Cougar Communication: Students Finishing Work and Improved Remind101

Excellence in Education

I’m going to try something new and I hope you’re willing to participate by visiting the blog site and leaving your suggestions by commenting.

At our December faculty meeting each of you asked a question, I’m going to do my best to come up with an answer. Often my “answers” will be stolen from you—strategies that I’ve learned by observing the best teachers in the nation.

When students are assigned work, they often finish at different times. This is especially troublesome at the end of class because the finished students can become distracted.

Students are strategically grouped in groups of 4 with a high, 2 middle, and low student. Students are not permitted to turn their completed work until everyone in the group is done. Students will need to learn and practice how to help and teach instead of simply giving their partners the answers. If there’s still time left in class when everyone is finished, students should practice and quiz other members of their group. Some students will need more structure (make flashcards, for example) while others will do splendidly with little guidance.

Credit for this idea goes to Natasha Marple and Mr. Whitt, who I student taught with. 

Ideas for the Classroom: New Improved Remind101

By now you know I’m a huge fan of Remind101. Well, they’ve added a new feature called Send to a Few. Using this new feature you can send a text to a select subgroup of students (minimum of 3). It still provides all the protections of Remind101 (not sharing your number with students) but allows you to target your message to specific students.

Some examples of how this could be used:

1.     Remind students who are presenting tomorrow of their presentation. Don’t forget to have your presentation ready to go tomorrow. Looking forward to it!

2.     Alert select students to an upcoming deadline. Tomorrow’s the deadline to turn in your essay, please be sure to bring it tomorrow.

3.     As coaches, you can send a message to your captains or select position players. Pitchers, be prepared to stay after practice tomorrow.

4.     Remind students who haven’t turned in permission slips of an upcoming deadline. Don’t forget that all permission slips for our field trip to Richmond are due Wednesday

Here’s a video explaining the new feature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCXvBaLDns

Administrative Notes

You’ve experienced our great edcamps. Wouldn’t you like to share that experience with teachers from other schools? Why not go to an upcoming edcamp?

            March 29: EdCamp Arlington (Washington-Lee HS)

            April 5: EdCamp MetroDC (Stone Ridge School, Bethesda)

I’ve signed up for both. Let me know if you’re interested in going/carpooling. I’ll see if we can get PD/Opt-Out credit as well.

Oh yeah, the organizers of these events often drum up lots of great sponsors with free gifts and prizes!    

Tonight’s #vachat topic is Teacher Leadership. Join us at 8. Use www.tweetchat.com to easily follow and participate.

Stat of the Week

According to famed educational researcher John Hattie, friendships are perhaps the most critical element in a student’s attachment to the school community.

Not surprising, but something we should never lose sight of.

What I’m Reading

Oldie but goodie. Kid President: 20 Things We Should Say More Often

Learning to Think Outside the Box: Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline

A Chart on Summative vs Formative Assessment

Cougar Communication: Google Timer

Cougar Communication

This is a memo-heavy Cougar Communication.

Highlights: Google Timer, Final Positive Referral for the term, some tech ideas to start next term

Ideas for the Classroom: Google Timer

A simple Google trick.

In a Google Search Box: type “Timer x minutes” [enter]. A simple timer will appear and an alarm will sound when time is up.

You can be more specific and include seconds “Timer x minutes x seconds” [enter]

Or you can type in a time. Lets say it’s 9:00 am and you want the timer to go off at 9:15, enter “Timer 9:15” Google will do the math for you and the timer will give you a fifteen minute countdown.

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: http://goo.gl/cZIXm7

If you haven’t already completed HR’s Intent Survey (whether or not you’d like to return to KR next year), please do so by Friday. It’s non-binding. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZDBNRNL

A BIG thanks to all of you who have already completed your optional and anonymous evaluation of me. Lots of great feedback (both the kind that makes me feel good about myself and the kind that helps pinpoint areas of improvement). Here’s the link http://goo.gl/5LCHKm 

I looked back at last week’s Cougar Communication to pull the link and noticed several grammatical errors, so I’ll add that to the improve on this list—I see my mom, an English teacher, wagging her finger at me in shame.

As we start the new term, I wanted to share with you two resources that I had great success with as a teacher.

The first is a parent survey http://goo.gl/f1A3KM and the second is a student interest survey http://goo.gl/V9o9rA . They were both created with Google Forms and automatically go right into a spreadsheet for easy access and follow-up. The links can be added or embedded into BlackBoard too. If you’d like to use or modify, either please let me know.

We’ve had great success with Remind101 (over 500 subscribers in our school account and 130/145 mentors have signed-on). It’s super easy and safe. Another option is Portfoliyo, which allows 2-way communication without sharing your cell number.

I think Mrs. Brill’s email regarding exam exemption was pretty self-explanatory. We’re looking to save paper while also provide the necessary information to our students and parents. Please be sure to distribute the papers to students during homeroom. Like in years past, if a student doesn’t receive the paper, yet is still exempt, that student still doesn’t need to take the exam.

