Friday's PD: 21st Century Assessment

For our Professional Development time today we're going to begin by taking a close, first-hand look at what student assessment will look like in the very near future.  Not only will the kinds of questions being asked soon change, the testing interface itself is going to change radically, too.  Paper-and-pencil tests will soon be a thing of the past once PARCC is fully rolled-out.  Multiple guess, one-step problems will soon disappear as well.

Smarter Balanced the test,
not Smart Balance the "buttery spread"

You're probably already aware that assessment in the near future will require students to take tests on digital mobile devices such as iPads.  What you may be somewhat less aware of is that these new assessments will also require our students to answer cognitively rigorous questions, to find and write discrete answers, to interact physically and knowledgeably with the device, and to use one answer or set of answers to construct new, more complicated responses.

Like the PARCC Assessment, Smarter Balanced is a nationally-normed standardized assessment based on the Common Core State Standards.  It looks to me like they're a little bit ahead of the PARCC folks when it comes to implementing the online portions of their practice tests. So, we're going to use their stuff today knowing that PARCC will look and feel almost exactly the same.

(If you're curious, however, here's what PARCC's got going on -  sample items are in the left-hand sidebar - for practice/sample test items to date.  They're not iPad ready.  Not by a long-shot.)

Show this QR code
to i-nigma and then select "go online"
or simply click the link below to go to
Smarter Balanced practice tests

Using the Smarter Balanced sample tests on your iPad, here's what I'd like you to do during today's PD:

• Login in to the practice test section at Smarter Balanced.  This is a multistep process in-and-of itself.  If you find the login process a little confusing, 
• Here's what I hope will be a helpful little video to show you what you'll need to do to login.
• With your grade-level group, select a math or ELA test to complete... if your grade-level doesn't have a test (K, 1, 2) pick any other grade-level (3, 4, 5) to work on with the other members of your grade-level team.  
• Feel free to work together on the first two items on the practice test, talking freely and openly with one another about what you think is expected and how you should go about solving the problem(s).
• Once you've completed the first two exercises together, work on the next couple independently, coming together to discuss each subsequent item and your response to it as soon as everyone's had a chance to get it done.
• Do this for the remainder of the time allotted (~20 min)
• After you've had a chance to work on the practice/sample test items, work with your grade-level team-mates to complete this survey.  
• View the survey results live.
• Each member of your group should complete a survey, however you may decide to collaboratively respond to each item.

Ch. 4 -- The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe

Hello everyone,

Thanks to Ms. McFall's class for inviting me in to read earlier this week.  I've got a little chest cold at the moment, so my voice is a little hoarse.  Nevertheless, I hope you and your students enjoy this chapter.

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
Chapter 4 -- Turkish Delight



Chapter 1 -- Lucy Looks Into A Wardrobe
Chapter 2 -- What Lucy Found There
Chapter 3 -- Edmund And The Wardrobe

As always, please let me know if you'd like me to read a chapter of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe to your class sometime soon.  I'm available next week for chapter 5...

Updates -- 24 October 2013

Hello everyone,

Tomorrow's payday-Friday, so that's a good thing.  Should be another lovely fall weekend, too.  Enjoy!

Two-hour PD: PARCC sample test items
We'll meet together in the Library for our next Professional Development seminar (the second of only two this semester) this coming Friday, 01 November, at 1:00.  We're going to be looking at PARCC sample test items and brainstorming ways and means to best-prepare our students for this new and, I'll be honest, somewhat intimidating assessment format.

I promise you: building greater awareness of this material is relevant to every member of the teaching faculty at Marshall, regardless of your current grade-level or assignment.  We all will need to be hard at work in the coming months and years to prepare our students to be assessed in this manner and with this sort of content.

Please be on time and bring your fully-charged iPad.  If you will have the i-nigma QR-code reader app pre-installed, it will save some time.

