What An Exciting Week!!!

This week has been an exciting week.  STAAR scores came in and the results were great.  Congratulations to you for your hard work.  There were gains in every area which says a lot about the preparation and execution of the plans that you developed.

Last night, TPS had its annual M & M program in the coliseum.  As a first time attendee, it was amazing.  Christy Lister and Donna Toon did a fantastic job preparing five grade levels of students to perform for the community.  The student speakers were very polished.  The students entertained the crowd, and the campus faculty did a fantastic job supporting the Christy and Donna with organization.

The moral of the story is this.  When everyone works together to achieve a common goal of excellence (STAAR or M&M), students will always rise to the occasion and meet the goal.  I put together a quick video to illustrate the concept of what you have done this year to meet your excellence goals.

May is Mirror Time (Time to Reflect) 

Reflection is the most important yet most overlooked stage of change.  Think of it this way.  When the power is out when you begin getting ready for work, there is no light; thus, no opportunity to look in the mirror before leaving for work.  Without the opportunity to 'reflect' on the work you have done getting ready to look presentable, you stand a strong chance of showing up to work with one brown shoe and one black shoe.  Your hair could be sticking up in the back.  Your collar could have one side buttoned and one unbuttoned (sadly that happens to me even when the power is on.).  Without reflecting on the work you did this year, there is a strong chance that you may forget about the one strategy that had the greatest impact on kids.

In progressive organizations, systems exist where reflection happens frequently.  The more frequent that staff members work together to examine their products and the processes that created them, the more progress can be made.  Reflection offers opportunity to tweak, revamp and even replace ineffective actions.  When we reflect, efficiency expands as effectiveness becomes exponential. 

CLICK HERE for a Google Doc to guide your reflection.

STAAR Update for 2015-2016

I attended the curriculum directors meeting in Kilgore this week, and there was lots of  information to share with you about upcoming training and information that you need to know about STAAR.  I'll keep it brief.

• Grades 3-8 Math STAAR will be completely over the new standards.  There will not be an overlap test (testing new and old TEKS)
• Grade 5 & 8 Math will NOT be under SSI, but 5 & 8 reading will be under SSI for next year only.
• Lead4Ward will be releasing new documents around June 1 to help us prepare for Math STAAR.
• All STAAR tests except math need to prepare to have kids passing at Phase-In Level 2 in 2015.
• CLICK HERE for 3-8
• CLICK HERE for EOC
• STAAR Math tests will only receive raw scores in 2015, and we won't know the passing standards until January 2016. (insert collective sigh)
• Region 7 is looking for teachers (in all content areas) who want to collaborate with other teachers from other districts on various topics.  They will be creating cohorts of teachers who will collaborate using face-to-face and virtual tools (Google Hangouts, etc.).  As information comes to me, I'll share with you.

Celebrate Excellence

This week, I'd like to highlight some cool things happening in the area of technology integration.  If you are creating some cool tech integration products that you'd like to share with everyone, SEND ME AN EMAIL

From Cindy Haston:

THS students are experimenting with blogging as a way to share ideas and improve their writing skills.  In Mr. Galloway’s English III class, students created a research blog to record their thoughts as they go through the research process. (see picture below)   In English IV, Mrs. Turner’s students create their own adventure travel blog based on characters from  The Canterbury Tales.