Staff Enrichment Day 001 2019-2020

Setting Our Curriculum Mapping Goals and Plans for the Year

Welcome back! 
 
Thank you for all of the hard work you and your team did unwrapping and mapping the Ohio Learning Standards. The discussions, collaborations, and products from our work last year have led to some incredible growth as a district. 
 
This Monday, September 9th, will be our first Staff Enrichment Day for this school year. We will continue our work unwrapping and mapping the Ohio Learning Standards, building common assessments, and designing units around bands of standards. 
 
The following video will help you prepare for Monday’s Staff Enrichment Day, and it outlines: 
 
1) The Seven Goals our Technology Committee set for this school year. 
2) Our overall goals for this year’s Staff Enrichment Days. 
3) Our expectations for Monday’s Staff Enrichment Day. 
 
I look forward to working with you and eventually meeting with each team. I have met with department chairs, grade level chairs and fleet leaders about the scope of work the enrichmentdays. 
 
If you have any questions or concerns after watching the video, please call or email me. I would love to work with you.
 
Remember to ‘share’ your curriculum map with me again via Google Sheets and with Chelsea Moyer, and allow “Can Edit”. Also ‘share’ your team’s plan for the upcoming Staff EnrichmentDays with me via Google Docs that includes everyone’s first and last name, meeting location, content area, grade, areas of focus, etc. (Will you unwrap and set learning targets for a new content area? Will you set differentiated learning targets for all learners?  Will you design a common assessment, and begin designing a unit of instruction for that assessment? Will you create interventions for learners for post-assessment? Each building, grade level, and department may take their own path, but two commonalities remain: we will be working with The Ohio Learning Standards and we will be further developing our Curriculum Maps. Our maps are a living document that serves as a tool to help us instruct and learn. We are constantly improving them. Our maps will soon be accessible for all in the drop-down Staff Resources Folder on our browsers.)

Please watch this video for important information regarding our upcoming Staff Enrichment Day, Monday, September 9th:  https://youtu.be/rNhAJk7mDLE

Thank you, update and winners!

Thank you for all of your hard work this morning on our curriculum mapping process.

• We now have 32 subjects linked on the district curriculum map.
• Almost every content area has now shared their curriculum map template.
• There are 70 registered teachers building units, designing lesson plans and mapping their standards inside Chalk.com.
• Lots of great feedback and suggestions from the survey on the mapping. Thank you to the departments for taking the time to fill that out.
• Several departments across the district, including at least one from each campus has graduated from unwrapping the standards to our next step. (Again, there is no finish line, and we will always be working to create a curriculum that is engaging, relevant, and standards-based for our students.)
There were many great discussions today about students and curriculum.. Thank you.
We had 36 entries for the contest guessing the correct number of students enrolled at Port Clinton City Schools. The guesses ranged from 465 to over 2000.
The correct number of students currently enrolled at Port Clinton City Schools is 1662. (Provided to me by Jan Gluth.)
The winners are: 
Abbey Fry at Bataan Intermediate. She won a copy of Let Them Speak! How Student Voice Can Transform Your School by Rebecca Coda & Rick Jetter
and
Bill Hollister at the High School. He won a copy of Stories from Webb: The Ideas, Passions, and Convictions of a Principal and His School Family.
(Photo attached.)
Thank you making a difference in the lives of students.

ELA Writing Resources:

Some great links from a friend.

ELA Writing Resources 

The following resources were shared with me recently, and I think they are excellent for helping to teach point of view, fact/opinion, finding evidence to support an argument, communicating a clear idea… and more! 

I hope you find them as helpful as I did. I especially like the links within the ‘Vermont Writing Project’ at the end of this email.

Kelly

(Hat tip to Char for these great links.)

Resources:

Student Writing Samples – Argumentative – Achievethecore.org and InCommon sorted by grade level K-12. https://achievethecore.org/category/330/student-writing-samples?&sort=name

The Points of View Reference Center – Infohio.org  for Grades 6-12 Browse by category, find graphs  and charts, examples of fact vs opinion in context, point and counterpoint paired texts

Looking and Learning at Student Writing – Vermont Writing Project includes checklists and resources for grades K-12.

Video Update for December Staff Enrichment Day on Curriculum Mapping and Ohio Learning Standards

We are one week away from our staff enrichment day focused on the curriculum mapping of The Ohio Learning Standards. It’s going to be a great morning!
I will be sending out a few messages this week about the day and process. We will let you know the exact locations you are meeting, etc.
I have met with each building’s curriculum-map facilitator team, and I will be happy to meet with anyone that would like to learn more.
You will need:
The template itself has the directions in it, and the process is very simple.
The process is simple and valuable: 
1) Read every standard out loud.
2) Copy and paste the standard number in the first column of the template.
3) Copy and paste the standard description in the second column of the template.
4) Collaborate and discuss with our colleagues what the standard means to us and record in bullet point fashion a “teacher’s clarification/understanding” of the full standard in the third column of the template.
5) Collaborate, discuss, and record the student evidence of learning, or an “I can statement” for each part of the standard.
6) Only focus on the first 4 columns.
This is a solution-focused day.
Our first goal: For every staff member to have a high understanding of The Ohio Learning Standards and engage in rich, solution-focused discussions about those standards with their colleagues, and create evidence of learning statements for students, for each standard.
This will be a great day!
Thank you for all you do for our students and the district.
You are awesome!
Kelly

 

Science Standards Update and Notes for 2018-2019 School Year

One of our district’s Science teaches made a great observation about the 2018 Ohio Learning Standards for Science; there are not content elaborations. I made some calls and learned that those will appear before January for in the newly revised Science Model Curriculum.

