Home - Learning Village 2.0.9.16

Home - Learning Village 2.0.9.16

2nd week of school

So far so good. The opening of school has been rather smooth. Everyone seems to be settling in and our students are doing a great job with practicing the 3 R's. We just need to keep practicing and reinforcing our expectations for them and for ourselves.

I have seen some excellent connecting activities and I really appreciate those that have remembered to post them on the school wiki. At last count we had about 17 activities. That is 17 weeks worth of connecting activities for your class. If you have not posted yet- please do. It will be great to have enough activities to get everyone through the year. That would be 42 submissions.

I really like the third grade taking up the bricks idea on their hallway. The students are beginning to understand the we need to build upon the foundation to make a strong community and we are doing that by following the 3 R's- Respectful, Responsible, and Ready.

The learning team meetings went very well today. Kindergarten and 3rd grade did a wonderful job working through the process of unpacking a standard. The more we do it, the easier it will become and it will make your job easier in the classroom. I am looking forward to seeing what the other grade levels do this week with unpacking one of their standards. I have been very impressed how the staff has internalized the Single School Culture concept, not only with the academic part- that we have just begun, but also in the climate and behavior piece. You all have just taken up the focus and process naturally. We just need to keep that going and continue to hold our students and each other to higher standards to meet out goals for this year.

Keep up the good work, remember to laugh daily, and make it fun. The scores will come when we remain focused and using high yield strategies in all of our instruction-challenging our students and teaching them to think.

Have a great week.

Trish

Welcome Back South Fork Staff

School starts on Tuesday, August 25th. We have had to make a lot of changes right before school started so I have been very busy hiring new staff and switching staff around to accommodate the changes. I am excited at the new additions but sad to see some people move on to bigger and better positions within the system.

Please welcome Barry Hill to our 4th grade, along with Beth Hodges. It will be the "H" team as it is Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Hodges, and Mr. Hill. We have also added a new kindergarten teacher, Ms. Rachel Hicks. Her assistant has joined us from Kimberly Park ES. Her name is Carol Green.

Ms. Cheryl Wright has taken the position of the Summer School Academy and the SES Coordinator for Title One Schools. She will be great at this position but we will miss her more than we can imagine. Angie Anderson, from 4th grade, has taken on the challenge of being our new Tech Facilitator. Ms. Wright and Mrs. Anderson have been working night and day to get technology lab prepared for the classes to start.

We have made several grade level changes. Mrs. Sanchez moved to 1st grade. Mrs. Quigley moved to 2nd grade, Ms. Allen moved to 3rd grade, and Ms. Knote moved to 5th grade. We have also added Ms. Revelle and Ms. London to our primary reading support staff. Mrs. Hunt has joined out staff for the mornings for ESL. She will be at Brunson ES in the afternoons. Mrs. Dixon will be in a full time support role working mostly with 2nd grade to begin with and then pick up small reading and math groups as the need arises. Please welcome and help all the these new additions and people new to these different grade levels.

It is going to be a fantastic year. We have incorporated the theme this year as, " A Firm Foundation Builds a Nation". This is how we will include the "Essential Skills of the 21st Century", which is our overall school theme for the county school of choice. We had a great beginning of team building with our staff on the 17th. The Theme Team that went to the Teacher Academy this summer, worked on this idea all summer to help unite our staff, students, and community. By all of us working together, our students will become the leaders one day that we need them to be. More to come on that later....

Remember that we will use the blog and wiki to communicate ideas, discuss staff development ideas, and share instructional strategies with each other.

I will be glad to have all the students back at school. It will be nice to have a routine in place.

Trish

Opportunities to improve- What can you do?

We are embarking on a week long trip of enrichment and OTI- other opportunities to improve. This is for all the students who did not pass the EOG's the first time. Most of our students missed the cut off by 2-5 problems. I feel sure they will meet their goal this second time around.

Thinking about OTI- what can you do to improve on what you did this year in the classroom? We had good scores. Some would even say we had great scores in some areas. But, we all have room for improvement. No one teacher in our school can do this alone. It is a matter of building upon what each teacher did beginning from pre-K through fifth grade and beyond. Each one of us adds to the foundation of each student who attends South Fork. Preparation for the end of grade exams do not begin in third grade...it starts the minute they enter our doors and it doesn't stop once they leave us...it continues, I hope, for the rest of their lives. It takes all of us and we are all doing what needs to be done to prepare our students- or not prepare them- if that is the case. We are all in this together. Where one fails, we all fail- We are a TEAM. Where one succeeds- we all succeed- We are a TEAM. Where one receives a bonus- we all receive one- not because of just the one but because we all had a hand in the success of the students. If you believe otherwise- come see me. We need to have a chat.

