Paying It Forward

One major issue that impacts students’ ability to be successful is how they feel personally about school. Unfortunately, all schools need to battle issues such as bullying and teach students how to be kind to one another. Partnering with parents and focusing on this in the elementary years can sometimes help to prevent tragedies in the future, such as the recent school shooting in Ohio.

To that end, we issued a challenge to Windsor’s 5th graders to “Pay It Forward” with acts of kindness toward others. To our delight, our students have embraced the challenge. A group of 5th graders created a video commercial challenging all Windsor students to do good deeds through March and April, leading up to International Pay It Forward Day on April 26th.

Now the buzz in the hallways is less about which girls are friends or not, and more about how Windsor kids are accomplishing acts of kindness to one another and the world. Stay tuned for more details on the creative ways our students find to Pay It Forward!

Konnichiwa!

Last week, Windsor School had the honor of hosting students, staff and parents from the Damine School in Japan. Over three days, we learned from one another, shared talents and gifts, and used lots of body movements and gestures to communicate! Four Windsor families and five District 25 staff members opened up their homes to serve as hosts for our visiting guests. We feel lucky to have had the opportunity to make such great connections with our new friends across the world!

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Flipping the Classroom

There has been a recent rash of articles highlighting an innovate teaching strategy known as “flipping the classroom.” The New York Times has published a series highlighting how teachers can utilize online video tutorials to “teach” new skills and concepts to students at home and then use in class, face to face time to reinforce skills and clarify concepts.

The NYTimes article entitled “Five Ways to Flip Your Classroom with the New York Times” highlights how teachers can invert the traditional classroom to expect students to view lectures at home and complete practice problems (traditional homework) at school.

The article explains, “Sometimes teachers create lectures and other resources themselves using resources like Teacher Tube, the Show Me app or a voice recording tool. Or they might provide a link to an available resource, like a video from Vi Hart, Khan Academy, the Teaching Channel or YouTube EDU. They can even supplement student curriculum with material from an online course.“

Teachers in District 25 have begun to play with ways to flip their classrooms to allow for greater opportunities for differentiation and enhance student engagement. As we began the year, we asked all staff to consider “Who Owns the Learning” and have found that perhaps a non-traditional approach to teaching might provide an option to place students back at the center of their own achievement.
Additional information about flipping classrooms can be found below.

• The Daily Riff– “How the Flipped Classroom is Radically Transforming Learning”
• Learning Conversations–”Flipping the Classroom”

Thanksgiving 2.0

As we all leave for the start of our Thanksgiving holiday, I’d like to join my colleagues in saying how thankful I am to have the opportunity to work with such great school communities at Ivy Hill and Windsor. As a way to give back, I’d like to share a little tech resource to support you in your holiday.  Enjoy your time with family!

Check out Main St.’s blog of Thanksgiving 2.0.

“Whether you’re hosting your own Thanksgiving dinner (and doing all of the cooking) or traveling to visit friends and family, this holiday weekend can get hectic. But the smartphone in your pocket can be a huge help to make it all go smoothly. It can save you money, which we’re all thankful for (no pun intended) since the average Thanksgiving dinner is expected to cost 13% more than it did in 2010. From apps full of dish recipes to apps with delicious desserts to an app that turns your smartphone or iPad into a fireplace, MainStreet put together some of the most helpful smartphone apps for Thanksgiving.”

Adding Rigor to Science Instruction

As students in District 25 enjoyed the first day of a long weekend, classroom teachers in Kindergarten through 5th grades were engaged in a day of development focused on adding rigor to their Science instruction. (Other District staff members were also engaged in a variety of team meetings and learning sessions throughout the day.)

As I listened in on sessions presented by staff members from Science Companion, the District’s Science curriculum, and listened to presentations by our own district Techsperts (classroom teachers who have tested adding technology to their Science instruction and were sharing with others), I was impressed by the discussions and planning taking place throughout the day.

Some interesting questions popped up as teachers engaged in thinking about best practices in Science instruction.
-What is productive questioning?
-How do we help students “do science” instead of simply being passive learners of science material?
-How do we infuse technology to create a rich learning experience for our students?
-What resources can we use to engage students in scientific inquiry?

It is such a joy to work in a district where teachers feel passionate about their practice and are open to experimenting with new methods in an effort to enhance student learning.

Building a 21st Century LMC

This past week I was given the opportunity to travel to the annual conference of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) in Minneapolis, MN. As a former elementary school librarian turned administrator, I was excited to re-immerse myself in best practices for the Library Media Center (LMC). Along with Gail, the Windsor LMC teacher, and several other District 25 staff members, I attended sessions focused on how to create an effective 21st century school media center. We discussed and debated issues including the physical library space, the digital library space and the blending of digital and print media collections. We also learned new and effective strategies for integrating the LMC with the curriculum and classrooms to best impact the school community.

As with any good conference, I came away with more questions than concrete answers. I have shared some of these questions below. However, I also came away with a better understanding that we are lucky in D25 to have the staffing and resources (including the support of parent volunteers and the PTA!) to allow our libraries to truly be centers of support for building 21st century learners.

*How do we promote student work in the LMC, both digitally and in the physical space?
* How do we promote learning the Dewey Decimal System and how does that connect with what students see in the classroom library, at home, in the bookstore?
* What is the LMC’s role in promoting professional resources for teachers?
* Through what metrics do we want to judge the effctiveness of our LMCs?
* How are students involved in using and curating the LMC?
* How are we helping kids build their digital footprint?
* How are we working to build knowledge citizens?

Understanding by Design

One of the most interesting times to watch District 25 staff at work collaborating together is during Understanding by Design (UbD) planning meetings. Typically, grade levels meet with the LMC Director, the Technology Facilitator, and the District’s Teacher on Assignment. The group immerses themselves with the UbD process for several hours, challenging one another to create motivating, enriching and curricularly-sound project plans for the students.  District 25 staff identify essential questions to guide the unit of study and then delve into conversations about how students will demonstrate their learning (projects, presentations, using new technology tools, etc.). The planning meetings can be challenging and time-consuming, but, in the end, we see some amazing ideas formed on how to engage our students and help them own their learning.

Interested in more about the UbD process?
Gurus, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduced the concept of “Understanding by Design,” as a conceptual framework for instructional designers. Two of the key factors in UbD are:
-The “backwards design” instructional design model
-The “Six Facets of Understanding”

BACKWARDS DESIGN

The backwards design model centers on the idea that the design process should begin with identifying the desired results and then “work backwards” to develop instruction rather than the traditional approach which is to define what topics need to be covered. Their framework identifies three main stages:
-Stage 1: Identify desired outcomes and results.
-Stage 2: Determine what constitutes acceptable evidence of competency in the outcomes and results (assessment).
-Stage 3: Plan instructional strategies and learning experiences that bring students to these competency levels.

Six Facets of Understanding
-explain provide thorough and justifiable accounts of phenomena, facts, and data
-interpret — tell meaningful stories, offer apt translations, provide a revealing historical or personal dimension to ideas and events; make subjects personal or accessible through images, anecdotes, analogies, and models
-apply — effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse contexts
-have perspective — see and hear points of view through critical eyes and ears; see the big picture
-empathize — find value in what others might find odd, alien, or implausible; perceive sensitively on the basis of prior indirect experience
-have self-knowledge — perceive the personal style, prejudices, projections, and habits of mind that both shape and impede our own understanding; they are aware of what they do not understand and why understanding is so hard

Additional Information on UbD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_by_Design