We Have Moved!

Here is my new blog! See you there.

Morning PLCs

Each morning, grade levels meet together for morning PLCs. They have not been very structured and some teachers feel like they are not getting much out of the morning meetings. After our last data day, I developed a note taking page to help make the discussion more meaningful.

As a school we are focusing on targeting out Tier II students who we support in the classroom through interventions and personalized learning. We also want to make sure our independent work during center time is meaningful. Below is the agenda we will focus our discussion around:

My Resource Page

This year I have been trying to story all my links and resources on a resource website so I can access them easily. I have organized the site into a few tabs: Grades 3-5, Grades K-2, Literacy, Mathematics, Presentations, Science, Social Studies, and Specials-Art, Music, PE Resources.
https://sites.google.com/site/rebeccabrink1/home

All Set for ICE16!

I have finally completed all my documents for the ICE Conference and my Snapshot session next Thursday. I am presenting on Flipping Your Classroom for Differentiation and Instruction. I have changed the format a bit from when I originally outlined what I would present. I created an interactive image using https://www.thinglink.com  I am so excited to share my experiences, some resources, and network with people!

Here is a link to my Thinglink image with the resources I will be providing during my Snapshot session:
Flipping the Classroom for Differentiation and Instruction

MTSS January

Today, my school's data/MTSS coach and I spent some time looking at both Aimsweb and NWEA data for our enter building. Our goal was to identify any trends we saw in the data. We decided, at the end of our conversation, to support teachers with the focus on Tier 2 students.

We will begin our school's data wall in the next week or so and will have a Building Leadership Team meeting to discuss how the data wall will work and track student's progress throughout the year. We need to continue to see gains in the student', but for many of our students we need to gain more than a year of growth.

I will be sharing Achivethecore.org's coherence map's to close gaps in math.
http://achievethecore.org/coherence-map/

I will also share http://www.interventioncentral.org/ with the staff (or remind them of this resource) so they can continue to support tier 2 students within their classroom in reading, math, and behavioral needs.

Newsletter- January

Research Simulation Task

Research Simulation Task Slideshow

PARCC Expectations

Research Simulation Tasks – students will analyze an informational topic presented through several articles or multimedia stimuli and then answer a series of questions, synthesizing information from multiple sources, in order to write two analytic essays.

ICE 2016

I will be presenting on flipping the classroom to maximize and differentiate instruction in February. I plan to include different sections of the presentation. I have 50 minutes and it will be a poster session.

Introduction:
Objective
Purpose
Research to support flipped learning
Common Questions
Different Scenarios  (1:1 environment, 1: Many, etc..)

Resources:
Youtube
Zaption
Showme (and other whiteboard apps)
Teachertube
mysteryscience

Different Ways/Purposes:
Review
Learn new concepts
Show thinking and learning (making thinking visible)
Absent students
Increase application (assign lesson for homework)

Reflection:
What worked/what didn't
Pros/Cons
Teacher created vs. Student created
Classroom examples
Creating videos as you teach vs. pre made videos
How to keep students accountable

Questions

Snapshot below:

Math Talks and CGI

This year I have been attending training about for math coaches and the focus of the training has been on Math Talks and Number Talks. I have modeled a "Math Talk" in all classrooms at my elementary building. This "new" idea made some people a little hesitant because there have been some many new initiatives these past few years. Luckily, it seemed like the teachers were reassured that they were doing math talks in their classroom already. It is interesting to see how in my short 7 years-ish of teaching how many "new" ideas are just new names for old things that work (ie. Kagan Structures = Cooperative Learning).

Math talks and number talks should be focused around student thinking. Math talks help students talk about how they arrived to a solution and from this discussion teachers can formatively assess students. In addition, MARS tasks were introduced which really help classrooms who are trying to find differentiated materials for math center work time. MARS tasks are naturally differentiated and are once again a great formative assessment tool for teachers.

CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) Problem Solving follows the following 5 steps:
1.) Anticipating (purpose of the lesson)
2.) Monitoring (walk around and see how different students solve the problems)
3.)Reengagement (revisit the problem/concept)
4.) Sequencing (select work to show steps- of DOK)
5.) Connecting (transfer the skill)

Links to support with CGI math instruction:
http://www.heinemann.com/ChildrensMath/
http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/mathematics-glossary/Table-1/
http://www.dusd.net/cgi/

Reviewing MARS Tasks and CGI Math with the Staff