Thursday Thriller
March 23, 2023
Photos from the Field
Tuesday night our Prelude and Intermediate Orchestra students performed with Pioneer. Students were amazing! Our Prelude students 'self' conducted themselves! Great job, Caleb!
Signing up for the Color Run
Becky Jo, Yaneth, Christy and Addison are doing a great job of organizing and recruiting for our first annual Color Run! Anxious to see the turn out next month.
Nuts-n-Bolts
1. 9th grade registration went REALLY well! We registered all but 6 students!!! WHOOP!! WHOOP!!! Shout out to Steve for doing the prep work and planning, ELA teachers for gathering up the registration forms, Scott, Becky Jo, Addison, Yaneth, Ian Moffit for helping our students register. The smiles on students' faces and excitement for their classes was priceless. :D
SBA schedule
Dance/Assembly on the 31st
Upcoming 6th and 7th grade registration
3. Jen Golden is a recipient of the Golden Onion Award!! Whoop! Whoop! She will be recognized at the April 18th school board meeting. Congratulation, Jen!!!
4. Nominations now open for Staff Achievement Grants. If a team of three want to nominate a staff member, please let me know. I would love to write a letter in support of
Classified and certificated staff are eligible for these $1500 grants. The grant award also includes up to five days of professional leave. Staff are only eligible for this grant once during their tenure with the school district.
Remember, this is a peer nominated and peer selected award. Recipients will be honored at the End of Year in-person celebration Wednesday, June 14 in the Wa-Hi Commons. Please contact me with additional questions.
5. Don't forget to sign for your absences with Stephanie.
Something to Ponder
I found this article interesting as well as the strategies! Especially the EXPICITLY Random Groups and the percent of students' mindset going into the group work. The Vertical Work--students feel less anonymous standing and more engaged in the classroom.
Hope you find a gold nugget and try out one of these strategies.
A Strikingly Different Way of Teaching Math (and Other Subjects)
In this Cult of Pedagogy article, Jennifer Gonzalez interviews Peter Liljedahl (Simon
Fraser University, Canada) on his “Thinking Classroom” model. Originally designed for
mathematics instruction, it can be used in science, social studies, and language arts with
modifications. Here are the essential components:
• Problems before instruction – The class begins with students getting a thinking task to
work on in small groups. “In a traditional classroom,” says Liljedahl, “we show the students
how to do it, then we do one together, then they practice it on their own – the classic I do, we
do, you do – which promotes, whether you want it or not, a form of behavior called
mimicking… In order to get students to think rather than mimic, we have to remove the I do.”
• Increasingly challenging tasks – When teachers first launch this model, students get
fun, non-academic tasks to help develop a “culture of thinking.” Then teachers introduce a
carefully sequenced series of curriculum tasks that expose students to key content, one step at a
time, becoming more and more challenging.
• Vertical work – Groups of three students work standing up. Why this unusual format?
“When it’s vertical,” says Liljedahl, “they can see each other’s work, which promotes
knowledge mobility and gives greater access to more ideas. When it’s vertical, I can see
everything. I don’t need to wait for that quiz next Friday to see if the students understood it. I
can see right now, and then I can intervene right now.” Standing up also seems to make
students feel less anonymous and more engaged in the classroom.
• Non-permanent work surfaces – Students record their thinking on erasable
whiteboards. This supports experimentation and creative thinking and makes unsuccessful
attempts and mistakes acceptable. “If we compared a group working on a whiteboard versus a
group working on flip-chart paper,” says Liljedahl, “the group working on the whiteboards,
they’ll start within 20 seconds. They’ll start making notations on the board. They’ll try
anything and everything because they feel like they can just erase it if it’s wrong.” Students
working on flip-chart paper typically don’t get started for three minutes, avoid taking risks, and
do less high-level thinking.
• Explicitly random groups – When students formed their own groups, or when teachers
grouped students strategically, says Liljedahl, “we found that 80 percent of students entered
these groups with the mindset that, within this group, their job is not to think.” But when
teachers made it clear that groups were being formed randomly, within a few weeks, 100
percent of students were thinking and contributing. “In addition,” Liljedahl continues, “the use
of frequent and visibly random groupings was shown to break down social barriers within the
room, increase knowledge mobility, reduce stress, and increase enthusiasm for mathematics.”
• One marker – Students have to pass the writing implement from person to person,
which means they have to collaborate rather than engage in “parallel play.” The teacher
circulates as students work, giving hints and suggesting extensions when necessary.
• Consolidation – After students have worked through their assigned tasks, they
transition to activities that reinforce each student’s learning. First they do a gallery walk
looking at each group’s work, with the teacher pointing out key elements. Next students take
notes, writing down their insights in a more-formal and structured way. Finally they do a self-
assessment to check on their grasp of the concept or skill.
“A Thinking Classroom: An Interview with Peter Liljedahl” by Jennifer Gonzalez in Cult of
Pedagogy, March 5, 2023; for more detail, see Liljedahl’s book, Building Thinking Classrooms
What are you reading?
I listened to this podcast Hope Rising with Casey Gwinn. It challenged my thinking on how powerful hope is AND it's measurable! I also took the 'level of hope' quiz. Science tells us that it is the most predictive indicator of well-being in a person’s life. Hope is measurable. It is malleable. And it changes lives.
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Calendar of Events
Thursday, March 23rd -"Let's Talk Tik Tok" beginning at 6:00PM
Friday, March 24th - GC @ 7:30 in CONOR's room, Dismissal at 12:25, Staff meeting at 1:00 in the library
Saturday, March 25th -Spiffy Film Festival at the Little Theater from 10:00-1:00
Monday, March 27th -Scott and Kim will be at MS PD in the morning and return to the building at 9:00 AM. Scott and Kim have training at the District Office from 1:30-5:30
Tuesday, March 28th - Band rehearsal first period, Book Thief Panel parent evening from 6:00-7:00 PM
Wednesday, March 29th -
Thursday, March 30th - 5th grade band recruitment concert at Garrison from 9:30-10:15, HBD, Charlie!!
Friday, March 31st -Activity hour and Assembly
Spring Break April 3-7th
