October 16, 2017

Reminder... inform Amanda Wilks about field trips five days prior to the field trip.

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher 2017-2018 School Calendar

Students of the week!!!!!!! 
(Running slide show) 

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Kudos

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• Kudos to Steve Berezowitz, Becky Hoesly, and Ryan Heft for assisting with the grade level positive relationship lessons during advisory this past week!  The hope is the more we front load and bring attention to the importance of an upstander, inclusion, and acceptance the better off our students will be!  
• Kudos to all staff for your assistance and support in our work this week on bullying and building relationships with students at Cooper and Waller.  
• And yet again... thank you to Jack Schmidt, Eric Sulik, and Wendy Zeman for your hard work, behind the scenes, with our character education curriculum!  
• Congrats to Jean Fifer who was selected to fulfill our full time aide position that was posted a few weeks back.  Congrats Jean!

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Information/Reminders...

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• October 16 - ELA email week!
• It is your week again to have students send an email home to their parents/guardians.  
• The purpose for these emails is to connect the students to their parents/guardians when it comes to their education.  Please assist students with providing them with stem starters, topics to discuss, etc.  This is a reminder to everyone about the "why" not directed at ELA.  This is a great way to open communication up between the school environment and home environment. 
• October 16 - Parent/Teacher Conferences from 4:00 - 7:00.  

• These conferences will be open conferences held in your classrooms.  
• Jodi Borchart and myself will be in the library for parent/guardian meetings at both 5:00 and 6:00 discussing social media concerns with parents!  Please encourage parents you see to attend! 
• Please be in the building no later than 3:50pm.  
• October 17 - Silver House field trip to Madison.  
• October 18 - Hive House field trip to Madison.  
• October 18 - Essential Skills PLC.  

Looking ahead...

• October 23 - BLT Meeting 2:40 - 3:30 
• Extended Advisory... Huddle Week.  During this time students will stay with their advisory teacher in order to focus on grade checks with each student and provide time to ensure all students have completed needed items for all of their classes.  This is a structured time give to students prior to the end of the term.  
• During this time other great things to assist students with is organizing their materials, organizing their lockers, and assisting with systems and strategies to stay organized.  
• October 24 - Picture retake day! 
• If you did not have your picture taken earlier in the school year please do so in the ULab!  
• October 26 - All day inservice from 8:00 - 4:00 at BHS.  
• More to come... 
• October 30 - SLOs and PPGs are due on MLP.  

Pictures from this past week!

Students in Mr. Yopp's STEM class trailing their personally designed rockets.  Students utilized the design process to make one rocket out of only one straw, paper, and a little bit of clay.  










Student council students at Camp MacLean working through team building challenges!











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Our Cooper and Waller visit this past Friday!  
Great work everyone!  

Quick-Draw Gallery Walk

A Quick-Draw Gallery Walk allows for students to share their Quick-Draws and to look for themes and similarities. It requires that students will have first completed Quick-Draws, and it requires that they be displayed around the room.

How It Works

1. Ask students to label their Quick-Draws with a brief explanation as to how it represents the content that was learned.
2. Place cut strips of tape so that they are dangling from a table or have several tape dispensers available so that students can grab a piece of tape to hang their Quick-Draws at eye level around the room.
3. Ask students to grab their notebooks, walk around the room (give them all the same direction, clockwise or counterclockwise), and take notes on the content-related themes that they find in the imagery students have created.

How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking

Ask students to find two or three new themes that they hadn't thought of prior to viewing their peers' Quick-Draws. Once they've captured a few themes, in pairs or small groups, ask them to create a sentence that encapsulates the imagery in their peers' pictures and the content that it was meant to represent.

Pause to Apply

Once you've tried the Quick-Draw, you may find yourself wishing that there were a way for all students to quickly see and analyze each other's imagery. We encourage you to have several tape dispensers ready so that students can quickly share their images. Have them label the images to make the meanings clear. This activity came as a result of successful shared experiences that we added to our own practice. We encourage you to try it. As noted earlier, you may be surprised at how well Quick-Draws apply to abstract concepts in any content area.

Chalkboard Splash

• "What have you noticed about yourself as a reader because of this unit? Be specific."
• "What do you think the main character will wish for? What makes you think that?"
• "What is the most important thing that you learned about today's topic? Why is it important?"
• "Which of these forms of pest management do you think is the best? Why?"

