Weekly News and Notes

If you're anything like me, you woke up this morning after a restless night of sleep brought on by thinking about the number of emails I had answered, the number of events, games, and meetings coming in the next couple of weeks, working on teacher goals, and some of the conversations we are having with Student Government. Oh, and the Red Sox. Staying up for all of these Red Sox games has brought me back with a sense of deja vu  to my English classroom circa 2004, when my students and I were all bleary-eyed with extra inning game after game.

Someone should really alert the television networks and umpires that a baseball game CAN be played in less than four hours.

At any rate, thanks to caffeine, my adrenaline was going strong today. I'm not sure whether that's because it was Friday, because there was a lot to do, or because of Koji Uehara. Either way, I hope you find something to balance the hectic nature of our profession!

Power Standards 

Aubrie Rojee, Humanities Ed Leader

Last Friday, we began to explore and determine what were our “Power Standards”, or standards that the core of our instruction will focus on in order to lead to mastery. We followed the “LESS is more” philosophy in that all chosen standards met the following criteria: leverage, endurance, and success in schools. As we began to divide and conquer, we found many of the standards were targeted by more than one grade and/ or content area.

However, this process was not about eliminating. Instead, we highlighted what supporting standards best served each “Power Standard”. As many of you found, your choice standards often incorporated these other standards when taught properly.

So, where do we go from here? Our next step is to identify how these standards should mold our curriculum. Now that we know what our “Power Standards” are, ask yourself where in the course is this standard as well as its supporting standards best conveyed to the students? Remember, more than one standard can be addressed in a unit.

PLC time offers a great opportunity to start this discussion. In future department meetings, we will explore where these “Power Standards” overlap both vertically and horizontally. Next week, a list of all the determined “Power Standards” will be provided on our departmental conferences.

Thank you for all of your hard work on our Profession Development Day on October 11. Many remarked how exhausted but satisfied they were by the amount and significance of the work completed. Bravo!






DDM Pilot beginning in Allied Arts







The Allied Arts department is implementing District Determined Measures, which many of the other departments will also be implementing and piloting as the year goes on. Our work last week on Power Standards centered on defining our Core Course Objectives, and from there determining what methods were the best for measuring student growth, be it pretest/post-test or a repeated measures strategy.

For example, in physical education, we will soon be implementing software called "Fitnessgram," which will help track student performance over time. The hope is that students will be able to see the gains they are making over a specific period of time.

In many of our classes, the writing across the curriculum that began last year will continue to be refined this year, and the hope is that, over time, some more consistency with regard to student reflection will emerge.

School Committee This Week

At School Committee this week, Dr. Pires presented the district's MCAS data, which includes a great many points of which we should be proud. Our math scores, with upwards of 95% scoring proficient or advanced, rank near the top of districts in our geographic/demographic area. In English, our scores remain strong as well. In fact, the DART, a data review tool implemented the DESE, compares us with Scituate, Weston, Wellesley, Westwood, and Concord-Carlisle, among others, with our median student growth in ELA better than all of those schools and our growth in math comparable.

I'm not going to begin to get into the data points that help create that statistical analysis - I could leave that for the likes of Ms. Morin, Mr. Nassiff, Ms. Shire-Swift, and Ms. Kirby in their stats classes! However, what the data does suggest is that our students are capable of doing quite a bit compared to their peers across the state.

In addition, the middle school ranked among the top 15 middle schools in the state in several grade levels and subjects, which means, in terms of the standards and a test that is generally considered more difficult than the high school/Grade 10 test, we should be seeing students coming our way more equipped for the skills we require of them than in years past.

The other part of the School Committee meeting involved a presentation on Atlas by Ms. Menard, one of the middle school instructional coaches, and Ms. Rojee. They outlined the power of the program, provided School Committee with exemplars, and demonstrated some of the work many of you have been doing. The School Committee and Dr. Evans were effusive in their praise of the work that has been done and that is continuing to be accomplished in terms of Atlas and our curriculum maps!

Classes of the Week
 
After an exhausting morning of PSAT testing, Ms. Lynch took the opportunity to get her sophomore French ACC moving and engaged. After the desks had been designed in a circle, students played a type of musical chairs by asking questions in French and those who it applied to had to race move chairs. Last one standing? It meant you had to read your next question to the group. You could sense the enthusiasm in the hallway! Great job, Betsy!

In Mr. Hoek's Chemistry ACC class, the students were using a review game online to prepare for a test on atomic structure and isotopes. The students were able to work together, but, more importantly, were able to retake the game for a higher score in order to ensure that they were, in fact, retaining the information. The questions had varied degrees of difficulty and moved toward a varied level of inquiry and application.

With PSAT's in full swing, the counseling staff provided the ninth graders with a full program, ranging from information on how to deal with social media, their learning styles, or an explanation of the adolescent brain. The work that the entire counseling staff put into a meaningful few hours for our entire freshman class came to fruition in terms of their instructional plan and its objectives! To keep 200 students engaged for several hours, even with the chunking of the time, is not always an easy task!

Weekly Resources

The full paper can be found here. For a couple of very, very quick recommendations, I found a couple of lists. One included "Ten Things Every Teacher Needs to Survive" (my favorites: coffee and a story), and the other was a quickie on "Five Ways to Get Students to Listen."

Happy reading, and enjoy the weekend!