Monday Musings - November 25, 2013

Thanks!
It sounds cliche, but I cannot thank you enough for all that you do for our students, families, and each other. You always step up to the next challenge with great effort and a true belief that what you do is ultimately what is best for kids.  Your conviction to get better for our students is incomparable.  In the following paragraphs, I will try to explain what my "THANKS" stands for not just during the Thanksgiving season, but all of the time.

T=Thoughtful
You are a thoughtful group. You reach out to support our students and one another. You bring in extra snacks or winter items for students in need or just give them someone to care about them.  Many of you notice when I'm swamped and offer to help.  I'm sure that our students and colleagues have a multitude of examples of how we support our Dodgeland family.

H=Helpful
You are a helpful group. There have been so many times that you have stepped up to help out a student, a colleague, or myself.  We have a handful of staff that put in extra hours to help students with their homework in PALS and others that spend prep/lunch time helping students or colleagues.  Just a couple of weeks ago I had several staff help with the fundraiser pick-up after school.  Once again, like the examples of your thoughtfulness, I'm sure that there are many more examples of how you step up daily to help our students and one another.

A=Attitude
Never in education has attitude been more important.  The changes to the landscape of education, from curriculum to schedules to negative perceptions of teachers, could have stifled and altered your attitude. You have not lost your positive attitude.  You say your piece, vent at times, but your attitude always returns to the belief that we are doing what is best for our students.

N=Nurturing
No matter the grade level, I see the nurturing nature that you have for our students. You want what is best for them and they, in turn really do their best for you. You may get frustrated with a student now and then, and I do too, but then you take them under your wing, develop a plan and move forward; celebrating their newfound success.

K=Kindness
You are a kind bunch. You truly believe in and encourage one another and our students. It's so much easier to be kind than mean and the benefits you reap from being kind can carry you through the day. Let's continue to be kind, and foster that in our students. They learn a lot more from us than just curriculum and whether you realize it or not, they mirror nearly everything we do.

S=Superb
You are all superb. What else can I say? The dictionary definition is excellent, superlative, first-rate. This definition fits you all. Continue to share with one another, push each other, and support each other. Together we will keep working on becoming the best that we can be, so our students can be the best that they can be.

Happy Thanksgiving!
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, thanks for taking the time to read this. My hope for you this Thanksgiving season is that you spend quality time with family and friends, enjoy a good meal or two, relax, refresh, and reflect to come back in December with the same vigor which you began with this school year.

 

Friday Focus - November 22, 2013

Great Things I Noticed this Week:

• Students working together in partners on challenging multi-step math word problems.
• Students discussing a topic using TodaysMeet.com
• Students starting blogging and learning about digital citizenship. 
  

Upcoming Events:
Today - 1st Quarter Dodgeland Pride Assembly at 2:15. Please start coming down at 2:10 so we can be ready to start at 2:15. Please also remind your students how to behave in the assembly.
Monday/Tuesday - I know that next week is an incredibly short week, but please keep in mind that the more you stray from the normal routine the more crazy your students will get (and they already will be knowing it's a short week).  Here's a reflective teacher's post on why to Not Show Movies Before a Break.
Dec 2-6 - Cereal Drive -please encourage students (that are able to) to bring in boxes of cereal that we will donate to the Reeseville food pantry.
Dec 4 - Mrs. Bartlett will be bringing any student Christmas ornaments to the Juneau Public Library for our school tree.

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Last year we discusses branching our bucket filling out to the community. I'm working with Clearview for this opportunity for 2nd-5th grade students. I am planning to have two days in December-one day for students to stay after school one day to make Christmas cards and practice singing carols. The next week after school we will go to Clearview to deliver cards and sing our Christmas Carols. The tentative dates for these (and will be confirmed by Tuesday) are: Monday, December 16 and Wednesday, December 18.  Please let me know if you would be interested in helping out with either of these days.

Blogs, Pins & Tweets...Oh My!
*@sjunkins: we use a method called an "Idea Bandit." Visit someones' classroom and "steal" a great idea.
*A great reminder for each of us: Take Some Time 
*A helpful article to share with parents of a child struggling to comprehend: What to Do When Your Child Can't Remember What He Reads

Read more about this HERE

Monday Musings - November 18, 2013

Fostering Grit

Here's a book review/blog post I just shared on my professional blog that I wanted to share with you for my Monday Musings.  This is a topic that I'm sure many of you will find relevant to our students' needs. I only had an electronic review copy of this book, but if you're interested in getting a copy to read for yourself, please let me know.

I recently finished reading the book Fostering Grit, which is an ASCD Arias book (it is short enough to read in a 1 hour sitting) written by Thomas R. Hoerr.

Every great educator knows that we can not only teach students content; that we must also teach character traits such as respect, responsibility, kindness, etc.  Hoerr wrote this short guide under the premise that we must also teach the virtue of grit, which he defines as tenacity, perseverance, and the ability to never give up.  The author points out that teaching grit can be difficult for educators, because "it runs counter to the caring school environments that we all esteem."  The author shares that we need to teach our students to respond positively to setbacks and to respond appropriately when things go wrong; as he writes, "turn a failure into a good failure, one from which we learn."

As I read Hoerr's book on how grit helps us to be resilient and to persevere when we fail, I made many connections to what I learned when reading Mindset by Carol Dweck.  The concept of having grit goes hand in hand with the teaching students the concept of having a growth mindset.

Hoerr writes that as educators we can help teach our students to develop grit by introducing them to levels of complexity that are out of their comfort zone, to cause frustration and then help students to understand the frustration and how to respond to it.  Students will benefit from us sharing our personal stories with them of how we have overcome obstacles and talking about the importance of grit.  We can also share examples of others we know or famous people such as professional athletes, actors or even former presidents that our students may be surprised (and interested) in learning about the obstacles they overcame and how having grit helped them to be successful.

