Another Year Completed... still I want to try to blog more in future...easy to say, harder to do.
This summer I am reflecting on how well I integrate technology into my classroom lessons, and ways I can do more or better lessons that use technology than ever before. I want to fully start using our BYOD concept to encourage students to stay engaged, and to take control of their learning. While several of my students this past year did submit assignments online using Moodle each week, it wasn't as large a percent as the previous year. Some of that may have been the fact I had two student teachers working in my room, basically the whole year I had an extra teacher in the room! How cool was that! But I gave control of the lessons over to them for a huge percentage of the school year, and that may have effected how well my students got used to the online part of the class.
So this summer I am reading first a book by Kipp Rogers (a Solution Tree conference purchase) about Bring Your Own Device to engage students and Transform Instruction. We shall see what nuggets I learn from the reading.
Until next time...
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Grading Reflections
I attended a superb Solution Tree workshop week focusing on Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Grading practices, Intervention Tiers, and how to help every student succeed by Raising the Bar and Closing the gap... yes that is a book title too.
One topic that I learned about was the argument yet again about not putting in zeros for missing work. That has always stuck in my craw so to speak because I would not want to give a child 50% of the points for an assignment they never did, when a child who did poorly on it, but tried and did turn it in, but never tried to redo it also got 50%. But I started to see that the scale of 0 to 59% being a F while all the others are only 10 points on the 100 point scale made more sense. Especially when they talked about grading differences between teachers being a much as the same paper could get an A or an F depending on who your teacher is! Really made me think about how many zeros I have given out and was that really a fair and reasonable way to grade. Especially if the number of points possible on the assignment was over 10. The more points an assignment is worth, the worse it hurts those students who can't keep up with the workload for whatever reason.
So I am looking at using rubric scales of 4 to 0 for next year on most items, and I decided that while I wasn't sure about the 50% rule, the 25% rule I could handle. So any student who still had any missing items at the end of last quarter, was given 25% of the points possible for those assignments.* I almost never have a child turn in work and still only earn 25% of the grade.
Plus I will continue my policy of MAKING those students do their missing work in the next class periodinstead of moving forward with the rest of peers to the next assignment. That I was reassured is the best policy, even though it is a lot of work to have students working on multiple assignments in one 55 minutes class period, trying to supervise and juggle it all.....
Another reason I love my student teachers!
*None of my students failed Science this quarter with this policy in place!
I attended a superb Solution Tree workshop week focusing on Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Grading practices, Intervention Tiers, and how to help every student succeed by Raising the Bar and Closing the gap... yes that is a book title too.
One topic that I learned about was the argument yet again about not putting in zeros for missing work. That has always stuck in my craw so to speak because I would not want to give a child 50% of the points for an assignment they never did, when a child who did poorly on it, but tried and did turn it in, but never tried to redo it also got 50%. But I started to see that the scale of 0 to 59% being a F while all the others are only 10 points on the 100 point scale made more sense. Especially when they talked about grading differences between teachers being a much as the same paper could get an A or an F depending on who your teacher is! Really made me think about how many zeros I have given out and was that really a fair and reasonable way to grade. Especially if the number of points possible on the assignment was over 10. The more points an assignment is worth, the worse it hurts those students who can't keep up with the workload for whatever reason.
So I am looking at using rubric scales of 4 to 0 for next year on most items, and I decided that while I wasn't sure about the 50% rule, the 25% rule I could handle. So any student who still had any missing items at the end of last quarter, was given 25% of the points possible for those assignments.* I almost never have a child turn in work and still only earn 25% of the grade.
Plus I will continue my policy of MAKING those students do their missing work in the next class periodinstead of moving forward with the rest of peers to the next assignment. That I was reassured is the best policy, even though it is a lot of work to have students working on multiple assignments in one 55 minutes class period, trying to supervise and juggle it all.....
Another reason I love my student teachers!
*None of my students failed Science this quarter with this policy in place!
