Slice of the Day

Reflection is one of the most underutilized tools for teacher and student learning and allows metacognitive thinking to take place. Incorporating thinking strategies is “the single most effective way to increase student achievement” (Silver, et al pg 57), thus making metacognition and the reflective process taste that much sweeter to any teacher aiming to promote critical thinking in the classroom. How can you learn from others while teaching? Conducting a “Slice of the Day” is a great way!

To conduct a slice of the day, choose a school period and map out your schedule. @GraysonLawrence and I conducted our “Slice of the Day” during sixth period (A 96 minute period). We stayed in each classroom around seven minutes. We used the slice protocol to create a snapshot to share with teachers in Teacher Academy. Our goal was to show teachers the “Slice of the Day” and give them time to reflect on practice, create goals, and discuss classroom pedagogy that is impactful to student achievement.

@GraysonLawrence and I chose to do a new take on the “Slice of the Day”. We each had a lens of what to be on the lookout for. The only reported information was observable information/data garnered by the lense. His lens was student engagement and my lens was rigorous instruction. Here is what we discovered for each applied perspective:

Rigorous Instruction Lens:

Citing textual evidence
Academic vocabulary from the ACT Aspire in elective courses
Quality question by teachers
Students using content vocabulary in conversation without the teacher present (high expectations present)
Performance tasks (open-ended questions) in ALL content areas
Graphic organizers, such as ACE, in history and elective courses
Number talks in math
Manipulatives used by students to model thinking
Application of Ethos, Pathos, Logos in elective course
Differentiated Small-Group based on student needs
Students using Rubrics to assess their learning

Engagement Lens:

Classroom Managers present and eager to discuss their learning and the learning in the classroom.
Students troubleshooting through assignments together
Students using rubrics in groups to assess learning
Learning Targets posted that show a pathway to learning
Students asking questions about their own learning
Bellringers to start the day
Math Stretches
Students participating in PBL (Project Based Learning)
Blended Learning opportunities for students
Collaboration in Google Docs/Slides

References:

Silver, H., Dewing, R. T., & Perini, M. (2012). The core six essential strategies for achieving excellence with the common core. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

**Small side note about The Core Six Essential Strategies for Achievement Excellence with the Common Core: It is a short read, BUT very transformative!!! I highly encourage you to read and reread it! I have a copy you can borrow anytime! It is not content specific, rather just a focus on effective teaching strategies!

Category: ACT Aspire, Engagement, Metacognition, Project Based Learning, Reflection, Rigor | LEAVE A COMMENT

October 18

Our Journey to Student Portfolios

The following is a blog post written by Assistant Principal, Grayson Lawrence (@graysonlawrence). #Exceptional blog and an #exceptional day of learning!

Teaching and Learning is alive and well at Winterboro High School. Recently, the teachers collaborated with each other to brainstorm about Student Academy and how we can best serve our students. Some reading this blog may remember a previous post last year about Student Academy which with our students, strives to serve the following purposes:

Student Professional Development
Student-engaged assessment
Students learn the language of standards
Students set academic goals
Students monitor progress
Students identify patterns of strengths and weakness
Students become self-advocates
Students access their own work with honesty and accuracy

Students Leading their own learning is something we feel strongly about, and we want to do it in every way possible that is most beneficial to our students. “Student-engaged assessment involves students in understanding and investing in their own growth. It changes the primary role of assessment from evaluating and ranking students to motivating them to learn. It empowers students with the understanding of where they need to go as learners and how to get there. It builds the independence, critical thinking skills, perseverance, and self-reflective understanding students need for college and careers that is required by the Common Core State Standards. And, because student-engaged assessment practices demand reflection, collaboration, and responsibility, they shepherd students toward becoming positive citizens and human beings (Berger, 2014).

What better way to help our students lead their own learning than through a school-wide decision to use student portfolios that will usher in this process from the time they enter the door at Winterboro as a 5th grader, and then leave College and Career Ready as a Senior. We look forward to beginning this process as students take charge of self-monitoring their learning, collecting work samples, developing an online portfolio, tackling the enormous task of reflecting, and holding student conferences utilizing google sites. This is just the beginning, but we anticipate great things to develop throughout our year.

