October 27, 2019

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

2019-2020 Karcher Calendar

Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/KarcherMiddleSchool/

BASD Staff Blog:  https://basdstaffnews.blogspot.com/

______________________________________________________________________________

Kudos

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Thank you to all of our teachers for your hard work and dedication to our students when it comes to utilizing data to meet individual students were they are at and work to progress them forward, for example, using our iReady data to inform our iTime groups!  Thank you all for your continued commitment to all of our students!  
• Also... thank you all for participating and being part of a great inservice this past week with Dr. Luis Cruz.  So many of you said something to either myself or Annie about how much you enjoyed Dr. Cruz or commented about being proud of the numerous things we are already doing that he mentioned "exceptional schools do"!  Thank you for all of your positive feedback, focus, and participation when he was here.  
• Lastly, thank you to Eric Sulik and Jon Nelson for all of your continued efforts and work with our advisory curriculum.  This past Friday was a great example of The Karcher Way as our students excelled and enjoyed their time working with our Waller and Cooper students!  Thank you Eric and Jon for the behind the scenes work for the week and final afternoon!  Thank you to our staff for your focus and persistence to help your advisory students put something positive together for our elementary buddies!  

Article this week:  

Seventeen Thousand Classroom Visits Can't Be Wrong

by John V. Antonetti and James R. Garver

Chapter 1. Focus on Learning

As the authors of this book, we have looked at instruction in more than 17,000 elementary and secondary classrooms. During this experience, we have come to recognize the power of shifting the focus from teaching to learning. This realization has come both over time and in a few blinding moments of clarity.

A few years ago, we hosted our first annual Engagement Conference in Las Vegas. On the eve of that conference, like expectant parents, we carefully reviewed our plans for the following days, ensuring that every detail was covered. Finally, at about 10:30 p.m., John said, "I think we're ready, but you don't seem very happy."

"What's the 'big idea' for our conference?" Jim asked.

"That kids need to be more engaged … actively involved in learning activities."

"And how are we starting?"

"With your 90 minute keynote speech …"

And at that point, we both realized that wouldn't work. So, we set about designing a new conference opening—one in which participants would be physically and cognitively involved in the work. We were nervous, because we had never seen this kind of thing done in a large general session, but it gave rise to one of our favorite sayings: "Trust the learners."

A major purpose of this book is to help educators understand and develop this trust. Whether you are serving as a classroom teacher, site administrator, district leader, school board member, or parent, this idea can have powerful implications. In the following pages, we will share:

• What's really going on in classrooms around the country.
• Benchmarks to determine where your school is on the continuum of effective instruction.
• Good classroom practices for implementation and professional development.
• Tools and techniques to improve academic scores.
• Qualities that will result in students being more engaged.
• Strategies that develop higher-level thinking.
• Techniques to lead professional learning communities (PLCs) in a new, more thoughtful direction.
• A vision of what your school could be.

For many reasons—the movement to standards and accountability being chief among them—one might think that a shift toward learning-focused instruction should have already happened. Unfortunately, testing elevated the importance of results but not the learning process.

In a traditional classroom model, time is the constant and learning is the variable. That is, all students receive the same instruction for roughly the same amount of time. The results—not surprisingly—are a bell curve. Some students learn the content deeply and well, most have a moderate level of comprehension, and a few don't learn it at all. With the advent of standards, learning has become the desired constant, yet one of the most important variables—time—was never adjusted. Another element of the learning process resistant to change has been the traditional role of the teacher.

For more than 20 years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement has provided educators around the world with statistics regarding math and science achievement. In 1999, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) analyzed math classes in seven nations to examine the relationship between the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks and student achievement. In this study, a random sample of 100 8th grade math classes from each of the countries (Australia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong [China], Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States) was videotaped during the school year. The six other countries were selected because each performed significantly higher than the United States on the TIMSS 1995 mathematics achievement test for 8th grade (Stigler & Hiebert, 2004).

In the 1999 video study, the classroom math tasks were categorized as either using procedures (i.e., requiring basic computational skills and procedures) or making connections (i.e., focusing on concepts and connections among mathematical ideas). The problems were coded twice—once to characterize the type of math problem and once to describe its implementation in the classroom.

Figure 1.1 captures the percentage of each type of math problem presented in six of the seven countries.