Quarter 4 Week One Review
As before, having a student teacher in my class to assist and slowly take over the teaching while I supervise is such an opportunity to share my teaching skills and to re-evaluate what I do and try to improve even more. So this week, my student teacher is taking over all the classes now, with me simply assisting and guiding, or sometimes co-teaching. I love it!
We have only 9 weeks left now, and two of those will be doozies as we have both our AZmerit testing this quarter, and our Sex Ed guest speakers coming in for a week in our science classes. Not a fan of this, but our principal is trying to make sure every student gets this and more students take science than P.E. so "C'est la vie!"
So we really are going to need to find the absolute BEST lessons to teach our Ecology standards to our students with to help them understand and succeed in this unit. I vote for the best hands on labs and activities I can find, and then make sure the students can analyze the data and results they gain, and make strong conclusions that match that data.
One lab I know I want to repeat is the Transfer of Energy lab using water teams to carry water leaky bucket by bucket down a chain of students!
As before, having a student teacher in my class to assist and slowly take over the teaching while I supervise is such an opportunity to share my teaching skills and to re-evaluate what I do and try to improve even more. So this week, my student teacher is taking over all the classes now, with me simply assisting and guiding, or sometimes co-teaching. I love it!
We have only 9 weeks left now, and two of those will be doozies as we have both our AZmerit testing this quarter, and our Sex Ed guest speakers coming in for a week in our science classes. Not a fan of this, but our principal is trying to make sure every student gets this and more students take science than P.E. so "C'est la vie!"
So we really are going to need to find the absolute BEST lessons to teach our Ecology standards to our students with to help them understand and succeed in this unit. I vote for the best hands on labs and activities I can find, and then make sure the students can analyze the data and results they gain, and make strong conclusions that match that data.
One lab I know I want to repeat is the Transfer of Energy lab using water teams to carry water leaky bucket by bucket down a chain of students!
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Summer Break is Over Already!
Tomorrow I head out of town with 11 other teachers for a training that will last all week, so even though I OFFICIALLY am not back at work until the 30th, it really feels like my summer is over now.
I am looking forward to this training, called Laying the Foundation by the NMSI institute, as others who went last year found it greatly beneficial, and I often find a training like this gets my brain going for the new school year with fresh ideas and plans to put into place. Not that I don't have a lot of new things in place already that I am excited to see how it helps my students, but I can always find something new to intrigue me from the ideas and experience of others.
So sometime between this Saturday, and Wednesday the 29th I have to get in my room and set things up, touch up paint, clean out the supplies boxes and decorate. Maybe make a few copies in the meantime too.
The big plus for me is that most of my calendar and links for resources and assignments is already on our district Moodle Web page. I have been using Moodle for several years now, and it is such a time saver to have these items up ready to use. All I have been doing this summer is tweaking the order, updating a few worksheets, and adding more images and pictures to make it attractive and eye-catching for the students.
The main thing I have to work on this coming weekend is making a couple of new videos that I do not have yet, for my flipped classroom. I made several new ones last year, and I think this year I may actually get to the point where I do have one 10-15 minute video for each week of the year, except testing weeks! That is such a blessing and I am excited to be at this point in my goal of flipping my classroom content from lectures to videos.
Well, I need to finish packing,
Until next time
Maura
I am looking forward to this training, called Laying the Foundation by the NMSI institute, as others who went last year found it greatly beneficial, and I often find a training like this gets my brain going for the new school year with fresh ideas and plans to put into place. Not that I don't have a lot of new things in place already that I am excited to see how it helps my students, but I can always find something new to intrigue me from the ideas and experience of others.
So sometime between this Saturday, and Wednesday the 29th I have to get in my room and set things up, touch up paint, clean out the supplies boxes and decorate. Maybe make a few copies in the meantime too.
The big plus for me is that most of my calendar and links for resources and assignments is already on our district Moodle Web page. I have been using Moodle for several years now, and it is such a time saver to have these items up ready to use. All I have been doing this summer is tweaking the order, updating a few worksheets, and adding more images and pictures to make it attractive and eye-catching for the students.