Category: Student Academy | LEAVE A COMMENT

October 16

Tech Tools to Help Creativity Come Alive

Below is a blog post by our Technology Integration Specialist, Emily Nestor (@emilycnestor). #Exceptional job Mrs. Nestor.

Taking notes, listening to lectures, and completing graphic organizers are all expected components of whole group instruction. But it is what we ask students to do with the information gained from these activities that can be the most meaningful and relevant. Providing students with opportunities to transfer and apply their knowledge is a vital part of teaching and learning. In blended learning environment, the utilization of technology can make these opportunities more engaging for students and provide them with learning that is both rigorous and technology rich. One way in which we can achieve this tech rich blended learning is by providing students with tech tools that allow them to not only reflect on their learning, but to also add a level of voice and choice through creating a digital product! Here are some great examples of creation tech tools that could be utilized in all content areas!

Category: Technology | LEAVE A COMMENT

September 11

High Expectations and Growth Mindset

Contrary to popular belief, high achievement isn’t only a byproduct of talent and ability. Other factors, such as our internal beliefs about our skills and abilities can also fuel our success. This is also true of our students. Therefore, it is important that we, as educators, encourage and foster this type of growth mindset in our schools and classrooms. One way in which educators can achieve this is through the setting and maintaining of high expectations for ALL students. These expectations are communicated to students not only through our content related interactions with them, but also through our body language. In her article, ” Do We Really Have High Expectations for All,” Barbara Blackburn suggests that students are very aware of how educators translate their expectations into actions. Therefore, in order for our students to truly have a growth mindset and believe that they are able, then we must treat all students the same when it comes to our expectations and translate these high expectations into action. You may be wondering what this may look like in the classroom. The chart below highlights both body language and content interactions that translate high expectations and serves as a great resource for self evaluation.

Category: Growth Mindset | LEAVE A COMMENT

September 11

Teching Up Formative and Summative Assessment

This blog is written by Emily Nestor (@emlouau). She is the Title 1 Resource/Technology Integration Specialist at Winterboro High School. #Exceptional Blog post Mrs. Nestor!

Assessment is an important component of teaching and learning. The data gathered from both formative and summative assessments help educators to make both long term and short term instructional decisions that will have an impact on student learning. For most, when the word assessment is mentioned a picture of a student taking a long, formal test comes to mind. And although some assessments do look like this, this doesn’t have to be norm for classroom assessments. By adding a little tech to it, educators can apply the same ideology behind an assessment, but make it more appealing and engaging to students! Some of these tech tools, such as Triventy, Quizziz, and Quizalize turn assessments into digital games where students are racing against each other to be the first to answer correctly! Other tech tools like ProProgs Quiz Maker and Google Forms with Flubaroo allow students to take a “traditional” assessments digitally and eliminate the hassle of a having to grade each assessment.

Check our these tech tools a little more in depth below!

Category: ACT Aspire, Formative Assessment, Technology | 1 Comment

September 5

What’s a PLD?

Welcome back! We took a hiatus on the Teacher Academy blog over the summer! We wanted to start Teacher Academy off with a bang this year, modeling teaching strategies through small group instruction. Over the course of the next week or so, we will be highlighting the theme of each group. The first theme was the Performance Level Descriptors or PLD for short. These are rubrics published recently by the ACT Aspire.

Summative Assessments should not be a secret. The data from Summative Assessments, when coupled with appropriate Formative Assessments, should not be a mystery or a surprise. More times than many, when students take the ACT Aspire, the data can be a surprise. This causes much frustration for teachers under this new assessment model. Each year, the ACT Aspire gives morsels of information to aid teachers and students. Some of the information given is to focus on concepts rather than procedures by using the Webb’s Depth of Knowledge Wheel (in particular Levels 2 and 3) and that writing is valued, particularly in constructed responses. Recently the ACT Aspire released the Performance Level Descriptors. You can find them here for each grade tested on the ACT Aspire.

What are the Performance Level Descriptors? This comes straight from the ACT Aspire: “Performance Level Descriptors outline the knowledge, skills, and practices that students performing at any given level achieve in each content area at each grade level. They indicate if the students are academically prepared to engage successfully in further studies in each content area, the next grade’s material and, eventually at the high school level to verify that they are college and career ready.”

