4th Week of January

January is over and February is upon us.  Be sure to look at the testing calendar (Testing Calendar Tab is above) to make sure you're aware of all testing dates that apply to you.  Also check out the CIA Resources tab for links to help you prepare for STAAR.  Here are some links of interest pertaining to STAAR & TELPAS.

• STAAR-A Student Tutorials and Teacher Resources 
• TELPAS Reading Released Tests

DOK 3 your Tech Integration
If you're familiar with the Rigor and Relevance Framework by Bill Daggett of ICLE, you know that the goal of instruction is to take students to the highest levels of knowledge in real-world unpredictable situations.  Eric Sheninger, senior fellow with ICLE has added technology applications and products to get to the highest levels of DOK.  The tweet below from David Geurin illustrates where we want instruction to go with respect to DOK 3 and tech-integration.

 

David Geurin‏@DavidGeurin

Rigor relevance adaptation for technology @E_Sheninger #digilead

Collaboration - Aligned Discipline
Collaboration isn't about teaching, and it doesn't happen once a week at the team meeting.  Collaboration is about guaranteeing learning, and it happens every time we interact and learn from our colleagues.  Sometimes, the biggest barrier to learning is discipline.  Let's face it.  Every educator struggles at some point throughout the year with student discipline, and when we struggle ensuring learning for every kid, what do great educators do?  We look to one another for support.  If you think about it, when we respond to academic failure, administrators and teachers work together to address the issues that prevent learning.  The same principle should apply to our response to student behavior since it too affects learning.

School-wide rules are designed to set the stage for student success, but they are most effective when grade level or department level teams align their commitment to enforce school rules and procedures.   If you're struggling with a student's behavior or classroom behavior as a whole, I encourage you to collaborate with your teammates.  Everybody has successful strategies and ideas to address student behavior, and we should share those strategies with one another.  We're all in this together, and we all can support one another to ensure that classroom behavior supports our vision of "Excellence for All".

Jacob Knight and his
completely functioning
mini wind turbine.
Source: Jessica Rymel
THS Ag Teacher

College & Career Readiness

Competition is College & Career

Congratulations to the TMS UIL Academic team.  Two weeks ago, the team placed 3rd at the district meet.  We are proud of all of our coaches and participants for making this great showing.

The THS UIL Speech and Debate Team (plus Ready Writing) had a good weekend at the Whitehouse Invitational two weeks ago.  Geissel Garcia broke to finals and placed 3rd overall in LD Debate. Doug Smith took home 5th overall in Ready Writing (at his first meet!).

Student Leadership is College & Career

For School Board Appreciation Month, TES Student Ambassadors hosted a breakfast for our board members in appreciation for their hard work.  Student leadership is essential for success in life and TES is doing a great job preparing students in the area of leadership.

When we incorporate student leadership into our classrooms, students learn the value of collaboration and team work.  How do students lead in your classroom?

TIP (Tech Integration Pic) of the Week
by Cindy Haston
Students in Dr. Vilia Payne's Advanced Physics class are working on tutorials to teach 5th grade science TEKS to TES students.  In collaborating and creating the videos, the students had to think deeply about the science concept and how best to present it to the 5th graders.  On completion of the project, the videos will be posted to a blog so that the elementary students can post comments or questions to the high school students

3rd Week of January

DOK - How we respond when they fail to learn.

The first semester is over and some kids passed while others didn't.  Failure is a part of the learning process, but accepting failure shouldn't be.  How we respond to failure tells us if we truly believe in our vision, "Excellence for All" and our motto, "Where Every Child is Special".  If we believe in all kids, then we must also believe in our ability to work as a team to see those statements come to fruition.

There are 2 reasons that kids fail to learn.  There are kids who can't do the work, and there are kids who won't do the work.  When we can identify if this is behavioral issue (won't) or an academic issue (can't), we must work to isolate the root cause for their inability to demonstrate learning.  Here are a some questions that will help you isolate the root cause of failure.

Can’t	Won’t
Are they missing academic skills that are needed to help them learn? Does the student have a history of failure? Do they lack vocabulary or reading skills? What teaching style matches their learning style? (Kinesthetic, Auditory, Visual) What strengths does the student have in respect to learning the content?	Does the student have a history of persistent behavior problems? Is the student avoiding the learning task? Is the student seeking attention? Does the student lack organizational skills? Are there emotional or social issues? What behavioral strengths does the student possess?

With answers to these questions, you can begin to determine what can be done to change the conditions for learning.  By changing the conditions for learning, we can improve the chances that failure will transform into success.


Don't Give Up
These kids are counting on us, and I know that it is hard helping kids overcome failure.  To help you focus on not giving up on a child, read this.  "7 Things to Try Before You Give Up On A Student" http://t.co/nzQYdRKOmz via @pernilleripp 

Collaboration

Think of collaboration time as time for collective growth with your colleagues.  If we are learning with and from our colleagues, then we can find new ways to better help all students learn.   "The Growth Mindset – Not Just a Kid Thing" is a cool little piece that I found to help me focus on my own personal growth and development. I think you will find it beneficial as well.

College & Career Readiness - What's your College Knowledge?
Here are a few questions to ask yourself about college.

• What does a student need to do to be able to go to junior college in Texas?
• Earn a high school diploma and apply to the school.
• In Texas, the student must pass the TSI test to be able to take college courses.  They can be exempt from taking the TSI by earning a 4000 on their STAAR EOC in English 2 and Algebra 1.  If they make a certain score on  PSAT, SAT, or ACT, they can also be TSI exempt.  
• Which test is better for a 4 year university, SAT or ACT?
• It depends.  If a student is stronger mathematically, then ACT is a better test for that student.  If he is strong in language, then SAT is the way to go.  However, some schools place a heavier emphasis on one test over the other.  As your student becomes interested in a university, research the school to see which test they prefer students to take.
• Also, some schools don't require the writing portion of the ACT test.  Find out what scores the school looks for in their application process, and plan accordingly.
• What role does student participation in organizations play in the application process for college?
• A well-rounded student is what schools want.  A student who participates in school clubs and organizations is good, but to be a more attractive applicant, schools want students who have been leaders of or have accumulated honors through the organization.  Membership is important, but active participation increases an applicant's value.

