What's Happening Around Lyon Academy? August 25th, 2016

Take a look at several highlights from around our school this week. If you see an anchor chart, student work, or something else in the building you would like showcased for the staff, please send it to Tyler.Archer@slps.org.

Ms. Walker and Ms. Axelsen welcome students to Pre-K with a theme from the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. 

....so did Ms. Connell for her Kindergarten students. 

 

Ms. Wolfenden's students spent time writing about their identity in "The Colors of Us" writing project. 

Ms. Archer's BBC includes all the required elements- Do Now, Objective, and Homework. 

Ms. Pocost clearly posts the voice level expectations for each activity during the lesson. 

A feature board such as Ms. Pocost's "Scientist of the Month" is a great way to introduce students to important figures and thinkers. 

  

Ms. Jones posts her daily schedule using a pocket chart to show students what will happen in the classroom throughout the day. 

Ms. Welch has expectations for an important strategy, "Turn and Talk" posted visibly for her students. 

Ms. Welch has posted her theme for this year, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," on the hallway bulletin board outside her classroom. 

Giving students an open-ended prompt is a great activating strategy. Ms. Cychowski used this strategy to help her students think about what they will do in Science this year. 

Ms. Cychowski posts assignments for students to complete once they finish their classwork. 

Mr. Harris has an anchor chart to prompt students in the correct ways to write about their reading. 

Ms. Walker's students have already began their study of letters in Pre-K this year! 

Ms. Richardson has a simple anchor chart posted to help students with their writing. 

Ms. Richardson has prompts to help students think about ways they can work with their peers when conflicts arise. 

Ms. Connell completed a puzzle piece activity with her students to show how they are all connected. 

Ms. Wolfenden's door is decorated and ready to welcome students to 2nd grade! 

Anchor charts in Ms. Wolfenden's room help students to see how they can create a REAL community in their classroom. 

Ms. Wolfenden has created a sensory feelings corner for her students to reflect on their in-class behavior. 

Ms. McCord has conversation norms posted for her students to be reminded of how to engage in discussions.

Ms. Benjamin's students have SWAG this year! 

This Editing Marks anchor chart helps Ms. Benjamin's 4th and 5th grade students to revise their writing. 

Ms. Cisar has a number of anchor charts posted that help students to be reminded about classroom and school expectations. 

Ms. Cisar's "Cool Down Corner" is a great way to give students an opportunity to take a break, then re-enter the classroom community. 

Ms. Latta uses mailboxes to sort student materials. 

This classroom library in Ms. Latta's room is organized by genre, level, and is friendly and inviting for students. 

Ms. Connell gets to know her students by discussing a "Question of the Day" and posting the results. 

Using a Kagan MegaTimer

According to the SLPS Excellent Classrooms Tool, excellent classrooms "develop lessons that focus on mastery of the standard through appropriate materials, engaging activities, and a gradual release of responsibility to maximize learning."

One key strategy to create strong lesson structure and pacing is to create the illusion of speed so that students feel continually engaged. Some ways to do this include:

• Using a timer for each aspect of the lesson to let students see how much time they have left during each activity
• Using brief 15-40 second turn and talks
• Cold calling students/using another randomizing strategy

The Kagan MegaTimer is a tool to assist teachers with implementing these strategies. 

A Jumbo Timer Designed Just for Teachers!
Hands down, the biggest, most powerful timer for teachers available. Mega means big. The MegaTimer™ measures in at a super-sized 6.5 by 9.5 inches. The jumbo LCD display with a brilliant blue backlight is so big and bright, you can read the display from the back seat of your classroom. Mega also means powerful. Powerful it is with all the standard timer features you would expect, plus many, many more. The MegaTimer’s design is so unique and versatile it is patent pending. Push the Student Selector button to randomly pick any student to share. Push the Team Selector button to randomly pick any team in the class to present. Use the Countdown timer to display how much time remains for students to complete their projects. Use the Stopwatch timer to challenge the class how long it takes to clean up. Need dice, a spinner, or random numbers for math problems? The Random mode will generate random numbers for you. Set an Alarm to remind you and the class it’s break time. Students seem a little sluggish? Press the Temperature button to check if the temperature is optimal for learning. And when you’re not using the timer, display the Time and Date. Carry it around, hang it on the wall, or use the stand to place it on your desk. This is the timer you don’t want to be without. Nowhere else will you find so many teaching tools packed into one digital timer. It’s big. It’s powerful.

Some ways the MegaTimer can be used include: 

To download the user manual for the Kagan MegaTimer, access the following link: http://www.kaganonline.com/catalog/JMT/MegaTimer_Instruction_Manual.pdf 

From http://www.kaganonline.com/catalog/JMT/index-vid.php 

What's Happening Around Lyon Academy? April 7th, 2016

Take a look at several highlights from around our school this week. If you see an anchor chart, student work, or something else in the building you would like showcased for the staff, please send it to Tyler.Archer@slps.org.

Ms. Wolfenden's anchor chart helps students to visually make the connection between money and its value. 

Ms. Salmo's students sing the "Vowel Song" to help them with understanding their vowels and identifying them. 

In Ms. Kempf's class, a difficult math problem is made simple with an anchor chart that teaches how to make groups of ten. 

Ms. Connell's "My Strategies to Solve" anchor chart reminds students of several ways to solve difficult math problems. 

Ms. Trapp helps students to create compound words by using this color-coded anchor chart. 

Ms. Latta helps students to attack Constructed Response questions with this"QUAN" anchor chart. 

Ms. Cychowski's students engaged in a roller coaster experiment and then displayed their results on a poster they created. 

