Sharing Rubics and Models, Buncee

Cougar Communication

Excellence in Education: Sharing Criteria (Rubrics) and Models

As a teacher I was sometimes reluctant to share students models of excellent work for fear that they would simply copy the previous work. Truthfully little thought went into this poor decision and eventually I saw the light and shared student work from previous terms. I used the student work to demonstrate various performance levels by comparing it to the rubric (or having students evaluate it with the rubric). Recently, I’ve seen several teacher do a much better job than I ever did by using the same student examples and the criteria throughout the unit to help students better understand high-quality work.

Doing so benefits the students and learning. Even the best-written rubric may not be clearly understood by students. By sharing the rubric and work examples, students are more likely to know the desired criteria and will be able to set goals for their work. It takes the guessing out of the work, allows students to self-assess and will ultimately rid the teacher of having a student exclaim, “I don’t understand why I only got a B on this project.”

Tech in Education: Buncee

Buncee is a web-based creation tool that allows teachers and students to incorporate multimedia onto a shareable digital canvas.

1. It allows you to record audio straight into the canvas or alternatively you can upload it.
2. Easily embed links to other sites
3. You can add multiple canvases (slides)
4. Works great with YouTube videos
5. Simple interface and use
6. You share your canvases through Social Media posts or email
7. Integrates well with Social Media, so you can add/upload from Social Medi

Possible uses:

1. Student or teacher presentation
2. Using it to flip your lesson with lots of multimedia
3. You can create a teacher dashboard which enables you to add students and to submit work to your Buncee Dashboard. Doing so creates a very friendly student dashboard as well.

Administrative Notes

Grades are due March 25 at 8am.

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/s0KXRB

Work Order Request Form: http://goo.gl/H7hFwK

Comment Box: http://goo.gl/forms/KAHNoGf5D2

Some upcoming dates:

April 18: Prom (Chaperones needed)

April 30: Honor Breakfast (Top Decile)

May 17: Scholarship Banquet

May 18: Senior Picnic

May 26/27: Now sent in stone: Senior Exams

May 29 @ 6pm: Graduation

Some upcoming edcamps (opt-out credit can be earned):

May 9: Edcamp MetroDC (Potomac, MD)

April 18: Edcamp Delaware (Wilmington)

Still waiting for more info about Edcamp MetroDC and Edcamp95 (Virginia/Prince William maybe)

Worth Your Time

Finland schools: Subjects scrapped and replaced with 'topics' as country reforms its education system: An interesting artcle about reforms to Finland’s education system in which they are moving away from subject-based teaching

How Teenage Brains are Different

TEDTalk : 3 Rules to Spark Learning from a high school chemistry teacher   

Image of the Week

Plickers

Excellence in Education: Plickers

In the past I’ve shared several digital tools (Socrative, PollEverywher, Kahoot) that are great for formative assessment. But what if the students don’t have a device or if the Internet is limited?

Enter Plickers.

Before I explain Plickers, one other reason to use it instead of other digital tools: there’s no waiting for students to log-in on a computer or their device.

Plickers uses a teacher’s device and a series of QR codes that you print out for your students to create a student response system. After downloading and printing a series of cards, each student is assigned one card. Each card can be turned in any of four orientations (A-B-C-D).

When you have a question for students to answer, you simply ask each student to hold up his/her card in the correct orientation (just like using a whiteboard) and quickly scan the cards. A bar graph of the student responses is instantly created. 

Some advantages to Plickers:

• Because each student code is unique, students don’t know who got the answer right or wrong.
• You can create a demo or saved class. Demo classes are quick and easy. A saved class means that you take the time to create a class and assign each student a card. The latter allow you to see how each student responded to the question.
• Only 1 device is needed
• Scanning is easy. Essentially, you can just take your device from one side of the room to the other. You don’t need to scan each individual card.
• It works great with Cooperative Learning Strategies such as Thinking Pairs, Numbered Heads Together, Showdown and more.
• Great for formative assessments and pre-assessments
• Provides students with timely feedback enabling them to gauge their understanding
• Can easily be used for “concept-testing” where students commit to an answer before learning, making the students more engaged and curious about the outcome (the lesson) 

http://youtu.be/bejiz2HzUz8:  For more info on Plickers 

Administrative Notes

First marking period was quite discombobulated, but we made our way through it. I know it was difficult staying positive and getting into the flow, but your professionalism, adaptability, and perseverance enabled us to “weather” the storm(s). Hopefully, the winter weather is behind us. In talking to the students, it became clear that many teachers made use of BlackBoard and other means to continue teaching while students were not in school. If you’re interested in creating screencast of lectures, Brian has installed some software on a couple of computers that enables you to do this. Additionally, of course, there are several free screencasting programs. If you’re interested, please let Brian or me know.

