KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher 2017-2018 School Calendar

Students of the week!!!!!!!
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This week's article...

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Know Thy Impact, John Hattie

Teachers give a lot of feedback, and not all of it is good. Here's how to ensure you're giving students powerful feedback they can use.

Continuation of last week's article...

The Three Levels of Feedback

It's important to realize that feedback will look somewhat different at three separate levels:

Task Feedback

Feedback at this level describes how well the student performs a given task—such as distinguishing correct from incorrect answers, acquiring specific information, or building surface knowledge. The feedback clarifies what the student needs to do to improve his or her performance of that task.

For example, let's suppose a teacher is teaching students how to narrate events in a story in chronological order. The feedback to one student might be as follows:

Your learning goal was to structure your account in a way that the first action you described was the first thing you did. Then you were to write about the other things you did in the same order in which they happened.

You did write the first thing first—but after that it becomes muddled. You need to go through what you've written and number the order in which events happened and then rewrite them in that order.

Process Feedback

Feedback at this level describes the processes underlying or related to tasks, such as strategies students might use to detect or learn from errors, cues for seeking information, or ways to establish relationships among ideas.

For example, a teacher might suggest the following to a reader who stumbles on an unfamiliar word:

You're stuck on this word, and you've looked at me instead of trying to work it out. Can you see why you may have gotten it wrong? Perhaps you could sound out the word, look it up on your tablet, or infer its meaning from the other words in the paragraph.

Alternatively, a teacher might guide a student who is having difficulty relating ideas in a text by saying, "I've asked you to compare these ideas—for example, you could start out by listing ways they're similar or different. This would give you information about how they relate to one another."

Self-Regulation Feedback

This level of feedback describes how learners can monitor, direct, and regulate their own actions as they work toward the learning goal. Feedback at this level fosters the willingness and capability to seek and effectively deal with feedback, to self-assess and self-correct, to attribute success to effort more than to ability, and to develop effective help-seeking skills.

For example, when giving feedback to a proficient reader who is stumped by a vocabulary word, the teacher might say,

I'm impressed you went back to the beginning of the sentence when you became stuck on this word. But in this case, this strategy didn't help. What else could you do? When you decide on what the word means, tell me how and why you know.

A teacher might promote a student's help-seeking and error-detection skills by saying the following:

You checked your answer with the resource book and found you got it wrong. Any idea why you got it wrong? What strategy did you use? Can you think of a different strategy to try? How will you know if your answer is correct?

The power of feedback involves invoking the right level of feedback relative to whether the learner is a novice, somewhat proficient, or competent. Novices mostly need task feedback; those who are somewhat proficient mostly need process feedback; and competent students mostly need regulation or conceptual feedback.

In addition to maximizing feedback at the appropriate level, teachers also need to be attentive to moving the student forward from mastery of content to mastery of strategies to mastery of conceptual understandings. For this to occur, teachers need to give students feedback that is at and just above their current level of learning.

This article will continue next week as well... please discuss during team time!

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Kudos

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Kudos to Brad Ferstenou, Stephanie Rummler, and our leadership/student council students on a GREAT idea to have snow cones after lunch this past week as a KCB reward! Students loved it!
Thank you to everyone that assisted with FNL: Mike Jones, Donna Sturdevant, Stephanie Rummler, Amanda Thate, Hans Block, Mary Blankenship, Bobbi Smith, Ryan Heft, and Mia Schultz! We had a great turn out with 12 dodgeball teams signed up (usually we have 7-8 teams), ping pong, video games, board games, cards, and the movie Wonder. Great job planning it all Mike Jones and Donna Sturdevant!
Thank you to Marian Hancock for all of your efforts and work assisting these past few weeks with MAP testing make ups! We need to finish up this Monday as the window needs to close ASAP! Information about MAPs is below.
Kudos to Steve Berezowitz and your work with our 8th grade students on preparing them for their high school course selections!
Thank you to Kris Thomsen for getting things started for a Super Bowl luncheon on Friday. Crazy amount of great food! Thank you to all that participated! Dustan's macaroni and cheese was a hit!
Thank you to Amanda Wilks for your dedication to our students. These past few weeks have brought on some sicknesses and the clean up is not always the most enjoyable but Amanda does an amazing job treating all students with kindness, empathy, and respect!

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Information/Reminders...

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Applied Academic teachers... it is your week to have students email parents/guardians!
Monday, February 5 - 7th grade students to the auditorium during advisory.

After announcements and attendance please bring your advisory students to the auditorium for a quick conversation about 8th grade scheduling. We will be handing out course booklets along with an applied academic course request form to all students. The forms will be due back on Friday, February 9. Students can turn them into their advisory teachers or the library. If they give them to you in advisory please drop them off in the box that will be on the counter in the library by Marian. All forms should be signed by a parent/guardian in order to turn them in.

Monday, February 5 - All students who need to complete a MAP test need to go to the library right after announcements (8th grade) and right after the auditorium (7th grade). This is very important as we need to finish up our MAP testing ASAP. The students who need to finish testing were sent to everyone in an email from Marian Hancock. Students on the list will remain in the library for testing until they are 100% complete. Thank you for your understanding as this provides us with great data to utilize in order to analyze our students academic growth and were needs are.
Monday, February 5 - Secondary Curriculum Committee Meeting @ 3:30 - 5:00 in our Karcher library.
Tuesday, February 6 - 8 - Steve Berezowitz will continue working with our 8th grade students during their compass time on high school scheduling.
Wednesday - February 7 - PLC will be focused on Essential Skills within your teams. Initially we were going to look at MAP data for this PLC but I will be at the principal conference and we are still wrapping up MAP so we will analyze our MAP data as a team in the library next week, February 14, for PLC.
Monday, February 12 - Freshmen Open House!

The following handout has been given to them during their time with Steve Berezowitz this past week. We have also shared with parents via the blog and emails. Please remind students about this event for them to walk the school, hear about course offerings, and sign up for clubs!

Monday, February 12 - BLT Meeting 2:40 - 3:30 in the conference room.

Additional information:

Staff websites need to be updated prior to us rolling over to our new website! Please click on THIS link in order to login and make changes and adjustments to your website information. Everyone is encouraged to look at it as some information is a few years old now. If you do not use certain components (have a website but don't use it anymore) please delete those items as well.
All club advisors... please email Kim the start and end dates for your club. Even if it took place already or started in September we are wanting all information in the website to be accurate. Give her the following information about your club: Start/end date, days during the week you meet, start and end time, all club advisory advisors, name of your club. Even if you think we have your club information already please get these items to Kim so we can double check that everything is accurate. Please have get her this information by February 9, Friday. Thank you!
Just a reminder... your mid-year SLO is due on February 20 within MLP. If you used first semester (applied academic teachers) for your SLO then you should have all three submitted by February 20. If you are using second semester please make sure your beginning of the year SLO is completed.
Just an FYI... Karcher will be used as a training site for our Burlington Police Department and the drug dogs on Saturday, February 10. They frequently train in buildings around the city in order to provide different situations and scenarios for the dogs and officers.