Category: Uncategorized

Our apologies for the tardiness. We’ve had some scheduling issues to address to get together to chat. We plan on being back on schedule this weekend.

We chat about a range of topics, including:

• The frustrations of educators trying to use technology. (A principal was unable to use a flash drive because of fears of what it would do to the network. Another was told that no school could move ahead of any other school in technology. Thus, if one school didn’t want it, no school could have it. Read “Control vs. Self Control” for more). http://weblogg-ed.com/
• New teachers who maybe don’t realize that those posting on Facebook or MySpace could effect them now. (My favorite is the teacher response “I didn’t think about that.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042702213_pf.html
• An example of the day in the life of a Web 2.0 student.

NMSA Annual Conference Launched (officially)!

Shawn and I discussed a project that I’m involved in that demonstrates where technology is right now. This project is a good overview of things that students are using and teachers could be using (at least some of them) currently.

Technology and Teachers:

http://resa-23things.blogspot.com/

Here’s the blurb for the project:

Over the next 10 weeks, you will complete 23 Things to become familiar with a variety of Web 2.0 tools. Everything you need is available here so that you can work on your own time, at your own pace.

Following are the 23 Things to complete in the order listed. Click the blue links to go to each Thing. You may complete the Things at your own pace, but we suggest trying to finish one topic area per week. Have fun!

What are the 23 Things? (This is by subject only. Most of these include 2-3 things each):

• What is Web 2.0?
• Blogging
• RSS
• Photos and Images
• Wikis
• Podcasting
• Online Productivity
• Social Bookmarking
• Online Video
• Wrap Up

How many of these are familiar with? How many do you use regularly? How many do you use in your classroom?

Like a few other of my cohort, I jumped the gun for Part 5. I subscribed to many sites in Part 4 when that is supposed to be part of part 5. Anyway, I largely revisited some of my most heavily “traveled” RSS sites from NetNewsWire. (If you’re interested, check them out at: http://www.bloglines.com/public/MiddleSchoolMatters ) . RSS can allow you to gather a lot of information together. I think that it needs to be targeted though. I sometimes return to visiting web sites for a couple of reasons.

1. Going to a web site gives me more context.
2. Going to a web site “slows” me down. This allows me to process better.
3. I can automatically “rank” the sites that I want to see. Yes, I know that I can do something similar with the RSS reader, but somehow it’s still different.

News & Events:  The “Datey Thingys” 

NMSA Annual Conference (NMSA08) October 30-November 1
Denver, Colorado
Hotel information coming soon on the website. 
Conference focus on Technology this year. 

Grade Configuration:  Grade configuration was a hot topic early in the school year and is likely to come up again as we move into the summer and as next year’s schedules are being developed.  Here is a link to research on grade configuration courtesy of NMSA.

What Makes Middle Schools Work: Some research out of New York Public Schools on their top ten performing middle schools and what elements can be replicated to produce success in other middle schools.

Ohio Middle School Association Annual Conference:
Kalahari, Sandusky, OH.
February 21-22, 2009 

First Annual Schools to Watch Conference
May 7, 2008
Mount Pleasant, MI

Michigan Joint Education Conference
June 25, 2008
Holt High School
Holt, MI 

Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Grants – $1000.00
June 30 is the deadline for application. 

Teaching Moments has a new goal setting presentation that is FREE! 

eSchoolNews:
ATT – $100 million grant to stem dropouts. The AT&T Aspire program will distribute the $100 million over four years through a competitive grant process, said Eric Hausken, a spokesman for AT&T.

Why do we teach middle school?
1.  We get to see our names carved into various places with colorful adjectives attached.
2.  Up to date with current fashion trends. 
3.  Easier to teach those who know everything already.
4.  Hormone therapy without the prescription. 
5.  Also qualifies for CIA spy training, FBI interrogation training, and local or State Police crime lab training. 
6.  With all the comments heard on hall duty and student responses, it would qualify as research for the next Broadway comedy show.
7.  FREE PENCILS ON THE FLOOR IN THE HALLWAY! 
 

