Monday Memo for 12.9.19

The ten day countdown has begun!  The coming days will be tiring, but fun at the same time with all of the planned dress up days and yummy treats that will be provided.  We hope that this helps keep your spirits high and will float you through to winter break.

A big thank you goes out to James and Joanne for hosting our staff holiday party at their home on Saturday evening and to all of you for bringing delicious foods to share.  It was a great night of togetherness and laughter.  Getting to take a few hours to breath and spend time with one another was great.  Our DCE staff is truly a family.

Many of you have been implementing ideas mentioned in PD sessions or from your own research into your classroom lessons.  Below are some pictures from Sarah Baldwin's classroom that may spark some ideas for you!

 

In this picture, students are proving their progress up the standards ladder by posting a student work sample at each rung.  This is a great way to get students interacting with the ladder and understanding what is expected of them at each level for mastery.  Not only did the students in this classroom need to learn the content at each rung, but they had to "prove" that they had the rung to mastery and at the appropriate rigor level.  Even if you do not use ladders in your classroom, think about the ways that you communicate to students the learning goal, how they own it, and how they know they have attained it.  The use of the ladder in this way also helps boost the score for element 5: organizing the physical layout of the room.  In that element, the rubric provides teacher and student evidences at the top.  Two of these evidences mention that items around the room are student created and are attended to by students.  It also mentions that these items should be related to the current content. This is an example of that portion of the rubric!

Sarah has also found a way to increase student academic ownership in her classroom by the way that she has set up her word wall in her classroom.  The word wall is student created and is referenced without teacher prompting on a regular basis in her classroom.  Most progressions for standards begin with having an understanding of the vocabulary needed to get through the content.  This small tweak in her classroom has improved the likelihood that students will reference the wall and master the vocabulary.  And, just like in the previous picture, it supports the expectations of element 5 as it is student created, attended to throughout the lesson, and related to current content.

One last quick picture from Sarah's room!  Here, you can see students doing a Kagan Structure to discuss what they recorded on their sticky note.  Sarah provided students with a sticky note and asked them to answer a question at the start of her lesson that was related to content learned the previous day.  After having independent work time, Sarah partnered students up to discuss their answer on their sticky note.  Sarah circulated the room during the independent work time and during the partner discussion to take mental note of the level of retention of the content of the previous day to determine her starting point for the new lesson.  Sarah selected key students after the partner discussion to share their information with the class and she clarified any misconceptions through additional student response chaining.  This review was brief and engaged all students !

Here is this week's schedule.  

We hope that you have an amazing week!  -Keli and James