Birdneck Briefing
Updates-Info-Links Week of June 5 to June 9
FYI Week of 6/02/17 to 6/09/17
6/5 Makeup Sols
6/6 5th Grade Science SOL
6/7 5th Grade Social Studies SOL
6/7 Oceans of Success Fieldtrip
6/7 SCA Meeting
6/8 Robotics Competition
6/8 Student Placement meetings during collab (3rd grade to be rescheduled)
6/9 PreK/Preschool Field Day
6/10 Staff EOY Party 6-9pm Molly Searfoss's house 2429 Matthews Green Rd. VB 23456
Upcoming:
6/16 Last day
6/16 ALL STAFF meeting after school (all staff expected to attend)
If you know of events that are not on our Birdneck Calendar on our homepage, please let Kim Melby know ASAP.
August 16th Title I Conference. Register by July 1st. https://titleisummerconference2017.sched.com/
This is your Captain Speaking!
Hello Staff,
SOL Scores have been coming in and I'm very proud of the work you've been doing. We should have preliminary results of our accreditation by the end of the week. This is a great time for you to let your students know how much growth they have made this year (without sharing SOL scores quite yet) . Students love getting feedback about their progress.
I look forward to meeting with teams this week to create our classes for the next school year. Please be sure that all pink and blue cards are completed by Thursday so we can best group the students into classes. We will put a letter out to parents regarding any classrooms who will have the possibility of looping with their teachers. We will not be taking parent requests for certain teachers. It is important that our staff does not have conversations with parents or our community regarding the teacher who is or is not the "best fit" for the students next year. This is an in-house conversation that we will have in our placement meetings (not to be shared publicly).
Finish Strong,
RV Yoshida
Giving a Child a Chance!
Technically Speaking!
As you plan for your professional learning this summer, please consider checking out the Digital Learning Summer Summit. The summit will be offered both in June and August and will feature a variety of choice sessions offered over two days. If you are interested in checking out the schedule and all your options, please click on the links below. (You will not sign up at those links.)
*To participate, log into Frontline and register for the professional learning sessions. To find these sessions, look under Activity Catalogs and click on Calendar. All you have to do is navigate to the dates and click on the links “Digital Learning Summer Summit I-IV”. You do not have to attend all sessions.*
June 21-22: https://vbdigitallearningsummersumm2017a.sched.com/
August 14-15: https://vbdigitallearningsummersumm2017.sched.com/
Please email or see Lindsey Comfort if you have any additional questions. She would be happy to help you find something you would enjoy!
READING ROCKS!
7 Reflection Tips for Assessment, Empowerment, and Self-Awareness
James Kobailka
Edutopia May 2016
Reflecting takes many forms in the classroom, and it is an integral and indispensable part of education. Great teachers reflect on their daily practice and tweak their units, interactions, and attitudes, both at the end of a class and in the midst of their work. In the same way, students need to reflect on their actions and their work in order to build their classroom community and increase their own knowledge and skills. If you want to integrate reflection into your teaching practice, here are seven tips that you can start implementing in your classroom now.
Read these tips online at: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/reflection-assessment-empowerment-self-awareness-james-kobialka
Reflecting takes many forms in the classroom, and it is an integral and indispensable part of education. Great teachers reflect on their daily practice and tweak their units, interactions, and attitudes, both at the end of a class and in the midst of their work. In the same way, students need to reflect on their actions and their work in order to build their classroom community and increase their own knowledge and skills. If you want to integrate reflection into your teaching practice, here are seven tips that you can start implementing in your classroom now.
1. Reflect With Shout-Outs
Illustration by Cait Camarata
In an English classroom in my building, they practice TL (Team Love) shout-outs. At the end of class, kids are asked to shout out one positive thing someone else did. "TL to Carla for lending me a pencil!" or "TL to Kofi for explaining his quote really well" are surface observations, but they're also kernels of reflection.
