New Years Resolutions

One week until winter break:)  Try to keep routines going in your classroom as that is helpful for student learning and appropriate behavior.  Don't forget to come to Perkins on Tuesday from 7:15-8:30 for breakfast and time to socialize with our HP staff.  Everyone is invited.  Check out the Tellegami invite On Friday we will have the sing along from 2:30-2:50 in the gym and immediately following we will do Santa or Snowman Bingo from 3-3:30.  Our all school celebration dance will be done right before Bingo starts.  

I want to wish all of you a wonderful winter break.  Take some time to enjoy family and friends and do something kind for yourself.  

It's hard to believe it's almost 2014.  Happy New Year!
That is a time to stop and reflect on our lives and how we can improve ourselves.  Most of us make resolutions to save money, build more time for family, and to lose weight.  We also need to think about our jobs.  Here is an article to help you think about resolutions for 2014.  We are always trying to do more, meet every individuals need, try all of the new technology ideas out there, etc.  We need to focus our efforts and celebrate our progress.  This article may inspire you in making a resolution for school.  New Years Resolutions for Teachers

You may want to make New Years Resolutions with your students when you come back on Jan. 2nd and 3rd.  This is a 

good follow up to our Hopes and Dreams we made in the Fall. Students can reflect on their hopes and dreams and either update them or make New Years Resolutions.  Here are some resources to support making New Years Resolutions with students:
PBS Article Making New Years resolutions with your child
Scholastic New Years Resolution Time Capsules
Positive-and-Healthy-New-Years-Resolutions-for-Kids  
Please comment and add other ideas or links you may have to share.


Think about making resolutions...  
At school
To be healthier
At home

HSD 2025 and Technology

HSD 2025 and Technology  

On our December 11th Late Start, we are going to revisit our enduring understanding

Preparing learners for a changing world requires responsive shifts in teaching and learning.

Our essential questions are:

What do learners need to prepare for our changing world?

What shifts can we make in our practices to prepare our students (and ourselves) for our changing world?

We will continue our journey to UPGRADE our lessons, assessments, and activities utilizing technology.

We are not using technology for technology itself, but to upgrade understanding and learning.  

Heidi Hayes- Jacobs continues to inspire us to upgrade our work.  I recently emailed her sharing 

the progress here in Hudson and she said it made her day.  Here is one example of our students work.    Tellagami Example    
Her goal is to inspire and challenge educators

to upgrade our work.  Don't forget to visit  Curriculum 21 Clearinghouse for great resources.  

I would like to thank you all of the volunteers who are taking a risk and sharing what they know about technology.  Thank you to Jodi, Mary Beth, and Maija for facilitating sessions.

We will be meeting at River crest with our laptops.  Each session is designed for a 15 minute mini lesson with
30 minutes to apply your learning for something to use in your class,
8-8:45- Choice Session 1
8:50-9:35- Choice Session 2
9:40-10- Technology Overview with Nancy Dressel

I would like to encourage you to think about how technology can be used to help our students in reaching our 
Graduate Learner Outcomes:

• Global Literacy
• Technology Literacy
• Entrepreneurial Learning
• Environmental Sustainability
• Thinking
• Life Skills

Websites to check out include

 "Integration Matrix".  

Technology Matrix

I hope you find the collection of videos on the site showing technology being used in education to be helpful.  The videos are grouped according to the level of technology integration as well as the characteristics of the learning environment as defined below: (Our goal is to move toward the green!)

Levels of Technology Integration into the Curriculum

• Entry-The teacher begins to use technology tools to deliver curriculum content to students.
• Adoption – The teacher directs students in the conventional and procedural use of technology tools.
• Transformation-The teacher encourages the innovative use of technology tools.  Technology tools are used to facilitate higher order learning activities that may not have been possible without the use of technology.

Characteristics of the Learning Environment:

• Active-Students are actively engaged in using technology as a tool rather than passively receiving information from technology.
• Collaboration-Students use technology tools to collaborate with others rather than working individually at all times.
• Constructive-Students use technology tools to connect new information to the prior knowledge rather than to passively receive information.
• Authentic-Students use technology tools to link learning activities to the world beyond the instructional setting rather than working on assignments that are not relevant.
• Goal Directed-Students use technology tools to set goals, plan activities, monitor progress, and evaluate results rather than simply completing assignments without reflection.

December Dilemma

December Dilemma 

December can be a stressful and challenging time for students and staff, personally and professionally. Every December public school teachers and administrators face the difficult task of acknowledging the various religious and secular holiday traditions celebrated during this time of year while balancing the need for sustained high quality teaching and learning.  In an effort to help create a school environment that celebrates diversity by respecting differing points of view concerning religions, the following suggestions are offered.

·      Public schools must never appear to endorse religion over non-religion or one particular religious faith over another.

·       Public schools must be careful not to cross the line between teaching about religious holidays (which is permitted) and celebrating religious holidays (which is not).

·       Religious music, literature, art or other religious activities should not dominate school activities.  School events, assemblies, concerts and programs must be designed to further a secular and objective program of education and must not focus on any one religion or religious observance.

·       Religious symbols are not appropriate seasonal decorations in public schools. At the same time, students should not be restricted from choosing to express their religious views in course assignments (e.g., artwork, personal narrative).

My goal is to provide an inclusive learning environment for all students.  Every student should feel welcome and represented at a public school and should be able to participate in every activity we have.

High quality standards-based instruction and student learning is the expectation in December as it is throughout the school year. Holiday activities, parties and showing of videos should be a minimal part of the school day.  Maintaining routines are important to increase student learning and minimize behavioral difficulties.

Great Reads on this topic!

