January 4th - 8th

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.  

Students:  (left to right)

• Laura Haske (Hive)
• Laura has shown great perseverance this week in working at school to excel.
• Adrianna Rodriguez (Silver)
• The Silver House wants to thank Adrianna for having confidence to be a strong leader in all situations.  She is impressive!
• Kiara Quilling (Onyx)
• Kiara is consistently doing what we asked and expected of her.  Her efforts to do her best and treat others with respect and kindness are perfect examples of following "The Karcher Way"!
• Elizabeth Stoffel (Applied Academics)
• Lizzy demonstrates "The Karcher Way" through her responsibility and kindness.  She is very helpful and always has a positive attitude.
• Abigail Barajas-Rodriguez (Karcher Bucks)
• Abby is extremely respectful and is a joy to have in class!
• Not pictured:  Skylar Fry (Diamond)
• Skylar has a positive and bubbly attitude that rubs off on everyone around her.  She is kind and responsible inside and outside of the classroom.

______________________________________________________________________________

Kudos

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Amanda Thate was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Amanda and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Thank you to EVERYONE who participated in the staff vs. student basketball game!  I heard it was a great afternoon and a great way to end 2015!  
• Also... thank you to Marilee Hoffman and the student counsel representatives for setting up the spirit week!  It was great to see staff participate as well in the spirit challenges.  Nothing tops Mike Jones and Brad Ferstenou :)  

______________________________________________________________________________

Reminders

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Outdoor Education Week!  Most of our 8th grade students will be going to East Troy to Timberlee on January 6-8th.  Thankful for our snow storm we had over break so that Outdoor Education activities are able to run!  
• MAP Testing starts for 7th graders on January 7th with the reading test during social studies.  Then MAP  testing will continue the following week starting on January 12th (no testing on Monday the 11th).  See the Google Calendar for more details.
• The next two weeks (January 4th week and January 11th week) are extended advisory weeks every day.  January 4th week is character curriculum and January 11th week is for Huddle Time. 
• Reminder:  Huddle Time is for going over grades with each individual student in your advisory and provide students study hall time to work on their missing work for the end of the semester.  If students have no work they should be doing SSR.
• January 5th at 2:40 I will be meeting in the library with the applied academic teachers who are able to meet - discussion about how the changes to lunch have been going and brainstorm any additional changes needed. 
• January 6th PLC is for Standards/Common Assessment work.
• January 11th Staff Meeting will be to discuss our upcoming new Character Assemblies.  Stephanie Rummler and Jake Malewicki briefly explained this by we will discuss/explain in more detail on the 11th. 
• January 13th PLC is the next literacy lesson taught by Molly, Patti, and Jenny - Questioning/Visualizing.
• January 18th - BLT Meeting
• January 20th is a KCB day... students can wear a hat all day to school by using 2 KCBs.  Matt will send out more details for the systemic end of things to you prior to January 20th.
• January 26th is the end of the quarter.  Please continue to encourage students to utilize Thursday school prior to the end of the semester.

______________________________________________________________________________

Pictures from the week

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ms. Berezowitz's class utilizing the "Kick Me" instructional literacy strategy to assist students with the vocabulary prior to their exam.

Pictures from spirit week!

8th grade students in Mr. Schmidt's and Ms. Rummler's social studies classes participating with Jim Eggers (former social studies teacher) as he demonstrates what it was like back in the day as a soldier and a soldier's wife.

January 18th's festivities...

Article of the week: Continuation of prior week's article...

Chapter 1. Learning, or Not Learning, in School

Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility, 2nd Edition

by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Guided Instruction

The guided instruction phase of a lesson is almost always conducted with small, purposeful groups that have been composed based on formative assessment data. There are a number of instructional routines that can be used during guided instruction, and we will explore these further in Chapter 3. The key to effective guided instruction is planning. These are not random groups of students meeting with the teacher; the groups consist of students who share a common instructional need that the teacher can address.

Guided instruction is an ideal time to differentiate. As Tomlinson and Imbeau (2010) have noted, teachers can differentiate content, process, and product. Small-group instruction allows teachers to vary the instructional materials they use, the level of prompting or questioning they employ, and the products they expect. For example, Marcus Moore,^*  a 7th grade science teacher, identified a group of five students who did not perform well on a subset of pre-assessment questions related to asteroid impacts. He met with this group of students and shared with them a short book from the school library called Comets, Asteroids, and Meteorites (Gallant, 2000). He asked each student to read specific pages related to asteroids and then to participate in a discussion with him and the others in the group about the potential effect that these bodies might have on Earth. During this 20-minute lesson, Mr. Moore validated and extended his students' understanding that, throughout history, life on Earth has been disrupted by major catastrophic events, including asteroids. At one point in the group's discussion, he provided this prompt:

Consider what you know about the Earth's surface. Talk about that—is it all flat? (Students all respond no.) What do you think are the things that made the surface of the Earth look like it does? Remember, the Earth has a history ….

