Clif Notes 5/13/19
50 Years Of Building The State & Now Global Workforce!
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week
Monday - 8am Start for Extra Help;
Tuesday -CTE PLCS
Wednesday -Academic PLCs; Interims Delivered to Students
Thursday - Academic PLCs; Senior Exams (5-8)
Friday - Senior Exams (1-4); Prom at Deerfield, 7PM
Upcoming:
5/21 Senior Exams: Make-ups & Extended Time
5/23 8am Graduation Rehearsal, Gym/Auditorium
5/27 Memorial Day/CLOSED
5/28 7pm Graduation at UD - Bob Carpenter Center;
Faculty Celebration following at Timothy's Restaurant in Newark
5/30 Spring Sports Banquet
BIRTHDAYS
Ramonita Irizarry 5/15
Bryan Bryant 5/17
Cory Evan 5/19
Nicole Stokes 5/19
Pam Wise-Bowen 5/19
Car Show
Ignite The Night
ABC Awards
Congratulations to Miranda Marenco (SM) and Axel Vega (WG) for receiving the ABC Outstanding Co-op Award. This award recognizes co-op students in the construction field who demonstrate initiative, strong work ethic, excellent attendance, desire to learn and positive attitude while on the job site. Excellent job!
Art Club
Our Delcastle students did an outstanding job showing their creative talents at the Delcastle Creative Art Club student expedition. This club is so important because it gives an outlet for students to express their creative talents and to explore their ability to design, which is a part of every career area in our district. Special thanks goes to Andrew Hudson and John Rykaczewski for working with the students and art instructors all year.
Benefits Open Enrollment
Attention Senior Teachers
If you have any senior in danger of failing, make sure you make the call home and let their counselor know. Counselors need to know of any senior that is definitively going to fail a course no later than May 21st.
- Senior exams are REGULAR SCHOOL days with a regular bell schedule.
- May 16th - periods 5/6, 7/8
- May 17th - periods 1/2, 3/4
- May 21st – extended time/make-ups
- Chromebook collection for seniors
- May 16th 2:00-4:00 pm in the auditorium
- May 17th 9:47-12:00 pm in the auditorium
- Senior recognition- May 2nd - ceremony starts @ 7:00 pm in the gym
- Prom- May 17th @ 7:00 pm @ Deerfield
- Graduation rehearsal- May 23 @ 8:00 am in the gym/auditorium
- Graduation at the Bob- May 28th @ 7:00 pm
~ Kittel
Summer Home Visits
Each year we have staff visit our incoming freshman over the summer. Anyone interested in conducting home visits this summer should email Mrs. Traci Prickett.
Register for Student Success Conference on June 18
Registration is now open for the state's inaugural Student Success Conference to be held Tuesday, June 18 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. at Delaware State University in Dover. This conference is designed to provide educators with best practices for guiding and engaging students through their transitions from high school to college and career. The conference will also focus on building bridges across districts and communities to improve student support. Register for PDMS course #27975, section #50688. See flier for more information.
Digital Graphic Organizers
Graphic organizers have always been a terrific means of helping students organize their thoughts. However, making the digital versions can be time consuming and daunting…
Therefore, the link below provides access to 26 Google templates for graphic organizers!!!
These are view only, so after opening an organizer, click on the “File” drop-down menu and choose “Make a copy”.
Now you will be able to edit the organizers and put them into your lessons as links or embedded into Schoology!!!
As always, if you need more assistance or have questions please contact me.
~Tara
Delcastle Instructional Focus
What We Say and How We Say It Matter
What We Say and How We Say It Matter
by Mike Anderson
Shifting Language to Match New Goals for Students
Where did our bad habits come from, and why is this such a particularly good time to shift them? Many of the most common language habits and patterns have been handed down from teacher to teacher over many years. As new teachers, we look to professional mentors and colleagues for how to speak to children. In teacher preparation programs and internships, we may have been given lots of advice about how to speak with children. We may (consciously or unconsciously) echo our own teachers and parents. What we need to be mindful of, though, is that language patterns that might have worked at one point may not be as effective as they once were. This is the case for a couple of reasons. First, children today are different than children were years ago. I grew up in the tumultuous 1970s and materialistic 1980s—quite a different scene from my parents' experience growing up in the post-World War II 1950s. How could I not have been different from my parents? My two children, who have grown up in the information age, are different from me. Children 20 years from now will be different from children in schools right now. As society, cultural norms, and daily experiences shift, our children change as well. This means that some of our language needs to shift with them.
Perhaps more importantly, especially for educators, our goals for children may change to help them be ready for an ever-changing world. During the industrial age, when public schools came of age, the vast majority of people graduating from schools went on to fairly linear jobs—where they showed up at 9:00, did straightforward work, were managed and motivated by someone else, and then punched out at 5:00. Emphasizing compliance and obedience in schools might have made sense once. This is no longer the case. Skills of creativity, self-motivation, empathy, and collaboration are all more important now than they once were.
Schools also require students to learn higher-level skills than were once expected. When it comes to the social and emotional climate of schools, students no longer spend most of the day working alone doing quiet seatwork. Instead, they need to work together and engage in collaborative tasks with a diverse community of learners. When it comes to academic engagement, it is no longer appropriate for students to be passive recipients of content developed by teachers, textbook publishers, or curricular program companies. Instead, students must assume more power and control of their learning, cocreating rich learning experiences with their teachers. And when it comes to discipline, being obedient rule-followers is no longer enough. Students need to learn to think and act in ethical and responsible ways so they are ready to be independent and deep thinkers, not simply compliant workers.
As I travel the country working with schools in all kinds of settings, I see evidence that these sorts of shifts are happening. Many schools are working at creating more choice-based and project-based learning experiences that emphasize collaboration over competition. Many schools are moving away from traditional grading practices that aim to motivate students through rewards and punishments. And many of these same schools are working at having students play a more active role in discipline by having students create working norms and using restorative justice practices.
However, our teacher talk isn't keeping pace with these new practices, and this sends confusing and counterproductive messages to students. For example, even though teachers may want their students to take more ownership for their work, when they say, "I'm looking for you to turn in a high-quality piece of work," they actually send the message that students are working for teachers. A simple shift such as "Think about what you'll look for in high-quality work" sends a very different message.
Additionally, when you look at the highest-impact practices in education—the ones touted by the top education researchers as having the biggest effect on achievement—language is central to their effectiveness. Consider some of the factors that Marzano (2003) highlights as keys to school and classroom effectiveness and think about the critical role that teacher language plays in each:
- Effective feedback
- Safe and orderly environment
- Collegiality and professionalism
- Classroom management
- Student motivation
Similarly, John Hattie's meta-analysis work (2009), often considered the gold standard in education research, highlights many key practices that yield higher student achievement. The following list is a small sampling of these practices. Again, consider how the language that teachers use will be central to the effectiveness of these practices, all of which rate in the top 26 of the factors Hattie explored. The parenthetical numbers beside each show the effect size on student achievement of the practice. In Hattie's work, an effective size greater than .40 is in the zone of desired effects—practices that yield an above-average impact on achievement.
- Teacher clarity (0.75)
- Feedback (0.73)
- Teacher-student relationships (0.72)
- Metacognitive strategies (0.69)
- Not labeling students (0.61)
- Teaching strategies (0.60)
- Direct instruction (0.59)
Continue reading next week....