HOWL
Where our purpose is learning & making connections
March 5, 2020
"Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you're feeling. To have the hard conversations." --Brené Brown
Connecting with Each Other
CONNECTING WITH OUR LEARNING
As we learn more about the collaborative process together, we can use a process for identifying essential learning outcomes.
This is the video that was shown at the staff meeting. Each content team completed a reflection based on their work so far this year. The video includes references to this Essential Standard Chart.
This link shares results of staff surveys for your reference
We are looking for a team of teachers that would like to use the feedback from last week's survey to create a student code of conduct or clear expectations for our school. Please let Lance, Lisa or Vicki know if you would like to be part of the team.
We support our student's through learning expectations each week with Teach To's
Connecting with Our Future
Our Purpose
Our school goal: “During the 2019-2020 school year, Washington Middle School will connect with others, connect to our own learning and connect to our future. Our connectedness will be measured by smiles, celebrations, feedback and learning targets.”
Time to Master Our Process
Autonomy
This week we would like to celebrate the Maker Content team. Bev Deem, Jeff Koch, Paul Pendergast and Marly Harmeling have been working with autonomy to combine 4 different content areas into one team focused on learning.
Here are some highlights:
The team has been meeting twice a week and sharing what is happening in each of the four classrooms. Their time together is focused on finding commonalities which they use to measure student learning.
Some of these are:
Student work ethic, all four classes are project based and each project is an assessment of skill development, the feedback in each classroom is visual, and the classes are all materials based so there is learning around taking care of learning materials.
The team has become effective communicators and talk out any disagreements together. The members of the team recognize different strengths in each other and it has manifested in increased capacity for all.
Some differences in the mode of learning have also been recognized. Jeff’s class is organized around simulating a business - teams of students are led by a foreman, etc. Bev and Paul operate the classroom as a laboratory. They have learned from Jeff that there is power in delegating responsibilities to students and that competition between student teams seems to motivate students.
Paul shared that through working with his team, he has empowered students to systematize the learning process. Especially with the technology related courses, groups of students organized around a team leader has led to students helping each other more.
This team reports that their next challenge is to move their focus toward student learning in each content area and look for commonalities there.
Thank you for joining together to celebrate the work that Bev, Jeff, Paul and Marly have done to create a framework for student learning across multiple content areas.
Washington Middle School
Email: delsmanl@mpsd.k12.wi.us
Website: https://washington.manitowocpublicschools.org/
Location: 2101 Division Street, Manitowoc, WI, USA
Phone: 920.663.9570
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WashingtonMiddleSchool