This past Sunday these kids lost their mom to cancer. You may remember I went to visit my cousin and his wife and kids in March 2020 while she was battling cancer. They are only 7 and 4. As many of you know my mom died when I was 11. I feel so much for these kids. I feel so much for him. She was only 34. Way too young! Their lives will be forever changed. This brings up so many familiar emotions even at the age of 48. I am so sad that we can't go to visit them or be there for the funeral because of COVID restrictions. Cancer sucks!!!! I know many of you asked how I was doing this week and my response was always fine, I felt if I said anything else I would have lost it.
This past week was a difficult one for upper grade staff. I have never gone through the displacement process before and it is rough. It is hard to welcome someone to the SV family and within the week they are gone. Vanessa you will be missed!!
“Data doesn’t belong to the teacher. The data belongs to the student and is on loan to you.” --Damen Lopez
Developing a Commitment to Common Assessment Practices
(Damen Lopez)
The most successful teams display a clear purpose on the way that they take a joint effort to utilize valuable assessment practices. These teams exhibit the following characteristics:
1. Speak the same language, the language of data. Successful teams continue to go back to the numbers. While emotion is often an important quality that helps us to nurture and teach from the heart, getting results is the ultimate goal. If a team is kind and nurturing, but their students are failing then they have not done their job. Take the emotion out of the situation and look at the numbers.
2. Share data openly with one another. One of the most difficult things for us to do as a teacher is to share our data. We hide it out of embarrassment or fear of being judged. Successful teams make commitments to looking openly at their data with the purpose to not cast blame, but to help one another.
3. Take responsibility for all students. The easiest way for teams to get over their fear of sharing data is to decide that they are responsible as a whole for every student. Being a team means working interdependently. This starts with the way you collaborate about students.
4. Tie assessment to strategies and interventions that work. It is often said we are “data rich and information poor.” No one would argue the fact that assessments are crucial to ensuring academic success for students. However, assessments that are given without plans to turn data into strategies that create success for students are useless. Simply put: Once you know where students stand, it is your responsibility to make use of that information and generate academic success as you teach them. The data you collect from MAP testing is your starting point.
Observable Fish Moments at SV:
Be There: Eat lunch virtually with a student that you may have a difficult time with. BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM! Thank you Kami and Nicole for creating a very helpful PPT for MAP testing.
Play: I loved seeing Kindergarten and 5 monkeys jumping on the bed. The kids loved it!!
Choose your attitude: BE POSITIVE!!!
Make Their Day: Thank you to everyone for having an AMAZING BTSN!!
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