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