Ch. 3: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe
I must admit, I'm having such a good time reading to your classes!   The three classes I've read to thus far (Thompson, Heck, and LeMoyne) have each been so great and so attuned to what's going on in the book.  Thanks for inviting me in!

Here's Chapter 3 Edmund And The Wardrobe:



Only 14 chapters to go!  Please drop in to my office or drop me a note to schedule a time if you'd like me to visit and read to your class.

Previous chapters will remain available online:

• Chapter 1 Lucy Looks Into A Wardrobe
• Chapter 2 What Lucy Found There

Halloween
The following is a reprint from years past, nothing has changed:

I know my opinions about Halloween stuff at school are somewhat unpopular, but here's what I still think about it.  I think a real school day should happen on Halloween, therefore:

• Unless parties are aligned with standards and instruction, they're probably not the best use of instructional time. 

• If parties are aligned with standards and instruction, please ensure they don't impact or interrupt other school programs, schedules, or special classes, including but not limited to RTI.

• For safety reasons, children (and teachers, too, natch) should not wear Halloween costumes at school... Kinders have their City Hall costume-visit walking field-trip each year on Halloween, and for this reason they are excepted (albeit somewhat reluctantly) from this expectation.

Calendar
Week B

• Monday, 28 Oct. 
• Cragin Elementary School on-site for visitation
• Cragin is a newly minted magnet school in Tucson. They hope to gain insight into building their own program by having a look at what we're doing here at Marshall. That's kinda cool, don't you think?
• Coe @ Admin Council, 1:00-4:00 
• Tuesday, 29 Oct.
• SEI Task Force meeting in room 26, 7:45
• FAST in the Gym, 6:00
• Friday, 01 Nov.
• Faculty Professional Development seminar in the Library, 1:00

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Ch. 2: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe

Thanks to Ms. Heck's class for being such a great audience for chapter two of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe!

Send me an email if you'd like to set up a time to have a chapter read to your class.

Updates -- 17 October 2013

Hello everyone,

First of all, massive thanks to Malinda, Erin, and Janelle for keeping it all together up here in the front office during my unplanned absence this week.  Well done!

By the way, I'm pretty sure I had a run-of-the-mill GI-virus and not some creepy, more-serious bacterial infection from under-cooked food.  So please don't let my paranoia dissuade you from attending the Random Acts Of Kindness South In Your Mouth dinner next year.  It's still a super good time, and apparently just as safe-as-can-be.

Thanks, as well, to all'y'all for the thoughtful Boss' Day card.  I honestly didn't know it was Boss' Day until someone pointed it out to me on Wednesday morning.  Still kinda weird to think of myself as "a boss" but it means a lot to me to know that some of you think I'm doing okay at it.  I'm trying.

Serendipity
Nancy McCleskey stopped in my office the other day and asked me, "How many times have you cried doing this job?"  Which is unusual, if only because earlier the same day I'd read this article on The Onion:

I'll be honest, sometimes, both as a teacher and as a principal, I've really felt like crying.  And on more than one occasion, any number of my principal cohorts have told me of their compulsion to sit in the car and weep quiet tears at the end of a long, hard day.   I get it.  Believe me.

However, my all-too-honest response to Nancy was, "Never. Not that I haven't wanted to. I just haven't been able to."  Maybe I'm a robot.  Maybe I blame Mrs. Bromley for the things she said to me when I was 10.  I dunno.  But I understand the compulsion to cry.  We all get there from time to time.  Nothing wrong with that.

On occasion some of you have come into my office and cried.  I get that, too.  Believe me.  I'm never stoked to see you cry, or hear about your sadness.  It hurts me to see you hurting.  But as I write this to you on this Boss' Day, I'm pleased to be able to acknowledge that for many of you, you view my office as a safe place to vent, to let down your guard, and to have a good honest cry.  

Nothing wrong with that, either.

