KARCHER STAFF BLOG
Karcher 2016-2017 School Calendar
Student's of the week for
October 3 - October 7
- Maddie Roanhouse: (Applied Academics)
- Maddie consistently leads by example and follows "The Karcher Way." She is a positive role model with a positive attitude no matter the circumstances.
- Lyndzie Fox: (Onyx)
- Lyndzie portrays "The Karcher Way" with her manners, willingness to help, and outstanding participation. She is willing to take a risk answering questions, even when she isn't sure of the answer. Keep it up!
- Elizabeth Lind: (Diamond)
- Elizabeth was exceptional in leading her group during class this week. She always demonstrates "The Karcher Way" and is respected by her peers as well as staff.
- Arnulfo Lopez: (Silver)
- Arnulfo is always kind and goes out of his way to help people. We appreciate his positive spirit! Thanks Prince Arnie.
- Shawn Gehrke: (Karcher Character Bucks)
- Shawn is always eager to ask questions and participate in class. He works well with his science group.
- Cody Benzow: (Hive)
- Cody has positive interactions with his peers all the time, takes risks with his learning, and consistently takes on the leadership role.
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Kudos
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- 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.
- To our advisory team (Jack Schmidt, Patti Tenhagen, and Marilee Hoffman) along with Matt Behringer for your work behind setting up the Danish Student presentations with our students this past week. It is always awesome to see our students gain exposure about other cultures and countries from those who live there. Great job to all staff for facilitating within your classrooms to help the relationships between the Danish students and our students during the presentations. Great job!
- Thank you to our special education aides who have had to be flexible and responsive over the past few weeks when having to utilize a different schedule. I know this causes strain on our students and those having to change your schedules so thank you to those who have had to assist and be flexible.
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Reminders
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- Monday, October 10 - Student Council Field Trip to Camp MacLean with Ms. Hoffman.
- Monday, October 10 - BLT Meeting @ 2:40 in the conference room.
- Tuesday, October 11 & 12 - Mandt Certification training
- Wednesday, October 12 - MAP Data PLC in the library @ 2:40
- We will all take a look at our Fall MAP data results and the breakdowns by strands.
- Friday, October 14 - Final day of our first iTime rotation.
- The next iTime rotation will start on October 26.
- Starting Wednesday we will start working on thinking through our iTime groups for the second rotation, utilizing our Fall MAP results we will look at on Wednesday.
- Coming up...
- Week of October 17 will be an extended advisory for the entire week with the focus around bullying curriculum from our advisory team.
- October 24 & 25 we will be running Block Scheduling (bell schedule is on the Karcher Calendar).
- The end of term 1 is November 4 (crazy right!)
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Pictures from the week
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7th grade orchestra working on a new piece of music with Mr. Eckmann.
Article of the week: Here is an article in regard to student engagement, one of the three areas we focus on observing when we are in classrooms. This is the first half of the article, next week will be the second half.
The Icing or the Cake?
Teachers can plan for student engagement so that it's more than just decoration.
Please, please, please try to just shake it up sometimes. Give us a variety of work and activities and don't just stick to the same type of lesson every day."
This student's plea, reported in Grant Wiggins' 2014 Annual Student Survey of Academic Experience, reflects the longing of students in classrooms everywhere. Embedded in this learner's request are the top three culprits of classroom boredom, echoed by numerous high school students in the same survey: "Our assignments are just busywork," "There's no variety in what we do from day to day," and "The teacher talks too much."
It's tempting to dismiss such comments as the predictable complaints of adolescents who are inundated with compelling and distracting content from screens and social media. But similar themes emerged in the responses of elementary and middle school students who were surveyed with the same questions (Wiggins, 2014a, 2014b). Both common sense and research tell us that an engaged student at any grade level will invest—and therefore achieve—more than will a disengaged student (Sousa and Tomlinson, 2011; Hattie, 2012; Walkington, 2013). So instead of disregarding these students' complaints, we should use them to catapult us toward more effective planning.
How then can teachers plan lessons that address required content and standards while promoting student investment? We offer the following four practical principles that address sources of disengagement.
1. Build teacher-student and student-student relationships.
There is little doubt that student-teacher connections have a powerful correlation with student success (Hattie, 2012). That's why so many teachers administer a getting-to-know-you inventory at the beginning of the year. Yet, when presented with the statement, "My teachers really know me," only 7.3 percent of surveyed students responded that they strongly agreed (Wiggins, 2014c). This disconnect indicates that simply gathering information about students is not sufficient to build relationships. Surveys are a step in the right direction, but they matter far less than how teachers act on the information revealed.
Consider the following survey questions:
- What do you enjoy spending time on?
- What do you struggle with? Explain.
- If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, whom would you invite and why?
- What's the best story you've ever seen or heard (from a book, article, movie, TV show, friend, or family member)?
If examined carefully, the results of such an inventory can provide contexts for math story problems, writing prompts, and even fodder for instructional groupings (for instance, "dinner party" groups). By using survey information in this manner, teachers can connect students' personal lives to what they are learning and foster student-student connections.
Of course, relationships aren't built in one day at the beginning of the year, but over the course of the entire year. Teachers can integrate community-strengthening activities into normal academic routines to help a class gel, release tension, and exercise courtesy: for instance, asking students to "fist bump" one another as they complete a task, or displaying fun questions for students to discuss once they are finished with their work, such as, "What television character is most like the protagonist in this story? How so?"
When students see themselves reflected in the "business" of class, they become more comfortable working with their classmates. The result is an interactive, open atmosphere that lays a solid foundation for promoting academic success.
2. Create interest through concepts and essential questions.
Let's face it: Most students will not jump up and down with excitement at the mention of topics like punctuation or the Civil War. Likewise, the statement "this is in the standards" is a less-than-compelling motivator for most learners of all ages. One way teachers can create interest in curricular content is by using two lenses: concepts and essential questions.
A concept is a broad, abstract idea—usually one or two words—that is universal and timeless (Erickson, 2002). Concepts can be discipline-specific (chronology in history/social studies or composition in visual arts) or general (perspective, change, patterns, conflict). Teachers can probe the conceptual connections by considering what a particular topic is "a study in." For instance, punctuation could be "a study in the conventional and unconventional." Framing the content in this manner provides connections to students' lives and to the real role and purpose of punctuation. Additional examples include the following:
- Cells: A study in systems.
- Story: A study in power.
- Fractions: A study in relationships.
- The Civil War: A study in gain and loss.
Each of these examples provides an entry point into the content from students' lives and experiences. All students are part of multiple systems (family, school, peers); they understand what it's like to have and to lack power; they have experienced how relationships shape their identities; and they can connect with the idea that most good things come with a cost.
Teachers can use essential questions to propel students from conceptual connections to investigation and study. Essential questions are provocative, ongoing, recursive inquiries that drive the study of a discipline, topic, or idea (McTighe & Wiggins, 2013). They reflect what the learner really would wonder under optimal conditions. An essential question for "punctuation, a study in the conventional and unconventional" might be, "What choices do writers have with 'the rules'? Who or what decides?"
A rich essential question has potential for engaging the youngest child and the expert alike. For example, "How do living things stay alive?" might focus a primary-grades science unit on the basic needs of living things. Such questions pique even the most reluctant learner's curiosity, begging to be discussed, debated, and explored.
Calendar: Linked on the top of the blog.
