; 4 percent threatened with harm; 5 percent purposefully excluded from activities; 2.5 percent told to do things they didn’t want to do; and 2 percent had their property purposefully destroyed. Girls reported more online harassment (16 percent) than boys (6 percent). These were the locations where students said the bullying occurred:
- 42 percent in hallways or stairwells (similar for boys and girls);
- 34 percent in classrooms (perhaps mainly during entry, transitions, and exit);
- 22 percent in cafeterias;
- 19 percent outside on school grounds;
- 12 percent online or by text;
- 10 percent on school buses;
- 9 percent in bathrooms/locker rooms.
“Whatever model of bullying prevention a school adopts,” says Merrill, “– however diverse the coalition summoned to take a stand against bullying – it makes sense to be mindful that hallways and stairwells, taken together, are nearly twice as likely to be the source of the problem as the cafeteria, playground, or buses and bathrooms. Supervision and vigilance in those fluid spaces between classes is likely to benefit vulnerable students disproportionately.”
“Anatomy of School Bullying” by Stephen Merrill in Edutopia, March 21, 2107,
http://edut.to/2otXSUL (with a link to the full study)
Integrating Movement into Academic Classrooms
“Intuitively, many teachers have always known that physical activity plays an important role in student learning,” say Suzanne Lindt and Stacia Miller (Midwestern State University/Wichita Falls) in this Kappan article. Now the research is confirming those intuitions, showing how dance, gesture, and other forms of movement can improve motivation, engagement, and learning. In classroom experiments, Lindt and Miller have found that students in classrooms that integrated movement were “significantly more excited by, engaged in, and focused on the lessons” than they were with conventional teaching methods. The authors suggest five strategies with examples of each:
• Dancing to memorize information – Doing a dance skip-counting numbers (5, 10, 15, 20…) to the “Macarena.”
• Applying movement to assessments – To test knowledge of synonyms and antonyms, pairs of students jump straight up and down three times, then choose to land on either their right or left foot; if both land on the same foot, they must come up with synonyms for a word on the board; if they land on opposite feet, they must name antonyms.
• Moving among stations – The teacher gives each group of students sets of fraction cards and they take turns moving to another group in search of equivalent fractions, bringing possible matches back to their group to see if they’re correct.
• Forming lines, rows, or other groupings – Each student gets a card with a punctuation mark or a word and students silently arrange themselves to form a complete sentence.
• Representing terms or ideas with actions – After reading a book about emotions, students stand and act out furious, satisfied, courageous, and other words.
“Movement and Learning in Elementary School” by Suzanne Lindt and Stacia Miller in Phi Delta Kappan, April 2017 (Vol. 98, #7, p. 21-22), www.kappanmagazine.org; the authors can be reached at suzanne.lindt@mwsu.edu and stacia.miller@mwsu.edu.
Calendar dates that have been revised-Elective POD meetings, Common Assessment 5th Six Weeks dates, End of Year Gala Date, 6th & 7th Grade EOY Field day Dates
Week of April 14, 2017
STAAR Tutoring, 4:30 - 6:30
Tuesday, 25th
STAAR Tutoring, 4:30 - 6:30
POD Meeting (AD)
Wednesday, 26th
STAAR Tutoring, 4:30 - 6:30
Administrative Professionals Day
Thursday, 27th
STAAR Tutoring, 4:30 - 6:30
Friday, 28th
$1 Student Jean Day
TEI - Extended Observations Completed
Saturday, 29th
All Content SLAM Saturday School
May..Coming Soon
New Ranger: Baby Nola Jay Addison
Mom and baby are doing great!!
Skyline Open House @ ARMS a SUCCESS!!
Coach Cofer takes the robot for a spin!
Rubix Cube Solving Robot!!
Ms. Zapata and Ms. Nix greeting new parents
Lego Robotics Team represent!
Nix, Luckey, and Morrison support Open House & SSI Parent Meeting!
Ms. Wagers share PE and Athletics @ ARMS with rising Rangers!
ARMS Choir wows the crowd!
Click below to hear a clip of two songs!
ARMS Administration Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork!!
Ms. Hunt's son - Robert came to help!
Ms. A. Lewis son - Demarcus supported ELAR Content room!
ARMS Rangers Take all 1's in Sandy Creek Competion 4/22
Last Dance of the Year- Rangers Enjoy themselves!
Kudos to GT Class and Ms. Tesfai for a great dance!
ARMS Facility Request Google Doc
This is how all facility requests are to be made moving forward.
ARMS Safety Drill Staff One Pager
The Most Important Work of our Time! Always remember YOUR IMPACT!
Ann Richards Middle School
At Ann Richards MS, our vision is to be a flagship middle school at the hub of the community, nurturing diverse leaders, and empowering intelligent trailblazers.
Email: frataylor@dallasisd.org
Website: www.dallasisd.org/annrichards
Location: Ann Richards Middle School, North Prairie Creek Road, Dallas, TX, United States
Phone: 972 -892-5400