KARCHER STAFF BLOG
2019-2020 Karcher Calendar
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/KarcherMiddleSchool/
BASD Staff Blog: https://basdstaffnews.blogspot.com/
2019-2020 Karcher Calendar
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/KarcherMiddleSchool/
BASD Staff Blog: https://basdstaffnews.blogspot.com/
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Kudos
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- Thank you to our special education department, Amanda Thate, Alyssa Riggs, Briana Harris, Kelly Fulton, and Joe VanDommelen, who had the opportunity to work with Peggy Black this past Friday as we are always working on continuous growth and improvement when it comes to our practices around IEPs and special education. Thank you for your time and willingness to learn and grow!
- Thank you Jon Nelson for assisting administration and the building on Friday while I was at the principal conference and Annie attended the special education PD time with our team and Peggy Black. Your willingness to be a goose is appreciated!
- Thank you to Stephanie Rummler for engaging our students with the epic Civil War battle! Stephanie truly knows how to bring the skills and content to life!
- Thank you to our academic teams for your continued efforts to build in incentive days with our students to encourage and recognize positive character!
- Last but not least, thank you Steve Berezowitz for your behind the scenes work with all of our 8th graders and ensuring they all start their freshmen year off strong and on the right foot by assisting all of them with understanding the course selections and inputting them into the computer.
Article this week:
This article will continue into next week!
______________________________________________________________________________UDL: A Blueprint for Learning Success
Teachers who implement Universal Design for Learning are educational architects, creating learning structures that support all students' success.
Dylan is an enthusiastic 3rd grade student who wants to do well in his inclusive classroom. His teachers are concerned about his inconsistent performance, and they note that he's easily distracted and often doesn't follow instructions. When Dylan is able to concentrate, he can compute math facts on grade level, but he finds math word problems challenging. He is polite when interacting with adults, but friendships don't come easily to him.
Like Dylan, all students have learning strengths, challenges, and preferences that affect the way they learn. Recognizing that no two students are alike, effective educators differentiate their practices to accommodate their students' learning differences. One 21st-century framework educators can use to accomplish this goal is Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
UDL is rooted in the architectural concept of universal design, which calls for designing buildings, products, and services so that all individuals can use them. For example, a ramp represents a universal design that provides access for a variety of individuals who find stairs to be a barrier—not only people who use wheelchairs, but also people pushing strollers or making deliveries.
UDL is based on brain research that applies universal design to teaching and learning (CAST, 2011). To differentiate instruction for students with a range of learning differences, UDL provides multiple means of
- ▪ Representation (presenting content in a variety of ways);
- ▪ Action and expression (varying the ways in which students are encouraged to respond and show their learning); and
- ▪ Engagement (using a range of practices to heighten student motivation).
Just as architects create blueprints to design buildings that everyone can use, the UDL framework encourages teachers to be educational architects who build student success (Salend, 2016). Here, we describe a seven-step pedagogical model to guide educational architects in developing UDL instructional blueprints. Let's see how educators might follow this model to create an instructional blueprint for Dylan.
Step 1: Understand Students' Learning Differences
Architects begin the design of a building by identifying the various individuals who will use the building. Educational architects start to design their classroom activities by seeking to understand each student's academic, behavioral, and social strengths, challenges, preferences, and interests, as well as their cultural, linguistic, and experiential backgrounds. Teachers gather this information through a range of assessment strategies: by observing students' interactions with others; reviewing their academic records; examining their work; surveying them (and others who know them) about their interests and activities; noting the learning conditions that affect their engagement and motivation; and analyzing their performance on classroom-based and standardized assessments (Doubet & Hockett, 2016).
Interviews with Dylan and his parents have revealed that he loves to talk about his dog, Legos, trains, boats, planes, being a movie producer, and the funny stories he reads. Dylan's teachers have observed that he performs well with technology, but struggles to pay attention during traditional academic instruction and becomes frustrated when solving word problems or writing extended responses. An analysis of his math assignments and assessments shows that he often makes mistakes because he skips steps or copies numbers incorrectly from one space to another. His teachers note that when the class learns anything related to mechanical vehicles, Dylan is the first to raise his hand. They also observe that when Dylan tries to make friends with peers, he seems to misread facial expressions and actions.
Step 2: Identify Educational Goals and Learning Objectives
In the initial stages of designing a building, architects also determine how individuals will use the building—what "goals" users must be able to accomplish. Similarly, educational architects begin to design student learning experiences by identifying the academic goals and learning objectives each student needs to master as a result of the instruction he or she receives. The goals for students who have individualized education plans (IEPs) or 504 plans should be consistent with those documents; the goals for students who are English language learners should be individualized based on their proficiency in English and their first language; and the goals for gifted-and-talented students should strengthen their critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. Learning objectives may vary in the amount of content to be learned, the level of difficulty of that content, the pace at which students are expected to learn, and the ways in which students are expected to demonstrate their learning.
For example, Dylan receives instruction connected to his school's curriculum for all students, which is based on the Common Core State Standards. But whereas the Common Core stipulates that 3rd graders should be able to represent and solve multistep word problems involving multiplication and division, Dylan is still working on one-step problems—a goal that appears in his IEP. The Common Core standards for speaking and listening require that students "engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts." Dylan's challenges related to paying attention and maintaining friendships affect his proficiency on this standard. His IEP contains goals for paying attention when others are speaking and developing friendships with peers. Because there are other students in his class who also struggle with attention, his teachers often focus on these goals when designing group work.
Step 3: Examine Aspects of the Learning Environment
When designing buildings, architects identify the factors that may influence how a range of individuals will use the various spaces. Likewise, educational architects can perform an ecological assessment of the learning environments they create to examine the factors that may affect student performance. These factors may include their curricular, social, and behavioral expectations and interventions; technologies; assessment strategies; and classroom layout. An ecological assessment also identifies family involvement, collaboration strategies, available support personnel, and student interaction patterns that educators employ.
This article will continue into next week!
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 :)))
Overall reminders:
- Parent/Guardian/Teacher Conferences - Conferences are on February 25 from 4:00 - 6:00pm.
- As teams please continue to contact parents we would like the opportunity to meet with for 15 minute time periods.
- Elective teachers please make sure you jump onto the meetings academic teachers are setting up or set up meetings within your team as well!
- Click HERE to access the Google Excel document our BLT created to track the conferences.
- 2019-2020 Budget:
- All of your department budgets should be spent by March 15 with the exception of field trips, food, and needed consumables.
- 2020-2021 Budget: Please see the February 10th blog for all the information for next years budget needs and information.
- Next years budget documents are due to Kim by February 28!
This week:
- Extended Advisory this week:
- Monday will be regular extended advisory with your usual advisory students.
- Tuesday - Thursday students will be in advisory+!!!
- Friday - There is no advisory due to the BHS DRIVEN time, therefore, an adjusted bell schedule.
- Tuesday, February 18 - Come out and support our student council by having dinner at Culvers between 5:00 - 8:00!
- Wednesday, February 19 - Our goal is to have all of our 7th grade students enter their elective requests into Skyward during science class!
- Wednesday, February 19 - PLC time is for our Essential Skill work with your team!
- Continue your work with your content area team around your rubrics, creating formative & summative assessments, or analyzing your formative data to inform your instruction and strategy groups!
- Another thing you could think about using your PLC time for is your iTime groups.
- Wednesday, February 19 - Scheduling Committee Meeting at Dyer from 3:20 until the group is done! Those on the committee please leave your PLC at 3:10 to get to Dyer.
- Thursday, February 20 - House split day for 2020-2021.
- Friday, February 21 - All 8th grade course requests for their freshmen year should be inputed in the computer. The students have been doing this work with Steve Berezowitz.
Looking ahead:
- Monday, February 24 - District Essential Skill Committee Meeting from 3:45-5:15.
- Tuesday, February 25 - Start of our iTime rotations using Standards Mastery and TDA work.
- Tuesday, February 25 - School Board Karcher Day.
- The board will be making their rounds throughout the school district to see all the great work happening in our schools. They may pop into your rooms, observe the start of school, have lunch with students or staff, and simply be at Karcher to observe what all of our students and staff do!
- Perhaps this could be a great pot luck day! Seeing as it is also P/T conferences it might be nice to have food that day so it can carry into dinner for staff as well. Talk about it with your teams and if you guys want to someone shoot out the email about it... if you think a different day all for whatever the team decides!
- Tuesday, February 25 - Parent/Guardian/Teacher Conferences between 4:00 - 6:00pm.
- Wednesday, February 26 - Lucky Star Karcher night!
- Have dinner at Lucky Star stating you are there to support Karcher and we will get 20% of the total bill donated back to Karcher from Lucky Star!!!
- Friday, February 28 - 8:00 to 4:00 inservice.
- 8:00 - 12:00 will be Essential Skill time.
- 12:00 - 1:00 (or beyond) will be the next Scheduling Committee Meeting in our Karcher library
- 1:00 - 4:00 is teacher work time.
- This would be a great time to use for your SLO and PPG work - they should both be submitted by March 3.
- Biometric Screening will also be taking place for any staff who missed the screening the first go around. Time slots will be between 7:00 - 12:00.
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Pictures from the week
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