week of nov 20

UAI Staff News

Volume V

Issue 12

November 20th, 2017

[School Days 51-53]

Announcements

Girls Inc and Glamour Women of the Year.  Last Monday evening, fourteen of our hard working seniors attended the Glamour Women of The Year awards at Kings Theater!  With such names in attendance as Serena Williams,  Chimamande Ngozie Adichie, Peggy Whitson, Nicole Kidman, Tracy Ellis Ross, Gigi Hadid, Ruby Bridges, Maxine Waters, Zendaya, Anna Wintour, the women behind #metoo, and so many others, you know there was deep inspiration and empowerment for our students to grow stronger, smarter, and bolder from their powerful stories and successes. We had a wonderful week of both middle and high school afterschool programming and finished it with the middle school Fall Bash. They enjoyed an early evening of dancing freely and hanging out with friends. It was great to see so many smiling faces as they let go and just had fun! 

Quality Review and PPO Results.  After three long weeks of evaluation, we are now ready to reflect on what we've learned, and move on towards our next steps.  Both the Quality Review (QR) and Principal Performance Review (PPO) use the same rubric.  Here are our results.  

Areas of Celebration.  Both the Quality Reviewer and Dept. Superintendent Richie Cintron agreed that we have a strong positive learning environment (1.4).  We, too, celebrated out work in SEL, and the impact it has already had on student behavior and classroom culture.  Additionally, teacher supervision (4.1) and leveraging resources (1.3) were also celebrated by both reviewers. 

Conflicting Reports.  Both reviewers had opposite evaluations of our work in Curriculum (1.1) and Teacher Leadership (4.2).  The Quality Reviewer did not recognize the growth and achievement we've had in these indicators and judged them to be developing. However, both Richie (Dept. Supertindent) and our Superintendent (Fred),  have been working with us throughout the last three year, and thus have a much deeper understanding of our work at UAI.  Richie found these areas to be Highly Effective/Effective.

Areas of Growth.  The next step after our work with Unit and Lesson planning has always been a closer look at assessment and using those outcomes to impact our pedagogical practice.   Without a clear understanding of where we wanted our units and lessons to land (e.g. designing backwards from the unit assessment and being explicit about our lesson look-fors), we weren't ready to effectively use assessment to impact and improve our pedagogy.  At the beginning of the year and only 1 marking period into our planning work, Assessment (2.2) and Pedagogy (1.2) are logically expected to be in their nascent stages.  We are working to improve these areas and both evaluators agreed, rating them as developing.  

This Week's To Do's

Our Next Steps.  We have just finished our benchmarks and teachers are beginning to use that macro data (and that of the DRP) to adjust lessons and units to address student learning needs.  These macro level moves are important, but where we will get the most effective traction will be on leveraging our look-fors in the lessons.  As we move forward in our observation cycle for November, Annie and I will be giving explicit feedback on how you plan for use assessments in your lessons and how you are able to respond to the data generated by students and make adjustments, during your lesson.  

• First - Refine your Turn and Talks.  Students discussion should be used to support higher order (DOK 3 or 4) thinking.  Don't use T&Ts to support student recall or identification.  Use these DOK stems to support your development of Level 3 or 4 prompts that drive student thinking.  The actual discourse students have will enable you to assess thinking.  Your planned look-fors during the T&Ts will help you have a focused lens as you listen to students.  Things to think about as you plan: 
• How will you use student discourse to further achieving the lesson objective?
• How are you tracking student understanding?  If certain students are lost, what will you plan to do?  If students easily understand and are waiting for you or others, what will you plan to do?  If it's always the same students who are lost/bored, how will that impact your future planning?
  
• Then - Transform Thinking into Writing.  Discourse is a tool to support developing thinking. Ultimately, we want to cultivate this thinking so that students will be best prepared to show mastery through work-products.  Too often, we wait until the very end of the lesson to demand students to show us their thinking in writing.  Challenge yourself to ask why you place writing prompts where you do during the lesson.  Is it about timing or lesson part?  If so, change that.  Writing should be the natural punctuation to rigorous thinking (after discourse where they had to reason - not recall).  Writing can also vary in form - notes students create (not copied) like answers to the questions they just discussed, solutions to problems that the discourse helped them figure out, revisions to a process or another piece of writing after analyzing error/problems. 
  
