Tag: Instructional Leadership

Exactness in lesson planning is the clearest indicator of highly effective instruction. Great teachers don’t waste time on “just because” activities; everything is intentional from minute 1 to minute 45.

Every question, prompt, activity, assessment, and grouping is done with explicit rationale, and the teacher is purposeful in planning all aspects of a lesson to guide students towards new understanding.

We expect nothing less at 102. Classroom observation will begin next week, and these are the questions your observer may ask you:

How do you see the Thinking Generator working to get students thinking about precisely what they need to think about in order to learn the targeted objective?

What is the rationale behind the student grouping?

Do you believe this is a skill that requires more direct modeling? Or is it something that needs to be more experiential? How does this impact your lesson?

What pre-requisite understanding is necessary? How have you made sure students have it?

What are your next steps should you observe students struggling during the lesson?

What will tell you by the end of the lesson whether your students have understood what you taught?

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

A district principal of a large elementary once remarked that every dismissal is a small miracle, and I don’t disagree. However, forcing miracles to happen day in and day is basically what we educators signed up for, and nothing is accidental. Miracles happen because we made it happen.

Case in point: our dismissal.

From Mr. Borelli and Ms. Ferrari taking care of directing busing services to Ms. Sheerinand Ms. Weinstein facilitating late pick-ups with the incredible help  of Ursula and Laura, this has been the smoothest opening week I’ve ever experienced.  Thank you!

From Ms. Sheerin: The writing workshop I attended with Alex this week was not at all what I expected. It really got me rethinking my approach to teaching writing and I’m interested to see how this course unfolds and bridges creative writing with essay writing.  It goes against so much of how teachers are taught to teach writing – so it might be just what we need. 

From Mr. Borelli: Mrs. Smith has gotten class K-105 into mid-year form by the end of the first full week of the year! Her students have shown an immense sign of maturity, lining up in two straight lines, quietly waiting for the next set of directions from Mrs. Smith. They walk to each “landmark” with purpose. By having her students focused on her and having that attention reciprocated back to the students, the ease in which class K-105 enters the building to start their day speaks to what students can do with clear expectations.

From Ms. Weinstein: Ms. Susie Williams told me about a student in her class who just kept saying that he wanted to get better. She added, “When he said that, it made me want to be MY best for him and all of the other students and I can’t wait to do that.”  It is this spirit that caught my attention when we met over the summer.  Welcome, Ms. Williams – we are looking forward to seeing your best!

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

September 26th is Family Day. and we will begin at 4:30PM and closing at 7:30PM. The objective for this event centers around Focus Standards:

1.) Make clear to all families how important the focus standards are for the grade; (handout)

2.) The resources and strategies we will use to teach these focus standards; 

3.) What we’ll do to make sure there’s really no child left behind (New 102 Personalized Learning Intervention System); and

4.) What parents can walk away with to support children (guides, websites, online platforms such as Khan, Matheletics, Lexia, etc.)

MONDAY PL: Please prepare for Family Day with your content teams. Review the PL calendar for specifics and check in with your APs should you have any questions.

THINKING GENERATOR WALK THROUGH 9/20: This Wednesday we will have our first Thinking Generator Walkthrough in anticipation of the first round of classroom observations. We will conduct at least 4 walkthroughs this year (we had 6 last year), and they are non-evaluative and are only used for planning professional learning.

EMAIL SET UP: Thank you to Ms. Arlequin for creating such a helpful tool to support email set up. And myapologies if I had accidentally not included you in our staff contact list thank you for your patience as we fine tune our new online system.

ATTENDING OFF-SITE PDs, leaving early, etc.: Any off-site PD must have written approval. Please email me and cc your AP, Ms. Mills (smills@ps102q.org) as soon as possible.

Should you need to leave the building for any reasons, please check in with me and your AP. APs will approve should I be unavailable.

In case of emergency, don’t wait. Go and tell me later.

First Day Photos are up at http://www.ps102photos.com. Thanks Pete for an amazing Ms. Joyce portrait!

Getting kids to think has always been hard. And it’s only getting harder when our students have never lived in a world where getting anything–answers, food, clothing, friendships, dates–actually took more effort than a swipe on their phones.

Why think when they can just get?

Friday’s Wonder Walk gave us the answer. From the 4th to the ground floor, new wing to the historic, I saw inspired teachers appreciating the quality of the TGs that were posted in every room. Good TG’s, like good teachers, inspire wonder in addition to teach.

And inspiring the most teachers with their WonderWall, I present to you…

The 2017 Teacher’s Choice Human Thinking Generator Award
(and what you said about them)

205: “I thought it was most impressive how in the younger grades truly came up with such higher ordering thinking that impacts these young minds and truly relating each TG to the standards. For example, If your turn an ipad upside down is it still an ipad? HOW COOL is that, makes you think about what your actually teaching them in a hands on way that the students can relate to! MOST IMPRESSIVE!”

