1st Week of February

DOK - From Rigor to Vigor

This week, I want to share with you some ideas that will help you motivate your students to strive for higher levels of rigor.                                                                                                                                                By Luh Putu Januwati - Jennifer Day has come up with a cool and interactive way for her 3rd grade math students to use QR codes to learn about equivalent fractions.  Students review equivalent fractions using bar models and check their answers using QR reader. This is an awesome idea for two reasons.  It is easy to make, and the students have a chance to move around. It does not feel like work for the students.                                                                                                                                      

• 4 Habits of Highly Effective Assessors  
•  My Google Apps for Education SMORE  
•  Math Tasks Matter

Tweet of the Week

 

Dan McCabe@danieldmccabe

Rigor is… Rigor is NOT #edchat #ukedchat #aussieED

Collaboration that Counts

100th Day of School at TPS

Improving our impact on student learning is tied directly to how we improve our own effectiveness as educators.  Meaningful collaboration should result in us getting better at supporting kids by supporting one another.  The most powerful collaboration happens when our discussions center on the following concepts:

• The essential skills that we expect all kids to master at the appropriate level of rigor, 
• The tasks that students must successfully complete to demonstrate mastery,
• The targeted strategies that we will use to respond when individual kids fail to learn, and
• The meaningful tasks that successful students will tackle to extend their thinking in deeper and more complex ways.

This week, ask yourself these questions about your take-aways from collaboration with your colleagues?

• Do I dig deep into discussions about content and reflect on my own effectiveness as an instructor?
• Do I walk away with new instructional and assessment ideas to try in the classroom?
• Do I leave challenged to be more focused in my work with my struggling students?
• Do I leave with more meaningful activities to extend our students once they master the learning target?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that your instruction is changing every day to better meet the needs of kids, and that is a good thing?

College & Career

Mrs. Morvan's class using the Mimi 

to learn the bossy r sound in the pirate song "Arg".

Dual credit courses are a huge advantage for our students at THS.  Dual credit courses are college courses that students can take in high school, and these classes earn college credit as well as high school credit.  This year, Tatum HS had the 6th highest enrollment in dual credit courses for the entire Kilgore College service area.  This area includes all of the 5A schools in the Longview area.  In addition, Tatum HS students as a whole earned the 4th most college hours of all schools with 411 hours behind Longview, Hallsville and Henderson.  This is very impressive.

Currently we offer academic dual credit courses from Kilgore College in the following courses:  English, U.S. History, College Algebra, Intro to Probability and Statisitcs, Psychology, Art Appreciation, and Government.  Students can qualify to take dual credit courses in their junior year if they earn a scale score of 4000 on the STAAR EOC English 2 test.  This equates to making a score at the final passing standard.

You can promote dual credit courses in your class by challenging your students to make a score that is at the final passing standard or the advanced standard on the STAAR test.  It is never too early to promote dual credit courses to our students.  Kids need to hear every day what it takes to be college and career ready.

TIP of the Week

(Tech Integration Pic)

By Cristi Whiddon - Coach Thompson's class used smore.com to create newsletters covering the Battle of the Alamo.  Students pretended to be reporters for the newspaper during that time and had to include significant events and people in their articles.






National Signing Day at THS

Andy Evans introduces seniors who
commit to the next level

Five THS Seniors signed their letters of commitment to be student athletes at the next level.  Congratulations to the following seniors:

• Lauren Rockwell - LeTourneau University for tennis
• Beau Craig - Panola College for baseball
• Nicole Aldridge - Centenary College for softball
• Chaston Brooks - Lamar University for football
• Keshaun Smith - SFASU for football

We are very proud of them!  

#Excellence4ALL