Religious Holidays in Public Schools

How-handle-religious-holidays-public-schools

Video Use Policy #6181

“Video presentations are primary for instructional use. However limited use of video presentations for entertainment purposes (e.g. holiday, long bus trips, behavior rewards, movie theater visits, etc.) is permitted with principal approval .”

Please remember to discuss with me entertainment videos you are thinking about showing and the purpose. Videos shown for holiday purposes should be shown on the day before a holiday break. Students do best when their learning routines are intact, right up breaks like vacations. Again thank you for your work, you’ve done a wonderful job in past years focusing on learning during the holiday season.

Here is another interesting read. Keeping Kids Motivated During the Holidays

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Gratitude- Happy Thanksgiving

What are you thankful or grateful for?

This is the question people are reflecting on during the month of November. 

I once was told to spend each night before bed reflecting with gratitude with what I do have.  This is a practice I do every time I hear myself venting and frustrated and magically things turn positive in my life when you focus on gratitude.

I want you to know that I am thankful to work with such professionals as all of you. Your dedication to your students and doing whatever it takes to help them grow both social/emotionally and academically is inspiring.   You treat them with the love and care as if they are your own children.

Did you know gratitude is something students need to be taught.  Check out this article to tap in on how we can support the development of gratitude with your students. 
Tapping into the Power of Gratitude

Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have. 

I’ve seen better days, but I’ve also seen worse. 

I don’t have everything I want, but I do have all I need. I woke up with some aches and pains, but I woke up. 

My life may not be perfect, but I am blessed.

 If you want to find happiness, find gratitude. 

When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. When life is better, say thank you and grow. 

When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.

Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside. 

No matter what is going on outside of us, there’s always something we could be grateful for - 

See more at: http://www.lorensworld.com/life-work/be-thankful-6-quotes-to-express-gratitude/#sthash.UpviwDii.dpuf

Non-fiction reading and writing.

The ASCD published magazine Educational Leadership focused their November edition on "Tackling Informational Text". Editor in Chief, Marge Scherer describes the conversations that took place with the EL editors on their experiences with nonfiction text and how the authors discuss how the CCSS emphasize teaching students how to read informational text. 

Educators are reminded by Mary Ehrenworth (deputy director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, New York),  "You are educating them not for the state test, not for that college class, but for the contributions they'll make to the world.....You are setting out to transform their ideas about what it means to read."

Here is a great article about starting out with informational texts:

Ed Leadership: Starting Out Practices

Check out this website for free downloads of great primary level non-fiction texts.
http://textproject.org/students/beginningreads/

Differentation in the CCSS

The Common Core has been a guiding force in classroom shifts in the past few years in Hudson.The Common Core State Standards outline rigorous content expectations with the intent to make all students college- and career-ready by the end of 12th grade. 
Questions that come up are how do we use the standards to meet the individual needs of my students.  This includes specific learning disabilities, speech disorders, ELL, EBD, Gifted and talented students and the range of students you see in your classroom.

The graphic above shows the student is always the center of learning.  We need to utilize formative assessments to determine student needs to reach the outcome or the CCSS.  Differnitated instruction is the route we take to support students to independently demonstrating the standards.

Click here to view the standards.

Directly From the Common Core State Standards for English/Language Arts… 

"By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed... Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards." 

"The Standards set grade-specific standards but do not define the intervention methods or materials necessary to support students who are well below or well above grade-level expectations. No set of grade-specific standards can fully reflect the great variety in abilities, needs, learning rates, and achievement levels of students in any given classroom. However, the Standards do provide clear signposts along the way to the goal of college and career readiness for all students." 

"All students must have the opportunity to learn and meet the same high standards if they are to access the knowledge and skills necessary in their post–high school lives." 

"Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention." 

---

Directly the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics…
“These Standards do not dictate curriculum or teaching methods. For example, just because topic A appears before topic B in the standards for a given grade, it does not necessarily mean that topic A must be taught before topic B. A teacher might prefer to teach topic B before topic A, or might choose to highlight connections by teaching topic A and topic B at the same time. Or, a teacher might prefer to teach a topic of his or her own choosing that leads, as a byproduct, to students reaching the standards for topics A and B.”

“What students can learn at any particular grade level depends upon what they have learned before. Ideally then, each standard in this document might have been phrased in the form, ‘Students who already know A should next come to learn B.’ …. Learning opportunities will continue to vary across schools and school systems, and educators should make every effort to meet the needs of individual students based on their current understanding.”

The keys to differentiation are to change:
1.  Content

• Use the standards from the grade below if students need more support or the higher grade levels to determine appropriate extensions 
• Different text levels or complexity in Guided Reading
• Choice interests for inquiry

2.  Process

• Gradual Release to scaffold learning- Think aloud, Think together, Guided Practice, Independent Practice
• Small group corrective teaching with more support
• Small group extension
• Use more visuals and vocabulary development

3. Product

• Use choices for students to share learning

Read more on differentiation:  Differentiation in the Common Core  Please comment to share more ideas how you differentiate in the CCSS.

Book Study

Here are the great books being read at Hudson Prairie during our book studies.

They will help us uncover our enduring understanding of:
Preparing learners for a changing world requires responsive shifts in teaching and learning.
and answer our essential questions of:
What do learners need to prepare for our changing world?
What shifts can we make in our practices to prepare our students for the changing world?




We want to collaborate with North Hudson about our reading on Twitter and share our learning with our colleagues here at Hudson Prairie.
Please get a Twitter account so you are ready to join in the learning.
How to set up a Twitter Account
Twitter for Beginners

#HudsonBookStudy is our hash tag!
Just put that in the message and we can search for all tweets that are related.

Let the learning begin!

Read chapter 1 by November 5th and be ready to tweet!