March 3, 2017

Happy Friday! I have had a chance to meet with most of the departments to go over the course numbers for 17-18 school year. I do have a couple more to meet with later today and next week. Thank you for your input in creating the schedule. This has to be one of the hardest jig saw puzzles to put together. Once we have a master schedule, it will be sent out to you. Don't forget to get requisitions done on Web Link. If you need assistance please ask. 

We do have a building extra hour meeting on Wednesday. Just a reminder to be at your meeting before 7:00 am so your group can start on time. 

The end of 3rd quarter is on March 21, grades will be stored on March 23 and report cards will be distributed on that day. 

Next week during advisory we will have the next video from the Harbor series. Discussion questions will be emailed out. Students will do their 3rd quarter reflections on March 27. Those forms will be placed in your mailbox next week sometime.

Have a great weekend!

Staff News

Colleen Bortscheller and Cliff Collins presented to the Board of Education on Monday about the Math Core and our transition towards implementing the Iowa Core. Thank you for the great infomation you presented to the board. They had several positive comments about the presentation afterwords. 

Mary Westhoff, Lori Carter, Mike Boyd, Shane Hessenius, and Kurt Van Kley will be attending a math workshop today. 

Terry Fitzgerald and Judy Zeka attended a Social Studies Workshop last Thursday and were supposed to have it on Friday also, but that day was postponed.

Congrats to Judd Kopperud who will be moving to the guidance office next year. 

Students as Leaders

Congrats to the students and coaches who participated in district IE Speech. 40 acts qualfied for the state contest. 

Mark Zeka and the Advanced Government class will be taking a field trip to Des Moines to see the capitol and to meet with Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds along with other state officials. 

Congrats to Geared Up Team 9967 for their 6th place finish in the black division at the State competition last week.

Nancy Isebrand and Neal Utesch will be taking a group of student council memebers to a workshop today.

Assistant Principal's News

Designing lessons can often be a challenge, especially when you are looking to reach all your students and keep them focused and engaged.  Below is a reminder on how to develop an effective lesson that includes those essential elements necessary to effectively teach the students in your room.

1. Clear Learning Objectives: The objective leaves no doubt about how the learning will be demonstrated/assessed.  Teacher has it clearly posted in the room so that they can refer/point to the objective throughout the lesson.

2. Anticipatory Set: Teacher provides preview/background/purpose for the lesson to motivate, connect, provoke curiosity, or wake up the students back ground knowledge on the topic being taught.

3. Teaching & Modeling: Teacher clearly and explicitly teaches/models/"thinks aloud" for each component of the lesson.

4. Guided Practice: After each brief step in the lesson, the teacher immediately gives students a chance to practice/process information and to demonstrate their understanding of what was just taught...if they can't do it, then re-teach it before moving on.

5. Checking for Understanding: Both during and after each "guided practice", for every small step in the lesson, the teacher uses a strategy to check for understanding - that is, to quickly assess students progress or mastery.  (Cold calling a group of students, using white boards, this is not always a worksheet)

6. Independent Practice: The above cycle is repeated, sometimes multiple times, for every step in the lesson - until virtually all students are ready for "independent practice": an assignment, task, or assessment is given to measure the students understanding of the objective taught.

The above information comes from the book, "Leading with Focus", pgs. 48-49. The Elements of Effective Lessons, by: Mike Schmoker.

Librarian's Corner

"Fake news" is the hot topic right now. A recent Stanford study showed that students of all age levels have difficulty determining fake news from real news. Teaching media literacy is one answer. I teach a 6th grade class once a week for a quarter in which we look at websites and articles to determine validity and to look for clues to decide what is real or not. A reminder for students to question is provided by the C.R.A.A.P. test. Another helpful tool is this infographic developed by Vanessa Otero and tweaked for education by Shannon Horton and Andrew Ellingson of the Decorah Community School District in December 2016

Instructional Coaches' Tid Bits

I would like to introduce you to DocHub.com. DocHub is an online PDF editor. I have personally used it for PDFs but it will actually work with several types of documents. Some of its features are the ability to apply text, whiteout, and even insert your digital signature. While there is a pay version, I have been able to do everything I was interested in doing on the free version. Click here to watch a one minute video.

For those of you who have your own Google Site and you are using the new Google Sites, Google has added the ability to add a horizontal line. You can find this new option by going to the insert panel on the right and finding the new section "Components." Inside there is now a "Divider" option. This is simply a more visual way of splitting up your page.

In honor of President's Day, Google Arts & Culture partnered with more than 30 cultural institutions to bring you history from the United States presidency.

Here is an example of a hyperdoc that deals with a book called "Skunk Scout." The book isn't why I chose to share this with you. I chose to share this with you because I found it an interesting way to give students choice in their learning.

Google recently bumped up the allowed size of email attachments to 50MB on Thursday. An interesting side note, sending size limits are still 25MB.

Do you have your students making posters? Maybe you should check out Adobe Spark's free poster maker.

Success Center Update

When you ask your students to take notes, what happens?  They write down everything, or worse yet, they write down nothing at all.  Extensive research has shown that summarizing is a valuable skill that good readers do automatically, but struggling readers find very challenging.  Taking the time to teach summarizing, no matter the subject area, is a critical use of your time. Here are a couple of hints to help:

*Have students do a ticket-out-the-door or "reverse" bell ringer that has them summarize the important parts of your daily lesson.  Be specific at first - tell them how many points you expect they will include.

*Apply it to text.  Start simple - consider using selective underlining or highlighting, and underline for different purposes:

• underline key vocabulary and its definitions or explanations. (This is a good place to teach how the meaning of the words is revealed in your domain-specific text.)
• underline the main idea
• underline the facts and concepts that support a particular viewpoint
• underline cause and effect

Finally, have students re-write the underlined parts in their own words. Remember to keep it short, simple, and specific.

The more comfortable our students are with summarizing, the easier it will be for them to make connections, know how to eliminate unnecessary information, and remember what they read.  

Article Worth Reading

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The Teenage Brain: Stress, Coping, and Natural Highs

Upcoming Events

Saturday, March 4

- Show Choir @ Sioux City East Invite

Monday, March 6

- Spanish Club trip to El Ranchito

Tuesday, March 7
- 6:00 pm Dance Expo

Saturday, March 11

- IHSSA Individual Events Speech State Contest @ SC East

Tuesday, March 14

- 4:30 pm Boy/Girl Track Lakes Conference Indoor Meet @ Buena Vista University

Saturday, March 18

- Show Choir @ Hinton

Monday, March 20

- TBD - Girl/Boy Track @ The University of South Dakota

Be Extraordinary!

Mark