Cool quote from the NMSA website:  “Maybe the biggest reason some teachers love middle schoolers is the gap between what they know and what they do.”
—Nancy Feigenbaum, More Than I Ever Imagined

Mr. Devore’s Do-Over

Some Education Blogs from around the web:

Learning is Messy::Roll up your sleeves and get messy
http://learningismessy.com/blog/ – 

The Dream Teacher:
http://thedreamteacher.blogspot.com/

Cool Cat Teacher:
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ – Teaching content with new tools, enthusiasm and the belief that teaching is a noble calling!

Mathematical Musings:
http://mathmusings.blogspot.com/ – Thoughts of a middle school math teacher who is re-discovering technology.

Teaching in the 408:We must reject the ideology of the “achievement gap” that absolves adults of their responsibility and implies student culpability in continued under-performance. The student achievement gap is merely the effect of a much larger and more debilitating chasm: The Educator Achievement Gap. We must erase the distance between the type of teachers we are, and the type of teachers they need us to be.
http://roomd2.blogspot.com/   –


The Blurb: –The Blurb is a daily, weekly or sometimes monthly news show created and maintained by some seriously motivated students living in cyberspace! Check out our news and views regularly.
http://guysread.typepad.com/theblurb

Weblogg – learning with the read/write web 
Really liked the article titled Believe What You Want to Find.

Teacher Magazine Blogboards: Compilation of blogs with a teacher eccentric viewpoint.

News & Information: 

Innovative Practices Across the Curriculum
Lakeville, Minnesota
June 24, 2008
Featured Speakers:
Rick Wormeli
Bill McBride

Institute for Middle Level Leadership
Colorado Springs,
Colorado
July 13-16, 2008
Charleston,
South Carolina
July 20-23, 2008

Best Practices for Student Success
Baltimore, Maryland
July 28, 2008
Fargo, North Dakota
August 6, 2008

2008 Board of Trustees election
View bios and letters of recommendations for the candidates in your region. All ballots must be postmarked or faxed by May 9, 2008.  (Troy as a ‘write-in’ candidate …) 

The National Forum: To Accelerate Middle Grades Reform (Schools to Watch )  
Annual Conference in Washington D.C. June 19-21

NMSA’s Annual Conference, Denver, CO October 30 – November 1, 2009:  Watch this space for upcoming information. 

Something coming up in your area?  Send us information at middleschooleducators@gmail.com or www.middleschoolmatters.com. 

Student Level Factors:
The biggest question for educators is whether factors outside our control are determinate or can we, as educators, make a difference in the lives of children regardless of those issues?

1. Home Environment
   1. Income – Correlation with SES (SES is actually a complex statistic which can be broken down further) – Ruby Payne
   2. Education
      1. R.E.A.D.Y. to Learn
         
   3. Occupation
   4. Home atmosphere only
      1. Parents having frequent discussions about school with their children
      2. Parents encouraging their children to do homework
      3. Parents providing resources to help their children
         
2. Learned Intelligence/ Background Knowledge
   (Intelligence as 2 types: Knowledge & Cognitive Process)
   
   1. Mentoring
      1. maintain a steady & consistent presence in a student’s life
      2. Realize the relationship may be “one sided”
      3. involve the student in decisions
      4. Recognize the need for fun
      5. Learn about the student’s life
         
   2. Vocabulary Instruction
      1. Wide reading
      2. Direct Instruction
         
3. Motivation
   1. Duh!
   2. Why do we do things?
   3. Acceptance of failure:  Mr. Devore’s Do-Over
   4. Things we can do:
      1. Provide feedback
      2. Provide tasks that are inherently engaging
      3. Long term projects of their own design
      4. Directly teach the dynamics of motivation
         

How about some good sites?
FranklinCovey – 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens

Randy Pausch “Last Lecture” – available from iTunesU

Mail Bag: 
Letter from OpenEducation.net on internet safety and the stakeholders in technology in education. 