These are all questions that you could ask students to consider in a Pair-Share or a Quick-Write, but if you want the entire class to see the collective responses of their peers, then the best way to ask these questions may be in the form of a Chalkboard Splash. In a Chalkboard Splash (which can also be a Whiteboard Splash or a Chart-Paper Splash), all the students record their responses (or copy their Quick-Writes or Quick-Draws) onto random or assigned spots on the room's chalkboards or whiteboards, or on pieces of chart paper. After recording their responses, students are asked to analyze peer responses for three things: similarities, differences, and surprises. If you don't have multiple chalkboards or whiteboards, or if you want to hold on to the comments for later reference, use several pieces of butcher paper or chart paper instead of the chalkboards or whiteboards.

For student teacher Heather Berrier, a Chalkboard Splash was a way to wrap up her 5th grade lesson on Paul Revere's historic engraving of the Boston Massacre. After analyzing the event from two different points of view, students were asked to select a spot on the whiteboards and sum up their viewpoint with a Quick-Draw of their own engraving. Before students took their seats, they walked around to look at the various drawings representing their classmates' different points of view.

In the classroom of 5th grade teacher Mike Pyle, the whiteboards were labeled with the names of five different characters from a historical novel being read in class. After students analyzed character traits in small groups, they were asked to write these traits on the whiteboards designated for each character. Similarities and differences were discussed as students explained their reasoning for choosing specific character traits. Chalkboard Splashes provide a quick way to debrief student responses, Quick-Draws, or abbreviated Quick-Writes.

We absolutely love Chalkboard Splashes and use them repeatedly at the university level. They give a "community-of-learners feel" to whatever we teach as students find themselves genuinely interested in what their peers wrote. They are perfect for times when you want to see how every student in the class would respond to a question.

How It Works

1. Create a sentence starter, prompt, or question for which you would like students to see all of their peers' responses (these can also be used with brief Quick-Writes and Quick-Draws).
2. As students generate responses, ask them to copy their responses onto random or designated places on the chalkboards, whiteboards, or chart papers. (We give students a word limit, often 15 words, so that the activity can move more quickly.)
3. Debrief by asking students to walk around, analyze, and jot down similarities, differences, and surprises, perhaps using a form such as that shown in Figure 4.4.
   
   

   Figure 4.4. Chalkboard Splash Debriefing Form

   
4. Ask students to get into small groups and share what they noticed in terms of similarities, differences, and surprises, before asking for volunteers to share.

How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking

Chalkboard Splashes are great for addressing the big picture and the relevance factor with whatever topic you are teaching. For example, you may want to periodically use Chalkboard Splashes to address the following prompt: "So what? Why is this important?" Or, for example, what is the purpose for learning about Paul Revere's historic engraving? For Heather Berrier, it was to help students understand that Revere's was one of many views that was represented at the time and that has affected how we view history today. Guide students to analyze their peers' entries. What were the similarities, differences, and surprises? What new questions emerge from the similarities, differences, and surprises?

Pause to Apply

This activity works really well when Quick-Writes and responses to prompts are kept brief. In fact, we will often create a sentence starter and ask the students to complete the sentence in the form of a Chalkboard Splash. For example, after introducing a specific teaching technique in our university classroom, we asked students to reflect on the effect that this technique would have had on their own learning in the mathematics classroom during their K–12 experience. Our sentence starter was simply "In my own experience, the use of this technique would have …." Students completed the statement by personalizing it. What sentence starters could you use in the form of a Chalkboard Splash that will help students personalize or see the relevance in what you are teaching this week?

Similes

Similes compare two unrelated things. For example, a simile using the topic of TPTs might be "TPTs are like safety nets in that they protect students from falling through the cracks." Similes can provide opportunities for abstractly portraying the big picture of concepts in a way that sums up their meaning. To use similes after a teacher-directed presentation, teachers can ask students to make a connection between the topic they're studying and something unrelated. This activity will need to be modeled and scaffolded by first providing examples of similes and asking students to explain why the simile might be true. For example, a teacher might ask students to complete the following statement: "Adaptations are like bank accounts in that ___." Or after modeling the activity several times, a teacher can ask students to create their own simile. For example, a teacher might say something like this: "We've been talking quite a bit about Thomas Jefferson today. I want you to think about and jot down a simile using something you learned about Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was like ____ in that ____."

How It Works

1. Create similes using some of the topics you are studying.
2. Ask students to formulate an explanation for how the simile might be true.
3. Ask students to share with their partners in small groups or in a Chalkboard Splash so that all can see.
4. After similes have been modeled a few times, ask students to create their own similes based on the topics they are learning about.

How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking

By creating similes or explaining them, students are being asked to compare components within both items. In doing so, they are analyzing the topic for which you've asked them to create a simile. This activity takes just a few minutes and can ensure that students are understanding the intricacies or the big picture of whatever you're teaching. Try to come up with your own similes for what you are teaching soon, and see if the students can develop explanations for how the statements might be true. Their reasons may be different from what you originally intended to be the rationale behind the simile, but if their reasons make sense, students have just participated in analyzing the concept you have taught.