A single guided instructional event won't translate into all students developing the content knowledge or skills they are lacking, but a series of guided instructional events will. Over time and with cues, prompts, and questions, teachers can guide students to increasingly complex thinking. Guided instruction is, in part, about establishing high expectations and providing the support so that students can reach those expectations.

Collaborative Learning

As we have noted, the collaborative learning phase of instruction is too often neglected. If used at all, it tends to be a special event rather than an established instructional routine. When done right, collaborative learning is a way for students to consolidate their thinking and understanding. Negotiating with peers, discussing ideas and information, and engaging in inquiry with others gives students the opportunity to use what they have learned during focused and guided instruction.

Collaborative learning is not the time to introduce new information to students. This phase of instruction is a time for students to apply what they already know in novel situations or engage in a spiral review of previous knowledge.

It is important, too, that you allow collaborative learning to be a little experimental, a little messy. In order for students to consolidate their thinking and interact meaningfully with the content and one another, they need to encounter tasks that will reveal their partial understandings and misconceptions as well as confirm what they already know. In other words, wrestling with a problem is a necessary condition of collaborative learning. If you are pretty certain your students will be able to complete a collaborative learning task accurately the first time through, that task would probably be better suited to the independent learning phase.

Collaborative learning is also a perfect opportunity for students to engage in accountable talk and argumentation. Accountable talk is a framework for teaching students about discourse in order to enrich these interactions. First developed by Lauren Resnick (2000) and a team of researchers at the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, accountable talk describes the agreements students and their teacher commit to as they engage in partner conversations. These include staying on topic, using information that is accurate and appropriate for the topic, and thinking deeply about what the partner has to say. Students are taught to be accountable for the content and to one another, and they learn techniques for keeping the conversation moving forward, toward a richer understanding of the topic at hand. The Institute for Learning (n.d.) describes five indicators of accountable talk:

1. Press for clarification and explanation (e.g., "Could you describe what you mean?").
2. Require justification of proposals and challenges (e.g., "Where did you find that information?").
3. Recognize and challenge misconception (e.g., "I don't agree, because _______________.").
4. Demand evidence for claims and arguments (e.g., "Can you give me an example?").
5. Interpret and use one another's statements (e.g., "I think David's saying _______________, in which case, maybe we should _______________.").

These are important skills for students to master and, on a larger scale, valuable tools for all citizens in a participatory democracy (Michaels, O'Connor, & Resnick, 2008). They are also key to meeting Common Core State Standards in speaking and listening, the first of which asks students to "prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively" (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA/CCSSO], 2010a, p. 22).

We have seen teachers integrate collaborative learning opportunities into their instruction in a variety of ways. For example, a 10th grade social studies teacher selected a number of readings that would allow his students to compare and contrast the Glorious Revolution of England, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution. The students did so through reciprocal teaching (Palinscar & Brown, 1984), an arrangement in which groups of students read a piece of text in common; discuss the text using predicting, questioning, summarizing, and clarifying; and take notes on their discussion. At the end of the discussion, each student in the class summarizes the reading individually—a step that ensures the individual accountability that is key to successful collaborative learning.

The way in which one of these groups of students talked about their reading demonstrates how peers can support one another in the consolidation of information:

Jamal: I still don't get it. Those folks in England had a revolution because the king wanted the army to be Catholic, and he got his own friends in government. But I need help to clarify what they mean by the "Dispensing Power." It sounds all Harry Potter.

Antone: I feel you. But dispensing power—that's just the name for getting rid of rules you don't want.

LaSheika: That king, James number 2, used a power he had to suspend laws and other rules. Adding that to the things you said already, it made people very angry, and they started the revolution to get rid of him. It's just like the other revolutions we talked about.

Collaborative learning situations help students think through key ideas, are a natural opportunity for inquiry, and promote engagement with the content. As such, they are critical to the successful implementation of the gradual release of responsibility instructional framework.

Calendar for January: