KARCHER STAFF BLOG
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Kudos
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- Thank you Amanda Thate, Dawn Salbrieter, Jenny Geyso, and Kurt Rummler for assisting with the interviews this past week for our open academic position. I will be making final phone calls to candidates on Tuesday.
- Thank you 8th grade staff as well for your flexibility in providing 25 8th grade students for the interview process. The students did a great job and were very reflective.
- Shout out to Mike Jones for his organization and dedication this weekend for Outdoor Education and organizing the fundraiser for volunteers to assist in the Chocolate Fest Tent with the taster tickets. Matt Behringer and I assisted on Sunday night... see image below. Thank you to any and all staff members who also volunteered to help!
- The following three advisories will be having a pizza party because they raised the most funds for "Change for Autism". Any questions please see Katie Newholm.
- Ms. Amundson
- Ms. Hancock
- Ms. Jorgenson
- Congrats to Nick Buendia and our middle school band students. They did a great job representing Karcher in the Memorial Day parade!
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Reminders
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- This week is Huddle week along with our Character Student Assemblies.
- Here is the schedule for the assembly days.
- If you have any questions about the Character Assembly please see Jacob Malewicki or Stephanie Rummler.
- Final Band Concert will be in the Karcher gym on May 31 @ 7:00pm!
- PLCs this week are for standards/common assessments.This is your final PLC for the year as there is no PLCs next week to provide you time with rapping up the school year.
- Final Choir Pops Concert will be in the Karcher gym on June 6 @ 7:00pm!
- Field Day - June 8 - here is the schedule for the day.
- See Jack Schmidt, Patti Tenhagen, or Alyssa Riggs for details.
- Last day of school is June 9th - students dismissed @ noon.
- Staff checkout information:
- Packing boxes are available in the old office area, room 130. Starting July 5th the entire 2nd floor is being stripped so everything will need to be packed up and labeled in all of the rooms on the 2nd floor. Everything will be moved into the hallways in order to strip the rooms properly.
- Any questions... see Harvey.
- Teachers:
- There is a sign up sheet in the main office with Kim for your checkout times. You can pick:
- June 9 @ 1:00 (Matt or Jill)
- June 9 @ 2:00 (Matt)
- June 13 between 8:00 - 2:00 (Jill)
- June 14 between 8:00 - 2:00 (Jill)
- We will then make our rounds during those times and come to each person's room on the list. Please make sure everything that needs to be checked is completed prior to us coming.
- Here is the checkout sheet you will all need. Copies of this form are in the main office. Keep this sheet with you until the final checkout time. You will then give your sheet to Matt or myself.
- Special Education Aides:
- Here is your checkout information. Copies of this form are in the main office.
- Please give your checkout form to Kim or Jane once everything is complete.
Information for next school year:
- Here is the link to the Google Calendar for the 2016-2017 school year.
- I will continue to update next year's calendar as information comes out.
- Please note the Karcher Staff Cookout will be held on August 27th starting at 4:00 at our new home in Burlington :) Details are noted on the first page of the blog.
- If you have any questions about next school year please do not hesitate to come and talk to me!
- Staff will receive their schedules prior to the end of the school year.
- We are working on return to work notices for our special education aides and will get those out ASAP.
- Don’t forget to register for InterActiv 2016 June 15th and 16th.
BASD covers your registration fees.This is the perfect opportunity to get ready for our upcoming Chromebook 1to1.
We will have many sessions on Google Apps, using them in the classroom, and even a pre-conference on Google Basics.
Check out the website for more on the sessions and pre-conference offerings.
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Pictures from the week
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Note: Those who attended field trips this past week if you took any pictures send them my way and I will add them to the blog for next week!
7th grade Zoo Field Trip.
Weather cooperated perfectly for the time frame they were there!
Mr. Yopp working his magic in the library with Mr. Schmidt's class as Jack fills in for Matt.
Student Council bringing our Peanut Butter and Jelly challenge items to Love, Inc. Thank you all for assisting our students with giving back to the community!
Matt and I working our magic selling taster tickets as volunteers to assist with Outdoor Education fundraising for our current 7th grade students (we dominated in sales :))
The Karcher Band during the Memorial Day parade... nice job students and Mr. Buendia!
Article of the week: This article really helps us reflect on where we have been and were we still need to be going... the second half of the article will be posted next week.
Literacy Strategies for Grades 4–12
Chapter 5. Higher-Order Thinking
The ultimate goal of literacy instruction is for students to be able to process text at the level of evaluation, synthesis, analysis, and interpretation. This level is the final thread in the reading tapestry. Once students have learned to read, we spend most of our time from 3rd grade on trying to help them develop their thinking skills and use them as tools to process their thoughts. As Alvermann and Phelps (1998) tell us, “The curriculum must expand to include information and activities that explicitly support students in learning to think well. The emphasis is less on the mastery of information measured by a recall-based assessment and more on learning how to use one's mind well, to synthesize and analyze skillfully” (p. 69). Put plainly, students will need these higher-order skills to succeed in their lives and careers.