The main thing I have to work on this coming weekend is making a couple of new videos that I do not have yet, for my flipped classroom. I made several new ones last year, and I think this year I may actually get to the point where I do have one 10-15 minute video for each week of the year, except testing weeks! That is such a blessing and I am excited to be at this point in my goal of flipping my classroom content from lectures to videos.
Well, I need to finish packing,
Until next time
Maura
Friday, June 12, 2015
Summer Vacation Week Three
Here I am at the end of my third week of vacation and I have truly had some success in relaxing and NOT worrying about school work at this point.
I spent the bulk of the second week on a trip to see some of my children and grandchildren and having fun with them. It always seems like there are too many months between visits, but until I retire I am limited by the school holiday schedule for long trips.
This week I got to meet my new principal and chat for half an hour with him, I am looking forward to the new year and seeing how his plan for our staff and students unfolds, but that is always a bit stressful to deal with a new boss.
I have also done a bit of school work, uploaded some more items to Teachers Pay Teachers, and a book I requested from Amazon arrived and I have started reading it. It is called Total Participation Techniques and is by a husband and wife team. They give a whole list of quick techniques to gauge how the students are understanding what they are learning, and at the same time most of them require ALL students to participate in the class as active learners.
As a teacher I recognize a lot of these already, some by different names, but I am already planning a goal of inserting at least one of these into every lesson for next year, if I don't already have something like this in the lesson. And I like the suggestion that you need to write the technique into the lesson plan, or you will probably forget to do it. Highlight or write them in red too to make them stand out. Some of the techniques that are recognizable to me are 'Thumbs up-Thumbs down", "Quick-Writes", "Think-Pair-Share" etc, but another tip in the book is to make a folder or envelope of prepared items such as a whiteboard with dry erase marker, cards that have answers typed on like (Still Thinking/ Ready to Share) that you can use for specific lessons. I am thinking I would like to do this for next year, to have a set of envelopes that are large enough to put my whiteboards in and get the other items printed off and laminated added also. I will need 32 that is the only thing that is going to take some money... unless I can put in a request with my secretary at school to add 32 super large manilla envelopes to the budget for this summer. Our district still hasn't released the new budget to our middle school for spending this summer yet!
I also just ordered myself a WACOM Intuous Pen and tablet set to help with my videos, so now when I record and want to underline a part of the presentation, or add something I can use a pen instead of the mouse for better control. At least that is my plan, wish me luck I am installing it today!
I spent the bulk of the second week on a trip to see some of my children and grandchildren and having fun with them. It always seems like there are too many months between visits, but until I retire I am limited by the school holiday schedule for long trips.
This week I got to meet my new principal and chat for half an hour with him, I am looking forward to the new year and seeing how his plan for our staff and students unfolds, but that is always a bit stressful to deal with a new boss.
I have also done a bit of school work, uploaded some more items to Teachers Pay Teachers, and a book I requested from Amazon arrived and I have started reading it. It is called Total Participation Techniques and is by a husband and wife team. They give a whole list of quick techniques to gauge how the students are understanding what they are learning, and at the same time most of them require ALL students to participate in the class as active learners.
As a teacher I recognize a lot of these already, some by different names, but I am already planning a goal of inserting at least one of these into every lesson for next year, if I don't already have something like this in the lesson. And I like the suggestion that you need to write the technique into the lesson plan, or you will probably forget to do it. Highlight or write them in red too to make them stand out. Some of the techniques that are recognizable to me are 'Thumbs up-Thumbs down", "Quick-Writes", "Think-Pair-Share" etc, but another tip in the book is to make a folder or envelope of prepared items such as a whiteboard with dry erase marker, cards that have answers typed on like (Still Thinking/ Ready to Share) that you can use for specific lessons. I am thinking I would like to do this for next year, to have a set of envelopes that are large enough to put my whiteboards in and get the other items printed off and laminated added also. I will need 32 that is the only thing that is going to take some money... unless I can put in a request with my secretary at school to add 32 super large manilla envelopes to the budget for this summer. Our district still hasn't released the new budget to our middle school for spending this summer yet!