TIP (Tech Integration Pic) of the Week

by Kristen Sweeney

The fourth graders at TES are using the app, Explain Everything. They are drawing pictures of polygons, including quadrilaterals. They are labeling parallel and perpendicular lines as well as specific angles. The great part about this app is that students can also record themselves talking about each shape and use their drawings as a slide show.  The app allows students to insert text, draw pictures, insert pictures and make neat slides to show the depth and complexity of their thinking.

2nd Week of January

DOK - Are your Questioning Strategies Effective?
TEA has created a website called the Revised Math TEKS for Grade K-8.  This is a resource that you and parents can use to help students reach high levels of rigor.  If you scroll down to the "Such As" link, it will give you a better picture of how the TEKS should be taught and will be assessed.

Special Note - There are also links of interest for HIGH SCHOOL.

Questioning Strategies
High level questions are critical to ensure that rigor is in your instruction, but the determination of whether or not students are reaching DOK 3 does not lie solely in the questions you ask.  It also depends on the answers to these 2 questions:

• What percentage of students are successfully answering these questions?
• What percentage of students are asking DOK 3 questions?

In order to reach DOK 3 in our instruction, it depends on what the students do with the rigorous questions that you ask.  Drop a comment below if you have a successful strategy that is getting all or most of your kids to successfully answer or ask DOK 3 questions.


Collaboration
Collaboration is not just what happens during your collaboration time but also what happens outside of it.  Collaboration is about personalizing your own learning to be better at something you are passionate about or improve on a personal area of difficulty.  Personalized learning is concept in which educators use technology resources and colleagues to work on an area of that would like to improve on.  When we select an area for growth and develop a plan to ensure growth occurs, students always win.  Below is a infographic that I found on Twitter that shows the results of educators engaged in personalized learning.  When we all are learning, we all are improving the learning for our students.



College & Career Readiness
We are excited to report that we have purchased a new software program called Career Cruising.  This software will help our students not only select a college and career pathway, but it will help parents, teachers and students define what students must do in school now to be prepared to enter their college and career pathway of choice.  Students will be able to register themselves for classes online and develop their own Personal Graduation Plan (PGP) online.



TIP (Tech Integration Pic) of the Week

by Cindy Haston

Students in Kevin Grace's English II honors class are competing in CSPAN's student documentary project StudentCam.  StudentCam is C-SPAN's annual national video documentary competition that encourages students to think critically about issues that affect our communities and our nation.  The theme this year is "The Three Branches of Government and You" and students must combine CSPAN footage of national leaders discussing current events with local video describing the impact of these global issues on our community. 
Students participating in the competition must complete regular class work on their own time so that they can use class time to collaborate with peers on creating their videos.  Students also meet and work outside of class time to get interviews and other footage required for their videos.

The documentaries are due January 20th.

1st Week of 2015 - Happy New Year

I hope each of you had a restful and rewarding Christmas break, and I hope that the start of 2015 has been a pleasant one for you.  As you come back, I want to remind you of how much power you have to change the trajectory of a child's life.  What you do each and every day has the potential to transform children, (no matter their background or history), into amazing and productive human beings.

Inspiring and Motivating  kids to believe in themselves and their potential is how you remove the 

I & M from impossible.

Testing Calendar - Don't forget to put testing dates into your calendar.

DOK - Using the SAMR Model to get to Level 3

Exit Ticket aligned to SAMR

Collaboration

What is the purpose of collaboration?  To be meaningful, the purpose of collaboration should be to work with and learn from your colleagues.  For that to occur, we should all take turns leading the learning for our peers.  In other words, everyone has expertise, and if that expertise is helping kids grow in their learning, then we are morally obligated to share our expertise with others.

A perfect example of being a Lead-Learner is Teresa Nelson, TPS kindergarten teacher.  In Monday's professional development day, Teresa volunteered to lead the learning of her fellow kindergarten teachers on the topic of using their new interactive Mimio bars.  What made this collaboration special is that Teresa saw a need and took the initiative to prepare training for her peers about this fantastic technology.  If we believe in "Excellence for All", then we all must view collaboration as our opportunity to help our peers guarantee "Excellence for All" by teaching peers our successful strategies and by constantly learning from one another.

On Jan 5, TMS & THS honors teachers
collaborated on ways to motivated unmotivated
students via a Webshop through Region 7

College & Career Readiness

Are you looking for enrichment ideas in 2015?  Then why not engage kids in finding out what careers are aligned with their strengths and interests?  Every student has a potential career inside them.  They just need the perfect learning opportunity to discover where their strengths could lead them.  Check out this website to orient your students or your own children toward careers that are aligned to their strengths  and interests.   TexasGenuine.org

TIP (Tech Integration Pic) of the Week

STEM article - Tinkering is Serious Play via ASCD

Canva - Check out what my Kids Created on Canva

Student Communication

Communication to students about learning targets is extremely important.  It is so important that we must communicate in both written and verbal forms what we expect kids to learn today and what the learning should actually look like.  Below is a picture of Paulette Brown's board.  Her 8th grade science students not only know what the learning target for the week looks like, but she goes the extra mile to make sure that the critical details are communicated in a way that all students can see what is expected of them.  Great job to Ms. Brown