Openeducation.net examines the report commissioned by Gordon Brown on internet safety and education.  The report finds that educators, industry, and families need to come together to handle the plethora of transescents.  Parental controls and opportunities to control are encouraged in the article.  Parental controls do exist for some operating systems including restricted logins, setting restricted hours of usage, developing a “space” for students to work, and logging the contacts and activity of the student on the computer.  Mac OS X has these features.  I’d propose that parents aren’t aware these things are on their computers as internet immigrants.

News:
Failing Schools Show Progress with most of the Same Teachers:
Edweek.org

Much of the widely reported improvement in student achievement at eight inner-city Chattanooga, Tenn., schools seems to be linked to the rising effectiveness of teachers who had been at the schools when their students’ performance was dismal, a report from an education think tank concludes.

That finding goes against the way the elementary schools’ story has often been told by education reformers, many of whom have focused on financial incentives that were meant to lure better teachers to the schools.

This conversations is continued from last week. Please check out Podcast #28 for more information.

Teacher Level

2. Classroom Management
   1. Establishing & Enforcing Rules & Procedures
      1. Shouldn’t be too many (though Ron Clark did well with 55)
      2. Students can be involved in developing
         
   2. Carrying Out Disciplinary Actions
      1. Reinforcement – recognition/reward for appropriate behavior or absence (or cessation of negative) behavior
         
      2. Punishment – negative consequences
         
      3. No Immediate consequences- reminders
         
      4. Combined punishment/reinforcement –
      5. Ed Ford:  The Responsible Thinking Process  
         
         1. “The Questions” 
            
   3. Teacher & Student Relationships
      1. High Cooperation — High Dominance
         1. Teacher traditionally enter with high cooperation
            
         2. Within 6-10 years more dominant
      2. Do students “know” the teacher?
         
   4. Maintaining Appropriate Mental Set
      1. “withitness” – “eyes in the back of your head”–identifying problems early.
      2. emotional objectivity – teacher’s emotions
         
3. Classroom Curriculum Design
   1. Correcting Students’ Misconceptions About Content
      
      1. Activate Prior Instruction
      2. Student Discussion
      3. Student Argumentation
   2. Learning Experiences:
      1. Verbal Instruction
      2. Visual Instruction
      3. Dramatic Instruction

* Note all of the work on Brain Based Learning & Gardner‘s Multiple Intelligences.

• Teachers must specifically identify what students are to learn and communicate that to students.
• Learning tasks must be close enough to “real world” tasks to allow for transfer of knowledge.
• Students need multiple opportunities and complex interaction with the skills
  

Universe:  Visually searching the web.
    Imagine for a moment that you’ve got a visual learner and you’re asking them to research in a verbal/linguistic environment.  Imagine the internet as a vast expanse of solar systems and each topic are the stars and planets that orbit that topic.  If you can do that, you can visualize Universe. 
    Universe gleans information from the web and organizes it into orbiting information.  The first screen is constellations of stars flowing past the central star, which is your initial topic.  There are different ways to see the results of the search and can be selected along the bottom of the output screen.  The second option is to turn the star clusters in to constellations of words that float by the central star.  What if your student just doesn’t handle the floating words or stars too well?  Choose the third option for presenting the information, called “secrets”, and the words become stationary and in a grid with the larger print words being more related to the subject than the smaller sized words.  Students can then select keywords based on relevance and correlation.  Other options include statements, taken in your selected time frame, that can be viewed related to the topic, superstars, people related to the topic, and snapshots, photos related to your topic.  These are the same people that also did “We Feel Fine” that looks for the key statement “I feel” and “I feel like” in people’s blogs and then pulls them together into an emotional assessment of the world.  It relates it to weather and photos posted on the blogs it collects from and translates that into a graphical picture of emotion. They also have a website called Lovelines that does the same thing with just the statements Love and Hate, but probably not designed for a middle school audience since the search engine only looks for the emotive statement not the content related to it. 