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Thoughts from the School Year 2014-15
Random Thoughts and Decisions to make...
I had another year of students needing more time to get a lesson completed than previous students had needed. I hope this isn't a growing trend!
I had to use a new curriculum sequence this year because my school district adopted fully Vail's Beyond Textbook wiki and curriculum for us. So yes, I did this year have something that added to my workload. I had to reorganize my whole Moodle website yet again because the BT sequence did not match the curriculum sequence I had on there. I and the rest of the Science department has submitted our preferred calendar of units for next year, with high hopes that our district does approve them and these calendars get uploaded to the BT wiki for us for next year. We had been told that we needed to give their calendar a try for one year, then we could upload our own if we found that to be better for our students. I really hope that promise is kept.
I have helped write many formative assessments of the POs (performance objectives) we teach, and I have used them throughout the year to gauge my students' learning of the new concepts. This year I made them have a point value, granted only 10 points, but still, they counted for a grade. I wonder if I should change this for future years? Or if I can make students do a retake, until they achieve a passing score of 70 or 80%?
The notebooks went well this year in general. Many students did a superb job on their pages each week, and took pride in keeping their notebooks looking professional. I had students using a composition notebook all this year. I wonder if I should instead use spiral 5 subject or 3 subject notebooks next year. The loss would be that hard covering on the composition notebooks, the gain would be students could remove pages from the back section to use for making some of the foldables. If they only used a section for each quarter, that 5th subject section would be available for removing pages without messing up the actual notebook. The 8th grade Math students for the teacher I have been learning from used this type of notebooks this year, and it went really well for her. So I am wondering if I should change too?
I have a really out of date classroom for a science teacher. We have only one working sink in the room. I have discussed with my curriculum department about working with a local company to get the room updated but I am not sure that is really going to happen within this school year if at all so I need some improvisation tactics to make things smoother next year on Lab days. My idea is to use the 8 buckets I already own, and each lab day, fill with some warm soapy water and have both a handtowel and dish drying cloth at each table, maybe on the floor. Students can then wash and dry their equipment and glassware at the table, AND wash and dry their hands without the never ending line at the sink. I already have purchased the towels, I will need a good supply of dishwasing detergent though if I am going to use it both for dishes and hand washing each hour. But I think this will work to smooth the lab days.
My students get a hands on lab, or some kind of hands on activity, or a computer simulation day every week. Yet they still want more... that is the message I got again, loud and clear from their reflective letters to me at the end of the year. They love when a lab takes several days to complete, like the Egg Osmosis Lab from 1st quarter this year. I need to build more lab days into the week, or even more demos by me up front would please them. They really wish that we studied Chemistry in 7th grade, but we don't. So I have to dream up more Astronomy, Geology, and Ecology labs to excite them, at the same time as they are learning the concepts and standards for 7th grade.
I am also looking for some power point backgrounds that move, or animate for me to build my power points on. I am not sure if I will find free options online, or if I need to spend some money on this... my pastor at church uses something like what I want for his sermon outlines... I need to ask him about them.
Okay, that is enough for this blog entry... I am sure I will have some more ideas though.
Maura
I had another year of students needing more time to get a lesson completed than previous students had needed. I hope this isn't a growing trend!
I had to use a new curriculum sequence this year because my school district adopted fully Vail's Beyond Textbook wiki and curriculum for us. So yes, I did this year have something that added to my workload. I had to reorganize my whole Moodle website yet again because the BT sequence did not match the curriculum sequence I had on there. I and the rest of the Science department has submitted our preferred calendar of units for next year, with high hopes that our district does approve them and these calendars get uploaded to the BT wiki for us for next year. We had been told that we needed to give their calendar a try for one year, then we could upload our own if we found that to be better for our students. I really hope that promise is kept.
