Monday Mustang Memo

Focusing on the fifth year to help students graduate

Speaking up on teen stress (video)

Speaking up against racism around the coronavirus

Want something included on the Monticello Outlook Calendar, the Monticello website, in the PowerSchool Daily Bulletin, schoolwide Schoology accounts, or the student newsletter (viewed by parents, students and staff)? Please use this link https://goo.gl/forms/bIjfJLKokWPcEHx33

Worth Your Time

Saturday, March 7, 2020

The Need for Differentiation in a Nurturing Classroom

Excellence in Education: The Need for Differentiation in a Nurturing Classroom

This weekend, I received a phone call from my daughter who was at the AT&T store because she was having trouble with her cell phone on our shared account. To resolve the issue, they needed my 6-digit phone passcode. I texted her what I thought was the number. Looking at it, it didn't look right, so I sent another text with what I thought was the correct number. Then I realized it had 7 digits!

I imagined my daughter and the AT&T employee getting frustrated. So I turned my phone off so that I could enter the passcode, knowing that I was better able to remember the physical entry than the actual number. Or so I thought. Now my mind was playing games with me. Attempt one to unlock my phone failed. Attempt 2: failure. Attempt 3: Success!

But then I couldn't remember the six numbers I entered. I called my friend over and said, "remember these numbers" as my thumb unlocked my phone. She quickly repeated the numbers to me so I could text them to my daughter. Of course, she did this so quickly that I got the numbers wrong. Holding back laughter, she slowly announced the numbers. BAM! I sent the six correct numbers to my daughter.

What for most people would only take a couple of seconds, had taken me several attempts over several minutes.

As many of you know, I have a learning disability, and this was a manifestation of it.

Like so many students who struggle, I was frustrated and embarrassed. In fact, episodes of similar learning and life frustrations flashed through my mind, undoubtedly making the situation even worse.

Carol Tomlinson defines differentiation as "Teachers in a differentiated classroom accept, embrace, and plan for the fact that learners bring to the school both many commonalities and the essential differences that make them individuals. Differentiation classrooms embody common sense. The logical flow in a differentiated classroom is this: A nurturing environment encourages learning."

Unlike passionate and purposeful teachers, my daughter's frustration was not nurturing and she was unable to predict that such a simple task would cause so much difficulty. Fortunately, like the best teachers, she was committed to doing whatever it took to wait me out, but this was only because she didn't have a choice. As educators, we are committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure mastery of learning, whether this is of a concept, an academic skill, or a behavior. This commitment and passion is most important for our most vulnerable students.

We must strive to provide purposeful, pre-planned differentiated supports for our students. In my case, I benefited from visual cues and resources to accompany auditory teachings. For students who lack the pre-requisite skills, we must preteach and for those who lack the foundational skills, we must pre-teach and provide extensive scaffolded supports. Through frequent checks for understanding/formative assessments, we can appropriately adjust our teaching to meet students' needs.

A nurturing classroom requires differentiation.

Tasks, Important Information, Upcoming Events

Week of January 13: SAT School Day Registration (see Ms. Gaskins)

Friday, January 17: 1/2 Day, End of Marking Period (see below)

Monday, January 20: Martin Luther King, Jr Holiday

Tuesday, January 21: Teacher Work Day

Enter grades by:

Please enter names of students who have not taken exams by January 13
Please enter marking period/semester grades by January 24 at 9am; special education progress reports

Golden Apple Awards: Read more from this post

Field Trips

Birthdays
None that I know of

Useful Information

Bell Schedules http://bit.ly/MustangBells

Seeking volunteers? ACPS is attempting to expand volunteer outreach and help teachers find volunteers. Here’s a form that takes a minute to complete.

Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm

Why a high-performing school district is changing everything with competency-based education

Connecting math and science to reading and writing

Governor Northam's G3 initiative might bring jobs to community colleges across the state

Worth Your Time

½ Day Bell Schedule

8:55-9:45

9:50-10:35

10:40-11:25

11:30-12:50

Lunch	Class Time
1st: 11:30-11:55	12:00-12:50	Blue, Green, F-classrooms
2nd: 12:35-12:50	11:30-12:30	Red, Purple, Gym

All CATEC students will attend CATEC for the full half-day on January 17. They will leave depart from Monticello High School at 9am and return from CATEC and return to Monticello High School for 2nd lunch.

For our schoolwide PD in the afternoon, our time will be spent working in our PLCs with an emphasis on mid-year data and next steps to ensure success of all students.

1:00-2:15 PLC 1

2:15-3:30 PLC 2

PLC 1 Groups

AFDA

Chemistry

Earth Science

World Geography

US Government

English 9

English 12

Spanish

PLC 2 Groups

Geometry

Algebra

Biology

World History

US History

English 10

English 11

German

Health/PE

Geometry

Causing a Struggle

Excellence in Education: Causing Struggle

“Causing a student to struggle,” sounds counter-intuitive to our mission as educators, doesn’t it?

It’s not.