301:“I really liked how she had different types of TG’s: multiple choice, questions where students had to put themselves in the characters’ shoes, philosophical questions and analysis of quotes. Also, none of her questions pointed towards one answer or another. Every single one of them seemed like they would invite passionate debate. I also now want to read the book The Outsiders so I can ponder whether Johnny made a mistake when he killed Bob.”

338: “I liked that the questions were very open ended with zero room for yes or no and they are questions that I feel would be easily able to begin debates. They left me thinking even after walking away from them!”

401: “They took one idea (how religions are different that came from Judaism) and compared it to something relevant (biological siblings behaving differently. It made me think and reread the question to think about how to organize my answer and helped me to understand the concept better.”

409: “This  WONDERWALL was very interesting because it had both words and images. The images could provoke students to think out of the box and come up with more inventive and creative answers. For example there were two pictures and the question was write a reaction to each of the photos. Students could come up with different perspectives and this would be a great conversation starter. I feel that this can be applied to the lower grades because you can give students to images and have them discuss something about the images. This can lead two rich conversations that can lead students to high-order thinking.”

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Students will not be in attendance on Monday, June 12th. Teachers will organize student folders, and teacher teams who are organizing events for the home stretch (graduation, STEAMCON, MNW, 102’s Got Talent) should get together and finalize. I will be checking in with each group in the afternoon.

Two postings will be up for summer per-session. It is important for auditing purposes that you provide a letter of interest. If there’s even a sliver of a chance for you to come in over summer, show interest now, decide later.

We will be needing teachers to plan curriculum as well as teach a 5-8 day instructional program for students who just missed the mark for June Promotion. The postings will be on the board tomorrow.

Teacher programs for 2017-2018 are just about ready to be distributed. 99% of the teachers requested the same preferences as their assignment this year, and I will have some conversations the next two days to have it finalize and ready to distribute by Wednesday.

Observations are wrapping up, and shortly thereafter you will receive your end-of-the-year rating. And it’s only natural to question the validity of a evaluation system that is based on around an hour’s worth of classroom observation, considering the innumerable challenges you overcome each day, never mind the entire school year.

However, the truth is that it almost never takes the entire 15 minutes to know whether students are learning effectively during a lesson. (It probably takes just a little more than the time I need to realize that your room is too hot.)

The reason why evaluating a lesson isn’t all that difficult is not because teaching is easy or straightforward. In fact, it’s the opposite: a teacher must do so much successfully for every little bit of student learning, seeing 15 minutes of it can only mean one thing: the teacher must’ve done hours and hours of work that led up to it. In fact, we almost always see the following in effective lessons:

1.) The lesson makes sense. Clear learning objective –> clear thinking generator(s) —> purposeful activities to surface student intellectual engagement -> robust use of assessment to check for understanding. This is expertise that you can’t fake.

2.) The learning is aligned to not just state standards and curricula but also the STUDENTS. What’s the best way to find out whether a teacher knows the students? It’s not asking them to show you a data binders; it’s seeing whether their lessons are consistently at the right level for all of the students. And that takes time, conversations, meetings, and re-teach and re-teach (and tears.)

3.) Classroom management is tight. It takes so much to create a positive learning climate, and it never just happens by chance. On a similar vein, if a class knows how to line up and walk the halls quietly, I never question whether the teacher would waste instructional time constantly trying to get the students’ attention.

4.) Students are thinking. This is the big one: only masterful teachers can get all students to think day in and day out, and it’s the most obvious one to spot. Most teachers can get students to write, copy, speak, or read; it’s the highly effective ones who can consistently get them to think, to push, and to question.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

CARNIVAL ORDERS: Please email me ASAP direct links to the product page and desired quantity if you want to order from Oriental Trading. Ms. O’Donnell noticed that Amazon Wishlists do not have a “quantity field”, so please check with Jeanene if you had wanted more than one of any items. P.S. If you are coming to help at the carnival and don’t order a shirt yet, please speak with Ms. Delvecchio to give her your size.

EDMODO MEMO (I fixed the permission setting, in case you still need it)

FACULTY MEETING TOMORROW: 3PM location TBD. Please look out for an announcement tomorrow

JUNE 8th is BUILD THE WONDERWALL DAY: Heads up to everyone that we will be visiting one another’s Wonderwall’s as a learning activity on June 8th. This is the time to update it to reflect the best thinking your students have engaged in.

IMMEDIATE REMOVAL OF STUDENTS: While we are working on streamlining our disciplinary protocols including teacher removals for next year, please be mindful that any students who are physically aggressive in the classroom MUST be removed immediately. YOu should call the main office if your AP is unavailable should this occur during the school day.

SHREK CLOSING SHOW is this Wednesday. I’ve heard it is amazing, and at this point I don’t expect anything less from a Zecca production. I mean, her and Pete are having students do light designs using a 108″ promethean board as an input device. This is a level of showboating that even I can’t reach. Bravo, and see you Wednesday!