How does the ACT Aspire suggest to use them? This comes straight from the ACT Aspire: “PLDs are essential in setting standards. Standard setting panelists use PLDs to determine the threshold expectations for students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary to attain performance levels of “In Need of Support”, “Close”, “Ready”, and “Exceeding ”. PLDs are also used to inform item development, as each test needs questions that distinguish performance all along the continuum.

We encourage the use of the PLDs for a variety of purposes, such as:

Differentiating instruction to maximize individual student outcomes
Completing assessments to help identify target performance levels for individuals or groups of students
Tracking student growth along the proficiency continuum as described by the PLDs.”

If you haven’t checked out the PLD’s, do! I think it is a powerful plan for students and teachers to follow. Students can view the rubrics as a way to hold themselves accountable. Teachers can use the rubrics to develop stronger formative assessments in order to match the summative assessment that students will see at the end of the year.

Category: ACT Aspire, Formative Assessment, Questioning, Small Group Instruction | LEAVE A COMMENT

March 6

Data Walk!

The following post is written by Assistant Principal, @GraysonLawrence! He is paving the way in student professional development, called Student Academy! #Exceptional job Mr. Lawrence!

“Data is not about adding more to your plate. Data is about making sure you have the right thing on your plate.” –Unknown

Data can sometimes be a dreaded word as we discuss its relationship to teaching and learning. I must say, this year has been a fantastic year of looking at Data at WHS. Teachers are continually moving kids by creating action plans for their students and developing villages within the school to move students, or as we tend to say “move mountains.” This past Friday the faculty at WHS collaborated to discuss Data Walk Through WHS. We were excited to take pictures of Data displayed in our classrooms. We noticed that data is presented in many unique ways, but more importantly the central purpose is for growth.

Great discussions were cultivated from the mentor text used at the beginning of the chat. One quote that kept stopping us in our tracks was: “As long as we use assessments/data only as a means to rank schools and students, we will miss their most powerful benefits. We all agree that if we only look at data in such a way it can become frustrating. Should we be the only ones controlling and looking at this analysis? Who else can we coach in the process? Although we continually work to improve student data, another quote from our mentor text sparked more conversations. “ The largest untapped source of potential in any school is, undoubtedly, the students.” What better way to motivate student growth by simply taking time, just a little time, each day to discuss data with students, and charge them with the idea of self-monitoring for growth. We are in the very beginning stages of developing Student Academy with our students, and if proper collaboration in this process, great things can happen and even change the culture of monitoring student data in our school.

The purpose of Student Academy is for our students to do the following:

Student Professional Development

Student-engaged assessment

Students learn the language of standards

Students set academic goals

Students monitor progress

Students identify patterns of strengths and weakness

Students become self-advocates

Students access their own work with honesty and accuracy

This discussion is the begging of what will become future planning of how students can use their digital portfolios being created in Student Academy to be used as a central location for self-assessment and data monitoring in each class every day. We are excited to see this develop within our school culture so we continue moving mountains fostering in our students being as #exceptional as they can be.

Category: Data, Student Academy | LEAVE A COMMENT

February 28

I’m Tech Savvy….What’s Your Superpower?

Below is a blog post by Technology Integration Specialist, Emily Nestor! Thank you, Mrs. Nestor for a great event and an #exceptional day of learning!

Digital Learning Day 2016 was a huge success at Winterboro High School! This year’s theme was “I’m Tech Savvy…What’s Your Superpower?” Prior to Digital Learning Day, Winterboro’s Student Leadership team were assigned a new productivity themed Tech Tool that was not yet being used at WHS. The students worked in teams to create 10 minute fun, engaging, and strategic lessons that were aimed at teaching their new Tech Tool to others. The students even created “I Can” statements that they used to guide their lesson.

During our Digital Learning Day celebration, students, teachers and even parents/visitors were invited to the school’s auditorium where they were able to rotate through the various superheroes themed booths to learn new tech tools. By visiting the Superhero Stations and actively participating, guests were able to earn stickers on their superhero card. At the end of their visit, and if they fill their superhero cards, they were able to trade in their superhero card for a superhero snack! The 12 productivity tech tools that were featured at this year’s Digital Learning Day celebration can be found on the handout below!

