Reflection for the Improvement

Reflection is a key component to growth.  As a first year principal, there is  a lot on my plate.  Admittedly, digital leadership was not one of my top priorities.  I did not devote the time it takes to be a digital leader.  Getting caught up in your “job” can be easy to do and reflection goes out the window.  

While completing the ISTE standards survey this past Wednesday, I began to notice a pattern in my answers.  Some things are done some of the time.   Being mindful of the ISTE standards are a powerful component to understanding what a digital leader on the campus should be and how to model being a digital leader.  

When connecting the ISTE standards to the very diverse skill level of technology on my campus, I speculate that some people will be able to take my digital leadership and implement the technology easily, while others will resist using that technology for fear of failure. As the digital leader, promoting and practicing using technology means that I have to keep up with technology trends and practice using technology for all use of professional development to grow and cultivate those technology leaders.  

ISTE has established a set of standards for all administrators to follow to ensure they are driving the technology growth on the campus.  There are various components to the standards, including, Visionary Leadership, Digital Age Learning Culture, Excellence in Professional Practice, Systematic Improvement,  and Digital Citizenship.   

When reverting back the different standards, I feel that I am the strongest at promoting a dynamic, and a strong digital citizenship environment that creates a digital-age learning culture for the teachers and students.  My goal for the up and coming year, is to commit to developing my personal technology proficiencies and deficiencies, including Systematic Improvement and Visionary Leadership. It is my charge to become the digital leader that creates a community of learners for all.   

Justify and Tell Why!

How many time have you asked your students, did you find the evidence? Probably more times than you breath in a day.   Student get tired of just using one way to find evidence to support their claims.  Recently, I came across the article below.   

8 Creative ways to help kids find the Evidence in Non Fiction

In the article, it gave teachers ways to help build the skill of finding evidence.  We often use the question, "How do you know?"  without thinking about have we taught them how they know? 

The article is a quick read and can help you support those students who are struggling at supporting their claims or making a claim. 

Motivation for a New Year?

I often look for solutions for my teachers to common problems we face in our classrooms.  One problem that seems to happen frequently is student's lack of motivation in school.  Since we are moving into "testing season", Is it imperative that we help students engage, develop the ambition, and tenacity to be their best at all times?  

The other day I came across a blog that was posted from The Mailbox on Facebook. This 17 year veteran uses flashlights to motivate her students to read.  Although simple enough, a dollar flashlight from the Dollar Store, students couldn't wait to read and even asked for more reading time.  Using this simple tool she pushes student to engage in independent reading, overcome hang ups they have about reading independently, and affords them the steadfastness to be better readers through practice.   Now that is some MOTIVATION!  

See snippets of her posts on motivation below or read the full blog with the link.  Look for her update for Finger Flashlights in the link. 

 http://headoverheelsforteaching.blogspot.com/2013/10/spark-student-motivation-flashlight.html?m=1

What do you do to motivate your students to be their best?   I would love to share your ideas with my staff!

Happy New Year!  



~Amie

Instructional Rounds for Improvement

We have lots to celebrate with the holiday season coming up.  Here at AVC, we have made significant gains through our instructional rounds process.  It is very evident that our students are benefiting from our instructional improvements.  We were able to move our student discourse (talking) from one to three word answers to complete sentences using our sentence starters to support our students.  We will be implementing one more instructional improvement to help our student continue to grow in academic talking, 5 STAR answers.   Our students are talking more, which turns into better responses to classroom content.  I recieved this rubric from our middle school, IMMS, and adapted it to fit our needs here at the elementary level.  

Another focus is think time.  As a teacher, I was consumed with filling the day with activities that were related to the content, often times forgetting to let the students think and talk.  As I did some research on how to best help our teachers develop better conversations and discussions, I came across this article about discussion.   A Discussion Challenge You Overcame is an article that gives good insight into how to handle some of the challenges in holding discussion in the classroom. Using our data, it was determined that our students needed that time to think before talking, gather their thoughts, and ponder the answer. It is our goal to push our students into better oral conversation with giving them the tools to support and develop their thinking before speaking. 

Lastly, we are going to work on our questioning techniques by asking different types of questions such as, open ended questions and divergent questions, to help our student think at a higher level rather than solely focusing on the Bloom's Level.  Bloom's was designed as a thinking scale not a questioning scale.  Instead of using Bloom's to design questions we will use different question types that produce the thinking at the higher level of Bloom's.  

Here are examples of our student support with our 5 Star Answers Rubric and Sentence Frames

 

Instructional Rounds at AVC

Recently we had a team of administrators give us feedback on our best practices in the classroom.  This information was enlightening and really helped our teachers see the need for the Instructional Rounds.  Through this eye opening feedback we were able to target two goals to focus on:

1. Increase student talk by 10%
2. Increase higher level questions by 10%

Focusing on the student talk, we are using sentence frames to help our students begin to speak in complete sentences and think in complete thoughts.  We also have put in intentional planning of two higher level questions through out the entire lesson cycle. 

Through walkthroughs and peer coaching, AVC teacher have made a conscious effort to ensure our students are using complete sentences, by scaffolding the use, not accepting answers with our them being in sentence form, and providing a safe environment for our student to converse in.  Moving into the peer coaching part of the instructional rounds, teachers have observed each others practices and gave practical feedback for improvement. 

I am so proud of my teachers ability to take concrete data, to improve their instructional practices in the classroom.  

Oh Captain My Captian...

 Today the world has lost a comediac genius and actor who stretched boundaries.  RIP Robin Williams. Depression can touch us all. It doesn't care how successful, how loved, or how we present ourselves to the outside world. Today it claimed one of my favorite actors. Thank you for always making me laugh. Remember to watch out for each other and their emotional health.  

Branding: Digital Age Leadership

In reading Eric Scheninger's Digital Leadership, the chapter about Branding has stuck out at me as I go through this process of becoming a digital age leader.  The concept of branding is to communicate your product or service through a distinctive sum experience, with the ultimate goal having a positive presences in the digital world.  Scheninger presents two types of branding, professional and school.  Your professional brand is a personal  brand, one that communicate who you are and what your believe.  The school  brand is what your school communicates about itself to the outside world.  Scheninger recommends that we look at professional and school branding from a business perspective,to create a focused, positive product or service that captures your audience.    The schools brand should resonate throughout the school and community, as a whole.