New Tabs

Did you notice the three new tabs at the top of the blog?  I'm in the process of revising and editing our new school-wide Emergency Plan and thought I'd add a few components of it to the permanent record here on The Blue Note Blog.  

Might be a good idea to review each of them now, particularly in light of our upcoming Lockdown Drill.  In the near future they'll be reprinted for you as the Lockdown, Fire Drill, and Evacuations procedure policies which will be included in your new Red Folder materials. 

Vacation Day

I will be out on Friday, 25 Oct.  I am taking an honest-to-goodness vacation day to attend the Zendaya concert in Phoenix.  She's my daughter's current-favorite singer/dancer and we're going on a daddy-daughter date to see her show at the State Fair.  We have reserved tix in the fourth row and, well, my kid is counting-the-days-super-stoked to go, so I am really looking forward to it.

Calendar

Week A

• Monday, 21 Oct
• Lockdown Drill, ~10:30
• Tuesday, 22 Oct
• FAST parent meeting in the Gym, 6:00-8:00
• Friday, 25 Oct
• Coe in PHX -- Reasor has the helm (again!)

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If you're having trouble acknowledging The Blue Note Blog because your browser defaults to a Google Docs log-in when you click the "please acknowledge" link above, it's because you're currently logged into your FUSD Google account.  To fix this problem, log out of your FUSD Google account and then click "please acknowledge" again.  It will work this time.  Promise. 

Updates -- 11 October 2013

Have you checked our weather station lately?

Hello everyone,

Wow, what a beautiful Friday-payday!  Fall is definitely here.  And such a lovely dusting of snow on the mountain this morning to-boot.

Really don't mean to gloat too much about this, but I did kinda totally-call Thursday's weather pretty darn accurately nearly a week in advance!

I love watching the weather, especially this time of the year.

You may recall, we're quite fortunate to have a lot of neat tools for weather-watching, right here at Marshall.  Our home-grown Weatherbug weather station features a high-def camera, udometer (rainfall measuring device), anemometer (wind-speed measuring device), psychrometer (humidity measuring device), thermometer (heat measuring device), and barometer (atmospheric-pressure measuring device).  That's a very sophisticated collection of scientific instruments... all located up on our very own rooftop.

You and your students can access our Weatherbug device and the data collected by its myriad instruments online at any time, day or night.    

From the main Marshall School Weather Center page you can view enlarged or animated HD-camera images of the Peaks, check daily and monthly observations data tables and a number of different graphs, as well as review the local seven-day forecast.  The online Weather Center also includes wind-chill, latitude and longitude, moon-phase, and elevation information for our location.  A quick, simple live-updating display of current conditions for our station (FLGMM) is also available online.

I hope you'll take a few minutes soon to poke around a bit and refresh your familiarity with our weather station.  It's a great scientific resource for our students.

Walk To School Day
We won!  With 68% of our students walking on Wednesday.  Well done, Marshall.  Thanks to all staff, parents, and volunteers who helped out.

Staff PDs
Hopefully you've observed that we've made every effort to maximize your prep-time on Fridays by minimizing the number of required professional development seminars this year.  Thus far we've had one but one two-hour PD as a staff this year.  We'll meet next on 01 November to take a look at sample PARCC Assessment questions using our iPads.  And that's it for the first semester: two formal PDs.

When we come back from winter break we've rescheduled the Team Mastermind training to our PD-day on 24 January in order to ensure that we're all able to attend.  We'll likely have another PD in February and one more in May on the subject of documentation and presented by our Reggio-team.  That's it for second semester: three PDs, bringing the total for the school year to five. 

CPS
We will meet as a faculty next week on Thursday morning at 7:45 to review Child Protective Services reporting with Nancy McCleskey.  Please remember, as school staff, we are all mandatory reporters.  This means we are required to report neglect or abuse of our students to CPS whenever we suspect it may have occurred.  You should never deliberate about making a CPS report.  Nor should you fear retaliation for making a report.  CPS reports are made anonymously.  Bottom line: if you believe a child to be a victim of abuse or neglect, make the report.  