So, what can you do now and through the summer as opportunities to improve your teaching in science, reading, writing, or math? What can you do to help strengthen the foundations of our students next year? How can you help them build better character, or build more empathy or sympathy for others? Are you a good role model for your students? What opportunities do you need to improve?

Share your thoughts and ideas. The blog has been quiet for too long.

EOG week

It is End of Grade week this week at South Fork. We have had three tests- including Science- and we have one more tomorrow in math. It is a short day for testing and the last day for most of the students. We have about 7 students who will completing make up the rest of this week. Then we have a long weekend before we hit the ground running- again.


I have been amazed at how hard the students worked so far this week. I have never seen a group of kids stick with the reading test as ours did on Monday. We had several students who took the extra time to finish. It was truly awesome to watch. I hope the scores reflect how hard the kids worked. They should all have fours- if it does. Today, I saw so many students using all the strategies they have been practicing all year. It was a good day for testing today.


We are winding down the year but we still have three weeks to go. I hope now that testing is essentially over, we can take the time to do some activities with our students that fit into our curriculum but is not related to testing. Our multicultural week is the last week of school. Now would be a good time to do some hands on, fun, learning activities that involve the different cultures represented in our school.

Have fun with the end of school. Keep the kids engaged and pull out all those activities you used to do that made teaching fun. Let's end this year with a bang!

Good afternoon,

Ok Here is the website I spoke about this morning. It is a great resource for you as a teacher and for our parents- if you want to include it in your news letters.
http://school.familyeducation.com/working-parents/parents-and-school/51326.html?detoured=1&mail-04-07

We hope you enjoy this school.familyeducation.com page.

Also, as promised...the powerpoint is on the s: drive for you to look at. It will be a good resource to read through.

Now for your assignments for April 29th- Your assignment is to work with your table group(from today) to prepare to teach your strategy of writing summaries or note taking to the whole group on April 29th. This should only take about 3-4 minutes at the most for each group. I checked and found that you did not have the books that I was reading from so I will make a copy of the strategies and put them in your group leaders box to share( for those who did not get a sheet today). I will have copies of all strategies for everyone on the 29th so you only have to give info to people in your teaching group.
Group 1- Cindy Wright Summary Frames: The Argumentation Frame, The Problem/Solution Frame, The Conversation Frame
Group 2- Kathy Jackson Rule Based Strategy
Group 3- Blanca Oliver Summary Frames: Narrative Frame, Topic- restriction Illustration Frame, and the Definition Frame
Group 4- Betsy Truscott Combination Notes: Landmark college and the Cornell Two column Notes
Group 5- Connie Allen Webbing Notes- Extreme Notes
Group 6- Jennifer Mickey Roman Numeral Outline
Group 7- Amy Guthrie Post card summary
Group 8- Charlene Wellborn Picture Summaries

Update: All handouts have been put into the team leader's box as of this afternoon.

If you come across any websites or programs, or other user friendly ideas that will help us with the summaries and note taking process- please add it to the blog.

Any suggestions or things you have used is most welcomed too.

Back to Marzano...Writing Summaries and Taking Notes

Before we begin on this section of Marzano's High Yield Strategies...What are some things that you already do for teaching how to write summaries or to take notes? Do you teach your students how to take notes or to write summaries?

My daughter, Megan, has a hard time figuring out what is important enough to talk about when she is telling me about a book she has read or a movie she has watched. I have always said that she can't see the forest because she is so busy looking at each and every tree. So, when I ask her about a book or a movie- I tell her she has to tell me about the plot in only three sentences. This is extremely hard for her but after a while- I did notice that she was getting better at picking out the main ideas from the stories. Her book summaries are still just a recap of the entire story in her own words. We are still working on ways for her to shorten them and still get all the important information.

One way that was helpful to me as a student and what I did with my students for note taking was to provide a sheet with the information I wanted the students to know with blank spaces. As I went over the material or we came across the information in a book, an article, movie, etc. I would point it out to them and they would fill in the information on their study note sheet. After we used this for a while, they knew when they received the sheet they needed to read over it before class got started so they would recognize the information they needed to fill in the blanks. I found that to be helpful to them.

Another easy thing- I did for note taking- was to point out vocabulary in bold print. That was usually a clue that they should pay attention to. I included those in my note taking sheets as well.

What are some of the things you have done with summaries and note taking?