Thank you

Thank you!  Thank you for your hard work and dedication to your students. Your patience and guidance this past school year has made a difference.  

As you wrap up grades, pack up your classroom, and look forward to enjoying the next few weeks without lesson plans take a few moments and write a quick note to yourself highlighting the accomplishments you and your students made this year.  Then, make a list of the things you want to look different next year as well as all those “I don’t want to forget to do _____ next year” statements.  

When it is time to start thinking about the next school year use this short note to yourself to remember your amazing accomplishments and start thinking through the areas you want to improve moving forward. 

 Once again, thank you for everything you do for your students!    

“Teachers don’t start or finish as perfect.  Just like our students, we’re all in a journey that doesn’t end.”

 –Brent Warner, Ed Tech TV

Remember...

Today, remember to “Be patient with yourself and your learners.  No one is perfect and its ok to make mistakes.  Its even better if you learn from them.” 

—Starr Sackstein.  You are there for your students.  Keep students at the heart of everything you do.

Be Prepared

“Be prepared! It’s not just for Boy Scouts. The most successful teachers are those who plan thoroughly — everything from lessons to transitions to classroom routines. The more you plan, the better prepared you are for surprises.”

Change it up!

Don’t get stuck in a singular mode of teaching!

“Frequently vary the delivery of your instruction. Often times we as teachers get caught up in doing things one way. We are as much creatures of habit as anyone. When things become boring and too predictable, discipline problems are undoubtedly going to become an issue.”

 — Joseph D 

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Many Thanks!

“None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots." 

—Thurgood Marshall  

Teachers, what you are doing matters – the time to plan the engaging lessons, the constant thinking about how to help your students improve and become all they can be.  Today, know that all of your hard work matters!  Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Click here to register for MCESA’s Summer Courses 2016

Setting Expectations

“A great teacher sets high expectations for all students. This teacher realizes that the expectations she has for her students greatly affect their achievement; she knows that students generally give to teachers as much or as little as is expected of them.” – Maria Orlando

As the end of the school year is drawing near continue to collaborate with your students to develop shared values and expectations to end the year strong academically and prepare them to start the next year strong.  Here are some suggestions:

Write a letter to your students highlighting their accomplishments from the school year and encouraging them in their next school year. This could be mailed to them just before school starts or given to the at next years’ open house.  

Have students write a letter to themselves highlighting their accomplishments or what they want to remember going into next school year. Be creative and allow students’ to be creative.

Have students create a scrapbook highlighting their year and their goals for next year.

Shifting Gears

“A great teacher can “shift-gears” and is flexible when a lesson isn’t working. This teacher assesses his teaching throughout the lessons and finds new ways to present material to make sure that every student understands the key concepts.”    —Maria Orlando

As you are delivering your planned lessons what Monitor and Adjust strategies do you have ready so you can ‘shift-gears’ to adjust instruction to make the content more accessible for students and to increase rigor for students demonstrating mastery as well.

Goal Setting

“People who can set long-term goals and stick to them have a leg up on success in school and life.” – Deborah Perkins-Gough

What class and individual student goals can you and your students create and work towards achieving?

Amazing

“If children are given the chance to believe they’re worth something – if they truly believe that – they will insist upon it.” – Amy Azzam  

In what ways will you show your students they are amazing today?

Complex Thinking Prompts

“Planning a lesson that uses all four of the following types of questions can transform classroom questions into analytic tasks that require students to think at increasingly complex levels.”

 – Robert Marzano

Four types of questions:

Details – ask questions of students for recall or recognize details

Characteristics – move the focus to the general characteristics of the topic being studied

Elaborations – ask students to elaborate on the characteristics of and elements within a category

Evidence – questions require students to provide support or evidence for their elaborations

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Encouraging Curiosity

To encourage curiosity while learning, think about the types of questions you can ask to promote curiosity. Try using questions that start with:

What might happen if …

Can you think of another solution or method…

Assessing Creativity

“Assignments that require students to produce new ideas or reorganize existing ideas in a new way are likely to foster student creativity.” – Susan Brookhart

While students are working on different assignments, how will your feedback help students develop creativity?  And how will you assess their progress?  Read Assessing Creativity for creative ideas on how to assess your students:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb13/vol70/num05/Assessing-Creativity.aspx

How Students Arrive at Solutions

“To assess mastery of practice standards, we need to explore how students are arriving at their solutions” 

– Jessica Shumway

 As you are designing the practice and aligned activities for your students, ensure you are thinking about how students arrive at a specific answer.

Suggestions for designing a pre-assessment

Start by clearly articulating the goals of the unit or lessons – what all students should know, understand, and be able to do (Tomlinson & Mctighe, 2006)

Consider any crucial prerequisites.

As you design questions, ensure they focus on measuring student understandings rather than just knowledge and skill

Limit questions to those that have instructional implications – for example dates, names, and definitions will mostly come out in the unit/lessons regardless of the students answers on the pre-assessments.  

Effective Pre-assessments

“Effective pre-assessments can illuminate where students are now so that teachers can lead them to mastery.”

—Jessica Hockett

Ground Rules for Effective Pre-Assessments

• Administer shortly before the lesson or unit that will be taught
• Pique students’ interest in what they’re about to study
• Include just a few questions
• Be sure all assessments are accessible to all students
• Seek to discover what students do know instead of seeking to confirm what they don’t know
• Give students different and multiple ways to show what they know 

Student Engagement: Understanding and Using Academic Vocabulary

You know that students’ understanding and using academic vocabulary is key for student mastery. As you are developing lessons around specific vocabulary, think about how you can demonstrate the vocabulary through manipulatives as well as connecting the new vocabulary to previously taught vocabulary and/or skills.

Student Engagement: Mastering Complex Information

Students need skilled guides to support them in mastering complex information. Here are some ideas to think about as you build your lesson:

Establishing purpose – Students benefit from having a clear established purpose for learning.

Close Reading – Close reading requires a skilled teacher to resist the urge to tell students the correct answer at the first sign of confusion.

Close reading can be used to promote questions/inquiry from the students as well as allow them to discover specific information.

Collaborative Conversations – It is not enough to have students read information; they also need time to discuss using academic vocabulary.

Read more about helping students master complex information at:

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educationalleadership/

nov13/vol71/num03/Points-of-Entry.aspx

Student Engagement: Analyzing Text

“By engaging students in analyzing the intricacies of complex texts, we can transform their ideas about what it means to read.” –Mary Ehrenworth

Some questions to teach your students to ask as they engage in analyzing text are:

What does this text want me to know?

What does this text want me to understand?

What does this text want me to feel?

Read more about students analyzing complex test at

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-

leadership/nov13/vol71/num03/Unlocking-the- Secrets-of- Complex-

Text.aspx

Student Engagement

Are your students engaged? Student engagement is strongly influenced by
what you, as the teacher, do in class. 

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to begin to assess your influence on engagement:
 

 — Do I provide a safe, caring, and energetic environment?

 — Do I make things interesting?

 — Do I demonstrate why the content is important?

 — Do I help students realize that personal effort is the key to success?