BASH Weekly #4
October 25, 2010
Time Cards in the Morning From the Desk of Annie Torres:
Please remind teachers: 1) All staff must move their time cards into the IN position when they arrive in the morning. 2) All staff must move their time cards into the OUT position when they leave at 2:50 pm. 3) When staff is absent they must fill out the OP198 the next day that they return to work. Advocacy Groups
Please post an appointment sheet on your classroom door for your students to sign up. Add your name and replace the names with your students and print.
For your first meeting, please have students complete two hopes and a fear. This will be the basis for your first conversation. All students will have Your Bash Advocate as a reference for your meetings. Looking together through the lens of our school Mission "To inspire student voice in academics, community and self-advocacy", using Pupil Path to discuss student learning goals with your Advocacy Group is critical. Our school Inquiry Team will also be providing you with data to effectively guide discussions with your Advocacy students. Bulletin Boards of Student Work
Your student bulletin board assignment should display:
National Honor Society
We need five voting faculty members to make up the council. Linda Butkowski is the chapter leader. The number of meetings per year is determined by you. If you see Sobia Ilyas in the hallway, please volunteer. Let's show that we believe in our students! Thanks very much.
Emergency Lesson Plans
Please make sure you have at least two emergency lesson plans available in the main office by Wednesday, 10/27/10. All emergency lesson plans should have a clearly stated instruction objective (Aim).
Emergency lesson plans could include
Making Copies for Students to Read
Please be mindful not to give students photocopies that are illegible or are cut off so that words are missing. Administration has noted more than one instance where this has occurred. Thank you for your attention.
Unused Books in the Classroom
Thank you to all teachers for helping clean out our store room. The next step is to mark all books in your classroom that can be removed . Please make sure that only books slated for removal are marked with a pink slip. This must be done by Friday, 10/29/10.
Folett Educational Services will be coming back next week for all books that we are not using. Trip Forms
Ms. McRae Needs to Know!
Dear Staff,
I would really appreciate if you could share with me what you are reading. I would like the students to see that reading is something people do for entertainment, and how enjoyable it can be. I would like to decorate the bulletin board by the elevator with a picture of you with the book title you are currently reading. You can email it to me or stop by the library. Email: [email protected] Classroom Management: Avoiding Sarcasm
"One of the fundamental principles of human behavior is that people ultimately respond better to positive consequences than to negative consequences. Sarcasm is considered a negative consequence.
It should be the goal of every teacher to interact in a positive way with students and foster mutual respect. Nothing lowers a student’s respect for a teacher more quickly than does the use of sarcasm. Whether you speak sarcastically about an individual or the class as a whole, destroys a positive classroom environment and may prompt students to lash out with inappropriate comments of their own. The use of sarcasm suggests that you, as the teacher, do not know any better way of interacting and sets the stage for similar negative interactions between students themselves. Students do not usually misbehave because they purposely want to upset the teacher. Misbehavior generally happens because of an unmet need such as attention; avoiding a task that is too difficult or too easy, needing power and control, feeling insecure or the need to feel like a person who belongs. Sometimes a student may simply not know what needs to be done at that moment. Give the student the benefit of the doubt, redirect or give instructions again, and keep your initial interactions light. Students have other issues going on in their lives, and school should be a safe place where they can count on adults to work with them without playing mind games or instilling guilt feelings. Remembering that most situations are not ”the end of the world” fosters positive student teacher relations. Though on the surface sarcasm may seem witty and even humorous, in reality is its usually cruel and demeaning. Sarcasm has no place in the classroom. Strive instead for positive interactions with students. Reinforce what students are doing “right” whenever possible and communicate expectations in a straightforward matter-of-fact manner.from" from: Classroom Management Tips |
PLATO Training
Mr. Panaram, Mr. Joseph, Mr. Cocia, & Ms. Maguire will be attending in-house training on Tuesday, 10/26/10 from 8 to 3 pm.
Long Term Absences
If any staff member comes into contact or is aware that any students on the LTA list have come back to school, they are to notify Ms. Pacheco and their assigned guidance counselors Ms. Bonaparte or Ms. Vinecour.
