Week of December 10th

UAI Staff News

Volume VI

Issue 16

December 10th, 2018

(112 school days remaining)

Announcements

More on "Multiplication if for White People" Raising Expectations for Other People's Children, by Lisa Delpit.    As we finish up our 2nd round of observations focused on assessment and student look-for, this quote from Delpits chapter "How would a fool do it? Assessment" brings up Mike Schmoker's work from Results Now.  Delpit cites Schmoker's ideas for elevating student achievemetn by forming teacher teams focused on the following:

• being clear about what is to be learned and assessed
       [e.g. Lesson Look Fors]
• using assessments to evaluate a lesson's effectiveness and making constructive adjustments on the basis of results
       [e.g. listening into to Turn & Talks or Reading student writing]
• conducting checks for understanding at certain points throughout the lesson
       [e.g. student discourse, student summaries, or written work]
• having kids read for higher-order purposes and write regularly
       [e.g. reading for learning or analysis; writing every day]
• clearly explicating and carefully teaching the criteria by which student work will be scored or evaluated.
       [e.g. clearly stating/showing the criteria for success]

These are exactly the Look Fors that Annie and I use as we move around your classrooms to evaluate practice and student learning.  In your planning teams, continue to support each other in refining and elevating the quality of these points in your plans.  As you increase the quality of your Look Fors, your ability to respond and adjust to student thinking (as shown through your assessments and checks for understanding) will also improve.  As you increase the clarity of your Look Fors, your articulation and communication to your class about what it means to be successful will also increase.  The Lesson Look -Fors are the first step to high quality planning and lesson execution.  They are not a checklist of what you want students to say or do - rather they are an articulation of the type of thinking you want to see students execute in class. 

To Do This Week

Annual UAI Winter Staff Celebration.  Our annual winter celebration will be on Friday, December 14th from 4-6PM at Commonwealth Bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Please give Del $20 if you wish to attend.  All are welcome!  If you'd like to bring a guest, you are welcome to do so.  Please just give $20 for them as well.  The $20 includes an open bar and food (TBD - but I am open to suggestions if you have any!) from 4-6PM.  Please at least RSVP to Del by the end the day Tuesday so that we have an accurate head count and can move forward in ordering food!

Tuesday Outreach.  Please announce to parents this week that we are hosting our annual UAI family craft and karaoke night on Monday at 5:00PM.  The PTA meeting will also be the same night.  We are also recruiting for our SLT and PTA Executive Board.  So, if you have parents who may be interested, please let Del know ASAP!  Also:

• 12/14 - School Assembly at 2:00 - parents are always welcomed to attend if they would like
• 12/17 - PTA meeting and Family Craft Night - PLEASE GET PEOPLE TO ATTEND THIS EVENT   Everyone that attended had a lot of fun last year 5:00-6:30
• 12/21 - Rapid Dismissal at 2:00 PM and no after-school - Start of Winter Break!!!!

SEL This week

6th grade SEL-

We have been learning about peer pressure in SEL. The girls learned about how their peers can be both a positive and negative influence. They made up skits showing what negative peer pressure may look like and then used the tools they learned in class to show various ways they can resist doing things that don’t feel right to them. They practiced saying no and standing their grounds in some very creative skits!

This past Wednesday, several Middle School and High School Girls Inc. students were invited to participant in the Annual PopUp Shop hosted in the Metlife building in Manhattan. These amazing students have the opportunity to the sell items they made in their respective clubs. Some of those items included cook jars, book marks, essential oil roller balls, candle holders and body scrubs. By the end of the night these entreprenuers were able to sell all of their products! 

9th Grade SEL: Last week, we dove deep into our unit on bullying and social media. We participated in thoughtful turn and talks and completed readings on our essential question: "How do our interactions online impact our everyday experiences and relationships?". Although there were tough moments where we had to be completely vulnerable and really put ourselves out there, we were able to use our experiences to become more mindful of other perspectives.

This week, we will continue preparing for our next Socratic Seminar around this focus question as well as the following supporting questions:

• How can hearing another person’s experience with bullying change our perspective?

• What resources are available to teens who are being bullied?