Continued - Discuss the progress you've made in applying the strategies/techniques in the classroom.
DUE: Submit your Lit. Review Summary Report #3 that discusses assessment practices and strategies and how they can be implemented in instruction to promote accountability.
As I mentioned from yesterday's blog, I implemented teaching decimals today in the same manner that the undergraduate students presented during the conference. Although the idea of introducing money as an anticipatory set helped them appreciate the use of decimals in the real world, it still did not matter in terms of carrying out the process of solving decimals in certain contexts. Adding money is one thing, but it seems that when the dollar sign is taken away, they get intimidated with the problem in front of them. Actually, they have trouble adding and subtracting decimals with whole numbers mixed in them. An example is, 5.5 + 7 + 3.456. The key idea here is correct alignment of place values. The students are so used to writing their problems right-justified, that when they get to decimals, they make a lot of errors in just aligning the problem. That's one trouble I experienced when teaching adding/subtracting decimals.
ReplyDeleteToday, we resumed our legislative hearing. Most everyone had a chance to share their thoughts and ideas. When I read through the students essays, I use whole language approach because I have a few students who are receiving services and modification is required. I am basically interested in how the students convey their ideas and expressions; I am not saying that content and grammar are not important part of the assessment, but first analyze the student's whole language approach, then review the essay with the student, and make the necessary correction (mechanics). Overall, the students did an exceptional job in the mock legislative hearing. To wrap it up, I had them write a reflection paper on how they performed during the hearing.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to Dr. Kallingal's lecture, if teachers teach students to think or learn confict resolutions, they will be able to make responsible decisions, and hopefully become productive citizens in our community.
Today was our first Parent-Teacher conference. My turnout was lower than usual. I typically get between 40 and 50 visits. Today, I got little over half of that. However, I had a nice mix of parents who showed up. Of course, the parents of my overachievers were there but I was also able to meet with a good number of parents whose children are experiencing problems. That gave me and the parents the opportunity to brainstorm and figure out ways these learners can perform better.
ReplyDeleteI also took the opportunity to informally poll parents to see if they like the current block bell schedule. They all do. Parents of AP/honors students commented that their children have more time to concentrate on their subjects and don’t have to stay up so late to keep up with the assignments. A couple of parents even questioned why our school was the last one to make this move. Interesting!
Tomorrow, I will continue sharing the feedback I received from my students regarding first quarter. As I already stated, I used the two instruments Dr. Ellerton introduced in her second presentation, namely the letter to a friend and the IMPACT tools.
Good Afternoon!
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ReplyDeleteOkay...Just Testing Blog..That I don't have to type my blog again=)
ReplyDeleteGood Afternoon Everyone! Today, I had a short review about "A Story About Ancient Greece." I asked the students to work in pairs to work on the art project. They had to decide who they wanted to work with in the art project. I gave them instructions on how to go about creating their book about Ancient Greece. After the review, I gave students art supplies (crayons, color pencils, tape, scissors, etc.) to begin their assignments. It was up to the students to assign each other the task in order to complete the project. The students were unable to finish the art project today. I informted them they will be given more time to continue the project tomorrow. After completing the book, they will orally present their book.
As I work with professional staff development committees and the teachers from respective content and specialized areas like SPED, GATE and ESL, it is evident that we must continually promote professional learning communities to share best teaching practices to better prepare students to be successful in school and in the world today.
ReplyDeleteCollaboration between the ESL teacher and content area teachers in a school is crucial. They need to take time to plan together and look at grade-level standards to determine the depth and tpe of understanind expected before developing teaching and learning activities(curriculum alignment, veritical and horizontal planning).
As Betsy Lewis-Moreno relates in the article I read, "Shared Responsibility: Achieving Success with English-Language Learners(Phi Delta Kappan 2007) "The mantra "teaching doesn't cause learning, learning causes learning." Students need multiple opportunities to make meaning of the content and the academic language they are learning to be able to apply their knowledge
and skills in real-life situations(Lewis-Moreno,2007
Mentorship, prioritizing skills/standards and teacher show off lesson were the three main strategies that I implemented regarding assessment and accountability. I learned that supporting teachers and providing them the tools and guidance to improve student achievement can be taken in a proactive approach to get a good buy-in. Based from observations, the results show positive outcomes with such strategies: First, the show off lessons and mentorships increased the teacher's confidence during instructional delivery and lessen anxiety. They viewed such strategy as a way to improve ones craft and be more open minded. Sometimes, teachers misconstrue this type of strategy as a way to evaluate them and they get very defensive. As a school leader, my role is to serve as an instructional leader to our faculty not as a person who is out to get them :) Next, the skills assessment strategy made my teacher realized that she's working too hard to cover so many skills but in reality teachers should just follow the standards rather than trying to teach chapter by chapter. I have been preaching this as a school leader that standards should guide a teacher's instruction and not trying to work backwards to double check which standard did they cover after they teach. As a result, I will be making plans to do a presentation during our Professional development on how to incorporate such strategies on a larger scope.
