Mandates and Marking Period Ending

I just sent out the reminder of the Mandates that we issued at the beginning of the year.  Here's a snapshot of the Expectations Document I sent out at the beginning of the year.

In this 21 day marking period, the goal was to have at minimum

• 2 conferences for students in the Lowest Third
• 1 conference for students not in the Lowest Third
• 1 Unison Reading group each day (which would be ~20 groups total)
  - NOTE:  the mandate is that students participate in (not lead) at least 4 UR groups
  - NOTE:  this mandate applies only to Learning Cultures classes

I'm relaxing the mandate on student-led Unison Reading groups for this marking period, but your goal needs to be to launch those groups for this upcoming second marking period.

For the first marking period, many of you shared with me your confusion about how best to align your tasks to state standards and some of you still feel fuzzy about how to approach varying task lengths in your subject area.  As we work through this, I'll also relax this mandate for MP1 with the expectation that we follow through on this one for MP2.  

Finally, it took us a few weeks to pull the ISS and Carrerra teams up to speed on how best to plug into the Learning Cultures classes.  If you have not already done so, your cooperating teacher and/or Carrerra Academic support team need to be conducting their own UR groups and conferences.  This mandate will also be in play for MP2.

All other mandates are in place for MP1.  

If you followed the schedule above and maintained accurate conference and unison reading records, you should be in good shape for meeting the mandates.  

For example, in this 21-day marking period, if you had 2 conferences everyday, you would have had a total of 42 conferences.  In a 25-student class, 8 students would require 2 conferences (16 conferences) and 17 students would require only 1 conference.  So the absolute maximum number of conferences mandate in the high school is 31 (because 25 is our largest class size).  Given that you have space for 42 conferences, you should be able to achieve 31.  

Similarly, in this 21-day marking period, if you had a unison reading group everyday, you have had a total of 21 groups.  The mandate is that students need to participate in 4 groups.  If you had 20 groups of 5 students, then each student in your class of 25 students will have participated in a UR group at least 4 times.

Here's what you need to check

• Do I have at least 2 conference records for each of the students in the Lowest 1/3 for each section?
• Do I have at least 1 conference record for each non-L3 student for each section?
• Does each student in each of my classes appear on at least 4 of my Unison Reading records for the 1st marking period?

If so, you're golden!  If you're close, use the next 8 days wisely to get to the mandates.  If you're not close, please reach out to me ASAP, so that we can conference and figure out where the hiccups in your implementation seem to be.

Next marking period has 28 days, but the mandates are still the same.  So, you have more flexibility in how you might program the marking period.  Here's an example of how you might make your schedules.

*OPEN LC Format mean that you can do any learning cultures format that you want (Learning Groups, more conferences, more unison reading, etc.)

The bottom line is that you have to meet the mandates for the second marking period.  If you need extra support, please reach out to me, Emily, Tara, Nicia, and/or your grade or subject team members who may be excelling in areas in which you struggle.  Conversely, if you see a member of your team struggling, the community expectation is to reach out to see how you might support their work and efforts if the ask!

Additionally, please familiarize yourself with the LC rubrics.  They will help guide your implementation of the formats.  Just as I did with the Environment, I will be coming around this week to give feedback on Unison Reading.