Figure 1.1. Types of Math Problems Presented

Source: From "Improving Mathematics Teaching," by J. W. Stigler and J. Hiebert, 2004, Educational Leadership, 61(15), p. 14. Copyright 2004 by ASCD. Reprinted with permission.

Approximately 17 percent of the problem statements in the United States suggested a focus on mathematical connections or relationships. This percentage is within the range of several high-achieving countries (i.e., Hong Kong, Czech Republic, Australia).

As students worked through the math problems, the video study analyzed teacher-student interactions and the mathematical approach taken to solve the problems. Figure 1.2 shows the coding of the student work as it was actually performed by students.

Figure 1.2. How Teachers Implemented Making Connections Math Problems

Source: From "Improving Mathematics Teaching," by J. W. Stigler and J. Hiebert, 2004, Educational Leadership, 61(5), p. 15. Copyright 2004 by ASCD. Reprinted with permission.

Though the curriculum may have involved a balance in the types of problems proposed, virtually none of the making connections problems observed in the United States were implemented in a way that guaranteed conceptualization or demanded mathematical connections be made by students. There are a number of issues highlighted by the study, but the most troubling finding of all is that teachers in the United States reduced most problems to procedural exercises or simply gave students the answers—efficient teaching perhaps, but ineffectual learning.

If the TIMSS video study had only looked at instructional delivery or the resulting achievement measures, these issues might not have been as obvious. Focusing on students during academic activities provided the greatest clarity into the achievement results.

Why does this disconnect between curriculum and implementation occur in the United States? Math teachers across the country have shared with us many valid reasons when we ask this very question:

• "Our curriculum is too full, inviting coverage and speed over deep mathematical understanding."
• "The discomfort of letting our students struggle; the need to rescue our students and then move on."
• "The pressure of the ever-present high-stakes testing."
• "The fear that a visiting administrator who walks in during a moment of student struggle might not see the teacher 'teaching.'"
• "It takes too long for them to figure it out."

This challenge remains today. Math teacher Dan Meyer put it into perspective when he said that we are "taking a compelling question, a compelling answer … but we are paving a smooth, straight path between the two and congratulating our students for how well they can step over the cracks on the way" (Meyer, 2013).

The idea of a teaching-learning shift didn't spring into our minds fully formed. As you may have already gleaned, we had the opportunity to examine teaching and learning in a variety of classroom situations—more than 17,000 and counting. We conducted the vast majority of those visits through the classroom walkthrough process. It was in that environment that we first worked together and that our ideas about the teaching-learning shift became concrete.

In 2001, we were asked by a professional development company to help create one of the first classroom walkthough models. It became very popular, and we helped train thousands of educators across North America. In 2005, we decided to form our own organization, Colleagues on Call. To begin this new venture, we asked ourselves what we learned about classroom walkthroughs.

The answer, unsurprisingly, came from the teachers with whom we worked. They said, "We know your visits aren't supposed to be evaluative, but sometimes it still feels like evaluation." It didn't take long to figure out why teachers felt that way: we were looking in the wrong place. Most of the data gathered and feedback provided were based on teachers' behaviors. When the focus of the visits was shifted to students, the differences were dramatic. Suddenly, we had a data set that could be gathered in no other way. Instead of monitoring whether an objective was posted on the board, students were asked to explain what they were learning and why it was relevant. In this way, thinking levels could be viewed across content areas and grade levels. Whereas formal assessments provided post-instructional data, observations made during these walkthroughs provided teachers with real-time data they could use to make instructional decisions.

We call this process Look 2 Learning (L2L), and if you glance at the contents for this book, you will get a fairly accurate picture of what we look for—from the students' point of view—during our classroom visits.

Here's how it works: After two days of training, L2L team members (alone or in pairs) visit classrooms in their respective schools for two to four minutes. While there, they listen to conversations and interactions, look at student work, and talk to students. Information is collected on an electronic device or on paper. Over time, the data are aggregated so trends and patterns can be observed. This information is then shared with classroom teachers, who—through reflective conversations—determine which professional practices they might like to refine. L2L data can then be used to monitor progress. Adjustments can be made and celebrations scheduled—all based, of course, on the learning and not the teaching.

Several times in this book, we will mention the use of continua. We think they can be powerful organizers for graphically representing complex relationships and relative magnitudes. For the present discussion, a continuum can help depict the teaching-learning shift and the change in focus that happens with Look 2 Learning walkthroughs.

