ARMS Legend
Excellence Without Boundaries
Excellence in Leading. Teaching.Learning
Improve Student Achievement
Improve the Quality of Instruction
Create a Positive & Supportive Campus Culutre
Principal's Message
February 27, 2017, Week 1 of 5th Six Weeks
BY MAY 2017, AT LEAST 80% OF ALL STAAR EXAMS TAKEN BY ARMS STUDENTS WILL MEET THE PHASE II PASSING STANDARD.
TEAM
GRIT
GROWTH
Observation, Feedback & Coaching- GROUP C (Updates Please Read)
- Spring Semester Face to Face Feedback sessions may vary.
- Spot Feedback via SchoolNet reviewed by teachers.
- Respond to Polish via SchoolNet
ARMS New Information
DISD Boarc Approves 2017-18 Schedule
ARMS Reminders
Even I succumbed to the bug...
It is at the top of my mind, because I am with everyone who has been out sick and this round of the cold/flu/pneumonia/bronchitis is harsh.
Our students and team mates need us to be here and we want everyone to be well. Please be extra diligent over these last few months.
- We need to have 100%, All Hands on Deck, by 8:15 ready to go.
- 8:05 (6th & 8th) and 8:10 (7th grade) for Arrival Greeting Teams.
This week, Mrs. Linwood will follow up directly with staff members that are having to be reminded multiple times to be on post.
ARMS Has Raises alittle over $100 for UNCF
Please everyone bring in a donation so that we can end the month of February with meeting our Goal of $300.
Operation Excellence: TG2 Spotlight
Spotlight on Nix, Burns, Hawkins, Kattan, French, Ward, & Romero- Operation Excellence: Team
Ms. Burns and I would like to shout out all of our students that went on our first science field trip to Natural Bridges Cavern! They exuded our Ranger spirit and made us all so very proud of their attitude, behavior, and willingness to learn while we were there!
I would like to say a special thanks to Ms. Nix (who ziplined for the first time,) Mrs. Hawkins, Mr. Kattan, Ms. French, Ms. Ward, and Ms. Romero who was along for this great adventure and who gave up their Saturday for our students!
Ms. Husband adds, A special thanks goes to Ms. Burns for truly taking the lead and crossing every t and dotting every I to make sure this field trip was a success for everyone involved!
Spotlight on Ms. Zapata & Ms. Martinez: Operation Excellence Team & Grit
Ms. Husband writes:
I would like to shout out Mrs. Zapata for all that she did in assisting us in getting everything in order for our field trip! She worked overtime for us (even when she felt so bad) and made sure we had exactly everything we needed! We could not have done this without her and so very thankful for her!!
I would also like to shout out Ms. Martinez who before the birth of her wonderful daughter was our go to person for every single thing in regards to our field trip! She also ensured everything was in order before the quick arrival of her little girl! We could not and would not be able to do our job without both of these ladies, and we are so very appreciative of them!!!
Each week administrators and instructional coaches will highlight the growth in the instructional practices, creativity, purposeful and meaningful practices that promote student success. It is important that we recognize ALL the Excellence in Teaching we have in all of areas of our academic programs. The highlights are on a rotation and each content/department will be the focus for the week. The rotation will repeat itself throughout the year.
We would like to highlight two Social Studies teachers.
Instructional Highlight on Mr. Stephens
One of the areas that we have been working on within the department is presenting social studies content by making stronger connections within the content itself and finding the story element to what is being taught. We are striving to help students see relevancy and connection.
Mr. Stephens is demonstrating that he is truly going after this and has introduced resources, CNN10 and Flocabulary as he continues to strive to have students make connections to what they learn happened 100's of years ago to how it relates to today. Students are having richer conversations and using what they learned to make those connections across the ages.
Instructional highlight on Ms. Barksdale
Instructional highlight for Ms. Barksdale for her leadership on the the 6th grade Social Studies team. She provides direction that allows new team members to get a sound footing in content and organizational methods needed to increase effective instruction. In addition, she has taken on new Pre-AP content and has induced success in her students. Kudos to Ms. Barksdale for a job well done!
DISD Open Transfer Period Approaching
United Negro College Fund DISD Campaign
Click here for more information.
You may set up a donation via Oracle. ARMS goal is $300. The campaign starts on Feb. 1st to March 31st.
TEA A-F Ratings
Improving Secondary-School Classroom Discussions
In this article in English Journal, Lisa Barker (Towson University) remembers with embarrassment how, as a high-school English teacher, she responded to every correct student response by saying, “Rock and roll.” Looking back, she wonders, “What was I thinking? I mean that literally: What was going on in my head? Was I trying to communicate my enthusiasm for the fact that students were contributing? Was there something particularly high-quality about their utterances that I was aiming to praise?... I wasn’t being strategic; I was on autopilot.” Unfortunately, the Initiate-Respond-Evaluate pattern (the teacher initiates with a question, a student responds, the teacher evaluates) is a perennial staple in classrooms; lots of teachers aren’t even aware they’re replicating it and haven’t considered its disadvantages.