Ms. Pocost used social media and Instagram as a hook to involve students in drawing and representing their ecosystem. 

Ms. Davison's vocabulary strategies anchor chart outlines examples and strategies students can use to determine the meaning of unknown words. 

Student Work as Formative Assessment

One of the most effective ways of assessing student progress is through student work and high quality feedback. Research shows that when students receive frequent feedback designed to help them improve, they are more successful. Similarly, students who are exposed to student work and feedback are more likely to learn from their own work and the work of others. This is why teachers are asked to post student work with descriptive feedback in the classroom and hallway. Posting student work also provides students with an opportunity to feel successful about the work they do and receive recognition from their peers.

To help you prepare high-quality tasks for your students and display in the hallways consult the following resources:

Student Work Analysis Protocol (and Student Work Reflections/Feedback Form)
SLPS Project Description Sheet

High-quality student work should demonstrate a deeper level understanding (DOK 3 & 4) and indicate a student's achievement towards a specific learning target or standard. When posting student work, work should include a project description sheet, rubric and descriptive feedback. Multi-step projects or processes should be displayed, rather than simple recall worksheets or exit tickets. The examples below are recent examples of student work postings from our hallways that reflect some of the work students are doing in ELA classrooms:

Would you like to win a donut for reading the blog? What about a cup of coffee? Be one of the first five teachers to e-mail a task (with rubric) that you plan to use in your classroom in an upcoming lesson to Mr. Archer for feedback and you'll receive a donut and coffee the week after Spring Break! You'll also receive feedback about the task you plan to do with your students. 

Checking for Understanding and Reteaching Strategies

Throughout our professional development this year we have spent a significant amount of time discussing formative assessment. Most recently, we have discussed checking for understanding procedures and ways to respond to with instruction. Remember, Checking for Understanding consists of two key actions:

While you teach, constantly assess what your students understand. Gather responses from not just one but several students who represent different levels of achievement and performance. Use the data to estimate how many in your class understand and what segments of the class you might have left behind. In this process, ask Cold Call questions with the conscious purpose of sampling understanding. Also Circulate as students do desk work, with the conscious purpose of sampling levels of mastery in written answers. Exit Ticket is yet another technique to use with Check for Understanding.

Respond to misunderstanding by reteaching, and usually reteaching differently.  There’s no point to checking unless you also respond (the more promptly the better) to improve understanding. The shorter the delay, the more likely the intervention will work. 

When thinking about implementing a check for understanding in the classroom, think about the following process:

Select a lesson plan for an upcoming lesson. Note in your plan where you will want to Check for Understanding. Consider:
1. What errors students are likely to make. What misunderstandings may they have?2. The method you will use to check. What question(s) will you ask and how? Script your questions in the lesson plan.
3. Plan (and possibly write down) target student responses. What will you specifically look for in students’ work?
4. How you can standardize students’ work pages so that you can quickly find their work on a particular question (or set of questions).  

For each instance of checking, note what may be your best choice of a way to reteach at the moment.
After class, assess your plan and actual performance in class to improve and broaden choices in your next plan and lesson. In your next plan, include any needed reteaching that you couldn’t do on the spot. Generally, teachers are better at checking for gaps in student mastery than they are at acting on those gaps. Be realistic about where you are, but do plan to improve at filling gaps well and early. 

The following are some strategies that can be utilized to check for understanding, their advantages, pitfalls and challenges, and ways to address those challenges: 

Strategies and Their Advantages	Pitfalls and Challenges	Possible Solutions
Questioning     Immediate     Done during lesson	Right answers from individual students may not equate with whole-class mastery.	Track students’ answers and look for trends.
Observation     Immediate     Independent work- no copying   or piggybacking	Observing students’ work at their seats is likely to entail some delay after the moment of actual teaching. To be effective, observing requires consciously targeting a specific skill question and a valid sample of the class.	Pick one question to target; track responses. Observe during Do Now. Target specific students.
Quick Oral Quiz     Immediate     Done during lesson	The teacher needs to be sure to tap the right sample of students.	Intentionally target students who are high, medium, and low on different skills. Track answers. Cold Call specific individuals.
Hand Signals     Silent     Quick     Whole Class	Students may copy or piggyback.	Ask students go give signals with their eyes close. Ask for hand signals from smaller subset of class.
Slate     Silent     Quick     Whole Class	Students may copy or piggyback.	Explain why piggybacking does not serve the student’s own best interest. Signal the moment when everyone should hold up his or her slate. Have students hold up slates at each step of a problem.
Reteaching	As teachers we may tend to delay reteaching, rather than do it right away after data show a lack of understanding.	Reteach as soon as possible, even if this requires adjusting objectives and lesson plans.

When reteaching, it is important to go beyond "just repeating" the material that was already covered.  Repeating what you did before in the same or slightly different words might work, but some or all students may respond better to some other form of reteaching. In general:

• Act quickly.
• Inform students of what you generally learned from your data.
• Decide to whom you need to respond: an individual, a group, or the class as a whole. 

The following strategies are ways to effectively reteach when a check for understanding reveals gaps in knowledge: 

In an upcoming PLC Team Meeting, we will look at lesson plans and brainstorm strategies that can be used for specific lessons to check for understanding. When planning how you will respond to student misunderstandings, think about the above strategies and how they can help your students. 

What is a Checking for Understanding strategy and reteaching strategy you plan to use in an upcoming lesson? Be one of the first five people to e-mail Mr. Archer (Tyler.Archer@slps.org) for a sweet treat next week!