ReplyDeleteBased on the lecture of Dr. Nerida Ellenton, that teaching methods affect learning more than theories or textbook qualities. Some authentic assessment has reflected on some fundamental questions such as "What are some assessments that work in the classroom?" 1. Using the Pre-Post teaching test 2. Investigate projects 3. Examine student reflections 4. Encourage student presentations in providing proposals and solutions to any given learning situation.
ReplyDeleteToday, I did not actually teach a lesson. I continued with the lesson in the middle school character ed. class (team time. The lesson was a continuation of talking about a person using "STATS". Afterwards, I did a very informal survey. Based on their perceptions, I asked them how they felt about the lesson as well as on their thoughts about what teachers they deemed to be effective teachers and why they thought they were. It was very interesting to learn that students are kind of harsh when talking about effective teachers. Since this was a "team" and there are at least 5 core content teachers and 1-2 elective teachers, they had about 1 teacher who they felt was "effective"....what does that say about our perceptions of the way we think that we teach? oh well...
ReplyDeleteI usually just use the tests in the book. Nowadays i use the internet but the photocopying
ReplyDeletecould be a problem. Using the text is really cheap. I have books but haven't use them for 2 years. Yesterday a parent agreed with me. A good teacher is better than any book. I do not like making tests. Our math dept. does it but they look hard. I modify it anyway. Teachers need to be fair.
Today, I was able to start to work on the "Digital Story" with my class. We have been working reading a story from our Literature book and this was very easy to incorporate into our routine. We started by reviewing our past readings, then the brainstorming format on a sheet of paper with 6 squares to develop and a final product to move on to the next step of making it into a electronic presentation. The braninstorming product that was developed was very revealing of their imaginations, knowledge of content and motivation to excell at this project. I will use this assessment tool more often.
ReplyDeleteToday I continued with my character education lesson that focuses on my students personalizing a theme. This relates to the presentation about deforestation at the conference. As mentioned on the previous blog, I introduced the topic of environmental responsibility. I posed question about the definition of that phrase
ReplyDeleteI decided to simplify the instruction by making everyone draw a trash can or a trash bin. Then I told the students that they need to make the garbage bin a character. I wanted them to personalize their drawing just like the animal cutouts that were shown at the conference. I let students draw in a bubble that would encompass what the trash can would say. They were to make a paragraph to allow the character express how he or she felt in a world that did not care about the environment.
In an earlier post, Joseph said, "A good teacher is better than any book." I would have to agree with him in a sense that teachers who are well-versed in the craft of teaching need not depend on any textbook to drive their instruction. I, too, have adopted textbooks, but have not issued them out for the past two years. The reason for this is 1) I know, from experience, that I wouldn't get some back at the end of the year, and 2) I'm just setting my students up for failure. I'm not trying to say that I'm "dumbing down" for my students. I look at it, rather, in a way of bringing my students up to par with certain skills they are not mastered with yet. After all, why in the world would I teach my students fractions and percents when almost more than 75% of them have not even mastered the basic operations? In the end, I want my students to actually LEARN, not just do problems in the book.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone! Today was another busy day, as I've mentioned in my blog last Tuesday that I scheduled meetings for Thursday. So, today, I met with the 7 teachers out of the 8 who were chosen to administer the GDOE standards based assessment. I prepared a short power point about 5 to 7 minutes, gave out hand outs, test materials and even the pencils. I am very confident that the teachers were very much ready and excited to administer the test. Anyway, I was missing 1 teacher, hopefully tomorrow Friday, I could meet up with him and do a brief orientation. Also today, I gave our Accreditation Coordinator the data he needed to finalize our school report. And he did expressed his interest that he wants to know more about making graphs and tables so that he can use it in his class. I briefly discussed with him that I was using MS office word and that I was contemplating in using excel in the future as suggested by Dr. Li. I do hope if I have more time I am very much willing to explore excel and help my co-workers in making graphs and tables for their classroom use.
