Middle School Principal's Meeting

Hans and I gave a SBG&R overview at the middle school principal PLC meeting yesterday.  It went pretty well.

Hans and I had a few ideas on the way back to school:
1) Perhaps we should make ourselves available to pre-service educators to talk about SBG&R, because...
2) We talked about how the research is decided about the fact that SBG&R is the way to go, so why don't more teachers/schools use it?  Because we not taught about grading and systems are handed down by tradition.  Therefore pre-service education is the one way to break the cycle.

Perhaps we should make a class about it . . .

Do other people have ideas about why grading methods are so hard to change?

Study of the week Feb 16th

Sorry there has been a delay, but I'm back!

This week we look at Competency-Based Learning.

Short article, here are the highlights.

1. In a forward-looking move, New Hampshire passed a law allowing students to receive credit for individualized learning experiences that bring the learning to life for them.
2. The move is from seat time to proof of learning based on students' needs and interests.
3. Teachers and schools are embracing this slowly but surely, and there is concern for teacher workloads if this continues to expand.
4. Anecdotes provided in article.

How is what we're doing with EL (or in the district) supporting or hindering this kind of learning?  What kinds of kids do you see this working for?

TMP-TT

Literature Study January 22, 2011

This week's article study is on using new literacies to teach writing in secondary schools.

Sweeny, Sheelah M. (2010). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Vol 54 Issue 2, p121-130


Highlights of the study:

• Relates ELA standards to Technology standands.
• Many students are already experimenting with "new" online communication (especially for creative and collaborative purposes and self expression) and the key is translating that experimentation into useful skills for learning.
• Suggested strategies for using technology for writing (from the piece):

1. Using songs (from an iPod, etc) to set a mood for a writing piece (immersion into emotion),
2. Using the internet to find a painting that has an untold story,
3. Internet workshops for collaborative writing,
4. Receiving mentorship from authors, and
5. Learning how to critique their and others' papers

• When students post their work online it goes from an audience of one (teacher) to many (the world).
• Text messaging as a paraphrasing tool.
• Twitter as a means of building community.
• Social sharing of content creates positive peer pressure to do a good job.
• Students still take it seriously as they understand the different roles.
• Teens who have their own blogs tend to be prolific writers.
• Wikis and cloud computing are good good options for housing community knowledge or a collaborative writing piece (the author suggests assigning members specific roles).
• When using new technology in the classroom we must do two things:

1. Expect to make mistakes.  Make sure you learn from them, and
2. Remove distinctions that you might have about in-school technology and out-of-school technology.

What do you think?

Midwest Leadership Follow-up

If you're went to the retreat in Chicago and want to talk, here is a meeting spot.  Hope your commitments are going well!

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Literature Study January 16, 2011

Been a tough week for those of us at Open World Learning Community.  Sorry no updates (not that anyone is currently reading them anyway) but I've been busy in meetings.  This weeks study is about developing relationship with students who are frequently suspended.  I know, not an issue many of us deal with (all of our kids are angels), but some people out there may need this.  Here we go:


Gregory, Anne and Ripski, Michael B. (2008) "Adolescent Trust in Teachers: Implications for Behavior in the High School Classroom." School Psychology Review 37(3). pp 337-353.

Article's review of literature:

• Suspensions vary a lot by teacher, study designed to figure out what the teachers who don't suspend students a lot do differently
• High rates of suspensions correlate with high rates of other bad things (incarceration, drop-out, etc.)
• Defiance, disrespect, and disobedience cites as most likely causes and Black students are disproportionally suspended suggesting that fixing this issue would help the achievement gap.
• Adolescent view of the legitimacy of the person in authority affects how the student responds to that person.
• A review of different strategies (including PBIS) and their relative effectiveness.
• Trust is important in all the other relationships throughout a building, a well-researched idea, why not trust between teacher and student (focus of study)?

Study Aspects:

• Most students in suspension in this study were Black males
• Most teachers in study were white females
• Two types of teachers were invited to participate in the study - teachers who referred large numbers of students and teacher nominated by the suspended students as teachers they got along best with.

Results:

• 15 of the 17 teachers nominated by the students used the relational approach to discipline.
• Teachers who report using the relational approach have less defiant behavior because students have trust in the teacher's authority.  The students saw themselves as more cooperative in these classes.
• In situations where adolescents are unclear about the intents of the authority figure, trust in the authority figure helps the students to not read hostility into the other's actions.
• Teacher who use the relational approach to discipline can detect early student disengagement and intervene early enough to limit disruption, as well as tailor strategies to students when larger disruptions do occur.
• Teachers that had greater suspension problems focused on structure and organizational mechanisms to maintain classroom order, which helps students stay on task and do better work, but may need to be augmented by relational strategies to help those students who work outside of this order.
• It may be that the relational approach is more important for Black students than other types of students as others (Whites and Asians in this study) assume the best intentions of their teachers.

What do the results of this study mean for you and your practice?

Literature Study January 8, 2011

Title:	Getting It Right: Building a Bridge to Literacy for Adolescent African-American Males
Personal Author:	Boone, Jennifer; Rawson, Casey; Vance, Katy
Journal Name:	School Library Monthly
Source:	School Library Monthly v. 27 no. 2 (November 2010) p. 34-7

Above is the article reference for the summary below:


Highpoints:
1) A summary of statistics about the need for literacy for this population.
2) Engaging this population with books by authors that are black isn't enough, we have to do the following:
     A) View academic success as a possibility and expect it.
     B) Confront and contradict stereotypes.
     C) Have students work collaborative with challenging texts
     D) Select text purposefully.
     E) Use appropriate teaching techniques to address the issues of this population.
     F) Do whatever it takes to reach out to this population, some suggestions listed in article.


What do my readers think?  As reading amongst our African American boys is one of our biggest problems I thought this might get some responses.


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Math Remediation

Why do we expect the same growth results in math and reading when we throw so much more money at reading?  I guess it is just because math teachers are better!