Monday Points October 15, 2012

 Celebration Points:

As Session One wound down at New Start last week, I want to celebrate our second graduating class of Success Academy! This year we are piloting the transitional project by requiring all students to pass through a week of reflection and preparation with myself, our counselor, student supervisor and support para. We co-taught the weeklong class in hopes of setting our students up to do well as they enter our small learning community. Session Two begins this week. Congratulations Cohort II!

Instructional Point:

There is some great teaching going on in our classrooms. I saw what I believe to be “Distinguished” level performance by a teacher when I randomly walked into a classroom at New Start this week. The teacher had students huddled around her laptop and projector and they were collaboratively writing the final exam for the course. The teacher had students refer to the notes they had been taking all session and asked them, “What do you need to know to pass this course?” Students reflected on their notes and what had been taught. The teacher laid out a framework for the exam letting them know there would be some true/false, short answer, diagramming and such. Then students proceeded to give their input and ideas about what questions needed to be asked in order to show that they been learning. As they spoke the teacher typed the test, projecting their ideas on the screen for all to see. The students were not only engaged in the co-constructed test, they knew what to study, and were set up to do very well in the course. That’s support, and that’s students taking ownership of their learning, a “distinguishing” indicator in the CD frameworks. Thank you for some great teaching.

Data Points:

Let the data begin! The New Start Language Arts team has already engaged in screening all of our students for fluency in reading. Over 70 students have been screened. I thought it was interesting that even though we don’t have growth data (yet) our literacy teachers already had a number of observations and findings to share with me and each other, just from the baseline we are building. Each teacher has a binder with student data they are collecting. Already we found that there are some very strong readers at New Start, at least as far as fluency goes. These are our students, with us now. At our LA Data meeting I could already see this vital information was beginning to inform teachers about their instruction. How will we support our strong readers? Would it be useful for other content teachers to know which readers where the strongest in our school? I am excited to see that just in month two of school, we are already learning about our students through the collaborative use of data.

  

PCT Point: “Seniors: The Road to Graduation” October 19

This Friday, October 19, our Counselor will prepare us to properly track, coach and prepare our Seniors down the road to graduation. Our commencement date has been set as June 12, 2013 (mark your calendars). We expect another record breaking number of candidates to grace our stage, but there is still a lot to do with our students before then. See you Friday at PCT. 1:00 at Salmon Creek.

My Schedule:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Oct 15	Oct 16	Oct 17	Oct 18	Oct 19
Open Session 2 at New Start Pro-Cert Presentation (Renton) CH PBIS Meeting In Classrooms Sped Meeting R&D Evaluation Meeting (ERAC)	Observation SIP Writing District Principals Meeting  (ERAC)	Classified Goal Setting Meetings In Classrooms Advisory Chat Classified Goal Setting Meetings Pre-Observation Meeting PBIS Team Meeting	Observation In Classrooms Policy Writing Counselor Meeting Science Data Team CHOICE Uniform Meeting	Classified Goal Setting Meeting New Start Partners Meeting PCT – Senior Day Contracts Summit Meeting Monday Points

Professional Growth Note: You should be somewhere between pages 45 and 50 in Pedagogy of Confidence. Remember to target through Chapter 3 by December 7.

New Start you begin Session Two on Monday, so let’s all be out to greet students as they arrive.

Have a good week.

Mike