I’ll be meeting with all teachers within the next week or two. Teachers on the comprehensive cycle, we’ll be chatting about your completed goals/standard 7 and a general overview. For teachers on the annual cycle we’ll be discussing your goal setting process.

Growing and Keeping Great Teachers is to the topic of tonight’s #vachat on Twitter. Come on by and join us by either lurking or participating.

Upcoming Schedule

           

January 15^th                  Winter Track @ Kettle Run 4:00 

                                    Girls Basketball vs. Culpeper Home 6/7:30

                                    Boys Basketball @ Culpeper 6/7:30

                                    Wrestling @ Liberty vs. Liberty/Brentsville 6                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                           

January 16^th               THUR Girls Basketball vs. Loudoun Valley 6/7:30

                                    8am faculty meeting

                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                   

January 17^th               Boys Basketball vs. Briar Woods 6/7:30

Swimming vs. Brentsville/Fauquier @ Manassas Park

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

January 18^th              Wrestling @ Handley 8:00

                                    Indoor Track @ Woodbridge 8:00

                                    Girls Basketball vs. Spotsylvania Home 11/12:30

                                    Boys Basketball @ Spotsylvania 12/1:30

Cougar Communication: August 26

Good morning. For those of you who are new to my supervisory, every Monday I send out a Cougar Communication (I couldn’t come up with a catchier name). I use this as an opportunity to share some of the excellent strategies, techniques, and more that I see in my classroom visits. I’ll also try to share other instructional ideas, tech tools and more.

This year, I’ll be posting these on a blog, so that you can always go-back and find any ideas, suggestions, techniques, etc. at a later time. Obviously, I’ll edit out anything that the public shouldn’t know.

My Goals

In the interest of transparency—after all, you’re required to share your goals with me—I’d like to take a minute to share my goals with you. I’ve actually written them in the SMART format, but I’ll save you from having to read all 3 pages of my goals. So, here is the Cliff Note version.

1.     I’ll communicate with and engage parents, students and community on school issues.

2.     I will be a lead learner and instructional leader.

3.     We will grow our collaborative model in our inclusion classes.

4.     Every day I will make a colleague better.

5.     Every day I will make myself a better lead learner.

6.     I will create relationships based on respect, trust and mutual understanding. I will support and engage those with whom I work and always act with the utmost integrity. I will listen and learn.

7.     I will provide timely feedback to all teachers and staff.

8.     I will encourage teachers to go beyond the standards.

9.     I will work with struggling students to improve their academic performance.

Ideas for the Classroom: Parent Engagement Through Remind101 and Portfoliyo

Countless studies prove that increased parent engagement leads to higher levels of student achievement and improved student behavior, regardless of other factors. Parental involvement is the greatest predictor of student achievement. Building relationships with parents requires that we exert the necessary time and effort to communicate openly with parents. Remind101 and Portfoliyo enable teachers to easily communicate with parents and teachers.

Some possible uses/texts?

·      I’ve updated grades on Blackboard.

·      Reminder that the unit project is due on Wednesday.

·      Please be sure to bring your textbooks to class tomorrow.

Remind 101 is a great—FREE—tool that allows you to text/email your students and/or parents in blast fashion. Sign-up is easy. Parents and students don’t see your phone number. You can send your text/emails through an app or using your computer. The only downside to Remind101 is that your students/parents cannot text or communicate with you. We have several school accounts with several hundred of followers.

Last fall, I met Harsh Patel, the founder of porfoliyo.org. Portfoliyo is very similar. Unlike Remind101, followers can communicate with you. It is still secure with users never seeing your personal info. There is no app that I know of at this time and parents cannot sign-up for emails.

Both websites have simple, step-by-step sign-up directions. It only takes a minute.

This might be something that you want to share with parents tonight!

Administrative Notes

Positive Referral Link: Again for those of you who are new, a positive referral is for a student who shows Courage, Character, or Citizenship or embodies our mission.  You can “write” a positive referral for any student (doesn’t need to be in my alphabet).  I’ll call the student who receives the positive referral up into my office, congratulate him/her, give him/her a homemade treat and follow-up with a phone call to the parent. This is a great way of recognizing students and it really means a lot to the student and the parents. Please try to write at least one referral every month. Occasionally, I’ll require a positive referral with a certain theme.

Meet the teacher night tonight from 7-8:15.

Faculty meeting tomorrow after school or Wednesday morning.

Field hockey has home games on Monday and Wednesday. First football game of the year is Friday.

On August 27 at 7pm, Daniel Pink, author of Drive and To Sell is Human, joins #edfocus for a twitter chat. If you’re not familiar with Daniel Pink, Drive is a must read book on motivation. Check out this video explanation http://goo.gl/o5kO . If you’re not familiar with Twitter or Twitter chats, here’s a brief primer http://goo.gl/kTWcQh .

Stat of the Week

ACT reported that 31% of all high school graduates who took their test were NOT ready for ANY college coursework requiring English, science, math or reading skills. The other 69% of students met at least one of the four subject-area standards.

Source: http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2013/index.html