Week of January 16

Bus Duty: Christy Smith  and Lex Levy

Monday 1/16/17 Martin Luther King Jr. Day - No School
Tuesday 1/17/17 
Wednesday 1/18/17 MTSS Collaboration Visit.  Eastman and Kaiser in Plummer
Thursday 1/19/17- 
Friday 1/20/17

Monday 1/23/17 Non Work Day
Tuesday 1/24/17 
Wednesday 1/25/17
Thursday 1/26/17- 
Friday 1/27/17

****IMPORTANT****
Students should NEVER be sent home by a teacher in the classroom.  If they are sick or misbehaving, they need to be sent to the office.  The phone call to pick up a student must always come from the office.  If they come to the office, they can be seen by the nurse and we can make the relevant calls.  The exception to this would be the extended learning time and calling for parents to pick kids up who are staying late.

Upcoming Conferences
Trimester 2 parent conferences are scheduled for Thursday, February 16 from 4 -7 pm.  We will notify parents via email newsletter and Heidi will send out a couple of email blasts to parents.  If you have a student who is not passing, please phone home.  Discuss the situation on the phone, provide some solutions (using extended learning time etc.) invite them to the conference, and make sure they know we value the student, the family and their input.

Conferences provide a perfect opportunity to showcase student work in the commons area.  Senior projects, essays, encouraging class data (without student names), science projects etc. could be on display for parents to see while they enjoy the soup dinner Val is serving.  Be thinking about some artifacts of student learning that could make for a display.  Come see me if you have some ideas.

Accreditation: An accreditation external review team will be visiting Venture on February 7 and 8. They will be visiting classrooms, interviewing staff, students and families as part of their review. Heather has been leading the process of gathering survey data, achievement data and organizing Venture's work.  We will be discussing this more at our next staff mtg, but I wanted to give you plenty of time to prepare your students and lessons for visitors.

Student Bulletin: Heidi has graciously agreed to read a student/staff bulletin on Tuesday mornings at the beginning of second block.  I know this will take a few minutes from your class (3-5 is my estimate) however, the benefit of having one message that goes out to all students weekly is worth the time.  Any information that you think could be included in the bulletin should be sent to me and Heidi each week.  This can be anything from shout outs about cool things kids have done, to reminders of upcoming events, to inspirational quotes that you'd like to share. Heidi will also print the bulletin and put it in your mailboxes.  Please insist that students are quiet and listening as the bulletin is read.  If additional questions or concerns come up, they might provide some

Why Don’t Students Like School?  A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How The Mind Works And What It Means For The Classroom

Chapter 2:  How Can I Teach Students the Skills They Need When Standardized Tests Require Only Facts?

Big Idea: Factual knowledge must precede skill

Remember the quote attributed to Einstein:  “Imagination is more important than knowledge”?  The author contends that knowledge is more important, because it’s a prerequisite for imagination that leads to problem solving, decision making, and creativity.  The author notes that a movement is underway to avoid teaching of facts and that ridicules “knowing things.”  However, the most respected cognitive process – logical thinking, problem solving etc.- are intertwined with knowledge.  Facts without skills are of little value, but thinking skills cannot be deployed without factual knowledge.

Knowledge is essential to reading comprehension.  Background knowledge allows chunking, which makes more room in working memory, which makes it easier to relate ideas and therefore to comprehend.  Because knowing things makes it easier to learn new things, and because children from underprivileged homes have a smaller vocabulary and fewer experiences to build background knowledge, the gap between privileged and underprivileged kids widens every year.

Background knowledge is necessary for cognitive skills. Background knowledge makes you a better reader and is necessary to be a good thinker.  Much of the time when someone seems engaged in logical thinking, he or she is actually engaged in memory retrieval.  Memory is the cognitive process of first resort.

Factual knowledge improves your memory.  People who have experience in a field, say football for instance, and people without experience can read the same simple story.  Those with background knowledge and experience will remember the story better, even though both groups understood the story when they read it.  The more you already know, the easier it is to learn more.  This is because when you have background knowledge, your mind connects the material you’re reading with what you already know, even when you’re not aware that it’s happening.

Implications for the classroom:

Evaluate which knowledge to instill:

1.      Teach the material that the author assumes students already know and left out. (The author of whatever text you're reading)

2.      Teach the concepts that come up again and again.

Be sure the knowledge base is mostly in place before you require critical thinking. This is really important, because asking students to use critical thinking too soon will turn them off completely.

Shallow knowledge is better than no knowledge.

Sometimes a brief explanation is all that’s necessary for learning to continue. To much droning on about at topic is boring and defeats the purpose of filling in background knowledge so they can engage with the topic.

Do whatever you can to get kids to read.  
Because it builds background knowledge.

Knowledge acquisition can be incidental.

Knowledge can be folded into the school day.  Stories, documentaries, math problems, etc. can contain information that builds a knowledge base.  Look for opportunities.

Start early.

Children who start behind in terms of knowledge, will fall even further behind unless there is an intervention.  

Knowledge must be meaningful.

Knowledge pays off when it’s conceptual and when the facts are related to each other.  Learning lists of facts is a curiosity killer.

You may have already seen this in circulation on Facebook.  If not, it's worth watching.