I have helped write many formative assessments of the POs (performance objectives) we teach, and I have used them throughout the year to gauge my students' learning of the new concepts. This year I made them have a point value, granted only 10 points, but still, they counted for a grade. I wonder if I should change this for future years? Or if I can make students do a retake, until they achieve a passing score of 70 or 80%?
The notebooks went well this year in general. Many students did a superb job on their pages each week, and took pride in keeping their notebooks looking professional. I had students using a composition notebook all this year. I wonder if I should instead use spiral 5 subject or 3 subject notebooks next year. The loss would be that hard covering on the composition notebooks, the gain would be students could remove pages from the back section to use for making some of the foldables. If they only used a section for each quarter, that 5th subject section would be available for removing pages without messing up the actual notebook. The 8th grade Math students for the teacher I have been learning from used this type of notebooks this year, and it went really well for her. So I am wondering if I should change too?
I have a really out of date classroom for a science teacher. We have only one working sink in the room. I have discussed with my curriculum department about working with a local company to get the room updated but I am not sure that is really going to happen within this school year if at all so I need some improvisation tactics to make things smoother next year on Lab days. My idea is to use the 8 buckets I already own, and each lab day, fill with some warm soapy water and have both a handtowel and dish drying cloth at each table, maybe on the floor. Students can then wash and dry their equipment and glassware at the table, AND wash and dry their hands without the never ending line at the sink. I already have purchased the towels, I will need a good supply of dishwasing detergent though if I am going to use it both for dishes and hand washing each hour. But I think this will work to smooth the lab days.
My students get a hands on lab, or some kind of hands on activity, or a computer simulation day every week. Yet they still want more... that is the message I got again, loud and clear from their reflective letters to me at the end of the year. They love when a lab takes several days to complete, like the Egg Osmosis Lab from 1st quarter this year. I need to build more lab days into the week, or even more demos by me up front would please them. They really wish that we studied Chemistry in 7th grade, but we don't. So I have to dream up more Astronomy, Geology, and Ecology labs to excite them, at the same time as they are learning the concepts and standards for 7th grade.
I am also looking for some power point backgrounds that move, or animate for me to build my power points on. I am not sure if I will find free options online, or if I need to spend some money on this... my pastor at church uses something like what I want for his sermon outlines... I need to ask him about them.
Okay, that is enough for this blog entry... I am sure I will have some more ideas though.
Maura
Summer Vacation Week One
Well, my first week of summer has been focused on organizing school papers into binders, uploading some files to TPT for sale, working on my Moodle website to get ready for next year... why?
I wonder if all teachers have this denial phase at the start of summer, in which they just can't stop working on school things?
I persuaded my husband that at the very least we had to take one day to do something fun, and he agreed. He works from home, and often 7 days a week puts in several hours of work each morning on his photography, so the only way to truly take a break for both of us is to leave the house!
We are heading up to Tucson tomorrow, hopefully to do a bit of shopping for fun, eat out a a unique restaurant, and visit Tucson's Botanical Gardens for a chance for some photography opportunities. So I lied, he will still be working a bit on this fun trip, but the truth is, he loves his photography.
Maybe next week I will truly take a complete break from school work...
Does my nose suddenly look a bit longer?
Maura
I wonder if all teachers have this denial phase at the start of summer, in which they just can't stop working on school things?
I persuaded my husband that at the very least we had to take one day to do something fun, and he agreed. He works from home, and often 7 days a week puts in several hours of work each morning on his photography, so the only way to truly take a break for both of us is to leave the house!
We are heading up to Tucson tomorrow, hopefully to do a bit of shopping for fun, eat out a a unique restaurant, and visit Tucson's Botanical Gardens for a chance for some photography opportunities. So I lied, he will still be working a bit on this fun trip, but the truth is, he loves his photography.
Maybe next week I will truly take a complete break from school work...
Does my nose suddenly look a bit longer?
Maura
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