Director’s Message

At the school year’s mid-point, it is essential that the planning and delivery for instruction continue to include the practice of frequently monitoring for student progress. “When teachers use systematic monitoring to track their students’ progress…they are better able to identify students in need of additional or different forms of instruction, they design stronger instructional programs, and their students achieve better” Fuchs & Fuchs, 2002.

As the days to our upcoming standardized tests quickly approach, remain focused and maintain a high level of expectation for you and your students. May 2007 be one of your best years ever!

Linda S. Whitehead
Director, Teacher Development/HRD

Some Research on Laughter

Research shows the importance of laughter for a healthy mind. Did you know that a funny movie can boost a healthy flow of blood to your brain?

1. Identify what makes you laugh and actively look for those situations. Your brain will actually help you find it when you decide to focus on more fun and games!

2. Watch at least one funny movie per week, and play funny CD’s or tapes in the car while driving to work (excellent way to get over morning moods!).

3. Make fun of what you actually fear. See the comic side in your fearful thoughts, exaggerate them and make them ridiculous.

4. Laugh at yourself each and every day. If you can make the problems you face funny, or at least see them in a different light, they will probably cease being problems.

Source: http://www.brainbasedbusiness

How to Create a Rubric

Here's a quick and powerful way to grade everything from projects to papers.
Difficulty Level: Average
Time Required: 20 minutes

Here's How:
1. Make a list of what you want the students to accomplish through your assignment.
2. Organize your list from most important to least important.
3. Decide on an overall point value for the assignment.
4. Assign each item on your ranked list a percentage value out of 100 percent.
5. Multiply your total point value from step 3 by each item's assigned percentage to arrive at the point value for that item.
6. On a fresh sheet of paper, write the name for each item on your list in order from most to least important. Make sure to leave room between the categories.
7. Assign specific grading criteria for each main category from step six.
8. Distribute or display the rubric to the students when you are explaining the assignment.
9. Attach a copy of the rubric filled in with the student's scores to his/her graded work once it is completed.

Tips:
Definitely know what your categories will be before you make your assignment.

Source: http://712educators.about.com/library/howto/htrubric.htm

An instructional tip from the School Improvement Network

Many educators have heard about Robert Marzano and McREL’s nine research-based instructional strategies. One of the research findings is that providing students with recognition for reaching a standard of performance can increase intrinsic motivation. However, teachers must be careful to use recognition appropriately; research has also shown that the incorrect use of praise or reward can actually diminish intrinsic motivation (McREL, 44). How can educators use recognition to raise student motivation and in turn increase learning? A few suggestions:

Personalize Recognition
Recognition is most powerful when it is given for the accomplishment of a student’s individual goals. In one classroom, a fifth-grade teacher helped each student set a speed goal for multiplication problems. Students charted their progress throughout the unit. The teacher then sent a letter of recognition to the parents of students who met their personal performance goal. (McREL, 46)

Pause, Prompt, and Praise
Instead of simply giving the answer, teachers can use the Pause, Prompt, and Praise strategy when students are struggling with a difficult task. The teacher asks a student to stop working momentarily, or pause, to discuss why the task is difficult. The teacher then provides a specific idea, or prompt, for improvement. If the student’s performance improves through implementing the prompt, the teacher responds with praise. (McREL, 46)

Concrete Symbols of Recognition
If teachers are using awards, stickers, certificates, coupons, and treats as recognition, they must use these tokens only when students achieve a specific performance goal and not when students simply complete an activity. (McREL, 47)
The nine strategies, when correctly applied, can raise student achievement by 22 to 45 percentile points.

Source: A Participant’s Manual for Classroom Instruction that Works. McREL, 2005.

Informal Survey

Create an informal survey to poll your students’ interests, i.e., favorite subjects, favorite hobbies, number of family members, cultural background, etc. Collect responses and use findings to create a frequency distribution chart leading to percentages and other math concepts. Show students the similarities and celebrate the differences. It is a great way to get to know your students, share the knowledge with the whole class and connect math concepts with real life situations.