In general, a continuum shows a relationship of degree that is indicated by position from left to right. It might look something like this:

We can also make use of the vertical dimension. For instance, a point high above the line could indicate a behavior solidly in adult control, whereas one below the line could denote a significant level of student control.

Earlier, when we discussed the shift in focus brought about by Look 2 Learning walkthroughs, we mentioned learning objectives. Where on this continuum might we locate "The objective was written on the whiteboard"? First, think vertically; we can identify this as a behavior under the control of the adult, so it should appear above the line. Now we need to determine our position horizontally. Simply posting the objective isn't very effective in improving learning by itself. Therefore, the placement of this task on the continuum might look like this:

In an L2L context, we would contrast looking for the written objective in the classroom with determining whether students understood it well enough to explain it. Where might we place that student behavior on the continuum? Vertically, we're fully in the realm of student control, so that would indicate a placement below the line. In terms of effectiveness for learning, having students be able to articulate the objective is fairly high, locating it toward the right end of the line. Therefore, the continuum might look something like this:

As you might imagine, this teaching-learning continuum is very useful in helping walkthrough observers understand that they should focus on behaviors that are "below the line." It also provides classroom teachers with a map for shifting the focus in their own classrooms. This shift in thinking (and the concomitant shifts in classroom practice) has the capacity to initiate powerful and fundamental schoolwide changes. Indeed, we have seen it replicated across the country. The following is but one example.

In 2008, a team of three site-level administrators from Boise, Idaho—Dr. Betty Olson, Liz Croy, and Dr. Kelly Cross—attended our first Engagement Conference. They wanted to know more about our work with student engagement and were especially interested in Look 2 Learning. They left the conference excited, seeing potential for L2L not only in their own schools but also for the entire district. They presented what they learned to a district leadership team, which quickly championed the program. Since then, L2L was implemented in every school in the district, became part of the district's strategic plan, and served as a common vocabulary for school improvement. Each school has a Look 2 Learning coordinator who assists the principal with data collection, scheduling, and reflection.

Dr. Olson, in particular, has used Look 2 Learning as the foundation for transforming her school. In 2010, she became principal at South Jr. High School and was determined to help the school become more learner-focused. The transformation has been transparent, incremental, and—frankly—amazing. Engagement and thinking levels have risen, lectures are rare, and discipline has improved. We recognize that Look 2 Learning didn't singlehandedly cause this change. The principal and staff still had much heavy lifting to do, but L2L provided a guide and monitoring tool for the school's evolution. It has become so much a part of the school's culture that if you sit down beside a student in class, he or she is likely to turn to you and whisper, "OK, here's what we're working on today …"

For us, talking to students has made all of the difference. Our walks (17,124 and counting) encapsulate more than a decade of insights gained from classroom visits. They have occurred in all kinds of schools: preschool through high school, urban and rural, large and small, needy and affluent. No matter where you work, the data presented in this book invariably include schools very much like yours and are gleaned from kids very much like yours. (We have found that, overall, there is a larger discrepancy between classrooms within a school than there is between schools. In fact, we have had to begin disaggregating data for schools and districts with which we work extensively.) Our conversations are usually informative, often insightful, sometimes funny, and occasionally moving. Here are a couple of them.

In early December, we walked into a 2nd grade classroom in South Carolina with the school's principal and assistant principal. A little boy looked up at Jim, made a terrible face, looked to the assistant principal, and then put his head down on his desk, sobbing. We all looked at one another and weren't quite sure what was going on. The assistant principal leaned down to whisper to the little guy, but the boy loudly said "I can't believe you really did it!" before putting his head back down. The assistant principal first looked puzzled but then started to laugh. She called us into the hall.

"That young man is one of my 'frequent flyers,'" she told us. "Yesterday, he was in my office for the third time this week. Out of frustration, I told him that if he didn't begin behaving himself, I was going to call Santa Claus. Well, Dr. Garver, when he saw you, I guess he thought I did!"

On another occasion, we were in a school somewhere west of the Mississippi. Again, it was close to the holiday season. In almost every classroom, we saw students engaged in a task with red and green construction paper. Finally, in one classroom, we saw something different: 2nd grade students coloring a calendar. The numbers stopped on the day in December that was the beginning of the school's holiday break. We tried to determine whether one of the students understood that she was working on a calendar activity.

"What do you think those numbers stand for?"

"They're just numbers. We have to count them."

