domingo, 19 de enero de 2020

January 20, 2020

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Kudos
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  • Thanks again to Jon Nelson for covering the office this past Monday as Steve Berezowitz, Annie Phillips, and myself attended a Threat Assessment Training at the Madison Police Department.  Always great to know the building is in good hands!  Thanks Jon.  
  • Kudos to our special education teachers for putting together Room 107.  We have never had the ability to service all of our students as we have needed to and now, as of January 13, have the ability to provide individualized instruction for some of our special education students for just one or two periods of their day up to a few hours of their day.  If you haven't walked past room 107 go take a peek as the department did a great job creating a welcoming environment for students!  
  • Kudos to Zane Bale for taking on the ACCESS testing this past week and into this week for some of our ESL students.  The ACCESS gives us some great data to analyze to ensure we service our ESL population appropriately.  Thank you Zane for the time it takes to organize and facilitate the whole process!  
  • Thank you to Jennifer Pelnar for working things through with me on some tweaks to the art spaces for the new building.  An adjustment was needed due to the requirements of our Kilns which moved things around a little bit.  Thank you Jennifer for coming up with numerous ideas to bring back to PRA to ensure the space is well thought out!  
  • Lastly, thank you to those of you who came on Wednesday regarding the 6-8 scheduling committee.  We had a great turn out from grades 6-8 and a very open discussion about the schedule.  I am confident we will land on a schedule that puts students first and provides strong opportunities for students!  Quite a few people on the scheduling committee have reached out to me asking specific questions as they work through their thoughts of the schedule.  Every question has been a great question!   It is awesome to see the excitement and commitment from all three grade levels!  
Article this week:  

Test Better, Teach Better

by W. James Popham

Chapter 1. The Links Between Testing and Teaching

What Sorts of Teaching Decisions Can Tests Help?

I've been touting the tight relationship that should be present between testing and teaching. It's time to get more specific. There are four types of teaching decisions that should rest squarely on what a teacher finds out either from the structure of the educational tests themselves or from the way students perform on educational tests.
Decisions about the nature and purpose of the curriculum. Essentially, the teacher seeks answers to questions like these: “What am I really trying to teach? What do my students need to know and be able to do? How can I translate the big curricular goals set for my students into specific, teachable components?”
Decisions about students' prior knowledge. Questions include, “What do my students already know about the topic I'm planning to teach? Are there any gaps that I need to address before we can tackle this material? Based on what my students know and can do, how can I tailor my instruction to provide the proper balance of remediation and challenge?”
Decisions about how long to teach something. Questions include, “How long do I think it will take my students to master this content? What kind of progress are they making? Are we on the right track? Should I continue teaching on my planned schedule, or are we ready to move on?”
Decisions about the effectiveness of instruction. Questions include, “Did my students learn? Was the instructional approach I took a good one? What specific activities were the most advantageous? Where do I need to make alterations?”
Now, let's take a closer look at how tests—both their design and the results of their application—can help teachers make these kinds of decisions with confidence.