2. Reflect Through Writing
Illustration by Cait Camarata
The most common form of reflection is a simple written response. Students can reflect on projects, grades, actions, and reactions. I use a reflection at the end of every quarter where I ask my students what grade they think they deserve and why, and then I give them their grade and ask them to respond, set goals, and offer any comments on the class.
I'm constantly amazed by how honest and accurate my students are. Most of them will predict within five points of their actual grade and be right on target with what they need to work on. Sometimes this practice also provides key insights, such as one student writing about having a hard time at home and that it's affecting her grade, or another student setting a goal to check off every item on his agenda each day before he leaves school.
3. Model Reflective Learning With Pluses and Deltas
Illustration by Cait Camarata
Pluses and deltas take the place of pros and cons. A pro and con chart points out strengths and weaknesses, giving equal weight to each. For youth, pointing out weaknesses can be devastating, especially if there are more cons than pros. Pluses and deltas instead phrases the conversation in terms of things you did well and things that need to change. It's a subtle but pervasive shift that's especially evident when students are offering feedback to their peers, and it's a great tool for your students to model reflective learning.
Each week in my science class, a different student presents a Science Friday project. At the end, four peers offer one plus and one delta each. These comments highlight the positive and then suggest a change, making the feedback uplifting, direct, and actionable. "You didn't speak well" is not a helpful comment. "You could speak louder next time because I missed some of your jokes" is better all around.
4. Reflect on Quizzes
Illustration by Cait Camarata
Tip: Be specific, positive, and actionable when giving guidance on reflection.
In math, students might be asked to reflect on the results of a quiz. Simply saying, "Reflect on your work" isn't enough. Instead, you can say: "Choose three problems you got wrong. For each one, explain the mistake you made, redo the problem, and explain why your new solution is correct." This focuses the students to reflect on one specific aspect and then gives them a specific format for the reflection. As the year goes by, less and less explanation is needed. If students recognize this format and begin to internalize it, they can use it as a baseline for what reflect means in the future.
5. Reflect on Behaviors
Illustration by Cait Camarata
When a class runs particularly well, I will often end by asking for reflection on why everything went so smoothly. On the other hand, if I ask a student to step out of class, I ask them to write a reflection:
- What did you do that led to your leaving?
- Why did you do it?
- How can we work together to make sure that it doesn't happen again?
6. Model Reflection for Your Students
Illustration by Cait Camarata
Beyond just incorporating it into your classroom as a formative or summative assessment tool, you can use your personal reflecting to make your class more transparent and your process more accessible to young people. Every day brings a chance to reflect on your own lessons as a teacher with your students. The end of a period is a great time to throw out some quick comments. I’ll often say things like:
- We didn't get as far as I hoped we would today. Does anyone have any ideas why?
- Today was great! Can anyone tell me something wonderful that they saw someone else do?
- I made a mistake. Next time, I'm going to do this differently by _______.
- I feel like we had a really great class today! I admired how all of us _______.
If students hear you reflecting honestly about your own lesson and pointing out your own successes and things to change, they'll be more willing to do the same.
7. Reflect on Your Teaching Practice
Illustration by Cait Camarata
Of course, not everything needs to be shared with students. Each day in a classroom brings successes and failures of various sizes. Being honest with yourself about both is absolutely imperative.
No one will ever be a perfect teacher. From the first day to the last, we will all make mistakes. As we become more experienced educators, those mistakes will change, but they will never disappear. When I started teaching, my weakest skill was making my lessons accessible. My students often had difficulty engaging with the complexity of my classes. Now, I struggle with the opposite, challenging the high-flyers in my class while still allowing everyone to participate.
I only know this because I can look back over six years of lesson plans, saved assignments, notes to myself, and journals that I've written. I write to myself at least weekly, and often go back for inspiration. Some of my colleagues write daily journals. Some use blogs, Twitter, or Facebook, and others just talk a lot about their classes. Yet we all take note of our own pluses and deltas, using those to better inform our teaching.