Source: Kathryn D. Hawley: Teacher

What are Coaching and Mentoring?

Both coaching and mentoring are processes that enable the coach and the client to achieve their full potential.

Coaching and mentoring are similar whether the services are offered in a paid (professional) or unpaid (philanthropic) role. Both coaches and mentors:

•Explore the clients’ needs, motivations, skills and thought processes to assist in making real change.
• Support the client in setting appropriate goals and methods of assessing progress toward these goals
•Observe, listen and ask questions to understand the client's situation
•Creatively apply tools and techniques that may include one-to-one training, facilitating, counseling & networking.
•Encourage a commitment to action and the development of lasting personal growth & change.
•Ensure that clients develop personal competencies and do not develop unhealthy dependencies on the coaching or mentoring relationship.
•Evaluate the outcomes of the process, using objective measures wherever possible to ensure the client’s success.
•Encourage clients to continually improve competencies.

Source: http://www.coachingnetwork.org.uk/resourcecentre/WhatAreCoachingAndMentoring.htm

Four Step Reflection Process: Coaches can help teachers look back on lessons.

Instructional Coaches can use some of the following questions to assist New Educators in evaluating classroom performance by reflecting on a lesson taught. This provides a way for a coach to debrief a lesson with a teacher. Share questions with the teacher in advance of the lesson so that he or she will be more aware of key behaviors, perhaps allowing him or her to adjust a response during the lesson.

1. What Happened? (Description)
What did I do? What did students do?
What was my affect at the time? What was their affect?
What was going on around us? Where were we? When and where did this occur?

2. Why? (Analysis and Interpretation)
Why do I think things happened this way? What are my hunches?
What was I feeling and thinking? How might this have affected my behavior?
How might the context have influenced the experience? Was there something about the activities? Was there something about the timing or location of events?
Are there any potential contributing factors? Was there something about what was said or done by students that triggered my response? Are there past experiences-mine or the school’s- that may have contributed to the response?

3. So What? (Overall Meaning and Application)
Why did this seem like a significant lesson to reflect on?
What have I learned? How might I improve?
How might this change my future thinking, behaving, interactions, and lessons?
What questions remain?

4. Now What? (Implications for Action)
Are there others to include in my reflecting on this lesson? If so, who and what would we interact about?
What do I want to remember and think about next time a similar situation arises? How do I want to behave?
How could I set up conditions to increase the likelihood of productive interactions and learning?

Source: Randall Deich

Support Group Meeting

This link will take you to the DOE website where they have just released the 2006 FCAT tests and answers for grades 3, 7, 9 and 10. The 2005 FCAT tests and answers for grades 4, 8 and 10 are also posted.

At your next support group meeting bring a copy of an old FCAT exam. Distribute the exams to the participants. Ask the participants to look at the tests with these questions in mind:
How are the questions worded?
What patterns do you see?
What skills do students need to be successful?
What instructional strategies could teachers use to help their students master those skills?

SWOT Your Team

At Lloyd Estates Elementary School we began the year with a survey of our staff using The SWOT method. This gave us feedback on what staff members felt were the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats at our school. This information was then put on a bulletin board in the staff lounge which could be updated, revised, etc. as needed.

The bulletin board featured an umbrella for the strengths, rain clouds for the weaknesses, sun shapes for the opportunities and lightning bolts for the threats. Ideas from the survey were typed on clear labels and placed over the appropriate meteorological entity. Sticky strips are located by the bulletin board so that stakeholders may add items when they feel it is appropriate.

The information was gathered from the board and discussed with our leadership team, which will serve as our Site-based Induction Team. Based on the information collected, the team has already decided that we will focus on strengthening parental educational support.

Source: Mary Taylor, NESS Liaison, Lloyd Estates Elem.

Walk-Throughs Are On the Move!

Principals who have been trained to use the four-minute walk-through observation technique speak clearly about its benefits.

