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In The News This Week
Learning Walk Term II:
During the next week, I will be walking through all art/music classrooms to continue the process of sharing out what we do as a whole team, and highlighting how we are doing with grade leveled task planning and scaffolds. I will be in each classroom for less than 10 minutes. Here were some notes from the K-5 and 6-12 LWs to refresh your memory!
K-5 Focus: Grade Level Tasks- High Quality Planning
This snapshot is a glimpse into the arts in Fall River’s grade K-5 art, music and performing arts classrooms- to observe tasks we are planning for students, and how these are communicated, and what we are doing to ensure that all students are engaged in grade level appropriate work. It was great to see the engagement during planned tasks, hear and see the content vocabulary being used and posted by teachers- and experience the teaching environment that you designed for your students. In this report, please find a snapshot of what was observed.Key Points from the Learning Walk:
In every class, there was evidence of engagement
In most classes, the I Can Statement or Objective was posted/clear
In most classes, the task was grade level appropriate
There was evidence that students of all ability levels were able to engage in the work
There were some opportunities for students to use academic language*
Things we can focus on:
Posting or communicating the I Can Statement or Arts Objective consistently so that students are aware of the expectation for the day/class- in student friendly language
This can be using a visual (examples in blog this week) or framed as an I Can statement (see map)
Using technology to engage/communicate the expectations- most were using Promethean boards to do this, and that’s awesome!
Providing time during, before or after a task to allow students to talk/write about their work and make their thinking visible using ACADEMIC VOCAB.
This can start at the beginning of class with students reading aloud the I Can statement, or the teacher can have students repeat the specific content vocab with them- “I say/you say”
6-12 Focus: Grade Level Tasks- Access for All
This snapshot is a glimpse into the arts in Fall River’s grade 6-12 art, music and performing arts classrooms- to observe tasks we are planning for students, and how these are communicated, and what we are doing to ensure that all students have access. It was great to see the engagement during planned tasks, hear the content vocabulary being used by teachers and experience the teaching environment that you designed for your students. In this report, please find a snapshot of what was observed.
Key Points from the Learning Walk:
In almost every class, there was evidence of engagement
In most classes, the agenda was posted
In some classes, the agenda included the learning objectives
In most classes, the task was grade level appropriate
There was evidence that students of all ability levels were able to engage in the work
There were several opportunities for students to use academic language
Things we can focus on:
Posting the agenda consistently (use Google Slides- so easy) so that students are aware of the expectation for the day/class
This can be super simple
Skill and task- Ex: SWBAT use rule of thirds to create a composition using oil pastel
Do Now, Intro/MiniLesson, Work Period and Closing
Using technology to engage/communicate the expectations- most were using Promethean boards to do this and/or Google Classrooms, and that’s awesome!
Providing time during, before or after a task to allow students to talk/write about their work and make their thinking visible using ACADEMIC VOCAB.
Eval Process:
Those of us on one year plans, your evaluator should be observing you 4 times this year, and should document that process in TeachPoint. You will also be collecting evidence for your Formative evaluation, which should be coming up in the next month. Please reach out if you have any questions or need any help with this process. Artifacts that come out of our PD work, PLC work, etc can all be used as evidence to support your ratings on applicable standards. For your PPG and SLG, you should have specific artifacts that show evidence of your work in getting closer to accomplishing that goal.
Durfee PLC:
No PLC during the week of 1/3 so teachers can take part in the school wide learning walk. We will meet next Thursday period 2 to discuss the LW using our PLC cycle. Bring any notes you would like to use from the walk.
K-8 Monthly Department Meetings:
Chelsea and Rochelle have been organizing these in person meetings all year, and I am so grateful for this monthly time that you get to have with your colleagues. For the winter months, this is how we will run it:
- No January meeting
- February meeting will be in person attached to the district wide PD day Feb 10.
- March and April will be on the usual day of the month, but VIRTUAL.
- May and June will be TBD
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