http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/ So many colleagues have shared and/or talked about this article in the last couple of days. I decided to implement the survey every couple of weeks in my Language Arts classes. Though individual student responses will remain private, I will post a "shout out" to a 4th and 5th grader who receives nominations from his/her classmates for being exceptionally caring or helpful.
inspired by a recent article about keeping tabs on the emotional pulse of students, Miss Gahr and Ms. Meyer polled 4th and 5th graders, asking each student to privately answer 2 questions. The 2nd question asks students to nominate a fellow student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen recently. In more detail, they were asked, "Who has done a particularly great job as a student? Who has been helpful? Who has been a good friend? Who do you notice working hard?" For more info, please see this article: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/ 4/4 Congrats to FOURTH GRADER KENLEY and FIFTH GRADERS Ethan-Connor-Beatrice-David (4-way ties!!) for receiving the most votes from classmates, and keep up the great work! 3/21 Congrats to FOURTH GRADER COSTA and FIFTH GRADER JANE for receiving the most votes from classmates, and keep up the great work! 3/7: Congrats to FOURTH GRADER KENLEY and FIFTH GRADER CLAIRE for receiving the most votes from classmates, and keep up the great work! 2/21: Congrats to FOURTH GRADER MICHAEL and FIFTH GRADER ABBY for receiving the most votes from classmates, and keep up the great work! 1/31: Congrats to FOURTH GRADER SEAMUS and FIFTH GRADER ASHLEY for receiving the most votes from classmates, and keep up the great work! http://mashable.com/2013/11/25/texting-transformed-period/
Such an interesting article (to me) about the use of the period (.) in text messaging. Hope you enjoy... I am beyond thrilled to be attending this workshop this weekend. Looking forward to using what I learn-both professionally and personally.
Students in my Reading class are assessed in many areas, and comprehension is a big one. This new research is very interesting to me for many reasons. Foremost, I feel it's important to isolate skills in order to properly "diagnose" the needs of each individual. Second, I research brain activity (neurological issues) because of a loved one's current health issues. It's nice to see the proverbial birds killed with one stone- brain activity can measure comprehension. Read on if it interests you, as well!
Can We See Reading Comprehension in the Brain?By Sarah D. Sparks on November 11, 2013 4:34 PM Brain researchers have long studied how students hear and read individual words, but it has proven difficult to parse out what happens when a reader understands a long and difficult passage of text. Now, a team of researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston,Ill., have developed a new way to view reading comprehension in the brain, and in the process highlighted a new angle for testing comprehension that isn't skewed by a student's background knowledge. In the study, published in the November issue of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, Julia A. Mossbridge, a research associate at Northwestern, and her colleagues there monitored college-aged readers using electroencephalography, in which electrodes placed on a person's scalp measure electrical activity in the brain in response to specific actions, such as hearing a sound or reading a word. "It's almost counterintuitive that you could use [brain electrical signals] to study something as complex as comprehension. It makes sense that you could use them to study something like [phonics] because you're saying, let's look at the difference in response to 'cat' versus 'dog,' or nouns versus verbs in word identification," Mossbridge said. "In a certain sense, we wanted to subtract out decoding and word identification because we wanted to look strictly at comprehension." Random or Order? The researchers presented each student with nearly 1,200 words of challenging text, part of the first chapter of Emile Zola's 1893 classic, Doctor Pascal. (Mossbridge said it was chosen because "no one had heard of it.") In one trial, participants read the text word by word in random order, and were asked to press a button every time they read the word "and." In the second trial, the participants performed the same task on the words presented in order, and in addition to marking the word "and," they were given a comprehension test on the text as a whole. When participants read and understood the text well, there was a significant difference in their brain activity between when the words were read in proper order (shown in red) versus when they were read randomly (shown in blue): By contrast, those who did not comprehend what they read had similar patterns of brain activity regardless of whether they read words one by one in order (red) or randomly (blue): (The brain activity on the y-axis in these charts is measured on a current-source-density index, or CSD, which indicates the position and strength of the electrical information coming from the electrodes positioned around the scalp.) By analyzing the difference in these two patterns, Mossbridge and her colleagues could correctly predict which readers comprehended the text 88 percent of the time. Among readers who saw the random words first (and thus were familiar with all of the words), the measure was 90 percent accurate. "An important piece to me is that someone can read a whole [text], and they can even be at the college level, and seem like they've read it well--and they can do horribly on a comprehension test," Mossbridge said. "Why would that be? It's because there is something that's not sticking--it's in working memory, or that's my guess" based on a critical difference found in electrodes placed over a part of the brain associated with working memory, she said. "Something is not carrying the information along, binding together the past with the future in what's just happened and what's coming up. That needs to be worked out. There's so much research out there showing the importance of working memory to reading