Click Here for the Complete List! DLD2016TechTools

Category: Technology | LEAVE A COMMENT

February 10

Tech Tools to Support the 4’C’s

Thank you to guest blogger, Emily Nestor for our PD on the go this week for Teacher Academy! Thank you for your #exceptional model of the 4 C’s at Winterboro High School!

In today’s 21st Century society, the ideal high school graduate is one who can effectively communicate and collaborate with their peers in order to solve problems by thinking critically and creatively. These skills – communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity – are Success Skills that all graduates need in order to be College and Career Ready. Therefore, it is our job as educators to provide students with opportunities to utilize these Success Skills within daily teaching and learning opportunities. One way in which we, as 21st Century educators, can achieve this is through incorporating a variety of technology tools that will allow students to collaborate, communicate, think critically, and be creative! And I know what you are thinking – There are SO MANY Tech Tools out there…. Where do I even start? Well have no fear – I am going to provide you with a bank of Tech Tools that can be used to allow students opportunities to utilize these Success Skills within your classroom!

Critical Thinking: Evaluating, Justifying, Analyzing

Coggle: Mindmapping (can be collaborative)
VideoANT: Annotating videos
Kami: Annotating text

Communication: Speaking (Orally and Written)

Collaborize Classroom: Blogging (with extras like voting, commenting, and different question types)
ScreenCastify: Screen recording (with or without audio)

Collaboration: Working Together (Sharing and Listening)

Tozzl: Group Workspace (chat, file sharing, tasks management)
81 Dash: Group Rooms with chatting and file sharing capabilities, can also be shared to GoogleClassroom with 1 click

Creativity: Brining Ideas to Reality

ToonDo: Make cartoons/comics, characters, books, and also edit images
Pixiclip: Whiteboard that can be recorded

Category: Technology | 17 Comments

February 7

The Power of Time, Pace, and Scaffolding

This week in Teacher Academy, we had a guest teacher, Nancy Clarke, from the Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI). Thank you so much Mrs. Clarke for coming to observe classrooms, plan PD, and highlight some best practices for us to implement and try! The framework of our discussion revolved around the power of time management, pacing students throughout a lesson, and scaffolding students.

The following highlights are a series of questions/statements to remember while planning future lessons:

We as teachers should plan with Blooms but assess with DOK (Depth of Knowledge)
With our DOK assessments, what type of thinking is required?
Tasks in the classroom should be at the DOK 3 Level because DOK 3 level incorporates DOK Levels 1 and 2.
As teachers, we focus on a lot of things and we try to do everything fast. The tasks we plan should have meaning and rigor.
Planning is extremely important. Planning should encompass areas where we anticipate we would have to scaffold.
We must plan where learning could possibly have a breakdown.
The power of time is invaluable.
The use of a timer keeps us on track but also the students on track during scaffolding. It is much easier to Close Read for 6 minutes then it is for 30 minutes.
If your students are having a difficult time turning in assignments, use a timer to help pace their work. Time management for students is a necessary skill to be College and Career Ready.
For more information on Webb’s DOK, click here!

Just a few Teacher Takeaways

Coach Strickland and Mrs. Brown said that their takeaway was starting out her small group lessons with DOK 3 questions then scaffold student learning from that point.
Mr. Studdard and Mr. Gable both stated that their takeaway was the use of a timer. This would allow them to maintain pressure throughout the lesson and help pace students toward completion of desired tasks.

Sentence Starters were also part of discussion amongst teachers. Using sentence starters in the classroom allows students to have appropriate content dialog in the classroom. Sentences starters look different in each classroom. There are millions of different sentence starters to use to frame productive classroom discussions. Share with everyone when you find some that best suits your classroom! Here are a few examples we can use in our classrooms:

Math: Check Out Page 7

ELA: Check out Page 3

Science

Social Studies: Check Out Page 10

Career Technical Education

Category: Metacognition, Pace Through a Lesson, Project Based Learning, Questioning | LEAVE A COMMENT