As a general reminder, please be sure to contact families of any students with D’s or F’s. As a whole we’ve received tremendous feedback from families about how teachers have been phenomenal at using BlackBoard to update grades, but the sad truth is that for many of our struggling students, their parents are not as engaged and don’t check BlackBoard (I think this can also be said of the students themselves). A phone call goes a long way towards increasing parent engagement.

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/s0KXRB

Work Order Request Form: http://goo.gl/H7hFwK

Comment Box: http://goo.gl/forms/KAHNoGf5D2

Some upcoming dates:

April 18: Prom

April 30: Honor Breakfast (Top Decile)

May 17: Scholarship Banquet

May 18: Senior Picnic

May 26/27: Senior Exams

May 29 @ 6pm: Graduation

New Marking Period Dates:

                  March 20: End of MP 2

                  No ½ days or exams

Some upcoming edcamps (opt-out credit can be earned):

March 21: Edcamp Arlington http://edcamparlington.org/

                    Edcamp RVA (Richmond)

April 18: Edcamp Delaware (Wilmington)

Still waiting for more info about Edcamp MetroDC and Edcamp95 (Virginia/Prince William maybe)

What I’m Reading

10 Tips for Increasing Student Engagement

Talk A Mile A Minute: A Great Vocabulary Learning Strategy that Engages Students

Classroom Strategies for Helping Depressed Teens

Quote/Visual of the Week

Children learn the most from struggling with complex tasks and making mistakes, not from mastering easy tasks.

Student Self-Monitoring and Warm/Cool Feedback

Excellence in Education: Student Self-Monitoring

As we’ve expanded our RTI procedures to over 20 students receiving intensive support, I’m proud to say we’re having success! While there are a multitude of reasons for increased student achievement, one that I believe is something that all teachers use in their classes is a form of student self-monitoring. Various research (Hattie, Brookhart, Wiliam, Marzano) all prove that the self-reporting is a high-impact strategy. Simply providing students with structures and tools such as logs, graphs, charts, etc. to reflect on their success equates to higher quality learning. When students are involved in monitoring their own progress, research indicates that they are more attuned to their academic performance and are more engaged in their own learning by developing a growth mindset.

Excellence in Education: Warm & Cool Feedback, Peer Editing of Document-Based Questions

While this video is for World History DBQ’s, it could be applied to any peer-editing process.

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/s0KXRB

Work Order Request Form: http://goo.gl/H7hFwK

Comment Box: http://goo.gl/forms/KAHNoGf5D2

Some upcoming dates:

April 18: Prom

April 30: Honor Breakfast (Top Decile)

May 17: Scholarship Banquet

May 18: Senior Picnic

May 26/27: Senior Exams

May 29 @ 6pm: Graduation

May 29 (full day) and  June 1: Exams (as it stands now)

New Marking Period Dates:

                March 20: End of MP 2

                No ½ days or exams

Some upcoming edcamps (opt-out credit can be earned):

March 21: Edcamp Arlington http://edcamparlington.org/

                    Edcamp RVA (Richmond)

April 18: Edcamp Delaware (Wilmington)

Still waiting for more info about Edcamp MetroDC and Edcamp95 (Virginia/Prince William maybe)

What I’m Reading

Last week I talked about the 2x10 approach for challenging students and several teachers asked about it. Here’s a link for more information.

Recent High School Grads Are Not Prepared for College or Career

Twelve Ways to Empower Student-Driven Learning

Lawmakers Look to Rein In Alternative (Special Education) Diplomas

  

Quote of the Week

Hannel and Hannel (1998, 7), student engagement “should not be optional…. Students come to school to learn, and when they are in school they do not have the right not to learn. Students are undertrained not underbrained.”