What are examples of how you use reflection to examine both successes and failures? Please share in the comments section below.
This blog post is part of our Schools That Work series, which features key practices from University Park Campus School.
Math Matters
What are your plans for math once your SOLs are over? Here are two engaging ideas (from an upper elementary teacher) that will allow your students to review what they learned during the year and then display it in a fun way.
END OF THE YEAR MATH ACTIVITIES AND IDEAS
Student created review games.
We love board games and each year we spend a few days at the end of the school year creating our own game boards. One year I did this independently, and another year I paired the students to create the game boards together. It works both ways, but I prefer the partners so they can double check their answer keys.
To complete the game boards, the students choose a skill or group of related skills (these can be assigned or allowed free choice or choice from a list of skills) and then they create a specific number of questions related to the skill(s). They can use index cards or cut rectangles from a piece of folded piece of paper.
After completing their questions, I have the students then create the answer key. When they work in partners, each student creates an answer key independently. When they are both finished, they compare their answers. Any that are not the same, they discuss and determine the correct answer. At this point, I check their question cards and answer keys before giving them the go ahead to create their game boards. They usually get super creative with their game boards and I love seeing how they turn out.
I like to give my students free reign with the game board creation (one year a student did a 3-D game board). After the game boards are complete, the students trade game boards and play each other’s games. Last year, we even invited our neighboring 5th grade class to come in and play the games with us.
Student created posters and then gallery walk presentation.
My students love creating posters to show what they have learned in a creative, unique way. This time of the year is perfect for that. You could allow the students (individually or in pairs or small groups) to choose a skill or you could assign skills to ensure a variety. When I do this, I have the students plan the poster out on notebook paper and get it approved before working on the final poster. After all the students have completed their poster, we display them around the room and complete a gallery walk and leave comments on post it notes for the students.
Join our PTA
IMPORTANT REMINDERS
Join the PTA! Our goal is to have 100% Staff participation!!!!!!!!!
Support Birdneck Elementary students by joining the PTA. Don't miss out on the benefits from joining the PTA. Receive over $300 in savings... all for just $5 for a membership. Check out the PTA website at http://birdneckpta.weebly.com/
Licensure: Technology Standards for Instructional Personnel (TSIP)
All teachers new to Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS) are required to meet the Technology Standards for Instructional Personnel (TSIP) within the first year (12 months) of employment.
This is a licensure requirement for the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE).
Your TSIP requirement must be completed no later than: May 31, 2017
Between now and June 30, 2017, please work with the Instructional Technology Specialist (ITS) to identify the dates and times to take and pass the TSIP tests in your school. Make every effort to complete this requirement prior to the end of this school year.
Additional TSIP testing sessions will be made by appointment through the Department of Human Resources during the month of July 2017.
For questions about licensure requirements and other options, please email your licensure analyst:
Last names beginning with A-Gn ............ Patti Perger, patti.perger@vbschools.com
Last names beginning with Go-N ........... Leslie Miller, leslie.miller@vbschools.com
Last names beginning with O-Z .............. Ila James, ila.james@vbschools.com
REMINDERS
Reminder: Tell our teachers how AWESOME they are
Reminder: Greet your students at the door every morning
Reminder: Have fun at work!
BIRDNECK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BIRDNECK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BIRDNECK MISSION
The mission of Birdneck Elementary is to dedicate ourselves to the success of all children, preparing them to meet today's expectations and tomorrow's challenges.
BIRDNECK VISION
Children are our future. We are dedicated to their success.
BIRDNECK BELIEFS
We believe in a collaborative community in which teachers, administrators, students, and parents work together for student success.
We believe in creating a safe, nurturing, and positive environment in which all students can strive for excellence and achieve their individual potential.
We believe we will prepare our students for success by providing 21st century learning and developing within our students critical thinking, effective communications and problem solving skills.
Website: http://www.birdneckes.vbschools.com/
Location: 957 South Birdneck Road, Virginia Beach, VA, United States
Phone: 757-648-2120