Forms for reporting to CPS can be found on the wall behind the copy machine.  You should complete the form, make your report by phone, and deliver a copy of the written report to me for filing in my office.  You no longer need to fax a copy of the report to CPS after you've made your report via the telephone.

McCleskey will surely have additional information and insight into this process on Thursday.  This is the only item on the agenda.  Please be on time.

Tax Credit
It's that time of the year: time to review Arizona's public school tax credit program with our parents.  Please do so as often as you are able during your conferences.  All the information is online, as well as the form letters, brochures, and sample tax returns you might need to convey this essential message to your parents.

Remember: all of your students, all of our teachers, and every single one of our classrooms benefit from this program.  It's essential that we all join together in the effort to raise these funds.  

Thanks for your help!

Parent-Teacher Conferences
As your conference schedules become finalized early next week, please ensure the office has a copy.  We get lots of calls asking, "When's our conference."  It's nice when we can answer the question.

A robo-call about early release times will go out to parents on Sunday evening.  A flyer with this information should have been sent home with students this week.  

Also, we've had lots of questions in recent days from faculty and staff about lunch times next week.  Kinda felt like I hadn't put it on the Blue Note two weeks ago... but I did.  Anyway, by way of review, here's the low-down on our odd lunch schedule during conference week: 

Tuesday and Thursday we will be on our typical early-release lunch schedule. Due to our odd dismissal schedule on Wednesday, 16 Oct.,  lunch will, likewise occur on a different schedule.  It will be imperative that everyone abide by the schedule below as closely as possible, as we will be operating on very tight tolerances in order to accommodate everyone's lunch and recess that day.  The lunch schedule for Wednesday only will be as follows:

• 9:35-9:55 -- K-1 eat lunch

• 9:55-10:15 -- K-1 on playground

• 10:00-10:20 -- 2-3 eat lunch

• 10:20-10:40 -- 2-3 on playground

• 10:25-10:45 -- 4-5 eat lunch

• 10:45-11:05 -- 4-5 on playground

Finally, please check with me if you will not be working your full contract day during conference days.

South In Your Mouth
Still a little time to buy your ticket to this event (Ingols, Perkins, and Shaw all have tix), which takes place this Sunday evening at Epiphany.  This dinner is a part of the church's annual Random Acts Of Kindness fundraising campaign, of which Marshall is one of the beneficiaries.  RAK is an essential and generous funding source for our school.    The presence of Marshall staff at these events is greatly appreciated by the church and the membership of their RAK Committee.

Calendar
Week B

• Monday, 14 Oct.
• Coe @ Heck for Read-aloud, 11:20
• Tuesday, 15 Oct.
• Early release @ 12:25
• Wednesday, 16 Oct.
• Coe @ Elementary Admin (Cromer), 7:30-10:30 -- Reasor has the helm
• Early release @ 11:10
• Thursday, 17 Oct.
• Faculty meeting in the Library, 7:45
• Coe @ Flagstaff Community Foundation awards 10:00-12:00
• Early release @ 12:25
• Clothing exchange in the Gym, all day

Please acknowledge that you read this post.  

If you're having trouble acknowledging The Blue Note Blog because your browser defaults to a Google Docs log-in when you click the "please acknowledge" link above, it's because you're currently logged into your FUSD Google account.  To fix this problem, log out of your FUSD Google account and then click "please acknowledge" again.  It will work this time.  Promise. 

Updates -- 04 October 2013

Hello everyone,

Happy blustery-cold fall Friday.  Looks like the wind's all set to blow like this at least through Saturday.  And then there's possibly a little something brewing weather-wise next week... looks like the Wednesday-night, Thursday-morning time-frame... first flurries in town? Another dusting on the Peaks?  Maybe!