Barker quotes Sarah Michaels and Catherine O’Connor on a more effective teacher role in a whole-class discussion: “to support the students to think productively with one another, ensure that talk is respectful and equitable, and make sure that everyone can hear and understand each other (something students rarely do on their own).” Building on Michaels and O’Connor, Barker says an academically productive discussion should have these elements:
- A belief that students are capable of participating in a high-level discussion;
- Well-established ground rules;
- Clear academic purposes;
- Deep understanding of the academic content;
- A “discussable” text – a novel, story, poem, article, film, etc. – that is open for interpretation and to which all students have access;
- A framing question and follow-up questions;
- An appropriate talk format;
- A set of strategic “talk moves” – for example, affirming, correcting, or restating students’ responses.
The problem is that all too many classroom discussions don’t meet these criteria. Observing discussions in a number of middle- and high-school classrooms, Barker found that teachers almost always made a quick comment after every student response (OK, Yeah, Excellent, Definitely), paraphrased the student’s response, or repeated what he or she said so everyone could hear (thereby implicitly communicating that students could respond in quiet voices and the teacher would do the work of making sure everyone heard).
These patterns are not always ineffective, says Barker. But what struck her was that when teachers were shown transcripts or watched videos of their classroom discussions, they were universally unhappy with their talk moves and wanted to improve. What really troubled Barker was that all these teachers had been through extensive methods coursework or professional development with her, and the sessions explicitly focused on high-quality classroom discussions. This clearly demonstrated that PD is not enough to change deeply-ingrained teaching patterns.
Barker worked with these teachers to see if change was possible. The teachers had taken the first step by watching a video recording or reading a transcript and becoming aware of classroom moves with which they were not happy. The second step, prompted by Barker, was asking themselves:
- What are my most common responses to students?
- How do they seem to shape the conversation?
- What might students be hearing when I say these things?
- To what extent do these moves align with my goals for student learning?
The third step was reviewing the criteria for academically productive discussions (see above), zeroing in on those that needed improvement, and, over time, working to break old habits. Teachers found these were the most helpful areas:
• Establishing ground rules – “Teachers preceded discussions,” says Barker, “by explicitly establishing norms for speaking and listening (‘Let’s go over some norms for today’), explaining to students why these norms were important, and sometimes providing scaffolding in the form of sentence frames students could use to change the topic of discussion, add to a previous speaker’s idea, or ask for clarification.” Some teachers were open with students about their desire to change unproductive discussion patterns, especially the habit of repeating what each student said. “Making students aware of where teachers wanted to improve their practice modeled humility and an openness to noticing and learning from mistakes,” says Barker.
• Clarifying academic purposes – “Some teachers realized their responses became automatic because they had lost sight of what they wanted their students to learn,” says Barker. “Either they hadn’t specified a particular skill or understanding they were working toward, or they had concrete goals for student learning, but, as discussions unfolded, they lost track of these aims because of the complex nature of orchestrating discussion.” These teachers worked on being more explicit about the content they wanted students to learn and the speaking and listening skills they sought to improve – teaching with discussion and teaching for discussion.
• Aligning purposes with questions and discussion strategies – Having established ground rules and clarified what they were trying to accomplish, teachers focused on improving their questions and talk moves. Teachers also were intentional about when not to talk, becoming more comfortable with an awkward silence after a student response to encourage others to join in, rather than reflexively affirming, restating, paraphrasing, or asking another question. “Although teachers refrained from taking unnecessary turns,” says Barker, “they did not relinquish their role as facilitator; they interjected strategically with talk moves to ask important follow-up questions that aligned with their learning objectives or to reorient students when a norm needed reinforcing.”
Barker gives several examples of teachers’ better-developed intentions and the kinds of questions they asked in class discussions:
- Essential understanding: Students will understand that themes are disputable statements; students shouldn’t equate a topic (like innocence, which is essentially a summary requiring only recall) with a theme (which requires interpretation).
- Question: And what is the book saying about this topic?
- Essential understanding: Students will understand how authors develop themes (e.g., through characters’ relationships and inner thoughts) and how we can apply these approaches to our own narrative writing.
- Question: What insights does this book give us for our own writing? If we want to communicate a theme to our readers, what are some ways we can do that?
- Key speaking and listening skill: Students will be able to use textual evidence, referring to a page number, wait for all listeners to find the page, and then orient listeners to where to look on the page.
- Questions: What in the text makes you think that? What evidence do we have to support that idea? Orient us to where you are in the text.
- Key speaking and listening skill: Students will be able to agree or disagree with another person’s ideas, not with the person.