Blended Learning Helps Boost Achievement
Meta-study concludes students can benefit greatly from online learning -- and blended learning environments appear most effective
By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor A new analysis of existing online-learning research by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) reveals that students who took all or part of their class on line performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction. Most of the studies examined by researchers dealt with college-level courses, and ED officials cautioned against generalizing the report’s findings to the K-12 level. Still, the report could help educators as they seek to create effective learning environments for all students. The detailed meta-analysis is part of a broader study of practices in online learning being conducted by SRI International for ED’s Policy and Program Studies Service. The goal of the study is to “provide policy makers, administrators, and educators with research-based guidance about how to implement online learning for K-12 education and teacher preparation,” says the report. The study says online learning is deserving of analysis, because it is one of the “fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology.” “Studies of earlier generations of distance and online learning courses have concluded that they are usually as effective as classroom-based instruction,” said Marshall “Mike” Smith, a senior counselor to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “The studies of more recent online instruction included in this meta-analysis found that, on average, online learning, at the post-secondary level, is not just as good as but more effective than conventional face-to-face instruction.” A systemic search of research literature from 1996 to 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, measured student learning outcomes, used a rigorous research design, and provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects from 46 different studies were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. From these studies, researchers sought to address four specific questions: How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction? Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning? What practices are associated with more effective online learning? And, what conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning? While the project’s main goal was to research online learning for K-12, the report noted that only a few rigorous research studies have been published on the effectiveness of online learning for K-12 students. For this reason, the report states that “caution is required in generalizing the study’s findings to the K-12 population, because the results are for the most part on studies in other settings, such as in medical, career, military training, and higher education.” The report also said its meta-analysis differed from recent meta-analysis of distance learning in that it limited the search to studies of web-based instruction (a limitation that eliminated studies of video and audio-based telecourses or stand-alone, computer-based instruction), included only studies with random-assignment or controlled quasi-experimental designs, and examined effects only for objective measures of student learning (discarding effects observed from student or teacher perceptions of learning or course quality). Researchers also distinguished entirely online learning from blended, or hybrid, learning–online combined with face-to-face instruction–because while entirely online learning is “attractive” on the basis of cost savings and convenience, blended learning “needs to be more effective than conventional face-to-face instruction to justify the additional time and costs it entails,” according to the report. While students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through face-to-face instruction alone, instruction combining both online and face-to-face elements “had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction,” the report says. The meta-analysis also found that most of the variations in how different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly–and the effectiveness of online-learning approaches spanned several different content and learner types. When researchers compared different online-learning practices, they found that elements such as video or online quizzes did not appear to influence the amount that students learned in online classes. But giving learners control of their interaction with media and prompting learner reflection did enhance online-learning outcomes. Even though the meta-analysis concluded that blended and online learning can help increase student achievement, researchers stopped short of attributing this higher achievement to the medium itself. The studies analyzed “do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium … [because] in many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum, and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions that produced the observed learning advantages,” the report says. But online learning is more conducive to increased learning time than face-to-face instruction, the report notes–and this increased learning time is a key factor in student success. Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, agrees with this analysis. Patrick said the advantage of online or blended learning over face-to-face instruction alone “is the combination of rich student-teacher-peer communication and interactions that are both asynchronous and synchronous, better utilizing the precious resource of time during, and outside, the school day to maximize learning–and personalize it in a way never before possible.” According to Patrick, the factors that make blended models better than most face-to-face models are the factors that research says also defines good teaching: “increased interactions between students and teachers, increased depth of rigor and exploration into content, customized learning to meet the students exactly where they are in learning the lessons, better use of data to inform instruction, and providing additional student support to help personalize instruction by the teacher.” Links: “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning” [1] International Association for K-12 Online Learning [2] URL to article: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2009/07/14/ed-blended-learning-helps-boost-achievement-2/ URLs in this post: [1] “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning”: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html [2] International Association for K-12 Online Learning: http://www.inacol.org |
