PBIS-Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies...

I've always been a huge advocate of rewarding students for doing the right things. As opposed to punishing students for doing the wrong things. For, instance, having a marble reward jar for students who make it on time to class with their supplies ready to go for the day's lesson. Do you have any other neat positive ideas to assist in student motivation both academically or behaviorally?

Literacy Pilot

Today we had our elementary training for the fourth curriculum in the literacy pilot.  As the grade-level language arts rep, I've been to all of the trainings and have been facilitating the pilot in my grade level.  It has been an interesting and in-depth process.  I was the science rep last year for my grade, and so had the same opportunity to engage with the science pilot.  I've found the piloting process to be quite a bit more extensive this year for language arts.  I have found it to be helpful to have the entire year to pilot the different materials, rather than one quarter.  The trainings have also been more in-depth and informative.

Have any of you been working with the literacy pilot?  What have your experiences been?  Do you have any thoughts on the materials?

PLC Reflection and Process

Reflecting on Monday's PLC workshop, I am looking to see to what extent we are commonly experiencing the learning "cycle" (i.e., identify essential learning, commonly assess student knowledge on it, teach to a smart goal, reassess if students met the goal, and differentiate instruction to meet needs.......within 2-3 weeks). Is this a common experience for PLCs across the district? Or are teams approaching this process differently depending on context and understanding; what is your eperience quarters 1 and 2?

Article on Student Engagement

Our IC sent us this article that outlines a Gallup poll on student engagement. It says that in elementary school, 8/10 students are engaged, whereas in middle school it's 6/10 and high school is 4/10. What do you think are the reasons for this?

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2013/01/gallup_student_engagement_drops_with_each_grade.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Semester Finals

My students have a math final next week which we started preparing for this past Wednesday. So far we've completed stations, had review packets as homework, done practice problems in class, looked at lists of topics on the final, etc. I've struggled to come up with an awesome way to review for a final. It seems like I always do "same old, same old." Does anyone have a great idea for reviewing for such a large test? I know the students must feel overwhelmed that there are so many concepts on one test, and I'm definitely feeling it too. It's quite daunting to have to review an entire semester's worth of material in one week!

Skits with reading, tie with writing

Hello Everyone and Happy New Year! I was just perusing through the recent new year posts, and I see that several people are posting about reading fluency or getting students engaged with a reading classroom activity. I came up with a way to get students excited and intrigued about characters in their literacy circle books. If they write a skit about a character that shows the character's physical traits and personality, then they will be engaged with how to portray the person's traits--both types. And it also ties in with reading closely to find out what kind of scene they need to portray. for lower level students, this could be a scene with the dialogue from the book. For higher level or honor students, it could mean a parody or some higher level thinking of creating a scene with more challenging parameters. Either write the skit with them or have them create it--just even a short one will get them engaged if you make it fun enough. Then you've covered reading, writing, listening, speaking, and if you skew it to whatever standard you are covering, you have it made! Have fun! Ann

Reading Fluency

The break gave me some time to reflect on areas that I would like to focus on for the second half of the year.  My second graders have made great strides in reading, but many still struggle with the fluency piece.  I am going to do Readers Theater with them, as I found that to be really helpful last year.  Does anyone have other suggestions for fun ways to help students boost their reading fluency?

Where has the time gone?

Happy New Year!

Wow our first week back and 2^nd quarter is almost done I still can’t believe we have been in school for 73 days.  How is everyone finding the time to get their assessments, report cards, meetings, and now getting ready for conferences?  Is there any magic tricks you can share?

PLC SMART GOAL and Intervention Results

My PLC group has gone fairly smoothly with the process and outcomes of the learning cycle. We were able to look at the data from our first formative assessment, identified the students who did not meet the goal (90% of the students will get 100% correct on the test), and created an intervention for them to target the skills they "missed." After a week of intervention, we gave them the assessment again. (Here I would like your thoughts) The students in the intervention got all of the questions right for the target skills. However, they also got wrong answers that they previously had right! (this means that the students still did not meet the goal).

My team felt that since the skills were no longer being taught (the lessons had moved on), the info was not still "fresh" in the students' minds over the week of intervention. When we are looking so closely as student learning, its becoming a little clearer the way that students don't retain all of the learning needed to meet the identified skill - This also messes with any percentage we set for our smart goal, as the students who receive intervention time needed to "hold on" to the information longer before the retest. 

Reading grouping strategies?

Hello All,
I was curious if you all had some creative ways to make inclass reading assignments not only more beneficial but more entertaining for the students as well. For example, assignming each group memeber a job or role etc. I'm always up for mixing it up in my reading assignments. So, feel free to provide me your ideas.
Thanks,
Shawn DeBoer