- Question: What do we think about that idea?
Some teachers created “cheat sheets” to keep track of intentions, questions, and student responses.
What happened in these classrooms? “In a relatively short amount of time,” Barker reports, “the nature of discussions in teachers’ classrooms exhibited promising shifts. Teachers clarified their purposes and aligned these intentions with their norms, questions, and talk moves. Students were speaking more and more often, and were building on each others’ ideas.”
“Under Discussion: Teaching Speaking and Listening” by Lisa Barker in English Journal, January 2017 (Vol. 106, #3, p. 87-91), http://bit.ly/2lDVquk; Barker can be reached at lbarker@towson.edu.
Summary of Article: "The Burden of Inequity – and What Schools Can Do About It"
In this Kappan article, Vernita Mayfield (Leadervation Learning) recalls what the principal said to her after her rambunctious 11-year-old son was once again removed from his classroom, this time for crawling on the floor: “Your son needs to return to the school in his neighborhood. He is a troublemaker. He’ll likely just end up in jail anyway.” African-American children, says Mayfield, bear “the weight of negative perceptions and expectations” in several ways: expected criminality, assumed intellectual mediocrity if not inferiority, and not belonging. “The gravity of these weights cannot be overstated,” she says. “But educators can be aware of what’s confronting black students and measure their own responses.” Her suggestions for an “emotional action plan” for schools:
• Don’t rely on anecdotal exceptions. Yes, some African-Americans have escaped harsh experiences, but the vast majority have not.
• Realize that black students’ burdens are worse than those experienced by other students. “The barrage of indignities and microaggressions that black children suffer daily can take an exhausting toll on their development of a positive self-identity, their ability to focus, their willingness to listen, their readiness to trust, their emotional well-being, and their motivation to excel,” says Mayfield.
• Empathize. “It is painful for a child to understand why they are refused respect even when they have complied with everything society requires them to do to earn it,” she says.
• Vision statements and packaged programs are not enough. “The values, beliefs, and perceptions that educators bring to their work lie at the core of creating equitable systems for black children,” she says, and those need to be addressed.
• Educate the staff on implicit bias, as difficult as that will be. “Too often,” says Mayfield, “professional development in culturally responsive teaching looks like campfire bonding at Camp-Everybody-Get-Along.” It takes much more than a one-shot workshop to change attitudes and practices. “Integrate a common language of culturally responsive practices and expectations into every professional meeting. Foster a culture of mutual caring and trust – an environment where there is accountability for actions, expectation for progress, and support for change.”
• Look carefully at discipline data by race. Look for patterns within and across classrooms, grades, and schoolwide before deciding on a plan of action.
• Observe one another’s classrooms with a critical eye. Ask questions like, Who answered questions during the lesson and who didn’t? Whose hands were recognized and whose were not? Which students are leaders and which are not? Who is placed in honors and advanced classes? How are expectations for student behavior toward each other taught, practiced, and reinforced? Follow up by using the observations to decide on an agenda for change, one step at a time.
• Every day, provide encouragement and support. “Applaud their efforts as well as their accomplishments,” says Mayfield. “Help them set manageable goals and clear paths for achieving them. Examine how you welcome students to school and create a sense of belonging.”
“The Burden of Inequity – and What Schools Can Do About It” by Vernita Mayfield in Phi Delta Kappan, February 2017 (Vol.98, #5, p. 8-11), www.kappanmagazine.org; Mayfield can be reached at vernita@leadervationlearning.com.
Calendar dates that have been revised- Common Assessment Days, Coffee with Principal
Week of Feb. 27 - March 3rd
5th Six Weeks begin
Tuesday, February 28
African American History Program
Grade Level Lunch Time Assemblies - Student Immigration Question & Answers
Thursday, March 2nd
ARMS Campus Climate Survey
Friday, March 3rd
Final Enrichment Sessions
$1 Student Jean Day
Elective Pod Meeting
ARMS STAAR Night - Fun and Learning for All
ARMS Natural Bridges Caverns 8th Grade Science Field Trip
ARMS PD DAY - Kick Off to STEAM
Why STEAM @ ARMS?
Spot Rotation Schedule (Updated 1.21.17)
Coming Soon Technology Support Doc
ARMS Facility Request Google Doc
This is how all facility requests are to be made moving forward.
ARMS Safety Drill Staff One Pager
The Most Important Work of our Time! Always remember YOUR IMPACT!
Ann Richards Middle School
At Ann Richards MS, our vision is to be a flagship middle school at the hub of the community, nurturing diverse leaders, and empowering intelligent trailblazers.
Email: frataylor@dallasisd.org
Website: www.dallasisd.org/annrichards
Location: Ann Richards Middle School, North Prairie Creek Road, Dallas, TX, United States
Phone: 972 -892-5400