• Finally - Work on your Feedback.  Feedback can be verbal or in writing, but students can't grow if they don't understand what they need to do and why.   Giving effective feedback is a hard skill to master.  It is impossible to give quality feedback on low-thinking tasks.  In order to have something to talk about, students have to be thinking deeply.  That's why turn and talks and writing come before this step. Once you are consistent in your planning for student discourse and writing, you will need to also plan for when and where you intend to give feedback. 

Announced Observations.  Below is the remaining schedule to announced observations. There were necessary changed due to the PPO visit.  So, please review the schedule!  We want to give you feedback on lesson plans prior to your visit, so please make sure your most recent versions of your lessons are linking into your Pacing Guides.  LDC teachers, please email Annie & me the PDFs of your LDC lessons.  We want to help you plan for Turn & Talks, Writing, and Feedback!

• Completed - 13NOV:  Cherry, Chris, Judy
• Completed - 14NOV:  Sursattie, Tracy, Elana
• Rescheduled - 15NOV:  Amanda, Megan, Meaghan
• Rescheduled - 16NOV:  Damon, Paula, Tom
• Completed - 17NOV:  Jake, Natalie, Suzannah
• Upcoming - 20NOV:  Katherine, Cassandra & Michelle, Tiffany
• Upcoming - 21NOV: Elena, Giselle, Matthew & Alison
• Upcoming - 22NOV: Diana, Phillan& Sarah
• Upcoming - 27NOV: Marsha, Christina, Kristina
• Upcoming - 28NOV: Kelly, Danielle, Jamie, Rebecca
• Upcoming - 29NOV:  Amanda, Meaghan, Damon & Paula, Tom

Monday PD.  For this Monday's PD, we will be using the time to finish our DESSA evaluations.  Lauren has regrouped your students so that you are evaluating students you actually work with.  She will be working with you on Monday.  Monday after Thanksgiving, you will have the entire PD to complete the unit planning work that we began on Election Day.  As a reminder, you need to have your unit assessment, unit overview, and all daily aims linked/listed in your Pacing Guide.

Monday PDs in December.  This year's over-arching school goal is to increase instructional rigor and student thinking (intellectual engagement) during our lessons.  Thus far, we have been using Monday PD to work on your lesson plans and increase your ability to be specific and intentional about your look-fors.  As mentioned earlier, we are now ready for our next step, Assessment. 

• Each Monday, you will have from 3:30 as time to link your lessons for the week into your Pacing Guide
• From 3:30-4:10, we'll have a short PD on 
• 04DEC17 - Effectively Gathering Assessment Data with Turn & Talks
• 11DEC17 - Using Writing to Assess Student Thinking & Learning
• 18DEC17 - Strategic Feedback - Figuring out what to say, why to say it, and how.

Staff Celebrations.  On Tuesday 12DEC17, we're going to put our regular Advisory Outreach work on hold and take time to celebrate and appreciate one another.  To make this a special Sursattie has volunteered to organize a potluck of sorts.  Stay tuned for more information from her!  

In addition, our annual staff party will be on Friday, Dec 15th.  Location is still TBD, but the other details will remain the same!  Staff celebration will be from 4-6PM.  Food (also TBD) will be provided as will drinks.  We ask that any friends/family join us at 6PM.  This year, the cost will be $20.  Please give money to Ms. Del.

SEL Update

In SEL this month, 6th and 9th graders have been focused on responsible decision making, particularly in the face of pressure from others. Students have been exploring how their daily choices can better align with their core values and future goals. This week, students will learn to identify peer pressure and practice ways to resist making poor choices, around topics ranging from misbehavior in school to drug/alcohol use or dangerous sexual activity (for HS students). Some of these methods include:

• Avoid settings where pressure could take place

• Leave the setting if pressure begins to take place

• Suggest an alternative to the poor choice

• Explain why this choice isn't right for you.

Students will also practice saying "no" in ways that feel natural to them, and will practice persisting in saying "no" in the face of unrelenting pressure.