Author: mrkobot

102 Review, 2017-1-29: Chinese New Year

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

We will meet in the auditorium Monday at 2:50PM for our mini-midyear Faculty meeting. Inquiry groups will then break out to continue with their work and you should review the updated PL Monday Calendar as some changes have been made and the Inquiry Showcase schedule included.

HIGHLIGHTS

SUMMO: “How would the title alter the play if it were 12 Angry Women instead of 12 Angry Men?”

Ms. Mulé: This TG creates student thinking in several ways, including the shift in perspective between men and women.  Students can look at the way society inherently thinks man and women think and feel and how it changes the outcome of the trial.

Ko: An amazing example TG perfectly designed to provide students a thinking experience that is 1) intentional focus on growing students’ worldview (intro to gender as social construct); 2) impeccably tied to both curriculum and current events; 3) compelling; and 4) surfaces misconceptions students may have about gender equality

(And yes, those are the four elements of an effective TG… )

 

Ms. Chao pulled off her first Chinese New Year event in stunning fashion. (See her new Staff Spotlight Here) She and her students worked overtime all week to provide 102 with an experiential showcase of Chinese culture involving making dumplings, writing calligraphy, and even playing Chinese Chess. The leading Chinese Newspaper paid us a visit and they were most impressed by the prowess of Ms. O’Donell’s cross-cultural brushstrokes. It was a great deal of effort by everyone and thank you for letting all of us head into the weekend in celebration.

Of course, Ms. McClain and Ms. Rafferty leading their Pre-K’ers around the building while chanting chinese phrases brought smiles and joy to all as well.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

New PL Monday Schedule

PID Meetings: Guidance will be coordinating PID meetings with teachers to meet with PID families. Non-promotion is a school-level decision, and as such it is important that parents recognize through school-level actions the seriousness of their child’s lack of progress. You should prioritize families strategically as you schedule them, and please know that should you and the families have conflicting schedules, you may seek approval from me to be covered for your regular teaching program so you can meet with the parent at an agreed-upon time.

Mid-Winter Intensive: Your PID students need intervention, and the Mid-Winter Intensive is just that. We have a few teachers who have emailed me, and we want as many as possible. Dates are flexible: You may choose any 2 days from Wednesday to Friday, 2/23-2/25, and we will do our best arrange the program according to your availability.

NYC Leadership Academy Professional Learning Opportunity: NYCLA is offering training for our teachers who may want an intro to data analysis workshop. It runs from 4:30-6:30PM on 2/15 in Brooklyn, and teachers who attend will be paid per-session. This is purely for your own development; it is not part of any of 102’s initiatives, and you are not expected to turnkey the information. Email me by Monday should you be interested.

102 Review, 2017-1-22: Effective Thinking Generators

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

Of all the things we say about Thinking Generators, here are the two most important things you need to think about as you plan them:

1.) You must first know exactly the thinking you are trying to generate as well as how it will lead to new understanding relating to the target learning objective

2.) The TG is written so that there exist no alternative option for students but to think about what you intended 

Why? Because we can’t learn by listening to a teacher talk or explain; we need to think about ideas to learn them. If you disagree, tell me how much you’ve learned about non-commutable variables after a teacher lectures and tells you to copy this idea in your graphic organizer:

“A function of noncommuting variables is a function defined on tuples of matrices of all sizes that satisfies certain compatibility conditions as we vary the size of matrices: it respects direct sums and simultaneous similarities, or equivalently, simultaneous intertwinings.”

Right.

Likewise, for some 6th grade students, the following “knowledge”  can be as confusing as the prior example was to you:

“To clearly defines how a word or complex term is being used in a reading, both denotative and connotative meanings should be considered. Because of subtle differences in both denotative and connotative meaning, a reader’s misinterpretation of the author’s intent may undermine their ability to navigate the nuances of the text.”

So how can we use a Thinking Generator to help students really learn connotation? Let’s use Mr. Goldin’s class as a case study for aTG mini how-to guide.

THINKING GENERATOR HOW-TO: 6th Grade ELA:

(V)TG: To help his students appreciation the purpose of connotation and learn how to use it, first-year teacher uses the following vocabulary Thinking Generator: “How old does an artifact need to be in order to be considered ancient? How old does it need to be to be considered prehistoric?”

By asking students to consider the many degrees of “old”, he allows his students to internalize through a thinking experience that words with similar meanings are not interchangeable because of their implied intensity. This is  an effective thinking generator that does its job to help students think to learn.