Readers who engage in higher-order thinking go beyond the basic levels of comprehension outlined in Chapter 4. They can analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and interpret the text they are reading at complex levels. They can process text at deep levels, make judgments, and detect shades of meaning. They can make critical interpretations and demonstrate high levels of insight and sophistication in their thinking. They are able to make inferences, draw relevant and insightful conclusions, use their knowledge in new situations, and relate their thinking to other situations and to their own background knowledge. These students fare well on standardized tests and are considered to be advanced. They will indeed be prepared to function as outstanding workers and contributors in a fast-paced workplace where the emphasis is on using information rather than just knowing facts.
Bloom's Taxonomy and Beyond
Although most teachers learned about Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956) during their preparation courses, many seldom challenge students beyond the first two levels of cognition: knowledge and comprehension. Because most jobs in the 21st century will require employees to use the four highest levels of thinking—application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—this is unacceptable in today's instructional programs. We must expect students to operate routinely at the higher levels of thinking.
Bloom's original taxonomy has certainly withstood the test of time, but a newer version has been introduced to reflect more contemporary thinking. Recently a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson, and a group of cognitive psychologists published a revised version of Bloom's taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Bloom's original six categories were nouns: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In the new version, Anderson and colleagues changed the nouns to verbs to reflect thinking as an active process.
Revised Category #1: Knowledge → Remember
In the revised taxonomy, the original “Knowledge” category was changed to “Remember.” This category refers to shallow processing: the drawing out of factual answers, recall, and recognition. In reading, this is simply recalling the facts in a text or recalling the sequence of a story. At this level, questions that teachers ask center on the five Ws and seldom require students to advance beyond superficial thinking. We see this level of thinking often reflected in classrooms across the United States. Some verbs that teachers use to demonstrate student knowledge of material include the following: choose, describe, define, identify, label, list, locate, match, memorize, name, omit, recite, recognize, select, and state.
Revised Category #2: Comprehension → Understand
The second category of Bloom's original taxonomy was “Comprehension.” In the revised model, it is renamed “Understand.” This category reflects the acts of translating, interpreting, and extrapolating. Examples in reading include summarizing text and identifying in-text relationships. Some verbs that teachers use to ask students to demonstrate understanding include the following: classify, defend, demonstrate, distinguish, explain, express, extend, give an example, illustrate, indicate, interrelate, infer, judge, match, paraphrase, represent, restate, rewrite, select, show, summarize, tell, and translate.
Revised Category #3: Application → Apply
The third category, “Application,” was changed to “Apply” in the revised taxonomy and is defined as knowing when or why to apply certain skills automatically, as well as having the ability to recognize patterns that can transfer to new or unfamiliar situations. Teachers prompt students to think at the “Apply” level by using the following constructions: “Predict what would happen if . . . ,” “Judge the effects of . . .,” and “What would happen if . . .?” Verbs that teachers might use to determine whether students are working at this level include the following: apply, choose, dramatize, explain, generalize, judge, organize, paint, prepare, produce, select, show, sketch, solve, and use. When students have not processed information at the application level, they cannot take information learned in one context and translate it to another.
Revised Category #4: Analysis → Analyzing
The “Analysis” category in Bloom's taxonomy was renamed “Analyzing” in the revised version. This level involves breaking information down into parts and different forms, and drawing comparisons between a text and background knowledge data. Classroom questions that address this category include the following: “What is the function of . . .?” “What conclusions can we draw from . . .?” “What is the premise?” and “What inference can you make about . . .?” The following verbs apply to analyzing activities: analyze, categorize, classify, differentiate, distinguish, identify, infer, point out, select, subdivide, and survey. To use the thinking process of analyzing, students must be able to see connections and draw conclusions. We often see questions on state reading proficiency tests that expect students to display thinking at this level.
Revised Category #5: Evaluation → Design
Though Bloom placed “Evaluation” at the highest level of his taxonomy, Anderson and colleagues rank it fifth to reflect their idea that creative thinking (design) is more complex than critical thinking (evaluation). For the Anderson theorists, critical thinking is necessary for the creative process to occur, because it involves accepting or rejecting ideas—a precursor to creating a new design (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). For this reason, evaluation precedes creation in the revised model.
