Repeated Reading, 12 Genius Questions

Excellence in Education: Repeated Reading, An Effective, Research-supported Intervention

Repeated reading is an effective strategy for any student who has not yet gained fluency. It requires the following steps:

1. Student listens to a passage read aloud by the teacher
2. Then the student reads the passage to himself/herself (may read it multiple times)
3. Then the student reads it aloud while the teacher records rate, accuracy, prosody (intonation, pacing, and expressiveness) and report this to the student so they can see and monitor progress.
4. The student then reads it again so he/she can monitor improvement.

Some other ideas:

• Even without the monitoring component this is a valuable tool.
• The teacher read aloud can occur in a small group of struggling readers.
• This strategy lends itself to differentiation of instruction. While struggling readers are working through Repeated Reading other students should be working on a different assignment.
• Since you’re using this strategy with struggling readers, choose an engaging passage.
• Use this strategy several times so students can see their growth.

Excellence in Education: 12 Most Genius Questions

Educator Angela Maiers identifies these 12 questions as a means to cultivate curiosity and extend learning:

1. How can we make it/each other better?
2. How do we know this to be so?
3. Is that what is needed most?
4. What is it we hope to accomplish, and what’s stopping us?
5. What are we most proud of?
6. What is possible?
7. When can we start?
8. How will we prevent failure?
9. Who can/how can we make this happen?
10. What do we regret most?
11. How can we make the best use of…?
12. What if we….(Dream big!)

http://www.angelamaiers.com/2012/03/12-most-genius-questions-in-the-world/

Shout Out

April Wilkerson, Thanks for organizing a great prom! Our students truly enjoyed themselves and it was a beautiful night. As April is the first to say, “She couldn’t have done it without the help of others.” Thanks to everyone who chaperoned the event!

Thanks to everyone who dressed up/participated in Spring Spirit Week! It’s great to see so many teachers “get into” it.

Need to Knows

Positive Referral Link: http://go.shr.lc/1XRoeub

Technology / Website Permission Request Form http://go.shr.lc/1HovEA6

Spring Calendar (Grades, SOL, Exams, Etc): http://go.shr.lc/1OwWVBB Obviously, this is subject to change with weather, but it’s a start. Some significant schedule changes begin next week.

Calendar Items

April 21: Senior Meeting during Mustang Morning

April 22: Monticello Pride Nominations Due

April 27: Club Schedule  

Birthdays

April 19: Bernice Hutchins

April 21: Rita Taylor

April 23: Dan Brown

Worth Your Time

I’m sure many, if not most of you, have seen Rita Pierson’s TEDTalk, but sometimes during this final stretch we need a little extra inspiration. It’s worth 8 minutes of your life to rewatch it.

12 Awesome Formative Assessment Strategies

Tech Glitches Plague Computer-Based Standardized Tests I think we can all relate, especially Ms Pryor and Mr Gibson

Education Sans the Art of Giving

Reverse Brainstorming

mohsmustangmemo.blogspot.com

Welcome Back! Hope everyone had a great break!

Excellence in Education: Reverse Brainstorming

This idea comes from Sparking Student Creativity by Patti Drapeau.

Reverse brainstorming is a strategy to get students to problem solve from the opposite side. Students generate many ideas about the reverse of what they want. Then they reflect on their answers to generate a new way of thinking about the original problem. For example, reverse brainstorming ideas include the following:

• Increase pollution instead of reducing it
• Promote more wars instead of thinking about how we can minimize war
• Increase consumption of water instead of thinking about how we can conserve
• Intensify a situation in a fictional text so that it is worse for a character instead of solving a problem
• Generate the worst ideas about a topic or situation instead of generating positive ideas

The idea is similar to finding non-examples. It alo reminds me of how I used to prepare for debates (yeah, I was  a debate-forensic geek in college) by knowing the other side inside out, I was better prepared for defending our side and attacking theirs.

Shout Out

Need to Knows

Grades and special education progress reports are due April 15 at noon.

Positive Referral Link: http://go.shr.lc/1XRoeub

Technology / Website Permission Request Form http://go.shr.lc/1HovEA6

Spring Calendar (Grades, SOL, Exams, Etc): http://go.shr.lc/1OwWVBB Obviously, this is subject to change with weather, but it’s a start. Some significant schedule changes begin next week.

Don’t forget to email April Wilkerson to sign-up to help for prom!

Tonight’s #vachat on Twitter at 8 is on Homework. I’m not hosting but with Albemarle County Schools revamping our homework policy, it’s pertinent.

Calendar Items

April 15 Club during Mustang Morning

April 15 @ noon: Grades are due

Please read this important information to ensure that your grades are correctly calculated.

Regardless of when the mid-term exam is given, the date 4/2/2016 must be used. With this date, the exam grade will fall under the E3 Term in the gradebook.

If a teacher decides to give their exam early (March 24th or 25th), they need to understand that any assignments given after these exams, must have a date of 4/11/2016 or later, so that it falls in the Q4 Term.

If a teacher decides to give their exam March 31st or April 1st, they can use any date for Q3 assignments, prior to April 2nd (if they want it to count towards the 3rd Quarter Grade).

Birthdays

April 11: Gwen Reynolds, Shannon Deegan

April 12: Mike Parsons

April 16: Gina Habermeyer

Worth Your Time

Virginia’s High School Overhaul Plan

Why Digital Natives Prefer Reading in PRINT

A Venture Capitalist Searches for the Purpose of School, Here’s What He Found This is an article by Ted Dintersmith, of Most Likely to Succeed fame