ReplyDeleteThe mentoring the mentor program that was presented by the professionals of Western Visayas University of the Philippines is a good program that showed great outcome. I would like to share that our counseling department has been practicing a similar concept to the mentioned program because we are practically practicing this everyday. Our counseling group is very good in assisting one another. We always collaborate and assist each other in handling our department. We also have a great support group. Being a newbie, I never once felt alone in this line of work since I started working with my colleagues. The cases that we sometimes encounter can be very challenging and having such group gives me the confidence that I am handling them properly.
ReplyDeleteI was once told that it is not the work that matters, but it is the people that you work with and I can say that I am very fortunate to have found a great group to work with. A group that is willing to assist one another and who has respect for each other. I think that our counseling department is positively contributing to the students in our school because we are always working together to provide them the most assistance that we can offer. Today was our school’s parent-teacher conference and it was another one of those fun working days for our group because we helped and supported one another which resulted to a successful conference.
Today I want to discuss with you "Service Learning" as I attended the session with John San Nicolas, a teacher from Okkodo High School. Service-learning is a method of teaching, learning and reflecting , frequently youth service, throughout the community. As a teaching method, it falls under the philosophy of experiential education. More specifically, it integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, encourage lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good.
ReplyDeleteService learning will be the requirement for next year's freshman class to graduation from high school. I commend the presenter and hope that all teachers were as competent as he is with his students.
I fully support this type of learning and civil learning! What do you think about this? Blog me back!
Ma
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you about the mentoring program. I believe we should have some type of in turn program for the student to see and feel what things are like in the real world. Career day event is a step in the right direction but I believe we need to show the students both side of the coin in term of making the right or wrong choices. Now the young people are finding out once the mistakes are made. Most of the kids in school today are physical learners. Maybe they need to talk to the young people in DYA and compare the choices they have made that led them there with the choices they are making now. To all the teachers out there, what is your take on this?
On my third practicum, I evaluated the response from my student on what they felt about technology and do they see value in the course I am teaching them now. Their response was pretty much across the board. What I was particularly interested in was what were their response whether or not this course and what they learned will become part of their life long skill. About one third of my class saw it as a kill and the rest looked at it as another course under their belt. None of them saw the opportunity to being technologically literate by identifying another form of applications using computer to enhance their lives. This tell me that there needs to be more discussion and exercise to show them how computer technology will simplify their lives and enhance the learning skills through technology. It looks like I am going to have my hands full this school year. As Dr, Kallingal said in his presentation, “ . . . we must convert these lessons into long life skills.”
ReplyDeleteSchool level assessments reflect whether students are mastering the learning standards. Through frequent assessments, the school determines if the instructional program continues to need improvement. Students’ struggling is an indicator of what curricular areas need attention. Timely interventions and teachers identifying the strength and weakness of the instruction reinforce the importance of school level assessments.
ReplyDeleteThe high-stakes testing: educational institutions need policing in their quest on achieving funding over the true needs of the students. Despite the situation, the non-speaking English students should not be use as a tool in protecting funding. Thus, the NCLB created false accountability using assessment to justify educational greed. This article will be helpful to my school needs of confessing up to the problems and finding solution to better our non-speaking student education. The valuable information in the article provides that assessment can be use for the wrong reason.
ReplyDeleteOctober 28. It was an unusually busy PTC day today… it was a very exciting day though! I’ve met majority of the parents of my “newbie” classes (the sophomores). I was particularly elated when one of the parents mentioned how her daughter (Stephanie, my intermediate student) has been a big help at home since she started learning how to cook. “Dinner is served when I come home from work” quipped this mom. It reminds me of Dr. Kallingal’s lecture that part of our responsibility as an educator is also to teach students to serve others. Ahhh… the rewards of teaching!
ReplyDeleteLiterary Review ---- 3 down, 1 more to go.....