"Do you do anything with this after you're done coloring?"

"We stick cotton balls on it and cover up the numbers."

"That sounds like fun."

"It was fun when we did it in kindergarten. In 2nd grade, not so much."

Several of the schools with whom we work are implementing Document- Based Questioning, a process that allows students to explore complex social studies questions by examining authentic historical documents. We recently visited a 4th grade classroom where students were really buzzing. Original sources had been distributed, and groups of four were considering the question "Why did so many people die at Jamestown?"

We stopped by one group to listen in on the conversation. The students were carefully poring over the documents when one of them spoke up.

"I think I have a reason." He had been looking at the ship's manifest—a list of the passengers and the cargo. "There aren't any women on this list. When women aren't around, men are like pigs. They don't even wash their hands. I think the men all got dirty, sick, and died."

Actually, that's a pretty powerful insight.

Those are a few of our experiences listening to the learners. What would your kids say?

______________________________________________________________________________

Information/Reminders

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Monday, October 28 - SLOs and PPGs are due!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Please be cognizant and mindful of submitting your SLOs and PPGs in a timely manner.  It is important for us to analyze our student data now and then determine goals for our students and our instruction so that all students show growth and achievement from now until June!  
• This is also a reminder that your PPG needs to be aligned to one of our Big Three.  If you have questions or need support please let Annie or myself know!  
• Monday, October 29 - ESL - CESA 2 trainer 
• Zane Bale, myself, and others across the school district will be meeting in the 21st Century Lab from 8:00 - 3:00 to discuss our ESL needs and services throughout the school district.  DPI contacted us and shared the concern about the number of ESL students who have been labeled as special education students.  Therefore, our time on Monday will be to work on this concern and develop solutions along the way.  
• I will be in the building... just in the 21st Century Lab if anyone needs anything!  
• Tuesday, October 29 - Administrative Meeting
• Jon Nelson will be filling in as administration for all of Tuesday.  Annie and I will be at Gateway, next to the high school, with the rest of the administrative team throughout the district.  The focus of our time will be on creating and determine a needs assessment and then working to figure out what needs to be decided on first, second, and so on.  
• Tuesday, October 29 - iTime rotation starts!  
• A copy of your advisory and where each of your advisory students should be going starting Tuesday is already in your mailbox.  Please make sure your advisory students know where they should be going for the start of this iTime rotation.  As a reminder, all iTime groups are focused on reading or math based on our iReady student data.  
• Click HERE to see where students should be going.  
• All iTime groups have already been loaded into iReady to provide you with data about your students in your group!  
• Tuesday, October 29 - Flu shots at BHS for those signed up between 2:00 - 5:00!
• Wednesday, October 30 - PLC 
• PLC this week will be on your own in your rooms.  Either working on Essential Skills or Strategies/Skills.  
• Please remember the importance of the PLC reflection form after every PLC!!!  

Looking ahead:  

• Monday, November 4 - BLT Meeting 
• Tuesday, November 5 - End of term 1!!! 

______________________________________________________________________________

Pictures from the week

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

What a great afternoon with our Waller and Cooper elementary buddies!!!  More images have also been included on our school Facebook page!  

October 21, 2019

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

2019-2020 Karcher Calendar

Facebook Page:  https://www.facebook.com/KarcherMiddleSchool/

BASD Staff Blog:  https://basdstaffnews.blogspot.com/

______________________________________________________________________________

Kudos

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Thank you to all staff for the gift card for both Annie and I.  We both feel fortunate to work with such a great group of people!!!  And... thank you to Kim, Kris, Lisa, Pam, and Steve for putting together a nice ice cream sundae bar for us as well this week!  Very much appreciated!!!  Thank you all!  
• Thank you to our staff who were asked to be flexible when we needed help covering for each other.  We know it is not ideal to have a sub shortage but it is our current reality and we appreciate your flexibility and willingness to assist in times of need.  
• Thank you to Hans Block, Wendy Zeman, and Kurt Rummler for participating in the Groundbreaking ceremony.  Your dedication to BASD, Karcher, students, and our community is commendable, thank you.  
• Thank you as well to Stephanie Rummler for assisting with Groundbreaking by organizing our leadership students to assist with the event!  
• Lastly, thanks to Kris Thomsen and Kim Moss for assisting with the behind the scenes of getting all of the set iTime groups into iReady for everyone so that your time is spent on planning your instruction.  It takes time and organization to put the groups into iReady so thank you both, Kris and Kim, for your commitment to our work as well!  