It’s time for me to work out our schedule for next year. My current goal is to establish a schedule which will allow for us to build in professional development right smack dab into the schedule. We are doing cost cutting, again, and one of the areas that is expensive is the cost of substitutes. This cost is actually doubly high, not only do we have the financial cost of a substitute, but the instructional value that substitutes bring is definitely lower than the scheduled teacher.With that in mind, we are looking for creative ideas. Here’s what we are discussing so far:

• Early dismissal once every other week (roughly) and extending the day – (Generally hated by parents. Child care is an issue).
• Late arrival – see above.
• Scheduling teachers in core areas to have common prep – (Could mean the loss of teams. Also a problem for teachers who teach multiple subjects).

Do you know of a creative way to build in professional development? Any comments, please hit the comment button above and let us know what you think.

I’ve been kicking around Prensky’s book, “Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning!”, and he talks about computer simulations and their impact on learning (teacher sense is tingling … this might be a future podcast … or Troy is getting ready to spitball me …) and am reminded that there are physical simulations out there for middle schools as well.

Experientia provides a couple of simulations and encounters at facilities around the country. One of them is Exchange City. Students work through an economics curriculum (think Junior Achievement) in preparation for a day at Exchange City. Students man the shops, provide the labor, consume the goods produced, take out loans, pay for utilities, run a credit union, create and abide city laws, and exercise the franchise through City Hall. Some of the program is scripted, but the rest is a limited microcosm of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Students experience the red tape of City Hall and the loan process, maintaining a checkbook, earning a “paycheck”, overdrafting (“Impossible, I have checks left!”) and the need to market as well arrange for supplies to produce. There are several goals for each student. Some are entrepreneurs and have to be concerned about turning a profit or at least paying back their initial loan. All have to worry about spending their paychecks without going over their limits. Students have to learn to manage their time and be back from breaks so that others can take theirs. If the entire shop goes on break, staff have been known to go into a shop and take supplies or inventory. They truly have to “mind the store.”

The curriculum includes a post-trip reflection piece that involves looking at the individual accounts for each student and each business. A post-trip business meeting yields interesting conversation analyzing each group’s business plan.

This is also an excellent community service project for high school seniors who are willing to be volunteers in each of the businesses assisting the middle school students as they work through their work day.

There are Exchange City locations in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Tennesee. You can view each state location here. I’m partial to Stacey Mehler. She’s always a great help. If you give them a hollar, mention you saw Exchange City on Middle School Matters.

News & Events:

Innovative Practices Across the Curriculum
Lakeville, Minnesota
June 24, 2008

Institute for Middle Level Leadership
Colorado Springs,
Colorado
July 13-16, 2008
Charleston,
South Carolina
July 20-23, 2008

Best Practices for Student Success
Baltimore, Maryland
July 28, 2008
Fargo, North Dakota
August 6, 2008

International Travel Grant for Teachers
Available to travel next April? Ever considered being an exchange teacher to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, or Ukraine? Here’s your chance! The U.S. Department of Education is holding a competition for U.S. Educators to travel and see the world. Some of it anyway. There are some restrictions and a daily stipend is provided in country. This program takes professional development to new places. Give a click here to apply for the program.

Teacher Ambassador Program: Applications due April 7, 2008

Essential Qualities in Math Teaching Remain Unknown 

By Sean Cavanagh

It is one of most widely accepted axioms in math education: Good teachers matter.

But what are the qualities of an effective mathematics teacher? The answer, as a recent federal report suggests, remains frustratingly elusive.

Research does not show conclusively which professional credentials demonstrate whether math teachers are effective in the classroom, the report found. It does not show what college math content and coursework are most essential for teachers. Nor does it show what kinds of preservice, professional-development, or alternative education programs best prepare them to teach.

Read the rest of the story here.

Advisory Idea: NSTeens - Internet Safety for Teens sponsored by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Videos and printable cards for discussing internet safety and online behavior. Activity cards provide for educators to facilitate discussion and spread information.

