As many of you know, I lost my mom when I was 11 years old to cancer. During my birthday I always tend to miss her the most! She was only 41 when she died and since my 41st birthday I feel so lucky to be alive and to be with my family. Instead of getting gifts from my family, this year I asked friends and family to make donations to the Butte County Office of Education or GoFund me accounts for those who lost their homes in Paradise. My mom was an immigrant and taught all four of us the art of giving back to our community. She was a teacher and because we lived in a community of immigrants many of the women would come to her for guidance. Our house was always that house, there was always someone over. I learned so much from my mom in the few years I had with her. The above picture of my mom I keep on my desk by my laptop. It is something I look at multiple times a day! It drives me to be a better mom, sister, friend, wife, and educator. I am constantly thinking how can I grow. In the last 8 years our school has been working hard to build our Agri-Science school. Now our program has been recognized by receiving a Golden Bell, gold ribbon and 3 blue marks on the dashboard last year!! We did this as a TEAM!! No great accomplishment can happen alone. It takes a team, it takes a family. There is a lot that can be said with the strength of numbers.
Focus on Good, no GREAT, First Instruction!
We continue to focus on GOOD, if not GREAT, first instruction. Asking a large number of questions and checking the responses of all students is something all teachers should be doing daily. When we stop talking "AT" students, we get them to reflect on their own learning and process the information at their level. From this, and having ALL students participate in academic conversations determines whether or not the class is ready to move on, needs to work in small group, or you must reteach the concept to the entire class.
How can this be done, you ask?
- Structured academic conversation: Put sentence stems on board for each partner
- Summarizing and sharing out: whole class, neighbors, or just to teacher
- Use Google Survey as a quiz
- Use those whiteboards!! Have them complete a quick write question, formative assessment, or an exit ticket! SO EASY!
- Use Padlet.com or post it notes to review quickly. Again, SO EASY!
Here is feedback from students and what they would like to see in their classroom. Out of the mouths of babes and, yes, one of those students is a Dragon. CLICK HERE TO HEAR OUR STUDENT VOICES
Any of you that have had the chance to read John Hattie and his High Impact Strategies for Teachers, you know that he focuses on student achievement and the high impact teachers have on students' learning. I recently went to a training and reviewed the 6 areas that contribute to learning (student, home, school, curriculum, teacher, and learning approaches) as well as his updated list of 150 effects of visible learning. Take a look HERE at the 252 influences of related to student achievement. Any guess on what the most influential one is? Yep. Teacher efficacy. Read it. It's worth your time.
CA Dashboard is live!! Check out where SV stands in regards to ELA scores, Math scores, Suspensions, and Attendance. Take a minute to really look at our data. What is it telling us? What area should we be focusing in on? Do we need to refocus our overall goals?
We will be reviewing this data, more in depth, at our staff meeting on January 8, when we return from break. This will be guiding our focus for the remaining part of the school year!
Observable Fish Moments at SV:
Be There: Thank you Mindi for hosting our social this Friday. Thank you Sunshine committee for providing the food and setting up.
Play: Please make sure you fill out at least one good news referral a week.
Choose your attitude: Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.
Make Their Day: Thanks Kami for the kind words :)
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