comprehension, so this is another reminder." Targeted Comprehension Test Mossbridge and her colleagues are planning to refine the measure by repeating the experiment with younger students and those of different reading abilities. But already, Mossbridge said the study could be helpful for educators looking for more targeted ways to test reading comprehension, particularly in complex and difficult texts. The Northwestern researchers developed their own comprehension test, using questions with multiple answers. A student was given credit for a given question only if he or she chose all of the correct answers and none of the incorrect ones. "One of the problems with common reading comprehension tests is, if you happen to know a lot about physics, you don't have to understand the text about physics in order to answer the questions correctly," Mossbridge said. In the study's comprehension test, "If you didn't understand the text, your performance by chance would be not getting any questions correct." The format was intended to weed out students guessing at answers, and the use of an older piece of fiction helped prevent students from relying on their own background knowledge rather than information from the text. Photo: The charts show differences in brain activity while reading words in random order or in their proper order for a text. Note that readers who comprehend the text have a greater difference in activity between random and ordered words than readers who did not comprehend the text. Source: Northwestern University. JerseyCan.org listed Bay Head School as the #1 elementary school in NJ based on academic performance. The school was also recognized by the state of NJ as a Reward School for superior academic excellence. These are huge honors and, in my opinion, the students, their families, the Board of Education,Home & School, Bay Head Foundation, and the teachers and staff are worthy of these accolades- and more. However, even though the current system seems to be "working in our favor", I professionally feel that standardized tests are not an accurate measure of the "whole picture" with regards to student or teacher performance. It's a tricky balance, and one that I might not have written about had I not been doing some reading. I think it's best to continue to try and meet the expectations of the whole student, and hope that standardized test scores increase at the same time.
…no other nation in the world evaluates its teachers by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores. It is not even clear that this is a worthy goal. Aside from the absence of evidence for this way of evaluating teachers, there remains the essential question of why scores on standardized tests should displace every other goal and expectation for school: character, knowledge, citizenship, love of learning, creativity, initiative, and social skills. - Diane Ravitch, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, September 17, 2013 An interesting article summed up with: Teachers have a responsibility to train complex minds that are suited to a complex world. This is at least as important as teaching young people mathematics, biology, or literature. For teachers, at all levels, attention must be paid to teaching that attention must be paid. "Roll up your sleeves and work harder."
NJASK score results are shared with parents in late September. Teachers are able to see the score reports before they are sent home, and I've spent time looking at the results for students currently in grades 4, 5 (my current students) and grade 6 (my students when they took the test). Scores on the Language Arts part of the NJASK are broken down into 4 parts. There are 2 Writing sections: writing in an informative/explanatory style and writing a narrative. There are 2 Reading sections: reading literature and reading informational text. For more information about the kinds of skills being measured by each part of the test, please click on this powerpoint, borrowed from Freehold Schools. Pages 3-19 deal specifically with the Language Arts part of the NJASK.
One of my undergrad majors at Bucknell was in Sociology- the study of people, how they interact and form societies- and doing this through research and data collection. This might be why I was so interested in spending some extra time analyzing these reports to see if I could glean valuable information about what my current students need. I looked at each individual student's report in each section to find strengths and weaknesses, and also compared each student's score to his/her classmates' progress to find any whole-group strengths or weaknesses. The state of NJ recently released more information comparing my classes' scores with other schools in New Jersey, as well. In Language Arts, Math, and Science, the students in Mrs. Wisliceny's and my classes scored, on average, not only a great deal higher than the state average but also higher than other schools in our District Factor Group.
After you have reviewed your child's report, if you would like to discuss them, please don't hesitate to call me if you think I might have additional insight about the results. NJASK results can be addressed during Parent/Teacher Conferences in November, but that meeting is usually devoted more to your child's progress in class.
The first few school days have both the students and the teachers on our best behavior. Everyone is organized, ready, and following rules and procedures to the letter. This year, like the 14 years of teaching before, I laughed to myself both days about how quietly the students entered the classroom each time they returned. They walked directly to their seats, sat down, and watched to see when I was going to begin talking. Every year I think of this as "the honeymoon phase." While I enjoy the peaceful quiet, I look forward to being able to say, "the honeymoon's over!" When the newness wears off and the routes to their seats become less direct and more chatty, that will signal a comfort, an engagement, a commitment, enthusiasm. That's when the genuine teaching and long-lasting learning -with all the rewards that come with it- will begin.
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