ReplyDeletewe had presentations the other day from GPD, Marshal's office, and the Attorney General's office. the high school and middle school population was split into 5 groups. the presentations were each held in five different classes and the students rotated every 30-40 minutes. i sat in on the marshal's presentation. they had stories to tell about drug addiction, family violence, redeeming oneself, the choices that end up putting you in jail. my students are no strangers to the judicial system. many of them can relate to the stories they heard. while i plan on using the carrot, egg, and coffee bean lesson tomorrow, it's good that the presentations kick-started their thinking on the subject of choice and character. discipline is a large part of what i do at school, so i tend to forget that these students may need guidance more than punishment. the punishments they've received thus far, haven't necessarily changed their behavior. most of my students are not entirely rotten, either. hopefully, they took something away from the presentations.
ReplyDeleteJonalyn, I have gone through the same experience when evaluating teachers. They are willing to accept my assessment of their lesson plans and post evaluation feedback, when I take a mentoring approach. The PTEP was designed to assist teachers in strengthening their instructional performance and support their professional growth.
ReplyDeleteCareer mentoring! I agreed with all my educator colleagues that it need to be enhance in our institution. Our educational institution usually forgets that students are people too. They need the comfort of school environment to progress. When you show caring and appreciating to a student effort in achieving their academic goal or career, they will double their effort. We need to show our students that the world can be a better place with the right choices.
ReplyDeleteToday, I've encourage my students to be creative and objective in their project. I inform them that recycling materials can look as good as the brand new materials. Thus, they should use their imagination and ability to build.
After hours of reading about assessment, I finally think I got enough information to make sense of most of it. I've just about completed the book I received from the Common Assessment conference I attended in San Diego last month and I've completed about 95% of my power point presentation for the November 1st professional development. The best part of today is that my team has agreed on the assessment activity for our work session.
ReplyDeleteI am happy to report it was based on the readings that I was able to accomplish over the past couple of days. We should have it all completed by tomorrow and then we can have a dry-run of our presentation on Saturday. I am so glad this week is just about over! It has been a long week made up of extra long days with little sleep.
Today was Parent Teacher Conference. The Counseling Department issued the SAT10 results from last school year to parents. The SAT10 is one assessment student's take yearly, to measure whether they have achieved their grade level skills. Not many parents came by to receive the results. I had a total of 11 senior parents come by to visit with me to follow up on their child's progress.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the SAT10 is not a very accurate measurement of a student's ability, as it only measures their cognitive skills. It doesn't examine the whole realm of what the child may be capable of. As a counselor, I think it is important to focus on student strengths and guide them based on what their interests may be.
I enjoyed reading your comments, but especially read Joey Paulino's students and their mock legislative hearing. I just love when student's role play real life experiences.
ReplyDelete"If teachers teach students to think or learn conflict resolutions, they will be able to make responsible decisions, and hopefully become productive citizens in our community." Joey, this is one hope for our future leaders, good job!
Today, with my 4th period English 11 Honors class, I used authentic assessment through group collaboration. Previously, students have been working on the three African spiritual folklore: Follow the Drinking Gourd, Go down Moses and Swing Low Sweet Chariot. As we all know these songs are not just spiritual but hold secret codes for slaves to follow as they escaped captivity. To display their knowledge and appreciation for the literature students were tasked to work collaboratively in groups and create an original song embedded with encoding. All songs were wonderful and extensively original. Students understood and successfully achieved the task.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Florncy.
Yes, Prez, students praticipate and continue to progress better when they feel appreciated and cared for.
Oh, I agree Maribeth (Jody), SAT 10 scores do not reflect our students capabilities, it probably never will, unless students are robotically transformed to do so. The test is culturally biased and must redesigned to incorporate critical thinking questions reflecting various cultures around world.
Maybe one day a Micronesian Genius will desgin a Standardized test reflecting their capabilities.
I do agree with Janice about the PTEP program...I look forward to pre-conferences with the teachers. Providing pre-conferences with the teachers, not only before an actual formal observation, helps them identify and understand their strengths and challenges in their classroom/teaching. Teachers always appreciate immediate feedback!
ReplyDeleteI was able to finalize our agenda for our upcoming Professional Staff Development with my Leadership Team. I'm so thankful that Focus A will take the lead on the "ice-breaker", Focus B took the lead in developing the agenda, Focus C sent letters to our parent reps inviting them to attend, Focus D developed the evaluation, etc...isn't great to empower our teachers? I hope you're not wondering, so what did I do? Ofcourse as leaders, we always provide support and guidance...it took a lot of motivating as well. It's obvious my school/s can run by "auto-pilot".