Thinking Generators are effective when they are specific: teachers should be able to explain in great clarity exactly what they intend their students should cognitively wrestle with for each and every TG. In this example, Mr. Goldin wanted the students to recognize connotation as a tool for communicating varying degrees of a definition. However, to fully appreciate connotation, he also needs to teach his students that connotation is not just about degrees of intensity: one of the most common mistakes students make as they build their writing vocabulary is using words with inaccurate or unintended positive or negative connotations.

If Mr. Goldin’s target objective for the lesson is for students to consider connotation in their writing, he should pre-emptively address this misconception with the following THINKING GENERATOR:

TG 1: “Mr. Ko is childish” and “Mr.Ko is youthlike”. Which one would make him more angry?”

To differentiate and/or extend the TG:

TG 2: “Find at least 3 more pairs of words that shows the same difference between childish/youthlike”

To differentiate even more by adding a subtext of social studies:

TG 3: “Some people who live abroad are referred to as “expats” or expatriates. Some are called immigrants. How do we determine who to call which? Does it matter?”

With each of these examples, the teacher did none of the thinking for students. However, the teacher knows exactly students should and would think about. TGs cannot possibly be effective without this level of specificity because impactful lessons leave nothing to chance.

HIGHLIGHTS:

From Ms. Mulé:  Without solving, how can you tell that 7x= 3x +4x will have multiple solutions? This question leads students to consider more than simply solving the problem in a traditional way.  Students have to determine what possible solutions are to the problem before they come up with the answer.

From Mr. Borelli: Part of being a skillful reader is adapting to different styles of writing and an article presents a host of challenges: more hyphenated words, charts and graphs placed in the middle of a text that do not always align with the paragraph, and cryptic subheadings. Thinking about the style of writing and what challenges lay ahead can prepare a reader for a stronger understanding of the text. Ms. Buiyan’s TG “Does the layout of an article have an effect on the reader, how?” does exactly that.

From Ms. Mintiens: I had the pleasure of visiting a few Kindergarten classes this week. In Nancy Hafkin’s class the students were learning how to add those tricky vowels to words in their writing, in order to make their writing easier for readers to read. She used a piece of her own writing and made the Exersize interactive asking students to help her. She also brought out her word study vowel chart. These small moves subtly show students how what they’re learning in one part of their day seemlessly helps them in another.  Kindergarten students writing is soaring in part to strong practices such as these.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Progress Reports: See this parent-facing memo for more info on Progress reports. With the exception of grades K and 1, all reports should go home by the end of January. NOTE: The purpose of these progress reports is to spark parental involvement: be ready for it.

Mid-Winter Intensive: Teachers who are interested in teaching 2 days, 4 hours each day, should email me to confirm. We are keeping the exact dates flexible, and will confirm once we have a core group of teachers.

Inquiry Groups Check In Tomorrow: Tomorrow we’ll get back to our inquiry work to prepare for our Showcase on 2/6. DO NOT OVER-PLAN for the presentation: Each group will have 10 minutes to describe their work, its implications, as well as take comments and questions. Groups will be able to schedule professional workshops for their colleagues at a later date; this Showcase is simply about sharing what you are working on, and what they can expect from you should there be a follow up workshop.

THINKING GENERATOR WALKTHROUGH: We’ll have our 4th TG walkthrough this week. We are getting better at delivering feedback, and we found that feedback is meaningless unless it is anchored to a shared learning objective. From now on we’ll note the IO in addition to the TG as we walk.

102 Review, Jan 15, 2017: Our Timeline for Progress

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

As we check in on the progress of our students, it’s also a good time to check in on the progress of our 3-year plan to quietly transform 102 into a thinking factory and become the best school ever. As you can see above, we’re right on schedule and now we focus on 1) identifying the best practices we’ve surfaced this year by piloting multiple initiatives, and 2) doing every thing we can to provide the appropriate interventions to students who need it. And here’s how:

1. Beg. Of Jan. Identify students who are promotion in doubt (DONE)

2. End of Jan: Get parents on board (Guidance/APs assist in scheduling concern meetings)

3. Beg of Feb: Identify a clear plan of attack to reach individualized targets (What are the most important (and most attainable) skills the student needs to acquire ASAP?)

3.Feb-Jun: Deliver FOCUSED intervention (102+, AiS, Mid-Winter Intensive, etc. and not just more of the same instruction they receive during the school day)

Children that fall behind need more personalized instruction (not more standardized tests), and we’re going to give it them.

HIGHLIGHTS: (As told by Ms. Pearlman) When describing a conflict with one of her peers, a sixth grade student said, “There’s just a lot of friction, like a low quality pulley.” This is just such an awesome and particularly 102 thing because 1) it evidences the comfort level between students and Ms. Pearlman, 2) I can absolutely imagine Mr. Grbhardt’s frustration with materials not meeting his high standards; 3) that’s just an amazing and wholly Hamiltonian use of a literary device.