Great Galloping
Wasn't the Gallop fun today?!  The kids all ran super-hard (here's hoping their pledge-getting was done with equal vigor) and everyone looked great, too!
A huge thanks to our entire PTO, and most extra-especially to Vince and Candyce Martinez and Christie Kinkaid for their tireless efforts coordinating everything.

Job well done!

Kids In Motion
Jan "Lucky" Luxton would like to remind you about the Kids In Motion program at the Flagstaff Athletic Club this month.  During October "all students are invited to come to the club to play or workout everyday."  Students can get passes for this free program from the office, Fit Kids, or Ms. Lucky herself.  Students must be accompanied by an adult and Marshall earns points for each pass used.  Both east- and west-side Clubs are participating.

Busted, Broken, Plum Wore-out
When you encounter things at Marshall that are busted, broken, or worn out, please report them to a member of the front-office staff (Malinda, Erin, or me) so we can facilitate getting things repaired for you in a timely manner.  It's not necessary for you to contact anyone else in FUSD to get repairs done.  There are protocols and online interfaces for most repair/work orders in the district and we're happy to fill out the right "paperwork" for you in order to get your busted stuff fixed in the most timely manner possible.

SEI
Kerry Kelly and Cindy Noble, FUSD SEI folks, will be leading teachers through a great training on 21 Nov. and 03 Dec.  The classes come highly recommended by Mrs. Pavich, and you're encouraged to consider signing up via TrueNorthLogic.

Money, Money, Money
Please remember: if you, your class, your club, or your committee collects, earns, or acquires cash-money at any point during the school year that that money must be deposited into an account with FUSD or the PTO, never ever kept in a classroom (or worse, taken home).  This is very important and something you must do, not just something it would be nice for you to consider doing.

Calendar

• Monday, 07 Oct.
• Coe @ Admin. 1:00-4:00 -- Reasor has the helm
• Tuesday, 08 Oct.
• Science Council, 4:00-5:00 in the Lab
• Site Council, 5:00-6:00 in the Library
• Wednesday, 08 Oct.
• Walk To School Day
• Pictures in the Lab and Fit Kids, all day
• Friday, 11 Oct.
• End Of First Grading Period
• Team Mastermind Training (voluntary) in the Library, 1:00-4:00

Please acknowledge that you read this post.

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe

As a classroom teacher, I used to read to my students everyday and, for 18 years, as a part of my daily read-aloud time, I read the entire seven-book Chronicles Of Narnia series out loud to my students... Yep.  That's right.  18 times in 18 years.  Needless to say, I love those books.

The fact of the matter is, as a principal, I've missed reading to students more than anything else.

I mentioned this to Holly as we were talking at dismissal time the other day and, a couple of days later, she invited me into her classroom to read to her kids.  I read the first chapter of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe to her second graders.  In all, I spent about 20 minutes with her class. It was fun visiting with them, answering a few of their friendly questions, and getting to know them all just a little bit better from a chair at the front of Holly's classroom... and not from behind the desk in my office, ya know?

We recorded a video as I read... and then, afterward, I discovered that the school camera will only record 10-minute videos... thus, the last bit of the chapter didn't get recorded.  However, later on I edited-in the final few pages of the chapter, reading them to myself in my office. So now, the first chapter video's complete!

Anyway,  I'm hopeful you might be able to find a time sometime soon to show the video below to your students.  And then I'm hopeful that you'll invite me to your classroom to read-and-record Chapter Two... or Three... or Four... and that that way we'll work our way through this book as a school, reading-and-watching one chapter at a time, in one classroom at a time.  As they get recorded, we'll post the next videos here on The Blue Note Blog, too, so your classes can stay up-to-date as we read each chapter.

Please let me know if you'd like me to visit with your students to read-and-record a chapter of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe.  I'll make myself as available to read per your daily schedule as I am able.

First come, first served... only 17 chapters in the book.

Form an orderly line :)