So when I saw a math teacher challenge students to solve a problem without telling her how, I was excited. Research shows that when you’re asked to solve a problem before being shown how to solve it, the subsequent solution is better learned and more likely to be remembered.

So whether it’s solving a math problem, or asking students, “How do you think (insert historical figure/event and a scenario?” or having students make corrections to something they haven’t yet learned, you’re actually priming their brain for learning. It’s perfectly acceptable for them to struggle—learning shouldn’t be easy and learning is actually made more permanent when it is difficult.

The challenge, of course, is finding the appropriate zone of development for each student. Asking one student "How do you think..." will cause him/her to dig deeper and pursue an answer, but for another student in the same class, it might cause them to shut down. Then, working with the student, we need to diagnose why he/she shut down and adapt our responses accordingly. As we are committed to ensuring the education for all students--which I believe should be measured by progression--this at the heart of what we do and often defines our why. This level of differentiation and scaffolding is strenuous, especially at first.

Exams provide a great opportunity for us to examine our teaching practices. Are we appropriately challenging each student or are we accepting a one-size fits all approach?

For more information see Daniel Willingham’s Why Students Don’t Like School or Make it Stick by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel.

Tasks, Important Information, Upcoming Events

Midterm Bell Schedule: bit.ly/MontMid

Bitmoji Image

Fire Alarm: 2nd Period on Monday.

Ugly Sweater Contest on December 19; Faculty Meeting 8:15 and staff lunch

Golden Apple Awards: Read more from this post

Kudos!
Hats off to Monticello's Orchestra for their great performance on Thursday night. Thanks for all staff who attended.

Looking for something to bring your family to and support our students? Choir performs on Tuesday and our band concert is Thursday!

Field Trips

January 9: All seniors will be attending UVA Law Trials

Birthdays

January 1: Jessica Eisenhauer

Useful Information

Bell Schedules http://bit.ly/MustangBells

Seeking volunteers? ACPS is attempting to expand volunteer outreach and help teachers find volunteers. Here’s a form that takes a minute to complete.

Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm

Show and tell: A video column/three conditions English Learners need to thrive

How to lead students to engage in higher order thinking

Worth Your Time

Peer Assessment

Excellence in Education: Peer Assessment

Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen several examples of effective peer assessment. The ability to self-assess and peer-assess are required for improvement. By studying their own work and the work of others, student learning accelerates and learning is much more efficient and effective than teacher-provided feedback.

Peer Assessment Technique 1

Students complete an assignment or problem individually.
Students then get into random or flexible groups of 3-4.
Each student pass their work to the left and they take notes (either on the paper or itself, a sticky note or their own piece of paper. This could also be done digitally.)
After everyone has reviewed each partner's work, they discuss differences.
Mark-up stage: This can be done in a variety of ways: They can mark up their own. they can mark up the last one they were passed, they can work collaboratively to mark up one or they can recreate a master one.
After completing the mark-up stage, encourage students to reflect on their learning by asking them questions like What were some decisions that were hard to make? What were some common errors that were made? What were things everyone did well? Were there some areas where you couldn't agree? How did you come to your decisions?

Peer Assessment Technique 2

Students complete an assignment. This could be a worksheet, a writing sample, etc.
The assignments are handed in and redistributed to students. Students do NOT know who is marking their work. If you are concerned about confidentiality: do not have students put their names on their original papers and instead use a code or some other secret word.
Students then mark their peers' work using a key or teacher-modeled answers. Again, posting this online is a good option.
Collect all the work and then hand it back to the original student.
Provide students with an opportunity to check the checker's work and, more importantly, to see where they made their mistakes.
After reviewing their original work, ask questions like those listed above in #6.

Using peer-assessment techniques like these benefits both the original doer and the assessor. It teaches students how to avoid mistakes, how to correct errors, and that improvement is always possible, building metacognitive skills and a growth mindset as well as teaching academic tasks.

What are some peer assessment strategies you use?

Tasks, Important Dates/Information

Interim period ends: Tuesday

Champions/Medford League Basketball Game: Tuesday during MM

Friday: B-Day & Clubs

Friday: College and Culture Pride

March 2: Monticello PD Day (plan for instructional showcase, PLCs, freshman seminar)

March 3: Teacher Work Day

March 5: Community Showcase 4:30-7:00

Shannon Grant Application http://compass.k12albemarle.org/?p=2319330

Birthdays

February 25: Joe Weaver & Paul Jones

Important Links

Bell Schedules http://bit.ly/MustangBells

This includes links to the Friday calendars and the year-end calendar

Seeking volunteers? ACPS is attempting to expand volunteer outreach and help teachers find volunteers. Here’s a form that takes a minute to complete.

Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm

How to use Google Sheets to create an interactive/multimedia timeline

Worth Your Time

Why are average students often stuck in the dullest high school courses?

Teachers use meditation to calm and inspire: 'Imagine a voice coming from your heart.'

Sunday, March 1, 2020

Walking Away from Students

Excellence in Education: Walking Away from Students

Over the last week, I've seen two examples where teachers walked away from students who were in need of help.

