Even though it feels as if Winter has invaded us earlier than normal this year, I hope you are or were able to enjoy a nice weekend. We'll certainly have a different week ahead of us than what we have grown accustomed to so far this year. I appreciate all of the time and thought you put into how an extended virtual learning experience could play out for you and your students, and I'm sure we will learn many things over the course of the week ahead.
Moving to Virtual Learning in the Middle School
In the week ahead, the decision was made to move only the Middle School to a virtual learning model. At the end of the week, we found ourselves in a similar situation to what the High School faced a few weeks ago in terms of positive cases that we learned of for a couple of our students. None of the students of concern were in school during a time when they were contagious, and we continue to see no evidence of spread in school, despite the increase in cases in the county and or state. That speaks well to the efforts of everyone to adhere to our safety expectations.
The purpose for the pause in our "in-person" model is to give at least a week to analyze the trends in the spread of the virus with our student population. Please share any details of illness that you hear from your students this week. We'll continue our diligence in tracking symptoms, monitoring test results, and using that information in our planning this week as if it was any other week.
Resource of the Week
We are sure to learn a lot this week as we teach our students in a different format. The article this week provides some tips to increase engagement for your students in the online environment.
"8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom" - Emelina Minero
Teaching Online Sessions
I wanted to re-share a couple of takeaways from our October Staff Meeting in terms of effective teaching strategies.
-Be purposeful with each minute you have with students online
-Greet each student by name at the beginning of your time together
-Set "Agreements" or "Norms" for what your expectations are in your online learning environment (i.e. everyone on mute while teacher is talking, chat feature is for..., how to volunteer, etc.)
-Finding effective, manageable ways to solicit student understanding, and engage students in discussion
We'll plan to start keeping track of attendance in the same way we have been...marking students absent based on their attendance to the first Homeroom meeting of the day. We can adjust to taking attendance for core classes if it seems that would make more sense...we'll be discussing more as the week goes on.
End of Quarter 1
The end of the quarter is on Friday (10/30). Grades will be due by the end of the day on the following Wednesday (11/4), as we'll begin printing and mailing report cards home on Thursday morning. We'll use comments this year to provide feedback to students and their families about their performance in your class...not to highlight what was learned in the past quarter. Let me know if you have any questions.
Advisory Tool in Infinite Campus
Thanks to Mrs. Mrnak for sharing information about how to use the Advisory Tool in Infinite Campus. It has helped her to communicate with students about their progress in a more efficient manner.
https://www.loom.com/share/1727cb22dd5a4134a92a6d6c335e3ea3
Google Resources (Thanks Mrs. Rogness!)
Julie shared a doc on Friday with a number of resources she has been using or has learned about recently. I wanted to share as well. Thanks Julie.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-tlmmbKqjI4TjGs7KJGI-iXs6o_-vL5FgRFXXmaHF6U/edit?ts=5f91d56c
Improving Writing Instruction
Thanks to Mrs. Morrissey for providing our resource this week. Helping students to improve their writing is critical, and the more efficient we can be at it, the better. The resource this week shares common mistakes made in teaching writing, and what can be a better focus.
"5 Common Mistakes Teachers Make in Writing Instruction & How to Fix Them"
Colleen Cruiz from the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project, recently shared the most common mistakes in writing instruction and their fixes. These mistakes come from a place of good, but hinder our students from reaching their true writing potential. Here are the top 5 mistakes from her research, and how to remedy them:
1. Making and sticking to backyard rules: Ever had special or added rules to playing tag with friends when you were younger? Writing examples of backyard rules can be anything from banning specific words (said is dead) or requiring a minimum number of sentences for it to count as a paragraph. While we are trying to get student volume to increase in reality we are decreasing opportunity. Sometimes said is the right word to use, sometimes you see a Pulitzer prize-winning author’s piece has a one-sentence paragraph, and sometimes you should use I in a piece of writing.
The Fix: Teach students about the audience and purpose for their writing rather than setting arbitrary rules.
2. Dragging out units: Often if we aren’t comfortable with a unit, or we feel it isn’t going well, our instinct is to slow it down. That often makes you feel like the unit is dragging on forever, and you and your students hate it by the end.
The Fix: When we struggle with something, the more we go through it the better we will get at it. Go through the unit quickly, and then cycle through it again at another time. The more times you (and your students) go through the unit, the better it will feel, and more understanding will come.
3. Giving feedback students can’t use: When a students’ work is riddled with comments or feedback is way outside of their zone of proximal development, a student can quickly feel overwhelmed. The result is the student not doing much revising.
The Fix: Only give feedback that encourages growth. Evaluative feedback doesn’t encourage significant growth. Instead, think about giving feedback like a video game. Video games give you little pieces of feedback more frequently and where you are to help you keep moving forward.
4. Creating Unnecessary Obstacles: These mistakes can be the rule that students can’t move onto typing up their draft until you have looked at it, to color-coding all revisions, or requiring several drafts before they can turn in a final copy. This makes the students too reliant on you. Often you might see students asking the teacher what to do next or some students not finishing their work at all.
The Fix: If you see that students aren’t finishing their work or constantly needing you to move them to the next step, then take a look to see what unnecessary obstacles might be in their way and remove those barriers.
5. Teaching the writing, not the writer: As teachers, we can become attached to specific writing projects. Doing so, we end up spending more time teaching about that specific writing project rather than the skills of writing.
The Fix: Instead of focusing on the specific project, and the pieces the students need to do for that project, think of the transferable skills. What can you teach them today that they can use ANYTIME they are writing?
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