My class lesson was on the Social Studies Unit on Citizenship. My first grade class is so diverse that using the adopted text works well. The kids got to do a picture walk. Then we went over the vocabulary words. As I was going over the lesson, the students were interacting with the pictures and listenting to the facts. When it came to the questions at the end of the unit, just a few were able to respond. I decided to so some KWL. Many of the kids were giving me information not mentioned in the lesson. When it came to the what they wanted to know, it was a repeat of what they know. Since the unit was also about voting, I pulled out the newspaper ad on the two candidates. I wanted to see what they know. Many already were discussing among each other who they like. Each party was explained in simple form and the representing animal was an new content in the lesson. Students pointed out the animals on each candidates ad. I told the kids that tomorrow they will learn be voting of making a choice of who they want as Governor and Lt. Governor. This will be interesting.
ReplyDeleteHi All,
ReplyDeleteDon't really have anything to say except for this morning I spent my half day at the ER USN Hospital just to find out that I have bronchitis.
I guess work is out of the question for a few more days.
Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends.
I agree with Janice...."Timely interventions and teachers identifying the strength and weakness of the instruction reinforce the importance of school level assessments."
ReplyDeleteTimely interventions are very important. At our Data Analysis Conferences we flag students who are not grasping the skills and content. Teachers are advised to provide remedies and reteach skills immediately.
WOW! This is my 8th time trying to blog. I keep getting denied and tells me I can't be connected to the Blog Site. Anyway, I hope this goes through this time. Today, we continued with the reading lessons and reviewed the previous story. We started out with oral review and discussion as to where we are now after the PTC. I was also reflecting on Dr. Ellerton's first session and how it closely relates to my Literature Review #2 on Assessment for Learning in the Classroom on the part of Questioning. My whole teaching today has become more interactive. Instead of showing how to find solutions, I will ask a question and provided my students more time to explore answers together. So, after asking a question, I am beginning to practice longer "wait time" for student response to allow more "think time" rather than my habitual desire to add something almost immediately after asking the original question.
ReplyDeleteI intend to continue this strategy to improve my student response.
October 28, 2010: I especially see a missing link in my math teaching that I was able to recognize in the two math presentations given on decimals and fractions and that was to determine through student activity what were the common difficulty areas. This can prove to be most beneficial in proceeding onto the lesson knowing what were the problematic, weak areas and addressing them immediately at that moment. I am anxious to develop a pre-activity or assignment that will bring out the obstacles of student learning in all content areas. I am also learning a new strategy for math that provides for students to retain steps, procedures and equations necessary for math which corrals major research findings of TIMMS, et. Al. compiled by American Federation of Teachers who developed it for nationwide use and is currently being taught by Cathy Robinson for CAST.
ReplyDeleteSeveral of the Luchan District Schools will be participating in "Building our Luchan Community Through Professional Development" for our Professional Development Day activity. Held at the Marriott, the administrators for four luchan school collaborated to plan and organize this event.
ReplyDeletePresentors will comprise of teachers and assistant principals from these schools to do presentations focusing on Professional Learning Communities, data analysis, Horizontal/vertical alignment, response to intervention and best practices to increase student achievement.
The ARRA grant was a funding source used to send teachers from these elementary, middle and high schools to attend professional development training and in return, provide training to their colleagues at the school site. Lots of planning and organizing collaboratively needed to successfully implement this event.
Today I am reflecting on the activity I did with my kids on the steps of voting. I hope that the kids got an understanding of the voting process. We did it in 30 minutes and I wasn't able to do more. Oh well! I can continue with them next week.
ReplyDeleteWe having our Staff Development on Monday and it's concentrating on our final report for our mid-term visit with accreditation. The focus group I am in is now Curriculum and Instruction. What a perfect team. We are doing so much for the success of our students. I look forward to seeing our progress.
At our Professional Staff Development, I shared with my faculty and staff our SAT 10 data/results. It was obvious there's still lots of work to do...but we were thankful for the progress. Therefore, our objectives are...all faculty and staff will review and analyze student performance on a regular basis using a variety of assessment data (SAT 10, SFA Reading, Teacher-made tests, Fromative Assessments, observations) to determine the most appropriate interventions necessary to impact student achievement, and for all teaching staff to continue to wrk on aligning content standards, ESLRs, SAT 10 skills, alnd curriculum materials to improve student achievement.
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