Marzano - What works in schools:
School wide:

1. Guaranteed & Viable Curriculum-
   
   1. Opportunity to Learn
      
   2. Time
2. Challenging Goals & Effective Feedback -
   
   1. Monitoring
   2. Pressure to Achieve
3. Parental & Community Involvement
4. Safe & Orderly Environment
5. Collegiality & Professionalism

Teacher Level:
* Note that individual teachers have a great impact on student achievement

1. Instructional Strategies
   1. Identifying similarities & differences (resource, lesson planner, Venn Diagram and Comparison Matrix, Frayer Model, )
   2. Summarizing & Note taking (graphic organizer resource, note taking resource, SQ3R (not "leet speak"), Sticky Note Strategy, THIEVES+)
   3. Reinforcing and providing recognition (post card home, Weekly logs of learning, reflections, Grade tracking)
   4. Homework & practice (Podcast #5, Homework is your Friend ...)
   5. Nonlinguistic representation (alternative assessment pieces, Foldables, step-by-step to a Flip Book creation)
   6. Cooperative learning (resource,
   7. Setting Objectives & Providing Feedback (Timely and specific, Rubrics )
   8. Generating & testing hypothesis (simulations
   9. Questions, cues and advance organizers (Q Tasks, Graphic Organizers or Graphic Organizers )
      

To Be Continued........

“The Mom” song, sung to the William Tell Overture, by Anita Renfroe What a mom says in 24 hours, condensed into 2 minutes and 55 seconds! Check this out for a good chuckle.

Middle School News & Information:

1.  Ning news:  Works nice, but watch out for the Google ads.  Some may not be suitable depending on the site topics.  Add content to the site to draw Google ads that are appropriate, otherwise, pay the bucks to loose the ads.
2.  U.S. Department of Education website:  Doing What Works – The USDE has a new website for best practices (k-12).  Currently the site has content for helping with ELL students but is planning on best practices across the school improvement spectrum.
3.  School Web Locker:  Is your IT “person” grousing about server space and teacher file space?  School Web Locker may be a solution to the problem.  The San Diego based company provides 100 mbs of space for each student and 1 gb of space for each teacher to use on their servers.  Teachers can create a homework assignment and automatically drop it into each student’s locker.  Students can turn in assignments by dropping it into the teacher’s locker.  There is a file size limit, something to consider in moving to a paperless classroom.
4a.  3 Skills needed to be globally competitive (Alan November)
1. The key to using technology in the classroom, November said, is not to train teachers to use it, but to train them on how to incorporate that technology creatively into lessons in engaging and stimulating ways.
2. The second essential skill requires every classroom to become a global communication center with a more globalized curriculum.
3. The third skill today’s students need is self-direction.
4b.  The Editor Reflects:  “Technology and Young Adolescents: Chance for a Better Future and Source of Anguish”
1.  Did folks recognize the importance and forsee the change of Gutenberg’s printing press?
2.  10 years ago could we see what impact the iPhone, iPod, and Blu Ray technologies would have on education?
3.  Are we teaching to current technology or teaching skills to assimilate new technology and apply it to our needs?
5.  Middle Level Essentials Conference in Minnesota:  April 4-5 is sold out!
6.  Innovative Practices Across the Curriculum    Lakeville, Minnesota    June 24, 2008
7.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership   Colorado Springs, Colorado  July 13-16, 2008 and Charleston, South Carolina  July 20-23, 2008
8.  Best Practices for Student Success  Baltimore, Maryland  July 28, 2008 and Fargo, North Dakota August 6, 2008
9.  First Annual Schools to Watch Conference—Celebrating Excellence in Middle Level Education
WHEN:       Wednesday, May 7, 2008 8:15 AM – 2:45 PM
                    Eastern Time Zone
WHERE:     Bovee University Center
                    103 East Preston St.
                    Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
                    USA
FEE:     Individual Registrant   Michigan Schools to Watch Conference $125.00
10. Software Industry Promotes Goals for School Technology from Education Week. (Education Week now includes free articles).