Article this week:  

The Best Value in Formative Assessment

Stephen Chappuis and Jan Chappuis

Ready-made benchmark tests cannot substitute for day-to-day formative assessment conducted by assessment-literate teachers.

Recently a school leader asked us to provide an example of a good test item on a formative assessment and then show how that item would be different when used on a summative test. He wanted to explain to his staff the difference between formative and summative assessment. His end goal was for teachers to develop assessments to measure how well students were mastering the content standards that would appear on the state accountability test before the test was given in the spring.

His question reflects the confusion many educators have about formative and summative assessment. This confusion isn't surprising: Definitions of formative assessment abound, resulting in multiple and sometimes conflicting understandings. And in part because of these varying definitions and views, practices labeled as formative assessment in schools today vary widely.

One result of No Child Left Behind has been a surge in student testing—much of it voluntary, going well beyond what federal law or state assessment systems require. Many schools and districts administer tests with names like benchmark, short-cycle, and interim assessments to predict student performance on high-stakes tests and to identify students needing additional help. This increasingly popular level of testing has contributed to the widening scope of what is called formative assessment.

Testing companies in the K–12 education market, seeking to support the trend toward more testing, sometimes advertise products as "formative assessments." This adds to the confusion by encouraging the idea that it's the test itself that's formative (Chappuis, 2005).

In reality, this level of testing is often little more than a series of minisummative tests, not always tightly aligned to what was taught in the classroom. There is nothing inherently formative in such tests—they may or may not be used to make changes in teaching that will lead to greater student learning.

The Difference Between Summative and Formative

What is formative assessment, then? First, it's not a product. That was the central misunderstanding of the administrator who asked for an example of a good formative test item. Even though assessments will continue to be labeled formative or summative, how the results are used is what determines whether the assessment is formative or summative.

To begin, let's look at summative assessment. In general, its results are used to make some sort of judgment, such as to determine what grade a student will receive on a classroom assignment, measure program effectiveness, or determine whether a school has made adequate yearly progress. Summative assessment, sometimes referred to as assessment of learning, typically documents how much learning has occurred at a point in time; its purpose is to measure the level of student, school, or program success.

Formative assessment, on the other hand, delivers information during the instructional process, beforethe summative assessment. Both the teacher and the student use formative assessment results to make decisions about what actions to take to promote further learning. It is an ongoing, dynamic process that involves far more than frequent testing, and measurement of student learning is just one of its components.

Summative Assessment Used in Formative Ways

Almost any assessment instrument can be used for summative or formative purposes, but some, by design, are better suited to summative use and others to formative use. For example, state assessments, although they may also have some limited formative use, are designed to provide accountability data and to compare schools and districts. Because their primary purpose is summative, the results may not be communicated in ways that teachers and students can easily interpret and work with. Further, the results are often delivered months after the administration of the tests. For these reasons, such state tests usually do not function well in a formative way: They can't contribute much information to guide day-to-day instruction or help determine the next learning steps of individual students.

Benchmark assessments, either purchased by the district from commercial vendors or developed locally, are generally meant to measure progress toward state or district content standards and to predict future performance on large-scale summative tests. A common misconception is that this level of assessment is automatically formative. Although such assessments are sometimes intended for formative use—that is, to guide further instruction for groups or individual students—teachers' and administrators' lack of understanding of how to use the results can derail this intention. The assessments will produce no formative benefits if teachers administer them, report the results, and then continue with instruction as previously planned—as can easily happen when teachers are expected to cover a hefty amount of content in a given time.

Teachers also select or develop their own summative assessments—those that count for a grade. Compared with state and district tests, these classroom assessments can more readily be adapted to formative use because their results are more immediately available and their learning targets have been more recently taught. When teachers know what specific learning target each question or task on their test measures, they can use the results to select and reteach portions of the curriculum that students haven't yet mastered. Carefully designed common assessments can be used this way as well.

Students, too, can use summative test results to make decisions about further study. If the assessment items are explicitly matched to the intended learning targets, teachers can guide students in examining their right and wrong answers in order to answer questions such as these:

• What are my strengths relative to the standards?
• What have I seen myself improve at?
• Where are my areas of weakness?
• Where didn't I perform as desired, and how might I make those answers better?
• What do these results mean for the next steps in my learning, and how should I prepare for that improvement?

