March 21, 2016

Please make a note of the following PLC dates to accommodate STAAR testing and 4th and 5th grade robotics schedule.

5th, 4th and 3rd grade: weeks of 3/21, 4/4, 4/18, 5/2, 5/16

1st, K, and 2nd grade: weeks of 3/28, 4/11, 4/25, 5/9

If there are specific resources you need for your PLC time, please send me an email.

March 7, 2016

CODING*ROBOTICS*EMERGING TECHNOLOGY*ART*THINKING*ENGAGEMENT

Develop your understanding of how to leverage innovative tools and strategies to intentionally target learning objectives and student skills.

June 20-22: When you register, you select your session so your seat is guaranteed. The iCREATE Mini Conference is $50 a day (for ESC 11 Districts) or $125 for all 3 days. **

**Tona can pay for a few registrations - please talk to her if you are interested!

Lego Robotics (Day 1 and 2)

Day 1 Breakouts:

Morning Sessions:

• Circuitry (Little Bits, Snap Circuits, and paper circuits)

• 3D Printing

Afternoon Sessions:

• Entry Level Robots (Ollie from Sphero, Bee-Bot and Cublets)

• Minecraft

Day 2 Breakouts:

Morning Sessions:

• Coding Resources for Elementary
• Microcontrollers (Raspberry Pi)

Afternoon Sessions:

• Coding Resources for Secondary
• Low Tech/No Tech Making

Day 3: Playground Day

Please go to www.esc11.net/iCREATE to learn more!!

Feb. 29, 2016

Recently I have been reading about how to encourage students to ask questions. Interestingly enough, a three to five year old will ask questions constantly, yet by the time they are in late elementary school that has changed.

How do we keep and grow curiosity in our students?

Please take a moment to watch Ramsey Musallam talk about his "3 rules to spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works." His thoughts of sparking curiosity and inquiry learning align perfectly with our goals here @canSTEM!

Check out this amazing TED Talk by clicking on the link below.

3 rules to spark learning

www.ted.com

It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of “pseudo-teaching” to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules to spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works.

Feb. 22, 2016

One of Dr. Newell colleagues recently used a program to extract every word used on the STAAR test for the past 3 years. The words are organized according to their frequency on STAAR tests. Please take time to review your grade level (K-2 please refer to 3rd grade). All grade levels will also look at 5th grade science. We will be using this resource in PLCs to identify words that we need to be more intentional with. Use the tabs at the bottom of the google sheets to toggle between the different grade/courses. THANK YOU DR. NEWELL for sharing this fabulous resource!!!

STAAR Word Frequency Analysis

Feb. 15, 2016

Student Led conferences begin this week. One common concern that many of you have shared is that you want students to be realistic and accurate with their self reflections.

The only way to promote growth is for students and parents to understand an accurate picture of the student’s performance in the classroom. Growth does not happen for all students at the same rate because everyone does not learn the same way!

When we apply the engineering design process in the classroom, we purposefully teach students that the process is so important and to not give up or get discouraged. I really think student led conferences are the Share phase of the engineering design process and it continues to repeat itself.

Imagine: student curiosity, design challenges & daily “I can” statements

Plan: learning content & student goal setting

Design: student work & formative assessments/data

Improve: remediation/extensions

Share: work samples, report cards, parent and student led conferences

This is engineering at it finest-becoming self regulated learners, who do not give up!!

Feb. 8, 2016

This week I have spoken to many of you about student led conferences. As a reminder, one goal of our Portrait of a Graduate is to grow self­-regulated learners. One way we do that is through goal setting, data collection, reflection and student led conferences. I have found several videos that I wanted to share. These videos are just a glimpse into conversations but are by no means an expectation. I thought by sharing these videos, it will help you process and prompt conversations within your teams.

Here is an example of a kindergarten student sharing his goal notebook and data. The powerful point to me was when the family wrote a goal with their child. Promoting teamwork helps bring awareness and responsibility for the parents too.

This video is a teacher that actually walks the parents through “what to expect” at the student led conference. If the student and parents watched this at the beginning of their
conference, they would know exactly what to do ALONG with a personal touch from YOU!

Feb. 1, 2016

INTERACTIVE WORD WALLS

U.CAN on Jan. 25th was a fabulous time of reflection on the work we did with Dr. Julie Jackson. Every conversation was meaningful and the collaboration among our staff made me feel grateful to be working with a group of teachers that are committed to growth, based on researched practices, to help our students. Here are the questions that were used to guide team discussions:

1. Does it contain student generated material?
   
2. What TEKS are being addressed?
   
3. Does it include process skills and/or TEKS verbs?
   
4. Are words arranged to organize learning? (Visual Literacy)
   
5. Is it used by students and teachers to support instruction? To support writing in class?
   
6. Does it include any part of a claim, evidence and reasoning statement?
   
7. Can you tell what stage of the unit of study students are currently in based on the wall development?
   

Please continue to use these questions and invite other staff members to give you feedback. Many of you requested for interactive word walls photos to be uploaded because you did not get to visit all classrooms during UCAN. Please upload them to this folder.

If you have any other ideas of how we can utilize this same type of UCAN process, please share them me.