To evaluate information, students need to be able to distinguish essential data from information that is simply interesting. They must be able to identify core themes, form and support opinions, and identify inconsistencies, bias, or lack of coherence or accuracy in a text. They must also be able to use background information, prior knowledge, and other textual sources to assess the validity of the text. For example, when reading a novel, students with strong evaluation skills might compare the works of two authors and offer evidence to support opinions on the author's writing style. Constructions that address the evaluation level include the following: “Do you agree with . . .?” “What is your opinion of . . .?” “How would you prove. . . ?” “How would you rate . . .?” and “How would you prioritize . . .?” The following verbs apply to evaluation activities: appraise, assess, check, compare, conclude, criticize, critique, defend, justify, and support.
Revised Category #6: Synthesis → Create
The fifth level of the original Bloom's Taxonomy was called “Synthesis.” In Anderson's revised version, this level is renamed “Create” and is upgraded to level six. Synthesizing text involves linking new information with prior knowledge or with multiple texts to develop a new idea, establish a new way of thinking, or create a new product of some type. An example of synthesis would be rewriting “Little Red Riding Hood” from the perspective of the wolf. Anderson sees the act of “creating” as combining elements into a pattern that had not existed before. Some constructions that assess the process of analysis or creating include the following: “Develop a new way to . . .,” “Suggest another way to . . .,” “How might you adapt . . .?” and “Can you predict the outcome if . . .?” The following verbs signal the “Create” level of thinking: choose, combine, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, hypothesize, invent, make, make up, originate, organize, plan, produce, and role play. To succeed at this level, students must be able to synthesize their thinking and make predictions based on knowledge.
Focusing Attention on the Higher Levels of Reading
When readers interpret text, they are providing their own ideas about what the content means by applying background knowledge to analyze and synthesize the information. Good readers must interpret both the literal and the implied meaning behind an author's words. The less background knowledge they have on a topic, the more they need to infer meaning by “reading between the lines.” Keene and Zimmermann (1997) identified the following seven essential comprehension strategies that skilled readers need to know:
- Determining importance
- Relating the new to the known
- Synthesizing
- Inferring
- Asking questions
- Creating sensory images
- Monitoring for meaning
Each of these topics must be taught to students in a deliberate and direct fashion. When students have mastered all seven strategies, they are processing text at the highest levels of literacy. For their part, Moore and colleagues (2003) point to the following reading skills as particularly important:
- Connecting knowledge to prior experiences
- Previewing and predicting to improve comprehension
- Organizing information and applying meaningful frameworks and categories
- Being able to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste what is described in print
- Self-monitoring of understanding
- Critically evaluating text
- Forming judgments
- Applying the knowledge gained from the text to new situations
Content instruction should strive for depth rather than breadth. To process what they read with insight and a critical eye, students must be able to consider the text as a whole and understand what the author is trying to communicate. Students may demonstrate understanding by explaining the purpose or viewpoint of a text, identifying the theme and critical elements, sharing their opinions on some aspect of the story, or analyzing the personal attributes of a character and interpreting his actions. Students must also be able to create and understand analogies, write about their thoughts and opinions, compare and contrast similar or dissimilar events, and use their creativity to extend and develop concepts. Higher-order thinking skills will allow them to analyze pros and cons and form well-reasoned opinions as adults.
In addition to good technical reading skills, students must have a good grasp of the nuances of language and how words are used. Figurative language can be particularly difficult for students. Petrosky (1980) observes that adults on average use figurative expressions over 500,000 times during a year; they permeate our texts as well as our speech patterns, helping to clarify meaning. Figurative language requires readers to access background knowledge and relate concepts to one another. According to Readence, Baldwin, and Head (1986), there are three reasons that readers may have difficulty interpreting figurative language: they may not recognize that the language is not meant literally, or they may not have enough background knowledge to understand the link between the two compared items. English-language learners are particularly stymied by figurative language, and by idioms in particular. Acting out idioms or illustrating them literally are fun ways to help the class interpret them. Have students construct their own picture books of favorite figurative phrases. Poems are great sources of rich figurative language, as are newspapers and magazines—especially the ads. Ask students to bring some examples to class. Some fun books for learning about figurative language are In a Pickle and Other Funny Idioms (1983) by Marvin Terban and Chocolate Moose for Dinner (1976) and The King Who Rained (1970), both by Fred Gwynne.
At the time this book went to press, the following Web sites were available to help increase student vocabulary and comprehension:
- The Wacky World of Words Web site (http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/teachwell/), where teachers can get games, puzzles, and other fun activities for all types of word and phrase learning.
- The RhymeZone (http://www.rhyme.lycos.com/), where students can find rhymes, synonyms, and antonyms for any word they type in, as well as resources on Shakespeare, Mother Goose, and famous quotes and documents.
- Word Play (http://www.wolinskyweb.net/word.htm), an exhaustive list of Web sites devoted to words of all kinds. I guarantee that your students will love exploring many of the sites listed; take time to explore them yourself and see how fascinating and helpful they can be.
