Sophomore results come back in June for the Educational
Course Assessment (ECA) Test they take in May.
Students learn if they have passed the graduation test or if they will
have to retake it to reach that goal.
On the
first day of the school year, I write three goals on the chalkboard to
challenge the classes: 1) 100% of my students will pass the ECA in May. 2) Students will write with voice and
passion. 3) Students will participate in
recreational reading from my classroom library for extra credit with the goal
of becoming lifelong learners.
As a
teaching consultant for the National Writing Project (NWP), writing is the most
important focus in my classroom.
Students use word processing programs daily to complete work for my
class. Microsoft Word is on the
computers in my classroom mini-lab, but students may use any word processing
program to type their writing.
Students
write poetry weekly using many different types of poetry - pantoum, free verse,
sonnets, black line poems, limericks, etc.
They do fifteen minute quickwrites on a topic of their choice. I give them a list of possible topics, but it
is an open-ended assignment as long as what they write is school appropriate.
Through this assignment I learn things about my students that they would never
talk about in class, and they improve their writing fluency so that by May they
are able to write a four-page ECA essay in fifty minutes.
Students
write different types of essays - persuasive, narrative, expository, and
descriptive. No one knows which type of
essay students will be asked to write in May so they learn to write all
four.
Students
also write research papers on a topic of their choice. They use the online Indiana State Library
Inspire for research. They use Google or
Bing to find online articles, websites, pictures, and video clips. Students use Endnote.com to organize their
research material. They create a multi-media classroom presentation which may
include Presi or Powerpoint.
Analytical
thinking and reading informational text is an important standard. Students write compare and contrast essays
after watching a youtube video of Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail and reading Antigone in the class textbook.
They make Venn diagrams and study examples of other compare and contrast
essays found on the Internet.
Students
learn to write Constructive Response Answers while reading novels. The short
answer questions have replaced multiple choice tests in recent years and
although it takes much longer to grade CRA, the improvement with student
writing makes it worth the time. The
sophomores are more prepared for the short answer questions on the ECA as a result
of this practice.
Our school
improvement plan includes using one short answer question on all tests in all
classes throughout the school to help improve student writing.
Parent
involvement is an essential part of the learning process. Through our student data system, Harmony,
teachers post lesson plans daily and student progress reports are available
online 24/7. I sent home letters at the
beginning of the year asking parental permission for students to read the books
in my classroom library. I also
communicate with parents about missing assignments, tardiness, discipline
issues, attendance, and progress on the Acuity pilot tests that are predictive
of the student success on ECA in May.
Shoals Jr./Sr.
High School is part of the Indiana Department of Education pilot Acuity testing
program this year. Students take three
predictive tests to indicate the areas of weakness and I may create custom
tests online selecting questions for the areas in which students need to
improve. I may also choose tier 1, 2, 3,
and 4 online tutorial resources and assign them to students. Although the tests themselves have worked
very well this year, students have had trouble connecting to the tutorial
resources. Brain Pop is one of the suggested resources and it tends to lock up
on our school network. So, I have not
been impressed with the tutorial section of the online program.
In April, I
plan to send a summary of the growth (or lack of growth) that students have
experienced with the three tests and explain to parents which areas students
have strengths or weaknesses prior to the ECA test. The online test predicts who will pass and
who will fail the ECA. Since this is the
pilot year and the first time I have used Acuity with classes, I do not know
yet how accurate the predictions will become.
I do like the data assessments of the online program and the individual
reports I can generate and print for the students. Since the analytical and
informational text reading scores have been areas of weakness (which I would
have predicted without the online test from my teaching experience), I have
focused on those areas throughout the year.
Collaborative
learning and sharing is an important part of my class. Students work in groups of three and then
circulate the classroom reading and making comments on written work that the
other groups have completed (using post-it notes). They receive class points for participation
and writing. Whole class discussion
builds on what each group has to say about a specific analyzed writing.
Rose-Hulman
provides a free moodle system called PRISM, which is funded through a grant
from the Lilly Foundation. Our classroom
moodle is password protected and available for students to use from any
computer, or even their phones. Students
participate in discussion forums about the seven themes of To Kill A Mockingbird. They
take quizzes and multiple choice tests. Sophomores
write essays and attach the Microsoft Word document to the moodle topic where I
may grade it online.
Students
learn 500 SAT vocabulary words during the year utilizing Vocabulary Videos that
are available online and then taking Vocabulary Video quizzes on the class
moodle. They also work in collaborative
groups on vocabulary building activities which include many different forms of
questions. Sometimes they fill vocabulary
words into a fractured fairytale.
Prefixes, suffixes and root words may be the focus of another
assignment. Filling vocabulary words
into blanks like Mad Libs is another format available. At the beginning of the
year, they start out writing their own sentences in groups using the words for
the week.
Ted Talks
are an important venue for educators.
Classes watch a variety of talks ranging from creativity, to doodling,
to never giving up in life.
After the
ECA is over, students work on multigenre blank books of their writing
throughout the year. Some students opt
to write additional poetry, short stories, or articles. Students may create a theme for their book
and design really awesome covers. The
books are purchased online. Talented art
students sometimes do cartoons, drawings, or pop-ups to showcase what they have
written during the year. This is my
favorite project and is the most fun to grade because every book is different. It always makes me feel like students have
accomplished a lot and that they will take those skills with them as they
continue their journey to become lifelong learners.
The
philosophy survey that I took indicated my top three methods are Progressivism,
Existentialism, and Essentialism. Since
I was a Guidance Counselor for twenty-five years of my career, teaching the
essential elements of academic and moral knowledge falls naturally into my
philosophy of education. I believe in a
strong core curriculum and high academic standards for students. I believe that if I set the bar high and
expect great things from my classes that they will rise to meet the
challenge. Of course, I do not have
success with every student, but my goal is still 100%.
I believe
in Piaget's theory that a learner cannot master a skill until he is ready to do
so. I am concerned that we may be
pushing students to do more complex learning skills at earlier ages before they
are ready to move on. We need to
consider where the child is in the learning process.
The learner
is the central focus of classroom activities.
Emphasis is on the future of preparing students to be independent
thinking adults. The school corporation
goal is for the sophomores to pass the ECA.
In order to write well, students must experience relevant hands-on
learning.
I teach all
sophomores which includes the top students in the class and the mainstreamed
special education students. The students
are divided into classes that are not labeled high ability or remedial, thus
each class has representatives from each tier.
Some of my tests are differentiated so students may choose to write an
AP essay or a less challenging written project.
Much of what I teach includes pushing all students to master skills to
pass the ECA and graduate.
My parents
were both teachers and I grew up in a home that valued education. One of my earliest memories is going to the
public library to select books to take home and read when I was about three
years old. I can picture vividly
climbing the tall cement library stairs and reaching up to the counter where
the librarian would stamp the books.
Today
teachers face challenges that were not even imaginable when I was a
student. Students do not communicate
face to face like they used to. They now
"talk" to each other via text messages, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail,
videos, youtube, and digital pictures.
Cell phones and the Internet have changed communication. If they don't
see an entertainment value in something, they don't embrace doing it even
though many of the skills they will need in the future are "boring"
now. Online bullying, pseudo online
personalities, digital pictures, videos, and higher suicide rates among teens
all concern me. Yet I believe that the
future will continue to provide positive opportunities and jobs for today's youth
that were not available in past decades. Education is still the
