North High School
Staff Bulletin - October 28, 2019
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Literacy Goal: North High School will raise the percent of students proficient on the Open Response from fall to spring by 10% in 2019-2020.
Actions Being Taken to Improve Literacy
- Daily Writing - Writing activities every day to boost our student writing
- Departments with different responsibilities in teaching areas of the OR Rubric
- Advisory students tracking their progress on OR
- Working on quality task creation and examining student work from those tasks
Math Goal: North High School will raise the percent of students proficient on the High School Math Assessment from fall to spring by 10% in 2019-2020.
- Understanding and applying the Common Core's 8 Mathematical Practices in all classrooms
- Advisory students tracking their progress on the BME Assessment
- Develop an auxillary leadership team to focus on math data assessments
- Working on quality task creation and examining student work from those tasks
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Classroom Implementation Protocol Observations Set to Continue This Week
We will once again be completing CIP Walkthroughs starting this week. Reminder, we are looking for the following:
· Higher Order Thinking Questions, Responses, and Statements (from adults and students)
· Depth of Knowledge (concept v. topic based)
· Student Understanding (can they answer the question, “What are you learning?” and refer to the target)
· Substantive Conversations (No Dialogue, Dialogue, or Substantive Conversation – How deep is the conversation going?)
· Value Beyond School (Student must explicitly state it without being prompted. Happens less than 10% of the time)
Individual feedback will not be provided. The goal is for us to visit each teacher twice (preferably the same block). The purpose of collecting this information is to provide us with a snapshot of our building and not individual teachers. If you have not been trained in AIW yet, don’t worry. We use this data to direct station rotations and focused professional development.
The following people are trained in CIP and you may see them in your classroom:
· Brant Bemus
· Ryan Dumkrieger
· Maggie Elgert
· Chris Koch
· Crista Limoges
· Laura Stevenson
· Joni Swenson
· Tracy Vander Wilt
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Last Week's Average Daily Attendance: 90.69% (-1.67%)
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TV and Marquee Information
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Daily Announcements
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Weekly Strategy Challenge - Practice This Strategy In Class!
Strategy - Substantive Conversation
Substantive conversations are classroom discussions that talk about concepts/themes/problems that go beyond factual recall. They involve sharing ideas and are typically a back and forth with students responding to the point previously made. These can add to and expand those statements or cut and argue against them. The key is that the discussion builds on statements (from adults or students) to ensure an understanding of the concept.
In my search for a meaningful video on substantive conversations, I ran across a two year old video from our very own North High School students. Watch this video and consider these points:
- Grouping matters - using pairs is good for checking for understanding. Using triads really helps getting to substantive conversations. Note in this video, when two are stumped a third person helps with an answer. This doesn't mean it can't happen with two students; three can make that easier.
- Planned discussion - We have all had that moment in class when it flowed. Things went just as went perfectly and we felt like the best teacher in the world. There is a good chance that happens when we planned for it. Planning for conversations matters.
It is great for these to happen on the fly as well. When we observe dialogue, we look for substantive conversation among students, but it can happen between the teacher and students as well. Here are some prompts to help when having the discussions:
- How would you put that in your own words?
- What would be an example?
- What would that look like?
- How can you make use of that?
- What is the most important part of that?
- Tell me more.
- How does this connect to what we have already learned?
- What conclusion could you draw?
- What patterns do you see?
- What textual evidence do you have to prove that? Why is that important?
- If that is true, what argument could you make against it?
- What might be a metaphor or analogy for this answer?
Here is also a great link to 6 types of questions to improve classroom discussions:
https://parlayideas.com/6-questions-improve-classroom-discussions/
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CPR Courses Begin
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Advisory Calendar of Events
Tuesday:
Grade Checks with Homeroom Students
Wednesday:
Review Expectations for Auditorium and Guest Speakers with 9th Grade Students
Thursday:
Sports World Presentation for Freshman at 9:00 am; Dismiss 1st block at 8:55 AM
Friday:
MVP Lesson
Current CPR Training:
Tracy Gilbert (S209)
C. Brown (335)
Upcoming CPR Training - 11/26 to 12/12:
K. Langel (S209)
A. Jelken (335)
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Upcoming Dates
Below are currently scheduled events that will take place during the school day. These will interrupt academic work.
Thursday, November 7 - SportsWorld Presentation 9:00-9:51 AM
Tuesday, November 26 - Audrie and Daisy Film for Freshman (8:35-10:35)
Wedenesday, December 11 - Senior College and Career Readiness Survey (homeroom only, should not be an interruption).
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Monday Morning Music
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Reminders and Checklists
All Staff:
- Safe School Training is released. Here is the link: https://siouxcityschools-ia.safeschools.com/ There are five training's on this year's module. Total time indicated is 129 minutes. Due dates are varied.
Certified Staff:
- Sign up for duties with Chris. If you sign up now, you will have a choice. If you wait, you will be assigned to an open duty.