For students to make maximum use of these questions to guide further study, however, teachers must plan and allow time for students to learn the knowledge and skills they missed on the summative assessment and to retake the assessment. Lack of time for such learning is one of the biggest hindrances to formatively using summative classroom assessments.

*****Assessment for Learning*****

When teachers assess student learning for purely formative purposes, there is no final mark on the paper and no summative grade in the grade book. Rather, assessment serves as practice for students, just like a meaningful homework assignment does. This is formative assessment at its most valuable. Called assessment for learning, it supports learning in two ways:

• Teachers can adapt instruction on the basis of evidence, making changes and improvements that will yield immediate benefits to student learning.
• Students can use evidence of their current progress to actively manage and adjust their own learning. (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2006)

Assessment for learning can take many different forms in the classroom. It consists of anything teachers do to help students answer three questions (Atkin, Black, & Coffey, 2001):

Where am I going?

• Give students a list of the learning targets they are responsible for mastering, written in student-friendly language.
• Show students anonymous strong and weak examples of the kind of product or performance they are expected to create and have them use a scoring guide to determine which one is better and why.

Where am I now?

• Administer a nongraded quiz part-way through the learning, to help both teacher and students understand who needs to work on what.
• Highlight phrases on a scoring guide reflecting specific strengths and areas for improvement and staple it to student work.
• Have students identify their own strengths and areas for improvement using a scoring guide.
• Have students keep a list of learning targets for the course and periodically check off the ones they have mastered.

How can I close the gap?

• Give students feedback and have them use it to set goals.
• Have students graph or describe their progress on specific learning targets.
• Ask students to comment on their progress: What changes have they noticed? What is easy that used to be hard? What insights into themselves as learners have they discovered?

When students use feedback from the teacher to learn how to self-assess and set goals, they increase ownership of their own success. In this type of assessment environment, teachers and students collaborate in an ongoing process using assessment information to improve rather than judge learning. It all hinges on the assessment's ability to provide timely, understandable, and descriptive feedback to teachers and students.

Feedback: The Key Difference

Feedback in an assessment for learning context occurs while there is still time to take action. It functions as a global positioning system, offering descriptive information about the work, product, or performance relative to the intended learning goals. It avoids marks or comments that judge the level of achievement or imply that the learning journey is over.

Effective descriptive feedback focuses on the intended learning, identifies specific strengths, points to areas needing improvement, suggests a route of action students can take to close the gap between where they are now and where they need to be, takes into account the amount of corrective feedback the learner can act on at one time, and models the kind of thinking students will engage in when they self-assess. These are a few examples of descriptive feedback:

• You have interpreted the bars on this graph correctly, but you need to make sure the marks on the x and y axes are placed at equal intervals.
• What you have written is a hypothesis because it is a proposed explanation. You can improve it by writing it as an "if … then … " statement.
• The good stories we have been reading have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I see that your story has a beginning and a middle, just like those good stories do. Can you draw and write an ending?
• You have described the similarities between _____ and _____ clearly in this paper, and you have identified key differences. Work on illustrating those differences with concrete examples from the text.

In contrast, the feedback from a summative assessment—whether given in the classroom or in a larger context—tells teachers and students who made it to the learning destination and who didn't. The assessment's coded, evaluative feedback—B+, 84%, Meets Standards, Great Job, Proficient, and so on—does not identify individual student strengths and areas needing improvement. It does not offer specific information for course correction.

Advantages of Formative Classroom Assessment

Although all formative assessment practices have the potential to increase student learning, assessment for learning in the classroom offers a number of distinct benefits:

• The timeliness of results enables teachers to adjust instruction quickly, while learning is in progress.
• The students who are assessed are the ones who benefit from the adjustments.
• The students can use the results to adjust and improve their own learning.

When we try to teacher-proof the assessment process by providing a steady diet of ready-made external tests, we lose these advantages. Such tests cannot substitute for the day-to-day level of formative assessment that only assessment-literate teachers are able to conduct. The greatest value in formative assessment lies in teachers and students making use of results to improve real-time teaching and learning at every turn.

______________________________________________________________________________

Information/Reminders

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

• Monday-Wednesday - Extended Advisory.  
• Click HERE for access to the advisory plans shared with everyone from Eric Sulik and Jon Nelson. 