From Mr. Borelli: The students in 5-338 were tasked with creating a parachute that would actually work. Sounds simple enough, but the challenge of how long your string is in proportion to the canopy presents a host of challenges. What is the air pressure? Is there a breeze? Is the canopy light enough to slow the object down but strong enough not to tear? The eye opening part of this engineering learning activity was seeing Mr. Dewhirst’s class come alive when presented with the challenge.

From Ms. Mintiens: The Kindergarten students have been studying self and family in Social Studies. They worked with their families to create a poster board that showed where their family is from. Posters included countries’ flags, typical clothing, food and more. Each child also included themselves in cultural garb. These posters turned out fantastic! Be sure to visit the kindergarten hallway to check them out and learn more about our students.

For Ms. Mulé: We love you.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Team Meetings: I will be meeting with grade/content teams in the next two week. Please look out for schedule and times from your AP.

Thinking Generator Walkthrough #4: We will postpone our TG Walkthrough originally scheduled this week to next week. New TG materials (A short How-To Guide) will be distributed this week via your mailbox.

Mid-Winter Intensive: As one of the tools we’ll lean on to support students who are struggling, we want to provide them with the opportunity to attend a summer intensive during the mid-winter break. Interested teachers should email me ASAP to discuss availability. We’re hoping to provide students with 2 days (8 hours total) of small-group instruction.

Operation Thank You: Thank you Ms. Nova for taking the lead on this awesome initiative. I can’t wait to see what comes out of this and would like to remind everyone that there should be zero anxiety for this. There’s no element of compliance for this project: thanking someone because you have to completely defeats the purpose. Please understand that the climate team would welcome these projects done at varying dates and times, and there is no actual “due” date should you need time. Just let them know and we’ll adjust.  

Thanking people should be fun; make sure it is so for you and for your students.

102 Academic Policy: It’s confusing and it’s one of those things I don’t understand enough to touch this year. However, it’s incompatibility with everything else we’re already doing is evident, and we’lll be sure to build a new Grading Policy Committee with members from each grade to design a more elegant and family-friendly system for next year. Stay tuned.

Happy MLK Day: The Civil Rights Movement was powered by people who thought for themselves and cared for others. Social justice tomorrow depend on what educators do today, and I’m humbled to serve along you in this tremendous and humbling endeavor. 

102 REVIEW, ISSUE 53: PROGRESS REPORT

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

102 KNOW: ISSUE 1 (CLICK TO VIEW)

Happy New Year!

We’ve done tremendous work these past few months and it’s nice to see in our latest School Quality Guide that our rating for STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT is now “Excellent”, the highest possible. Everyone wants excellence, but few attain it because it simply requires more effort than what most are willing to give. Our students excel because of you, and I know how hard you all work each day and I can’t thank you enough.

As we shift gears into the 2nd half of the school year, it’s important that we take a closer look at our impact for each individual student. We need to find out how much or how little each of our student is learning this year, and then make sure all parties–school, student, family, guidance, etc.–are fully informed.

Tomorrow all teachers will begin our Monday professional learning in the auditorium to get a reminder on academic policies, and teachers in K-5 stay learn about our new quick+easy progress reports. All  other staff should also work on communicating student progress with families at the midpoint of marking period 2.

HIGHLIGHT:

Our ENL team’s Herculean efforts to support all of our ENL students are finally recognized as we are rated “EXCELLENT” in ensuring progress for this challenging subgroup of students. Thank you for your hard work.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

SICK STUDENTS: Please make sure that any students with symptoms involving diarrhea and/or vomiting MAY NOT return class and must be sent home. Should there be any concerns, speak with an AP and they will assist with having the child picked up.

102 KNOW: The first school newsletter for families will be sent home tomorrow. See above for the digital version. Thank you for your work on the grade-level newsletter and we will soon begin incorporating highlights from each grade’s newsletter into 102 KNOW

COLD WEATHER: We have tons of jackets for students. Please do not hesitate to offer students one.

WHY TC? As we proudly shared in our inaugural 102 KNOW, our school is seeing great gains in the state ELA exam. So why change from ReadyGen to TC?

Because of things like this.

102 REVIEW, ISSUE 52: What Makes a Teacher (or a party planner) Highly Effective

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

THIS WEEK’S STAFF TG: What one piece of research would you look at to determine whether a teacher is highly effective or not? Do you look at a sample lesson plan? Student state test scores? Family surveys? Advance observations?

