The Dodgeland Download (DES): January 10, 2020

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

A team approach to helping students struggling this week. When we work together to support each other, everyone wins, the students and the staff.
Staff modeling how to deal with frustration when the i-Ready testing had technology glitches. Students were frustrated too, but they take their cues from us. Shout out to Mr. Modaff for working for many hours on this with multiple companies and tech support people this week to get this working for all of us.
Kindergartners are working on number sense by understanding how teen numbers are 10 plus another number.
There were a number of students very proud of themselves when Student of the Month was announced. It made me smile!

End of the 1st Semester
Early Release @12:20pm --No AM recess, lunch period changed to 11-12 for K-5 (4K is 10:30-11:30)
Report & Planning from 12:30-3:00

Following Week

I received a few questions and some feedback recently about this process. I wanted to take the time to respond to them.

The guidelines are meant to give parameters for our work. They are not strict "rules" for the work. If we need to add more, let's have a conversation about this.
The priority standards list does not have to be done in a way that every standard is a priority at some point during their elementary career. We will teach skills from all of the standards, but we are identifying the ones that are the priority. These are the guaranteed curriculum that we are saying every child will be assessed and held to these skills while going through our system.
Aren't we just teaching to the test?

This is an unsettling statement isn't it? It sounds like we only care if kids can do well on a test, not on all the other unique abilitiies and skills that make our students. This is not at all what I believe a well-rounded education looks like for our students.
However, I want to address this issue because it fits in with the target based work that we are doing. Our state assessment, the Forward test, is written with some of the most important reading, writing, matha nd thinking skills that we teach in a year. Is it a perfect test? No. But there are no perfect tests. We must take into account the skills that our students are going to be asked questions from on this assessment. It would be very frustrating for a student to go through this testing process without having the advantage of instruction beforehand. This is why it is important that our priority standards match the assessment. (The REAL process asked us to do this at the very beginning of this target-based work.)

But, what is important to remember is: This is not the only education and skills that are taught at our school. Yes, we are teaching the skills taught on the Forward, but we are also teaching skills that are not tested on the Forward. We are teaching them to work collaboratively with others, we are teaching them to problem solve independently, we are teaching them to use organization skills, and the list goes on. These are all important, even if they are not on the Forward. For the Target based work, our priority standards must include a direct and realistic view of what our students will be asked to do. This is why I don't believe we are "teaching to the test," but rather we are preparing them to be strong readers, writers, listeners, speakers, mathematicians and the Forward is just one way that our students will get to show their skills.

Please help our students understand the difference between the two baskets in our classrooms. If a milk container or other food remnants/wrappers/etc are put in the recycling bin, everything in the bin has to be put in the garbage.

The quick article this week is from Pernille Ripp. It is related to conferring, but as I read it I also think it fits with our concentration on SEL and building relationships with our students. The idea is that a single question can give us a glimpse into a child's world, help us see their perspective, and lets us in to the things that our students find important. It is a question I want to add to my repertoire to use often with students. Perhaps it will fit with your conversations too...