The author of Fostering Grit shares Six Steps of Teaching for Grit that each have great strategies to foster grit in your students:

1. Establish the environment

2. Set the expectations

3. Teach the vocabulary

4. Create the frustration

5. Monitor the experience

6. Reflect and learn

During Daily 5, students come back to the carpet in between "rounds" for a check-in which often serves as an opportunity for students to reflect on the reading/writing work they did.  Many of our teachers have added other opportunities for reflection throughout the day. As I read Step 6, "Reflect and learn" I realized what a great opportunity reflection can be for students to stop and think about how easy/challenging a task is for them and think about how they felt when they didn't give up on a frustrating task.

What other ways can you foster grit in students?

Friday Focus - November 15, 2013

Events Next Week:
Today- Staff Social Lunch
Tuesday- Grade Level PLC Meetings
Friday-1st Qtr Dodgeland Pride Assembly at 2:15

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*I will be gone most of the day on Tuesday (for EP training at CESA 6) so I will leave it up to you to determine your agendas for grade level PLC meetings.  Marie will have my key for you to get into the Data Room).
*If you've been wondering where I've been lately, I promise I haven't been hiding; I've been doing make-up WKCE testing.  I am almost done with all of the 3-10th grade WKCE make-up tests and am eager to get "out of the cave" I feel like I've been in and get back into classrooms where the real action is!

iPad Tip of the Week:
How to have mutliple "tabs" of internet sites on your iPad browser:


Blogs, Pins & Tweets...Oh My!
*A great teacher blog post on Public Conferencing as learned from Regie Routman HERE
*@teachersfriend

5m

Write More. Grade Less. Teach Grammar in Context. Write for Publication. Provide Relevancy. http://ow.ly/qOJpx  #engchat #edchat

Follow-Up to Staff Meeting

Notes from our meeting:

*Thank you for a meeting with great discussion yesterday!  If you missed the funny video clip at the start of the meeting, you can enjoy the humor HERE.

*I enjoyed reading all of your celebrations HERE

*Ideas for January Tech Showcase are HERE

*All of the notes from your group discussions on apps/technology can be found HERE.

Please expect more information to come in the near future requesting people to sign up for leading/facilitating sessions for the Tech Showcase.

Friday Focus - November 8, 2013

Great Things I Noticed This Week:

• Evidence that we are truly building a culture of readers: When students are done with the WKCE test, they are given a packet of fun activities (i.e. word search, sudoku, etc) to keep them quiet. Many students looked at the packet contents and chose to read instead!!
• QR codes used during Daily 5 for quick/easy access to online stories for Listen to Reading.
• Use of Edmodo: students read an article online for science and then responding to a written prompt on the topic and submitted it to the teacher on Edmodo. They then posted their own questions about the article and responded to each others' questions on Edmodo.  (If you don't know what Edmodo is, it's like "facebook with training wheels" and a great tool in the classroom).
• Kindergarteners starting to write independently for work on writing. 
• From the mouths of babes: one student told her teacher, "I can tell my reading is getting better from all the help you teachers are giving me here."  

Events Next Week:
Monday - *I will be printing report cards at 7:00 am.

*Veterans Day Assembly at 9:35 in the HS Gym.  Please make sure to dress professionally, as this is a day that we have many guests in the building. 

*Elementary Staff Meeting - the agenda is HERE. Please bring your iPad or Laptop. If you are still unsure of what the SAMR model is, here's a good explanation of it in 2 minutes using google docs as an example: SAMR in 120 seconds.

Tuesday - Fundraiser pick-up after school

Wednesday - Report Cards to go home. Please make sure to include parent invitations for students being recognized at the assembly.

Friday - Staff Social Lunch

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:

*Remember to give your Honor Roll Names and the On a Roll Names/Reasons to Mrs. Jaeckel so she can type up the certificates.

*If you catch any students being bucket fillers, please email me their names so I can take a picture of them and add them to the bulletin board. They love looking at it as they go by.

Blogs, Pins & Tweets...Oh My!
*I learned how to use Glogster in Mrs. Battenberg's XPD.  Look at how many great things you can use it for in this post: 40 Ways to Innovate Teaching Using Glogster   (If you want to learn how to use Glogster, she's teaching it again on December 17).

This just cracks me up....click below to see it enlarged:

http://avalaunchmedia.com/infographics/social-meowdia-explained

Monday Musings - November 4, 2013

As I started reading through/approving SLO forms this weekend I couldn't help but be amazed by the incredible work  that you all are doing with our students (don't worry, I haven't gotten through all of them yet, so don't feel bad if I didn't approve yours yet).  I am impressed with the degree of reflection and analysis that has gone into selecting a goal and what efforts are planned to help ALL students achieve these goals.  What's even more, it is great to see the level of collaboration that is occurring in grade levels to learn new strategies from each other and to help each others' students succeed through WIN.  You are creating a safety net for our students to make sure that each and every child achieves to their best abilities.  As I think about the work you are doing, it reminds me of what I have read about in the book Whatever It Takes by DuFour, et al.  Here's what a principal from Adlahi Stevenson High School was quoted in saying:

"Students simply cannot fall through the cracks here.  

We have too many systems in place to monitor their academic progress and 

general well-being and too many concerned adults involved in the 

implementation of those systems." 

~Dan Galloway, Principal, Adlahi Stevenson High School

You are all doing that amazing work we read about in PLC and RtI books; it is incredible to be at a school seeing it in action to benefit ALL students. Thank you for all your hard work!