Personally, I’d say none of the above. Instead, I would randomly choose a student and ask the teacher what the student has specifically struggled with this year, why, and what they are doing about it. Good teachers assume nothing and confirm everything; While lesser educators consider a lesson to be done once it’s taught, highly effective teachers see learning as a give-and-take process, and not only do they never take for granted that students will always master what they was taught by the teacher, they assume the opposite is true. They are relentless in their search to uncover what and how students have failed to learn, and it’s fair to assume that by April each year they would know pretty much know how each student would succeed or fail at each standard.

Taking it a step further, I believe how well a teacher can predict student outcomes on state tests is a better indicator of their highly effective instruction than even if the students uniformly demonstrated incredible growth on these tests. Whether students actually learn or not depend on so many variables both in and out of schools, and it’s difficult if not impossible to evaluate a teacher on things they have little control over. And while strong lesson plans and direct instruction can certainly indicate preparation, it cannot show how well students learn as a result. In the end, it’s knowing exactly where students stand, what their last great hurdle was, or what the teacher is excited to do soon to try push each student over the hump that speak volume to both the intentions and expertise of the educator.

MONDAY: Even for highly effective teachers, looking only at your own data and classroom observations can only take you so far. On Monday teachers who elect not to engage in Inquiry work will meet with their respective grade level teams to surface and discuss trends in student progress, behavior, new noticings and concerns, and most importantly, students whom you believe to be significantly off track and will most likely not meet the year’s expectations (1’s and low 2’s). Share this information with their other teachers–clusters included–and confirm whether there are discrepancies in performance for different content areas. This is important for three primary reasons:

1) Intervene: To better focus the delivery of intervention (i.e. students with low math and high ELA should engage mostly in 102+ on math days as well as use Khan Academy and not Lexia during TechFlex);

2.) Identify students who have significant discrepancies–unexpected under-achievement–between content areas. This is one of the many indicators of a potential Learning Disability, and our timely recognition of such gaps in students (3-4 in math, 1 in ELA) will have immense impact both now and in the future if that’s the case.

3.) Shepherd: When teachers can speak to students about their performance in classes they do not teach, students will understand that adults talk about them outside of class, and better realize that we care and that they have meaning in our lives beyond the classroom and our profession. Students don’t care about meeting the expectations set by those they do not trust, and for students who may be in difficult family situations, knowing that a team of adults here have genuine concern for their well-being can make all the difference.

You should also discuss with your team and AP regarding any nuts-and-bolts issues that need attention. From materials, custodial issues, schedule changes, to student discipline, come up with items as a grade team and we’ll see if we can generate a timely fix.

HIGHLIGHTS:

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Who knew the recipe for a good time was to combine a decidedly scary place for animals with freezing weather and then adding the magic of Jenny, Ravi, Mary, a photo booth, and some alcohol? Thank you for the work you all did for planning the event, and it was great to see everyone out of the building. You are a special bunch, indeed, and I look forward to the next one.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

RECESS PICK UP: We have started releasing classes of students out for recess for the last 15 minutes of lunch, and they will go out on a rotational as well as conditional basis. As such, there is not yet a system for informing teachers whether to pick up students from the cafeteria or the yard. For the time being we will have students who went out for lunch line up right outside our lobby so you can see who’s out there as you are on your way to the cafeteria.

SCHOOL CALENDAR: Lots of students means lots of events, and it’s time we have a better system to keep track of all the happenings in and out of our building that were planned before our calendar was printed. If you have any upcoming events this month, please email admins and Rose so we can put it on a giant calendar that will go up in the office. Field trips, games, parent events, anything out of the norm.

HOLIDAY SEASON SENSITIVITY:  Fun (or not so fun) fact: Jails are busiest after winter break, and I have a feeling why that is so. Kids who are most prone to violence and other ways of acting out are often the same ones who, whether they know or acknowledge it, lack the very same things we celebrate during the holidays and thus their frustration is most profound at this time. We should be cheery and we should be happy and we should celebrate, and we should also do it mindful of the fact that there are students who have never and may never experience the joys that some of us were privy to. This season, let’s set the goal for us to pay as much attention to how we make students feel (myself absolutely included) as we do to not offend adults whenever we check ourselves to always use the generic term “Holidays”.

In the end, it is children whom we work for and there’s little they care more about more than better loved and to love. (Or PlayStation. Or Shopkins.)

*I apologize for all the earlier typos and that this review has been changed, adapted, and edited many times since it was posted. Typed this entirely on an iPad and it’s a horrible experience.