Reversing the Downward Slide of Enthusiasm:
Why do students lose enthusiasm?
Audience responses:

• Peer pressure
• Newness wearing off
• Tired of being wrong  (Nothing breeds success like success?)
• Lack of home support
• Lower assessement pressure
• Lack of Teacher enthusiasm

Presenter Response

• No encouragement
• Boring
• Family issues (student becomes surrogate parent to younger siblings)
• Long day
• Too different from elementary
• Rules
• Other students
• Teacher strictness/interest/enthusiasm
• Too much teacher talk
• Hard work

Academic Life History (Graph this) then ask them why?
Could the student complete a graph of their interest?

Attitude survey
Students do not come to school to be frustrated and unhappy with their assignments.
Ask students why they are here. Have them process that and write it out.

Core Values:

• Take Risks
• Question
• be curious
• Respect ideas
• Team work
• Problem solve
• Frustration is OK
• Challege ideas
• Explore
• Think diversely

Have the students create the aims (core value) and then sign the poster.

I am the creator of the system but the students are the experts in the system.

When you give students more power, it doesn’t mean that teachers lose theirs. It is not a zero-sum gain.

Plus/Delta
Simple T-chart
Students complete with what I learned and what could’ve been done better.  (Reflection piece for the teacher.)  (What if the teacher had a “locker” on their bulletin board where the students did this on a sticky note and the posted it on the “locker” image on the board where the teacher then can get a quick assessment of the day’s lesson.)

Reeves Research:
Core Research:
1.Defeating the “failure of hypothesis”
2.The 90  90  90 schools
3.The collaborative imperative
4.Impact of nonfiction writing
5.From the bell curve to the mountain
6.The Pygmalion Effect for adults (expectations)
7.The futility of format
8.Critical mass of implementation
9.Neworks beat hierarchies
10.Accountability is more than test scores

Stephen White – Pygmalion effect is 3 times more effective in terms of student achievement.
Belief system has a huge impact on teacher effectiveness
Critical mass: unless the majority of teachers are implementing the work, it won’t truly make a difference.

Collegue to collegue is most impactful than anything else.

Rich kids get interventions and extras.

Keys to Monitoring

• Monitor adult actions, not just test scores
• Monitor frequently – once a month is an absolute minumum.
• Monitor constructively – it’s a treasure hunt, not a witch hunt. Find out what the teachers are doing right. Don’t focus on the negative. Focus on the positive.

Laughter is the common thread throughout effective teams video taped by Reeves.

Long-Term Memory:
From Dr. Robert Greenleaf:
Check out his web site for more information:

WAIT ~ PAUSE ~ REFLECTION TIMES
Defined: Short, intermittent pauses in the instructional flow designed to provide time for learners to recall, think,process, discuss, and organize current knowledge and ideas with prior understandings and information.
Researchers: Mary Budd Rowe (1987) ~ First Wait-Time; Robert J. Stahl (1990) ~ “Think-time”; Kenneth Tobin &
Capie  (1987),  William W. Wilen (1987) ~ Question Techniques
 
Research The average teacher pause after a query is 0.7 to 1.4 seconds, before comment, redirect, prompt, continuation, or redirect.

Strategy 1st WAIT TIME (after a teacher question)

• Method ~ Allow 3-5 seconds of uninterrupted silence after a prompt to allow students to consider/recall responses.
• Caution ~ Too much time after imprecise questions can increase confusion. More often this is a period for “recall” requiring less processing. Strategy 2nd WAIT TIME (after a student response)
• Method ~ Provide uninterrupted silence after a prompt to allow students to consider/recall responses. Allows other students to consider whether to add to the response or offer a response of their own. This provides an opportunity for the brain to process, search, connect, organize. Strategy REFLECTIVE “PAUSE” TIME (before, after, or within commentary)
• Method ~ Deliberately pause for 3-5 seconds after a student question, before  responding or in the middle of a statement… allowing students to consolidate thinking – requesting no input from them. This provides time to consider information in a smaller “chunk” rather than in mass.
• Method ~ Extend the pause time to 1-2 minutes, asking students to think an idea carefully through or to write ideas down. Reflection is vital to long term memory and understanding. Strategy WORK-WAIT TIME (brief think/do task)
• Method ~ Individuals or pairs to remain on task to complete a 30 second to 2 minute activity (silently or quietly in pairs). For Example: pairs interactions ask learners to apply skill, concept, or knowledge immediately after explanation or discussion.

Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Conference 
General Items
Attendance:  400 or so
Keynote speakers:  Dr. Monte Selby, Zeitouna
New book using Musical Intelligence and 6+1 Writing Traits.  Look for it May on his web site.

Individual sessions:
Dr. McVey:  Social Networking in the Middle School
Scary factor
Poster school 2.0
What are the tools?
Gcast
Wetpaint
Zimbra
We participate therefore we are.
Linkedin
Bebo
Cyworld
Xanga
Orkut
Friendster
Hi5
Facebook
Ning recommended for educators:  http://www.ning.com/
Example:  dc2008.ning.com
No HTML coding required
Can make it very private.
Librarything
Limited to the first 200 books, there’s a fee for going over that amount.
Imagine virtual book clubs.
Dr. McVey’s email:  mmcvey@emich.edu.

Alternates to Retention:
Dr. Nic Cooper

Tyrany of OR (only this or that)

If we’re asking the question about retention:
We’re assuming that all kids must be at the same place at the same time. Could we look at the systemic reasons?

Look at the system, an analogy:
A rigid ceiling restricting growth
A porous bottom allowing kids to fail and fall through the bottom.

We need to turn the system on it’s head.

How do we address the physical aspects of kids development?

Getting to Got It! Helping Struggling Students Learn How to Learn
BETTY K. GARNER
Compliance vs Understanding. Do kids really understand or do they just say “Uh, huh”?

Project Based Learning Through Negotiating and Differentiating the Curriculum
Suzanne Hopkins  hopkinss@saline.k12.mi.us
Backwards planning first:  What is it that I want to teach?
Wide variety of examples.
Key thought:  They’re going to do the project, its just a matter of choice A presentation of mastery of the material, or choice B presentation of mastery of the material.  “Red Cup/Blue Cup”

The X-Factor
Kids earn their way to rewards.
Have someone be in charge of the naming of the teams and theme.
Use theme words in the hallway
Based off of the “Joy Factor” by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Merits: Each student starts with 5 per day and then can lose them. They did this for paperwork reasons, easier to count by deletion rather than addition.

Must keep 90% to participate in the reward.
Rules of the classroom are cause for merit loss.
School rules can also be the cause of merit loss.
Merits are only through core classes and the hallway for the team.
Team has allowed the students to “earn” back merits for some kids (depending upon the reason for Merit loss).

Rewards (try to keep the reward (what it is) a secret until it happens):
Miss one class period per month.
Students not participating are supervised by a teacher. (There is no “punishment”, they are just missing the reward. Basically a study hall)
Sundae Monday
Movie Madness (Movie & Popcorn)
White Elephant
PinBall (dodge ball with a bowling pin behind)
Card Games (different card games in different rooms)
Capture the flag
Duck Races – bought plastic ducks
Musical Plates (spin on Musical chairs) – decorate a paper plate, went outside, put plates in a circle, throw plate in the air, walk around, when the music stops, they had to find their plate.

It’s only an hour, once a month.

What we’d like to see developed at MAMSE:

1. Non-compete clause with MRA.
2. Conversation opportunities with peers built in to the schedule so that folks don’t have to miss a session to verbally process what they’ve seen and learned.
3. Some time to interact with the vendors outside of session time.
4. No sessions during lunch.

Resources from our Presentation at MAMSE

1.   Skype:  www.skype.com
2.   Required t-shirt:  http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/991e/
3.   Hardware:  we recommend www.apple.com/store
4.    Software: WordPress, PodCast Maker, PodPress
5.    Free Options: Gabcast, Gcast, Blogger.