Here are my notes from my research on the 2018 Science Standards Update:

  • Science Standards are revised.

  • We have a standard statement and a content statement

  • What is missing is the content elaboration piece.

  • The content elaboration piece is being developed and will be available in the model curriculum. It will be released later, before January. Stay tuned.

  • I will be sending you some supplemental resources later that may be of help to you, for you to use in the meantime. They have been “possibly” curated by those helping to create the model curriculum for the state.

  • Recommendation: join Science Education Council of Ohio, SECO. There are some great resources there. https://scienceeducationofohio1.wildapricot.org/

  • Any questions on content elaboration…. I have some great resources, but the best is my friend, Char Shryock char.shryock@bayschoolsohio.org  She has offered her email address to answer any questions you may have regarding the Ohio State Standards for Science. She is on the board that worked on them. She is awesome. Please reach out to her, and you can loop me in if you’d like.

  • Also some great value in looking at the next generation science standards: http://www.nextgenscience.org/  While it is NOT what we use, it may be of great help until the model curriculum is released.

  • I would like to connect our science department with some science classrooms around the nation to do some collaborative labs, and share feedback and ideas within the science classroom. Jodie Dienhammer in Coppell, TX,and others are are a interested in collaborating..

  • I would love to talk with you about bringing Challenge Based Learning to the Science Classroom for a fun and relevant way to teach the standards. Basically students solve real world problems with Science, while… showing an awesome understanding of the Ohio Learning Standards. Inquiry based, projects, good stuff. Love it.

What School Could Be and Most Likely to Succeed

Books, Movie, and Resources

Mr. Buck shared the following with me regarding a book titled, What School Could Be. I think this will be one of my next reads, and the 90 minute documentary Most Likely to Succeed looks like something I would like to share with staff.

Let me know if you are interested in being part of the viewing for the film, and how we could organize this. I think this could spark some great discussion and may lead to some wonderful new initiatives and changes.

“Most Likely To Succeed is a thought-provoking documentary feature film that reveals the growing shortcomings of conventional education methods in today’s innovative world. The film explores compelling new approaches that aim to revolutionize education as we know it, inspiring school communities to reimagine what students and teachers are capable of doing. To date, MLTS has screened for thousands of audiences around the world, igniting conversations and empowering change along the way. Share the film with your community to activate change now.”

ACT Resources for Students

The Port Clinton ACT Prep Team, consisting of Kerri Schaffer, Joe Miller and Lucas Kennedy led two ACT Prep sessions for Port Clinton Students this March.

One session was in the evening, and another was held in the afternoon. The hour-long sessions were held in the new high school media center and designed to boost students confidence in taking the ACT, while giving them vital information on how to improve on the test itself. These were very valuable sessions.

The team also assembled an ACT resource file for all students to use to better prepare for the ACT: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TeRNAglW-9ZFYLDR9AC2RZl0ONlRjVUY

Please share this resource file link with any student who will be taking the ACT.

Thank you Joe, Kerri, and Lucas for your leadership and dedication to students.

 

PC Teachers to Present at G-Tech Summit

I am pleased to inform you that Port Clinton City School District was notified today that Ryan Evarts, Kerry Fial, Lucas Kennedy, Stephanie Kreilick, and Joe Miller received an acceptance to present at the 2018 G-Tech Summit.
Their desire and willingness to lead professional development helps advance good instructional practice within and outside our school district, which directly impacts the lives of students.
Port Clinton is truly grateful for the meaningful gift of their time and talent.
Thank you Kerry, Stephanie, Ryan, Joe and Lucas for your leadership.
Kelly

Ashland Graduate Credit Hours Opportunity for PC Teachers

Greetings, 
 
Anyone that attended  the Ashland Professional Development on our Inservice Day on February 16th is eligible to work an independent study and earn up to 3 graduate credit hours through Ashland. 
 
Ashland is offering graduate credit hours for $175 an hour for up to 3 hours ($525). That is amazingly affordable. You would work with me on an independent study project of aligning the Ohio Learning Standards to your lesson plan outline for the year. 
 
If you are interested, please email me and we can create an individualized plan together to determine what the goals and end product will be, as well as the completion date. 
 
I am volunteering to be the adjunct because I believe the work with benefit our district and the teachers involved.
 
I look forward to working with anyone interested. I will need a reply before March 13th. 
 
Please email me with any questions.
 
Thank you. 
 
Kelly
 
Additional Details: 
 
12.5 contact hours = 1 graduate credit @ $175
25 contact hours = 2 graduate credits @ $350
37.5 contact hours = 3 graduate credits @ $525
They will have to do an out of class assignment which usually takes 4-6 hours to complete.  This assignment could something like: a action/implementation plan, lesson plan with reflection piece, etc.