Pause to Apply

What are you teaching soon that lends itself to the creation of a simile? Do any similes naturally pop in your mind when you're thinking about a particular topic? If so, use them to prompt your students to make additional connections. Consider reserving a spot on your bulletin board, whiteboard, or chalkboard for the following cloze sentence: "[Topic] was like _____ in that ______." On bulletin boards, add the topic using a separate piece of paper or sentence strip. Or if you are using chalkboards or whiteboards, simply fill in the topic. This is a quick way to allow your students to make analogies between what has been learned and something unrelated.

Ranking

Ranking is an activity that requires your students to analyze components of the concepts that you are teaching and then justify their reasons for assigning rankings. It can be done on the spot, or it can be carefully planned to allow for more thorough analysis. For example, after teaching about the causes for the American Revolution, a teacher might list the events studied and ask the students to rank them in order of most important to least important in leading to the American Revolution. Keely Potter and Meghan Babcock used the Ranking activity with quotes from Kate DiCamillo's book The Tiger Rising(2001). They asked students to rank the quotes in order of most descriptive to least descriptive in describing the relationship that was developing between the two main characters, Sistine and Rob. Students were asked to cut the quotes from a handout, paste them in order of significance, and then write out their rationale for selecting the order they chose (see the example in Figure 4.6).

Figure 4.6. Angie's Ranking for The Tiger Rising

When analyzing students' explanations for their rankings, Potter was highly impressed with the way that one student moved from literal interpretation to an understanding of symbolism. "She's plugging in pieces of the color symbolism. This is the first time she's used it. I think it's through the ranking where they're manipulating the quotes and taking the words out of the book. The ranking triggers noticing the specifics." Ranking requires analysis and evaluation. In the example from The Tiger Rising, students were being asked to analyze the specifics in each quote, determine its weight in terms of describing a developing relationship, and then defend their choice.

Ranking can also be used to help students synthesize and analyze what they've learned. After her students learned about the moon and space travel, 6th grade teacher Julie Wash provided them with a list of 15 random items such as matches, an oxygen tank, water, an inflatable life raft, dehydrated foods, flares, a pistol, and a parachute. In small groups, students ranked the objects that they would take based on each item's usefulness if students were going to travel to the surface of the moon. The activity triggered conversations involving what would be needed for matches to work, and whether or not these would be useful to take based on what the students knew about the moon. According to Wash, "The discussion that ensues from the ranking is beautiful because you're forced to make a decision."

How It Works

1. Select items, concepts, steps, events, descriptive paragraphs, or other things that can be analyzed and ranked within your unit or lesson.
2. Ask students to rank them according to specified criteria.
3. Ask students to provide a justification for the way that they chose to rank the concepts.
4. If students are working on their own, allow them to pair-share or network (see "Networking Sessions" in Chapter 6) regarding how they ranked items and how they justified their rankings. Allow them to process what their peers shared and to change the order of their rankings if they've had a change of heart based on new information.

How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking

To ensure higher-order thinking, always require that students justify their reasoning. When students in Potter and Babcock's class were asked to rank, they were also asked to justify the reasoning behind their rankings. Students brought out deep metaphorical relationships that were embedded in DiCamillo's book. Even though the use of the concepts of "color" and "suitcase" were not referred to in any of the selected paragraphs, several students pulled out metaphors that had been used earlier in the book to explain the rationale for their rankings.

Sixth grader Emily explained her rankings in this way: "He had his suitcase open, but now it's closed. … He got to see things in color for once, not blank. He opened his suitcase and got rid of the 'not-thoughts' for a second." Hannah, another 6th grader, described the bullying by two characters in this way: "Those are the gray actions that help close the suitcase, because the blue sorrow of his mom and the orange curiosity of the tiger almost came out." Students made connections to earlier symbols and metaphors used throughout the book and in book-related lessons. Ranking, and the justification of rankings, requires that students review and then analyze learned concepts together, a higher-order thinking process. Students have to understand concepts beyond the literal in order to effectively justify their rankings.

Pause to Apply

Ranking is one of those activities that would work well in classes from preschool to college physics. What units will you be teaching over the next few weeks that would lend themselves well to the Ranking TPT? Think about analysis as a cognitive process. What would you like your students to analyze within the concepts that you're teaching? Would Ranking be a beneficial way of getting the students to consider most important to least important concepts learned? Or, depending on your content area, students can rank the most to least influential, essential, changed, affected, likeable, or other rankable features of the concepts or characters presented. Consider polling the class or creating a class bar graph of ranked concepts. Use the results as a spin-off for small-group discussions and then a whole-class debriefing.