• Monday, October 21 - Flu Shot reminder for those who signed up at Dyer between 2:00 - 5:00 

• Monday, October 21 - District Essential Skills Committee Meeting from 3:45 - 5:15 in our Karcher library. 

• Tuesday, October 22 - Picture retake day!  
• Interstate studios will be arriving at 6:15.  The will most likely be ready by 7:15.  They will be set up in the old ISS area (by the health room/staff restroom)
• Lisa will call students by last name to come to the library.  
• If you did not have your picture taken please make sure you do so as well as these pictures are used on our district website.  

• Tuesday, October 22 - Special Education Department meeting from 2:40-3:15 in the small conference room.  
• I will most likely not be able to attend due to a new construction meeting.  Annie should be able to attend.  

• Wednesday, October 23 - Furniture - Edspaces conference.  
• Just wanting everyone to be aware that I will not be in the building on October 23 as I will be attending Edspaces along with some other district administrators.  This is our first look at vendors, etc as we work to determine our plans for furniture.  Staff will be involved in the process, this is just the beginning stage of gathering information.  

• Wednesday, October 23 - PLC in the library
• Teachers with an iTime:  
• Please use this time to plan for your iTime groups together in the library (those who have an iTime group).  
• All groups have already been created in iReady as a "Report Group" for every teacher with an iTime group.  
• All groups are coded as:  2019 October iTime (Teacher).  
• Please login to iReady and make sure you can see your group and that it matches that found on the Excel Document.  
• Applied Academic teachers please use this time for Essential Skill work.  
• Click HERE to view all the iTime groups.  Please note... some students are crossing house for iTime.  
• We will put an advisory sheet in your mailbox with where your students should be going so that you don't need to search the documents for your advisory students.  We will work on getting those to you by the morning of Friday, October 25.

• Thursday, October 24 - District Inservice from 8:00 - 4:00 for all certified and non-certified staff.  
• Karcher Staff schedule:  
• 8:00 - 8:15 - BHS Auditorium for United Way Campaign kick-off.  It is important to be in your seat by 8:00 so we can start on time.  
• 8:20 - 9:30 - Keynote speaker Dr. Luis Cruz 
• 9:30 - 10:00
• Break/time to travel back to Karcher. 
• Head secretaries stay at BHS and meet with Lindsey Rossi and Ruth Schenning in the library conference room.  
• 10:00 - 11:00 
• Teachers:  Essential Skills work time 
• Aides:  Presentation with Kathy Merlo in our Karcher library.  
• 11:00 - 12:00 - Lunch on your own.  
• 12:00 - 1:30
• Teachers:  District directed time
• Please use this time to work on your SLOs, PPGs, or teacher planning.  
• SLOs and PPGs are due October 28!  
• Aides:  
• 12:00 - 1:00 Speech Pathologist Presentation in our Waller library.   
• 1:00 - 1:30 break, head back to Karcher for 1:30 time in our Karcher library. 
• 1:30 - 2:30 - All Staff:  Breakout session with Dr. Luis Cruz in our Karcher library 
• 2:30 - 4:00
• Teachers & Aides:  Classroom work time (time for individual needs)  
• Health aides and nurses:  Meet at the District Office

• Friday, October 25 - Afternoon Assembly Schedule
• Cooper/Waller Visit!  This is such a great afternoon for our students 1-4 to partner and work with our 7th and 8th grade students.  

Looking ahead:  
• Monday, October 28 - SLOs and PPGs are due!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Tuesday, October 29 - iTime rotation starts!  
• Click HERE to see where students should be going.  
• Tuesday, October 29 - Flu shots at BHS for those signed up between 2:00 - 5:00 
• Wednesday, October 30 - Interstate studios will be coming to take athletic pictures for our cross country teams and girls basketball starting at 1:00pm.  Will share a schedule with you in the next blog.  

______________________________________________________________________________

Pictures from the week

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Student assemblies this past week with Steve Berezowitz and Jodi Borchart talking about bullying, social media concerns, and the dangers of vaping. 

Jenny Geyso strategy grouping it up, talking about writing in slow motion in order to infuse tiny details into their writing.

Girls basketball being coached by two amazing humans... Kurt Rummler and Brad Ferstenou!

Students working on their bill to law simulation with Mr. Schmidt!

Kris Thomsen.......... doing a GREAT job decorating and ensuring everything was very straight :)))

Demo has begun!!!