"The biggest benefit is that the process gets principals into classrooms much more often and with a specific reason in mind," said principal Todd Wiedemann. Since the walk-through has a specific focus, "it puts teachers and principals on the same page in terms of expectations."

Another huge benefit is that it's an effective use of a principal's time, Wiedemann told Education World. "To make it into every classroom once every two weeks and only use 10 to 15 percent of my time is an awesome advantage."

Principal Ron Tibbetts agreed that getting principals into classrooms more often is one of the biggest benefits of the walk-through approach. "The more principals are able to spend time in classrooms, the more they understand what the teacher is doing and how the art of teaching is approached," he said. "Walk-throughs create a mutual ground for discussing students, curriculum, achievement, and behavior. They keep the administrator 'in-touch' with day-to-day classroom activities."

Walk-throughs enable principal Marguerite McNeely to really know her teachers' strengths and weaknesses. "By knowing that, we can plan for improved instruction," said McNeely. "Doing walk-throughs -- being visible and giving feedback -- helps everybody know that I am active within the school and pressing for improvements always. Walk-throughs reinforce that I have a vested interest in what goes on daily in our school."

Walk-throughs also improve rapport with the students and decrease discipline issues, said McNeely. "And when I do walk through, I also check lighting, space and maintenance issues, the availability and condition of textbooks and other materials, teacher routines such as gradebooks, attendance, and lesson plans...
"A lot can get done in a walk-through," added McNeely. "The staff welcomes me because they know I am there to aid them and support their efforts."

The dialogue that results from walk-through observations is the biggest benefit for principal Deepi Kang-Weisz. "The reflective focus questions become a springboard for professional dialogue that is all about improving instruction and learning," she told Education World.

"Walk-throughs are a great way to maintain contact, and they provide a basis for reflection and sharing effective practices for staff as individuals and a faculty as a whole," added Kang-Weisz. "

Source: http://www.education-world.com/a_admin/admin/admin405.shtml

Assessing teachers' effectiveness

A principal’s relationship to the school is analogous to the teacher’s relationship to the classroom. Teachers provide a safe and orderly learning environment, share information, present learning opportunities for students, and evaluate student performance. Effective principals provide a safe and orderly environment, share information, present learning opportunities for teachers, and evaluate teacher performance. This segment of the article, “Assessing Teachers’ Effectiveness”, examines the purpose of evaluation.

Purposes
Scriven (1967) drew attention to the distinction between formative and summative evaluation. If a school system institutes a system of assessment in order to encourage the professional growth and development of its teachers, it is engaged in formative evaluation. On the other hand, if the school system establishes an accountability system of evaluation in order to select teachers to license, hire, give tenure, promote, demote or dismiss, it is engaged in summative evaluation.

Most leading educators argue that the same procedures, and information gathered with them, cannot be used for both purposes - that teachers who may well benefit from assessment for formative reasons, will not expose their deficiencies if there is a risk of summative judgments. Accountability systems strive to affect school quality by protecting students from incompetent teachers. However, because nearly all teachers are at least minimally competent, the accountability system directly affects only a very few teachers who are not competent.
Thus, if our goal is to improve general school quality - and we use only those strategies that affect a few teachers - overall school improvement is likely to be a very slow process.

Growth-oriented systems, on the other hand, have the potential of affecting all teachers - not just those few who are having problems. There is no question that all teachers can improve some dimension(s) of their performance.

The survey of teacher evaluation that was conducted by Stiggins and Duke (1990) led them to suggest that there were several necessary conditions for the teacher growth model of teacher evaluation to succeed. The first was that any summative approach remains independent of the formative approach.

Stiggins and Duke (1990) were not dismissive of summative evaluation. Rather they argued that highly developed accountability-based evaluation protects teachers' property and rights to due process and protects the public from incompetent teachers.

Reflective Question: How can schools transform into learning organizations for their teachers?

Source: Michael J. Dunkin , Educational Research, 7(1), 1997, 37-51.