Using Tests to Clarify the Curriculum

Typically, educators think of a curriculum as the set of intended outcomes that we want students to achieve. During the bulk of my teaching career, most teachers have used the phrase educational objectives to describe their curricular intentions. These days, of course, we find that most curricula are described as sets of content standards—that is, the knowledge and skills students are supposed to master as a consequence of instruction. Sometimes we see the term benchmarks used to describe the more specific skills and knowledge often subsumed beneath fairly broad content standards. The descriptors may change, but the mission of a curriculum remains constant: Its essential purpose is to lay out the stuff we want kids to learn.
Regardless of whether we call them content standards, goals, or objectives, the curricular intentions handed down by states and districts are often less clear than teachers need them to be for purposes of day-to-day instructional planning. For example, a group of elementary teachers might find themselves responsible for promoting this district-approved social studies content standard: “Students will comprehend the formal and informal nature of the interrelationships among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of U.S. government.”
Let's imagine you're one of the 5th grade teachers who is supposed to help students master this content standard. How would you go about planning your instruction? Personally, I think there's way too much fuzz on this curricular peach. Different teachers could easily read this social studies content standard and come up with quite divergent ideas of what it signifies. For example, one teacher might conclude that this content standard focuses exclusively on the formal and informal “checks and balances” when one governmental branch interacts with the other two. Another teacher might think that this content standard emphasizes the distinction between “formal” and “informal” interrelationships among the three governmental branches.
Now suppose that your 5th graders will be taking an important “standards-based” social studies achievement test at the end of the school year. If the people who built that test interpret this social studies content standard in one way, and you interpret it in another way—and teach toward your interpretation—it's almost certain that your students won't do as well on the achievement test as you, your principal, or your students' parents would like.
Clearly, if the curricular aims that a teacher must address are open to multiple interpretations, then off-the-mark instruction is likely to occur, bringing with it lower test performances. But if a curricular goal is accompanied by a set of illustrative test items indicating the ways that the goal will be measured, then teachers can analyze those items and form a far more accurate idea of the outcome that the state or district is actually seeking. Because the sample test items exemplify what the curricular intention really represents, teachers can plan and provide their students with better, more curricularly relevant instruction.
To illustrate, suppose you knew that mastery of the fairly fuzzy 5th grade social studies goal about the three branches of the U.S. government would be assessed by items similar to the following:


Sample Item 1
Which of the following three branches of U.S. government, if any, is primarily responsible for the final enactment of treaties with foreign nations?
  1. Legislative
  2. Executive
  3. Judicial
  4. No single branch is responsible.
Sample Item 2
Which, if any, of the following statements about governmental stability is true? (Mark each statement as True or False.)
  1. The enactment of term-limiting legislation at the local level has made the U.S. federal legislative branch of government more stable.
  2. The availability of the impeachment process tends to decrease the stability of the executive branch of U.S. government.
  3. Historically, the judicial branch of U.S. federal government has been the most stable.
Sample Item 3
Our founding fathers charted a meaningful series of governmental checks and balances. Focus on the area of taxation, then select two of the three branches and briefly describe the formal way(s) in which one branch can check the other. Answer in the space provided below.
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Having read these sample items, wouldn't you have a much better idea of what to teach your students in order for them to come to “comprehend the formal and informal nature of the interrelationships among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of U.S. government”? Sample Item 1 makes it clear that students will need to learn the primary responsibilities of each governmental branch. Sample Item 2 suggests that students must learn why important factors such as governmental stability are present for each branch. And Sample Item 3 indicates that, as the content standard said, students will need to understand the “formal and informal nature of the relationships” among the governmental branches. For this item, as you can see, the focus is on formal. In another item, you can reasonably assume, the focus might be on informal. Moreover, Sample Item 3 tips you off that students may need to display this understanding by constructing their own responses, rather than merely selecting a response from a set of options.
I believe that elementary teachers who consider these three illustrative items along with the original statement of the content standard are going to have a far more lucid idea of what the content standard actually means. Consequently, they'll be able to deliver instruction that is more on-target and more effective.
The payoffs from test-triggered clarity about curriculum goals can apply with equal force to a teacher's own, personally chosen curricular aspirations. If teachers are pursuing curricular aims of their own choosing, but those aims are less clear (in a teacher's mind) than is desirable for instructional planning purposes, then teachers are likely to come up with less relevant instruction. To illustrate, when I was a first-year teacher, I wanted the students in my two English classes “to be better writers.” But even though that very general goal was in my mind as the school year got under way, I really had no idea of what it meant for my students to be “better writers.” As the months went by, I occasionally had my students write a practice essay. However, for their final exam, I had them answer multiple-choice items about the mechanics of writing. Shame on me!
The task of creating a few sample assessment items can bring the desired outcomes into focus. In short, test-exemplified curricular goals will almost always be better promoted instructionally than will unexemplified curricular goals. Because of the significance of tests in helping teachers clarify their instructional targets, I'm going to dig into this topic a bit more deeply in Chapter 2. Stay tuned.
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Information/Reminders
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New Construction Information 
  • To separate out information just pertaining to the new middle school I put together a blog just for the 6-8 KMS building!
  • Click HERE to access the new building blog. I will add information here when things come up and will always have the link here in the blog for all of you! It is also on the Karcher Calendar :)))
This week:
  • This week is the last few days of term 2!!!
  • This week is the start of our winter iReady diagnostic in ELA.  
    • Please be mindful of testing and assist with keeping the halls and classrooms by ELA quieter for a better testing environment.  
  • Monday, January 20 - Special Education Aide meeting from 2:40 - 3:00 in the large conference room.  
    • Our special education teachers want to go over aide schedules prior to the start of semester 2 as some adjustments are taking place, especially with the switch of electives for semester 2.  
  • Monday, January 20 - Essential Skills Committee Meeting in our Karcher library starting at 3:45 - 5:15.  
    • Our focus this time is on creating an aligned 4K-12 nonacademic behavior rubric so we are aligned with common language.  
  • If you have not filled out your 2 Character Awards please get those done prior to Tuesday.  
    • Here (Karcher Way Assemblies) is the document Brad Ferstenou shared to ensure we do not have overlap of students picked.  Put what you are saying on the back please - these mean a lot to students so everyone needs to be prepared and ready!  
  • Tuesday, January 21 - Karcher Way 8th Grade Assembly.  
    • Please bring your advisories up to the auditorium as soon as you have your attendance and announcements done.  We will not make announcements to come up.  Please come as soon as you can so we can get started.  
  • Wednesday, January 22 - Karcher Way 7th Grade Assembly 
    • Same as 8th grade... bring advisories right after attendance and announcements!  
  • Wednesday, January 22 - PLC this week will be in the library.  We will be tweaking and taking a look at our Essential Skills at a Glance.  Please bring your computers!
  •  Thursday, January 23 - End of term 2!!!  
    • 7th grade incentive during extended advisory. 
  • Friday, January 24 - 8:00 - 4:00 Inservice Day
    • 8:00 - 9:00 - BHS Auditorium for longevity awards and a message from Dr. Plank. 
      • This inservice day is for certified staff only.  
      • If you are a non-certified staff member and you are being recognized for your years of service then you are encouraged to attend the 8:00 - 9:00 longevity awards in the BHS auditorium.  
    • 9:30 - 11:30 - Building Level Inservice time - please come to the library with your computers!  We will be focusing on three things:  
      • Culture Building
      • Karcher Data 
      • Standards Based Gradebook. 
      • Standards Mastery - iReady 
    • 11:30 - 12:30 - Lunch on your own.  
      • Those on the scheduling committee we will be meeting from 11:30 - 12:30 in the library as a working lunch.  Lunch will be provided from Subway.  
      • We will probably start at 11:40 to give Dyer staff time to arrive.  So know you will have a 10 minute break between Building Level and the Scheduling Committee.   
    • 12:30 - 4:00 - Teacher work time.  This is a great time to get your grades done for semester 2 as grades need to be posted by Tuesday, January 28 by 3:00pm.  Also, start thinking about your SLO and PPGs as they will be due by March 3.  You will have teacher work time in the afternoon again on February 28 as another time to potentially use for your SLO and PPG.  
Looking ahead:  

  • Math iReady diagnostic testing week.  
  • Monday, January 27 - All 8th grade advisories please bring your advisory group to the auditorium right after announcements.  
    • Eric Burling will be coming to talk about Freshmen year course selection booklets.  Steve Berezowitz will then be taking students from ALL to work through the selection of classes process.  
  • Monday, January 27 - MTSS District Committee Meeting in our Karcher library from 3:45 - 5:15.  
  • Tuesday, January 28 - Grades are due by 3:00pm for term 2.  
  • Monday, February 3 - 7th grade in auditorium during extended advisory for course selection information.  
  • Monday, February 3 - BLT Meeting
  • Monday, February 3 - Freshmen Open House at BHS from 5:30 - 7:25.  
  • Tuesday, February 4 - Strings Concert in our Karcher gym starting at 6:30pm.  
  • Friday, February 7 - SNOCO Dance from 6:30 - 8:30.  
    • Please let Stephanie Rummler know if you are able to assist!  

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Pictures from the week
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Boys Basketball!  The last game of the season is this Monday!  

Cheer Club at the boys basketball game!

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