And it was GREAT!

In both examples, the teacher facilitated and advanced learning. First, let me talk about the situation I observed in Mr. McCrory's math class. Students were working in partnerships and were actively using math vocabulary as they tried to solve a series of problems. Two partnerships were stuck on the same problem and were consulting each other. After a minute or two, it was obvious they were close but were not quite able to get to the answer. Erasers were getting worked hard. Mr. McCrory came over and asked what is often called an advancing question, "Can you explain what you've done and what's next?"

Mr. McCrory answered succinctly, "That's one way to solve it if you do what next? Another student chimed in with the answer and the original student made a comment along the lines of "but isn't there another way?"

To this Mr. McCrory responded, "Yes. A simpler way would be to [brief non-specific explanation] Why don't you try that." He then walked away. The group explored the problem further and BAM! came up with an answer using the "new" technique.

The second example occurred right across the hallway with Ms. Kelly. After working through an question with a student who was struggling, the student arrived at the correct answer. Sensing that the student needed further help, Ms. Kelly stayed by the side and offered prompts to the student as she worked through the next problem. After the student had completed that problem, which was the last problem, Ms. Kelly asked two advancing questions--most likely because she was unsure if the student had truly mastered the concept. Ms. Kelly's first question was "How are the answers to these two questions the same?" She stuck around for the answer. Then she popped a more difficult question, "What would happen if these were flipped (referring to the angles of the triangle)? Think about it."

Then she walked away.

Ms. Kelly's last question was an example of an advancing question. She had assessed what the student knew in relation to the lesson's learning target and recognized that she needed to move the student's understanding further.

While both teachers showed remarkable skill in developing these questions on the fly, it's often very difficult to develop assessing questions and higher-order thinking questions in such a manner as you bounce around the room facilitating the learning of 25 students. In such situations, we often revert to providing the answers. A technique that I used was to write assessing and advancing questions in the margin of my copy to avoid this.

A tip I learned from an English teacher was to use assessing and advancing questions as a feedback tool. After collecting the work, she would write questions on each student's paper and hand them back to the students during the next class when they would be expected to "advance" their work. I've also seen a teacher type assessing and advancing questions onto labels and then as she walked around the class, she would stick them on students' papers to advance their learning.

By walking away, the teachers challenged the students to further their learning. They engaged the students in deeper learning and made learning visible to the student.

Assessing questions:

Are based on the student's work.
Provide clarification to the student and teacher.
Support the student's metacognitive growth.

Advancing questions:

Are the next step and are based on what the student can do.
Are intended to extend the student's knowledge and level of mastery.
Challenge the student to advance their learning and to think of problems in new ways

A tip I learned from an English teacher was to use assessing and advancing questions as a feedback tool. After collecting the work, she would write questions on each student's paper and hand them back to the students during the next class when they would be expected to "advance" their work. I've also seen a teacher type assessing and advancing questions onto labels and then as she walked around the class, she would stick them on students' papers to advance their learning.

Shout Out: Ms. Rita

We currently have 1,196 students. I'm a firm believer that we all teach and are responsible for all 1,196 students and that everyone must make a contribution to ensure the success of each student. Ms. Rita demonstrates such commitment as she has--without being asked--manned the purple doors during Mustang Morning and the first part of lunch to ensure our students are attending classes and meeting our expectations.

We must continue to work as a team of people all working to achieve our goals and the success of every student.

Thanks Ms. Rita!

Tasks, Important Dates/Information

March 2: Monticello PD Day (plan for instructional showcase, PLCs, freshman seminar)

10:00am: Freshman Seminar Teachers Meet

12:00-1:30 PLC 1

1:30-3:00 PLC 2

Please use time throughout the day to complete any work necessary for the showcase and other matters.

PLC Collaborative Work for month of March

Prepare 3rd common assessment
Reflect/Analyze reteaching strategies from midterm and their effectiveness
Determine SOL preparation plans for current students

Optional PLC Collaborative Work for the month of March:

These can be used to facilitate the above as well

Team time discussion

Equity Audit

Improving Student Outcomes

March 3: Teacher Work Day

This is a teacher flex day, meaning you can work from home. School will be open. Please ensure that you have.

Completed teacher course requests (we will be contacting those who haven't)
Request students for Mustang Morning. This is a school expectation that any student with a D or F or in jeopardy of failing is requested by the teacher. For directions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lgRaSKQaQ-SBPoqXw8tKD_wsrWJ07pJGBVMkDvefWTQ/edit
Additionally, please make sure that you have contacted families of students with D's and F's

March 5: Community Showcase 4:30-7:00

Birthdays

March 3: Chris Stanek
March 4: John Kinney

Important Links

Bell Schedules http://bit.ly/MustangBells

This includes links to the Friday calendars and the year-end calendar

Seeking volunteers? ACPS is attempting to expand volunteer outreach and help teachers find volunteers. Here’s a form that takes a minute to complete.

Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm