When I get home every day I ask my kids about their day and what they've learned. Every day they try to give me the same responses: "fine" and "nothing". Neither of these are ever accurate. I observe this same typical parent-student greeting in the parking lot every day after school.
Here are 20 ideas to get past "fine" and "nothing" when you greet your child after school:
1. Give them some "think time" by telling them what you are going to ask them, so that they can start thinking about your question.
2. Ask them how computers (or other technology resources) were used in class today.
3. Ask them a follow-up question related to a previous issue.
4. Ask them who they worked with in a small group and what they learned from that partner.
5. Ask them to think about the vocabulary (not spelling words) they are learning and to use one of those words to tell you what they studied today.
6. Ask them to describe something that they wrote down in class.
7. Help them to formulate a question that they could ask the teacher about something they didn't understand.
8. Ask them to predict what they think that they will do in each subject the next day.
9. Ask them to read (something from their backpack- such as an AR book) for 60 seconds and count how many words they read.
10. Ask them to show you something from their backpack that will help you learn something about their day.
11. Ask them to draw you a picture of the best (or most difficult, etc.) part of their day and then to explain it to you.
12. Pretend to be a T.V. news anchor and interview your child about their "highs" and "lows" for the day.
13. Make an appointment for a specific time to hold an "important meeting" to ask your child about their day.
14. Ask them to tell you the objective for math or language arts that was written on the board.
15. Ask them to share a "Quotable Quote" that they heard during the day.
16. Draw a line representing a spectrum, (one end could be "agree" and the other "disagree") and then ask them to respond by pointing on the spectrum as they answer your questions.
17. Ask them to show you a gesture or hand signal that was used in class that helps them remember something.
18. Ask them the funniest thing that happened today.
19. Ask them if they got to speak with any other adults at school other than their own teacher.
20. Ask them when their next math topic test will be.
Always require your children to respond in complete sentences and to explain their responses. "Fine" doesn't answer the question and "nothing" just can't be true.
Please help brainstorm some additional ideas by commenting on the link below.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Digging Out from the Mud
We are thankful to have a wonderful company, Tilden Coil, building our project. They are a very professional company with extensive portfolio of school construction experience.
Even the big storm will not deter the project from being on track for completion in August. It is hard to imagine how this muddy mess in the photo can be transformed into a new library.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
More Students Becoming Proficient!
During this school year we have been feverishly working to move more students to become solidly proficient. The results of our school-wide efforts are showing positive results.
On the second Reading Lions assessment, school-wide we increased the percentage of students who scored proficient by over 10%. Our goal is 15%, so we are making progress towards meeting our goal. A second part of that goal is a 20% increase of our English Learners into proficiency. We did a little better on that goal, moving 12% more students into proficiency than on the same assessment last year.
While any growth is a good we still have a long way to go before we can celebrate. Even our grades that have the best results (4th Grade) only have 43% of the students passing the assessment. We can celebrate growth, but not having over half of the students failing our school-wide assessments!
Unfortunately, Emerson's results are about average in the school district. We know that our teachers and children are smart. We know that they are all working hard. The biggest obstacle that we need to overcome in meeting California competency standards is to even further align what we teach to what is tested. As a school and a district we have been in this process for a while. We rely too much on our adopted textbooks to provide that alignment, but unfortunately the texts are not aligned closely enough to move more students into proficiency.
The process that we are using is to identify the most important standards and to plan our instruction to match those standards. Sounds easy? When teams of teachers plan for all of the different strands of each subject every day it can take a huge amount of planning.
Planning time is one of our biggest barriers. Many schools have "early release days" when students are dismissed at about 12:30 every Thursday. As a school we don't have "early release days" but instead teachers are released to plan when noon supervisors and substitute teachers supervise the students while doing independent work.
Steven Covey stated that "Every organization is perfectly aligned for the results that it gets." So, if we want to increase the number of students who are successful academically, we need to keep thinking about the next steps we need to take to increase student success.
On the second Reading Lions assessment, school-wide we increased the percentage of students who scored proficient by over 10%. Our goal is 15%, so we are making progress towards meeting our goal. A second part of that goal is a 20% increase of our English Learners into proficiency. We did a little better on that goal, moving 12% more students into proficiency than on the same assessment last year.
While any growth is a good we still have a long way to go before we can celebrate. Even our grades that have the best results (4th Grade) only have 43% of the students passing the assessment. We can celebrate growth, but not having over half of the students failing our school-wide assessments!
Unfortunately, Emerson's results are about average in the school district. We know that our teachers and children are smart. We know that they are all working hard. The biggest obstacle that we need to overcome in meeting California competency standards is to even further align what we teach to what is tested. As a school and a district we have been in this process for a while. We rely too much on our adopted textbooks to provide that alignment, but unfortunately the texts are not aligned closely enough to move more students into proficiency.
The process that we are using is to identify the most important standards and to plan our instruction to match those standards. Sounds easy? When teams of teachers plan for all of the different strands of each subject every day it can take a huge amount of planning.
Planning time is one of our biggest barriers. Many schools have "early release days" when students are dismissed at about 12:30 every Thursday. As a school we don't have "early release days" but instead teachers are released to plan when noon supervisors and substitute teachers supervise the students while doing independent work.
Steven Covey stated that "Every organization is perfectly aligned for the results that it gets." So, if we want to increase the number of students who are successful academically, we need to keep thinking about the next steps we need to take to increase student success.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Construction Photos Coming Soon
The Blogger website has not been available from my school computer, so I have not been able to post lately.
I have several great construction photos that I have taken over the past 3 weeks that I will post soon. The earthmovers have carved the earth down and are compacting and building it back up. The library footprint is marked out for the foundation, plumbing, and electrical work. Some concrete may be pored as early as tomorrow.
The traffic in front of the school has increased as a result of the absence of the lower parking lot, but in August when the new buildings and parking lot opens, this will all be a distant memory.
I have several great construction photos that I have taken over the past 3 weeks that I will post soon. The earthmovers have carved the earth down and are compacting and building it back up. The library footprint is marked out for the foundation, plumbing, and electrical work. Some concrete may be pored as early as tomorrow.
The traffic in front of the school has increased as a result of the absence of the lower parking lot, but in August when the new buildings and parking lot opens, this will all be a distant memory.
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