UAI Staff News
Volume VI
Issue 18
January 1st, 2019
(98 instructional days remaining)
Announcements
Happy New Year! Welcome back everyone, and I hope that your break was restful and rejuvenating. Also, I hope you were all able to connect with friends and families to celebrate the holidays and/or ring in the new year!
As we start the brand new year, we have less than 100 instructional days left in the school year. Already this fall zoomed by and the spring will likely be similar. As we jump straight back into the flow of school, let's challenge ourselves to push the quality and integrity of our planning and lesson execution to even higher heights of quality. In so doing, our students will end this year with the best instruction UAI can provide!
As we start the brand new year, we have less than 100 instructional days left in the school year. Already this fall zoomed by and the spring will likely be similar. As we jump straight back into the flow of school, let's challenge ourselves to push the quality and integrity of our planning and lesson execution to even higher heights of quality. In so doing, our students will end this year with the best instruction UAI can provide!
To Do This Week
Summer School Planning. As we close out the fall, we will begin to plan for the summer. UAI hosts summer school for several other UA schools in the summer. We have not finalized programming (because we still need to know who will need what). However, please complete this brief form to share your interest and availability for working summer school this year.
Family Outreach. The 3rd marking period is coming to an end with only 13 instructional days for the high school (followed by 4 days of Regents week), and 17 days for the middle school. This is a critical time for all students to make a strong push to get work in and study to increase performance on class and state exams.
All Classroom Teachers: If a student is currently failing your class, please make contact with the home (and log into Skedula) to help families understand what can be done to intervene and avert failure either by the end of this marking period or by the end of the school year. Please make sure you are adhering to the school grading policy. You can review that policy that was provided to you in the Staff Handbook at the beginning of the year.
All Advisors: If any of your advisees are failing 1 or more classes, please contact home to make sure families understand that failing 1 or more classes jeopardizes promotion and that the student fails to turn it around, she will end up in either summer school or repeating the grade.
HS Advisors: Please call home to review your advisee's regents schedules (you can pull them up on Skedula - click Schedule and then HS Exam Schedule). You can find the specific dates and times of the schedule by CLICKING HERE.
Reposted from last entry:
Planning for Student Thinking
Continue working on your lesson look-fors. Evaluate them using Webb's DOK (what level of thinking are you demanding). Look at your lesson time allotment. How much time are students spending at Level 3 or 4 for the duration of your lesson (students should be thinking at Levels 3 or 4 for a minimum of 30 or more min during the period)? Suggestion: About every 5 minutes, students need to be asked to be doing something (writing/talking/engaging in an activity to figure something out). At the end of a piece of instruction, create a quick turn and talk (or stop and jot) to help students engage in thinking.
Pay attention to your timing and circulation. How long are you spending with each pair? Are you picking up trends across multiple pairs? What are you doing with the trends and patterns that you find? Suggestion: During student discourse or work, use the first 1-2 minutes to get a lay of the land - visit every pair or group and take stock of what you hear first. THEN, make a decision with what to do with it - what hints can you drop to put pairs on the right track to think independently without you? Do those hints work for the class as a whole - if so then pause the talk and give it to everyone!
All Classroom Teachers: If a student is currently failing your class, please make contact with the home (and log into Skedula) to help families understand what can be done to intervene and avert failure either by the end of this marking period or by the end of the school year. Please make sure you are adhering to the school grading policy. You can review that policy that was provided to you in the Staff Handbook at the beginning of the year.
All Advisors: If any of your advisees are failing 1 or more classes, please contact home to make sure families understand that failing 1 or more classes jeopardizes promotion and that the student fails to turn it around, she will end up in either summer school or repeating the grade.
HS Advisors: Please call home to review your advisee's regents schedules (you can pull them up on Skedula - click Schedule and then HS Exam Schedule). You can find the specific dates and times of the schedule by CLICKING HERE.
Reposted from last entry:
Lessons from Visits, Observations, and Intervisitations. We will be resuming lesson observations this week. As a reminder, before the break, the biggest trend we were seeing was around how we are working with our Lesson Look Fors. We are improving significantly as a group in articulating quality look-fors that demand higher order thinking from our students in our lesson plans. As a result, our students across grades and classrooms are definitely being pushed to think beyond "identifying", "matching", or copying. More of our students are posing questions, sharing their ideas, and putting their thinking into writing as a means to consolidate their learning.
One common stumble that we are seeing through our intervisitations and observations is in teacher circulation. In pursuit of finding the look-fors, teachers are pausing too long with turn and talk pairs to elicit them from students. This means that many teachers are spending 2-3 minutes with a single pair, while the remaining talking pairs are either finished with their discourse and/or making the same conceptual mistakes without prompts or guidance.
This week is a great one for taking stock of your own practice by looking at thinking and circulation:
Planning for Student Thinking
Continue working on your lesson look-fors. Evaluate them using Webb's DOK (what level of thinking are you demanding). Look at your lesson time allotment. How much time are students spending at Level 3 or 4 for the duration of your lesson (students should be thinking at Levels 3 or 4 for a minimum of 30 or more min during the period)? Suggestion: About every 5 minutes, students need to be asked to be doing something (writing/talking/engaging in an activity to figure something out). At the end of a piece of instruction, create a quick turn and talk (or stop and jot) to help students engage in thinking.
Pay attention to your timing and circulation. How long are you spending with each pair? Are you picking up trends across multiple pairs? What are you doing with the trends and patterns that you find? Suggestion: During student discourse or work, use the first 1-2 minutes to get a lay of the land - visit every pair or group and take stock of what you hear first. THEN, make a decision with what to do with it - what hints can you drop to put pairs on the right track to think independently without you? Do those hints work for the class as a whole - if so then pause the talk and give it to everyone!
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