KARCHER STAFF BLOG
Karcher Character Students of the Week
All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:
Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.
- Emily Rauch (Applied Academics)
- She is always respectful, responsible, safe, and kind. She is a natural leader and has all the qualities that Karcher students should strive for everyday.
- Dylan Optiz (Diamond)
- He always gives his best effort and is kind to his peers.
- Max Rojo (Onyx)
- He has a positive attitude, is always respectful, demonstrates kindness, takes his responsibilities seriously, and consistently puts forth the amount of effort needed to be a successful student.
- Sephrie Cuevas (Hive)
- She always displays kindness by being extra helpful to teachers and classmates. She seems to always know how to do the right thing!
- Daniel Needham (Silver)
- He shows good character at all times and brings a positive attitude to every class!
- Bella Gatterer (Karcher Bucks)
- She displayed courage within the classroom this week!
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Kudos
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- Dawn Salbrieter was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK! Congrats Dawn and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits.
- Kudos to Nicolas Buendia for a great band concert on Thursday night. For your first Karcher Band Concert it was a great performance with a HUGE crowd!
- And great job thinking on your feet for the last song as a student's music was missing so Nick took on the percussion role and asked a student to conduct! Though it was not planned it worked! Nice job!
- Thank you Barb and Steve Berezowitz for opening your home for the holiday get together. Some very nice white elephant gifts were given... not sure about the gift Jack brought but hey... to each their own!
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Reminders
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- Parent/Teacher Conferences - Monday night from 4:00 to 6:00.
- Google Document for conferences...
- Scheduled conferences are from 4:00 - 5:20.
- Reminder... if you do not have a scheduled appointment please begin calling families and document your calls on the google doc. From 4:00-5:20 staff should be contacting families via phone calls. Prior to calling look at the google document to see which families/students have already been contacted/called.
- Open Conferences from 5:20 - 6:00. Parents/guardians are welcome to come to Karcher to meet with any staff without a scheduled conference.
- During this time if you do not have parents in your room please email families and note your emails on the google document.
- Phone calls and emails should be both positive calls and can be concerned calls. Thank you for your communication to families!!!
- 7th-8th grade Choir Concert @ Karcher gym @ 7:00pm this Tuesday, December 8th. We hope to see you there!
- Half Day Wednesday - Building Level In-Service (1:00 - 3:00)
- Teachers: we will be starting in the library with the focus being:
- Literacy
- SLOs
- Curriculum Organization
- Special education aides: training for all aides from 1:30 to 3:30.
- Please be to the high school by 1:25 in the cafeteria.
- You will be involved in two one-hour sessions and you will be informed as to where to go once you arrive on the 9th.
- 8th grade students will continue to NOT have compass opposite PE through December 8. They will continue meeting with Jean Freund and Steve Berezowitz to work through career cruising.
- BLT Meeting on Monday, December 14th.
- Modified Schedule for December 18th for the staff vs. students basketball game.
- See Matt Behringer for details.
- Bell Schedule
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Pictures from the week
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Ms. Waki's STEM class working on their 3D models of their homes they designed with their partners.
Students in Ms. Pruszka's class working within Garage Band to produce their own personal music.
Students in Ms. Weis's class researching Albert Einstein with the ability for student choice: create a resume, write a newspaper article, write a book, or bibliography compare/contrast with another scientist. All taking the lens as if the student WAS Albert Einstein.
Band Concert from Thursday night with Mr. Buendia. Students in white are 8th grade students and orange are 7th grade.
Cute little guy dancing to the music!
8th Grade Band
Teaching... a meaningful profession...
Article of the week:
Chapter 1. Learning, or Not Learning, in School
Learning—the goal of schooling—is a complex process. But what is learning? Consider the following definitions and the implications each has for teaching:
- Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skill through study, experience, or teaching.
- Learning is experience that brings about a relatively permanent change in behavior.
- Learning is a change in neural function as a consequence of experience.
- Learning is the cognitive process of acquiring skill or knowledge.
- Learning is an increase in the amount of response rules and concepts in the memory of an intelligent system.
Which definition fits with your beliefs? Now ask yourself, how is it that youlearn? Think of something that you do well. Take a minute to analyze this skill or behavior. How did you develop your prowess? How did you move from novice to expert? You probably did not develop a high level of skill from simply being told how to complete a task. Instead, you likely had models, feedback, peer support, and lots of practice. Over time, you developed your expertise. You may have extended that expertise further by sharing it with others. The model that explains this type of learning process is called the gradual release of responsibility instructional framework.
The Gradual Release of Responsibility Instructional Framework
The gradual release of responsibility instructional framework purposefully shifts the cognitive load from teacher-as-model, to joint responsibility of teacher and learner, to independent practice and application by the learner (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). It stipulates that the teacher moves from assuming "all the responsibility for performing a task … to a situation in which the students assume all of the responsibility" (Duke & Pearson, 2002, p. 211). This gradual release may occur over a day, a week, a month, or a year. Graves and Fitzgerald (2003) note that "effective instruction often follows a progression in which teachers gradually do less of the work and students gradually assume increased responsibility for their learning. It is through this process of gradually assuming more and more responsibility for their learning that students become competent, independent learners" (p. 98).
The gradual release of responsibility framework, originally developed for reading instruction, reflects the intersection of several theories, including
- Piaget's (1952) work on cognitive structures and schemata
- Vygotsky's (1962, 1978) work on zones of proximal development
- Bandura's (1965) work on attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation
- Wood, Bruner, and Ross's (1976) work on scaffolded instruction
Taken together, these theories suggest that learning occurs through interactions with others; when these interactions are intentional, specific learning occurs.
Unfortunately, most current efforts to implement the gradual release of responsibility framework limit these interactions to adult and child exchanges: I do it; we do it together; you do it. But this three-phase model omits a truly vital component: students learning through collaboration with their peers—the you do it togetherphase. Although the effectiveness of peer learning has been demonstrated with English language learners (Zhang & Dougherty Stahl, 2011), students with disabilities (Grenier, Dyson, & Yeaton, 2005), and learners identified as gifted (Patrick, Bangel, & Jeon, 2005), it has typically been examined as a singular practice, isolated from the overall instructional design of the lesson. A more complete implementation model for the gradual release of responsibility recognizes the recursive nature of learning and has teachers cycle purposefully through purpose setting and guided instruction, collaborative learning, and independent experiences. In Figure 1.1, we map out these phases of learning, indicating the share of responsibility that students and teachers have in each.
Figure 1.1. A Structure for Instruction That Works
We are not suggesting that every lesson must always start with focused instruction (goal setting and modeling) before progressing to guided instruction, then to collaborative learning, and finally to independent tasks (Grant, Lapp, Fisher, Johnson, & Frey, 2012). Teachers often reorder the phases—for example, begin a lesson with an independent task, such as bellwork or a quick-write, or engage students in collaborative peer inquiry prior to providing teacher modeling. As we stress throughout this book, what is important and necessary for deep learning is that students experience all four phases of learning when encountering new content. We will explore these phases in greater detail in subsequent chapters, but let's proceed now with an overview of each.
Calendar for December:
