CST Test Prep Planning Discussion

Announcements from Kathy - Marie won't be back until next year.  Good for her, bad for us.  Doug will minimally take over her duties, but be polite if he needs help. Mr. Ryan is no longer at this school - he had been waiting for another assignment, but other stuff came up too.  There may or may not be a replacement. If you have concerns about a student being on alcohol or drugs, send a sealed note to the nurse asking the student to be escorted out.  Be delicate.  Neutra tour flyers were distributed. Neutra's son has visitied the school and wants to be included in the modernization project.  April 9th there will be a continuation of the UCLA beautification project.  Rumor of fence is overstated - there will be a fence, but students will be allowed on during nutrition and lunch.  We are getting an e-mail re positive behavior support team.  Next Thursday (the 7th) there will be a one hour after school discussion on beginning to build the master schedule. We will start with a 38 to 1 norm, hoping for better news from the district. David is passing out flyers but they are color copies from color copies so they are hard to read.  CSTs suck, but we have to do them so we may as well make the best of it and try to have the kids do good so that people who judge us by one number based on 8 hours out of the entire school year can be assured that we are a "good" school. A teacher expresses that she is feeling frustrated that she is caring the burden of improving scores and that she wishes that we could share the burden amongst the full faculty.  Even though our math scores are worse than our English scores, the district is funding and prioritizing English right now. David is updating us on upcoming UTLA activities and inviting us to join him on a bike ride on Friday.

We will break into small groups and discuss how we want CST test prep to look, who, what, when, where (don't discuss why - 'cuz you have to do it). Our small group is discussing that we don't mind doing general test taking strategies in ET, but that AR has proven benefit and we should stick with it and that we should do AR April to reinvigorate reading. Content should be taught in the content areas because that person has expertise that the ET teacher may not have.  ET teachers should give the previous year CST scores to the students so teachers can discuss as needed. Teachers have some wicked twisted ideas for how to incentivize buy-in.  Pay students for scores? Bubble This? T-shirts.  Still want t-shirts for 1,000,000 word readers. Still doing free books? We've paid for them, but who is doing it? Group feels books shouldn't have to be AR or academic, should be anything that interests kids. Should spend ET stressing to kids that testing is important because it gets us money and freedom - tell them what is really at stake and encourage them to do a personal best. It would be great if we could get mints for the kids to suck on during testing. Teachers should give treats (smart cookies and other food especially), kids love to eat.

Each of our three small groups are going to share their discussions.  Tina leads the discussion.  I don't know about others, but I am confused about what we are doing now. I guess we are deciding who to send our suggestions to, but I am not sure what will happen then, especially as there isn't department meeting time scheduled until at least after spring break.  It doesn't sound like we are trying to come around to a cohesive action plan that all teachers carry forward and so I am not sure what my personal next step should be. I guess I will just keep on with what I was planning on doing anyhow and preparing as I see fit.  Lots of ideas and directives and few procedures. Asking if people want to do test prep in ET and/ or X period, but I and my group think this is a bad idea. Robin reviewed our ideas from our group and there seems to be consensus on buying mints for kids and teachers can provide non-messy snacks on their own dime. Bubble This shirts got a laugh, but are probably a no-go.  Doug is reviewing the info from his group.  Ahh, the bell.  Me and Pavlov, man.  My brain seems to stop caring right at the bell, like a switch.  Sounds like most of us agree - content in content classes, test taking strategies in ET and mints for all.  Kathy says we will talk in departments, but no department meetings are scheduled, so not sure how that will work.  Joel suggests "Up Yours (test scores)" t-shirts.  Those are funny too.

Accelerated Reader Spring Update

Well, here we are...trickling in slowly. I get to sit with RN and CJ! Yay! Robin is having issues opening her sour patch stick and several are having issues with the Teacher Resource login. (your login is your first initial and your last name; Michele doesn't know your password, but she can reset it for you if you go to visit her). Hmm, does Kaiser do TB tests? Which PD is in this room? Am I a MyData beginner? What Spring Checklist? Where's the sign-in? It is now 1355! Wow.  We apparently need naps.

Michele is now starting. So many conversations :-)

 Remember!! AR April is coming up fast!

ACCELERATED READER HOMEPAGE  

ML is getting a lot of wide-ranging questions about AR from a lot of teachers who may have lost their notebooks. We are trying to get tshirts made for our Million Word Readers! (Can't walk to Borders with Corianne anymore since there isn't a Borders or a Librarian anymore). We are now working on a Circle Map for our 'Daily ET Routine'. Would a Flow Map work better? Can I reset goals midstream?

JR has kids use a Reading Log everyday. RN reads a common book each semester that her ET reads together. She has ET rewards when everyone reaches 50% and 100%. DO takes his ET to the library once a month to make sure that they each have a book. What is the Frame of Reference for this Circle Map - Sustained Silent Reading, increasing literacy rates (FOR = how do we know what we know)...

Where do we build in time to actually use the data created from AR? Do we? Some do, some don't. Those who do - check-in conference-style with students weekly; have students check out their progress toward goals; deleting out of range ZPD quizzes...

We are now using Teacher Resources (use the link above) to view the AR Spring Semester Checklist.  It literally gives you a list of what to do for each month of the Spring Semester.  Some people are adding students that already exist instead of just enrolling them in their ET.  Michele is here to help with that, but get it this year because her position doesn't exist next year! Skipping to March - the goal setting chart is on Teacher Resources - it has the suggested point goal/ZPD for the 5, 10 and 15 week.  Now, log in to AR as yourself and pull up your Spring Diagnostic Report.  Make sure that you select Spring Semester!  There is a key to the Diagnostic Codes on the 2nd page of the Diagnostic Report - Reading Practice. For example, the code A actually means that they haven't  taken a single quiz. Encourage students to read Non-Fiction (those are more challenging).  Robin is an advanced user - she is comparing her student's reading ranges with the books they've actually tested on.  Don't forget to take a look at their Word Count! This is under AR Reports, Other Reading, Word Count to be able to give a shout out to your students who are at 700,000 or better! They are on track to read one million words! Of course, students with disabilities or ELL students will be at a lower word count.

What do we do if students are blocked or locked? Are these the same? They are NOT the same! Blocked means that a student has parameters set that prevent them from taking certain tests. Locked means that they have entered the incorrect password too many times.

Michele is available to help you have kids sign-up for HomeConnect so that you get an email every time they take a test.  If you need to STAR test your ET and you want to do the whole ET at once, check with Michele.  If you don't understand the Reports and such, go see Michele.

Good Reading and Good Luck. Be kind to each other! Peace, out! 

Department Meeting Professional Development

Today, the Ides of March, we met in departments. I'm in Carrie's room for the English department meeting discussing our favorite topic...  wait for it... upcoming SPA!!!  The dates are April 6 - 8 and they are due to the district on the 11th.  We also need to keep in mind that CSTs are coming two weeks after spring break.

History is meeting in 202, math is in 130 or at UNI, science is in 128, PE is in the girls' PE office, ESL is in 104, electives are in 7 and special ed. your in room 221.

The eighth grade English teachers then had the chance to work with Meghan on SDAIE lessons.  Meghan went over the criteria for selecting our classes and we need to design 5 lessons utilizing the Universal Access Lesson Design Template.

Lily, Tiki, Meghan and I all sat down to hash out our first lesson focusing on Response to Lit. We hope to focus on supporting our theses with paraphrasing and quoting literature.  We came up with some language objectives and language forms.  Whew.  We will get together again to complete the lesson template and figure out our next steps. 

Professional Development March 8: Grade Level Meetings

We met in the library and Ms. Gonnella went over the objectives for the grade level meetings. Mr. Contreras is meeting with the special ed. department and the seventh and eighth grade ET teachers are working on common tasks and grade-level activities. Eighth grade then met to get requirements together for regaining eligibility for eighth graders.

In the eighth grade meeting we started with Lily mentioning her ideal situation for undoing the Us situation. There seems to be no resolution to this problem. There is then a debate about the F-C conversion and how eligibility impacts field trips.

We came to the resolution that if a student no longer has Us in classes from first semester they must earn an S or E in order to regain eligibility.

Then there was the discussion of the appeal process and student having a teacher-advocate going into the appeals process.

At tomorrow's panorama picture ET practice, we'll review the culmination requirements and how students can regain eligibility.

SDAIE part III

Okay, so we're back in the library for more PD on Title III Access to Core SDAIE Session after a long day of CST Writing Exam special schedule and AT&T filming on campus. Whew. Busy day, 20 minute periods.

We came into the library after giving in to or resisting chocolate cake for faculty birthdays!

I caught Morrison reading. Awesome.

Meghan got us right in to an activity to review the four critical elements review: comprehensibility, interactions, content, connections. We paired up, one with each of the hour elements to review strategies for each of these four elements. Oakes kept getting candy which was super annoying to me.

After reviewing the four critical elements, we read through the definitions of English Learners Proficiency Levels: Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced. We went over what each of these levels can and can't do, and what they need.

Then we went into a Language Assembly Task. After looking at photos of four different shoes, we wrote about them and then shared our writing. We shared out some entertaining ones, Sharon's brass heel, Mr. Morrison's cowboy boot etc...

We then went into some collaboration around "The Language of Schooling" discussing how we might be more explicit about our use of instructional questions.  By department we discussed what strengths and difficulties we have with SDAIE methodology.

We shared out some of our language functions and that was it!