News from the Nest
Week of October 23, 2017 Related Arts "B" Week
Vision
"Wendell Phillips 63 will establish a positive, engaging, and rigorous learning environment that allows each child to “SOAR to Excellence” as a member of the Cardinal Family."
Places to be!!!
Oct. 23- Lesson Plans Due in Google Drive (9:00 am)
Oct. 24- K-7 ELA PLC's
Oct. 24- Leadership Team Mtg (7:45 am in Media Center)
Oct. 24- K-7 Math PLC's
Oct. 25- PIVOT ELA Testing, Grades 3-7
Oct. 26- Jeans Day
General Need to Knows
THANK YOU for a great start to the second quarter!!!! As I walk through the building (common areas, classrooms) I see the push of high behavioral expectations and instructional practices. Let's keep this up, as our students WILL meet the bar we set for them. Let's set that bar high and keep it there.
I also want to THANK YOU for the effort you put into your passion every day! I know the news we received at our staff meeting can be a little unsettling, but keep in mind why you chose to pursue your passion as a teacher....for the students! Keep your focus on them and how you intend to grow them more from the beginning of the year. We got this!!!!!
Continue to follow instructional schedules! We always need more time, but we also know that we cannot create this precious commodity. We need to be efficient with our time and design instructional plans that maximize your impact on student achievement. What is the focus for each block of instruction? How are you planning this through the gradual release process?
Finally, we are in the season of mini observations! Between now and winter break, your evaluator will be completing two mini observations. These are 5-8 minutes in length. While this is not a long time in the room, we will be providing constructive feedback on your practices. We will be scoring Domain 3C for everyone, as well if you chose a specific domain and indicator for your personal goal.
Vision Aligned Thought Provokers
Positive classrooms: Continue to push your high expectations for the behaviors in your classroom. The structure in your classroom is crucial to a positive learning environment. Continue to teach, reinforce, reteach and repeat...and repeat. We get what we expect and if we let this structure break down, students will take advantage and create their own version of rules.
Also, I know a lot of us do brain breaks throughout the day, which is great for all of us! However, let's make sure that we are using these effectively. Be mindful of when and how long the brain breaks occur. I am including some an article below from Dr. Lori Desautels (a local IPS Teacher and Butler University professor) about brain breaks.
Engaging instruction: We all know that students will not engage in instruction if they don't feel it is relative or interesting to them. This is sooooo true in station work. I know our ELA teachers received PD on this Monday. However, this also applies to math, science, and social studies. Stations need to be differentiated, intentional, and have a level of accountability. This supports student engagement; if we are designing it with those three items in mind, then students will buy in.
RIGOROUS Instruction: DOK guides our RIGOR work....its all about the level of questions we ask! We need to make sure we appropriately scaffold questions to align to the levels being asked on assessments. No, we don't teach to the test. But, we need to align our instructional practices to mirror the content and questioning seen on specific grade level assessments. See the article below for a deeper dive on this....