We want to wish Gus the best of luck in his new chapter in his life. I know I am speaking for everyone when I say that he will be greatly missed. Your service to this district is immensely appreciated!
I want to thank Jen, Jackie and Linda who have done a great job of recruiting students for FITT Club. There were a wide variety of students participating yesterday all being encouraged to give their best effort.
Speaking of clubs, I also want to thank John for sponsoring a variety of clubs throughout the year. The latest is girls intramural basketball for those students who want to play basketball but did not join our regular teams.
We are at the 50% completion rate for the 5Essentials Survey. Thank you to those staff members that have filled it out and if you haven't done so yet, please find a few minutes in the near future to do so. The survey does provide information that can help us grow as a school.
I will be emailing team leaders after school about setting up our next infrastructure trial for PARCC. It will be a school wide trial with each class using the opposite test of the first trial. A date will be selected next week and communicated so proper planning can take place.
The food was awesome today! Thanks to the 8th grade team for doing such a fabulous job.
The student growth committee met last Wednesday and continued to discuss the implementation of a student growth model in teacher evaluation. Thanks to everyone for trying out different growth formulas and ideas for assessments as we get ready for when it will count. Please feel free to come to me if you have any questions on this topic.
Just a reminder for teachers on the District Technology Committee, that we will be meeting at the Administrative Center on Monday at 7pm. Thanks for your service on this committee.
Instead of a bunch of different links and resources here is one article on Student engagement that I have found an interesting read. The article is by Todd Finnley, Professor at east Carolina University. You can click on the in article links if you go to the article at edutopia.org
In education literature, "engagement" is a lynchpin word, routinely cited as essential. However, authors often leave it undefined or offhandedly provide vague definitions. So, what is engagement?
It depends on whom you ask. In an unpublished study, Shari Steadman and I found that preservice teachers often identified acts of compliance as engagement. Wrote one education major, "Engagement is an agreement between student[s] and teachers to be there and present during class." This unfortunate and quotidian explanation implies that merely breathing and looking at instructors constitutes student engagement. Ruth Schoenbach and Cynthia Greenleaf view the term differently:
By adding the word "engaged," we mean to distinguish between the skilled by rote and unsophisticated kind of academic literacy that many "successful" students master, and the more analytic, critical, and discipline specific ways of making meaning emblematic of engaged learners.
Adam Fletcher’s definition is succinct: "Students are engaged when they areattracted to their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their work." (PDF, 134KB) To visualize these characteristics occurring all at once, imagine kids playing Minecraft or participating in cooperative classroom games.
But to consider engagement viscerally, we need to refer to its mid-17th century association with battle. Imagine fencers: competitors face off, all senses focused on the micro-adjustments of their opponent's blade as well as their own physical, emotional, and intellectual potential. When fencers lunge, circle, and feint, their fierce ballet is called engagement.
Benefits of Engagement
According to multiple research studies, engaged students . . .
In contrast, disengagement . . .
Regrettably, an overwhelming number of high school students are disengaged and bored with class content. In the early grades, eight out of ten students are engaged. By middle school, the number is six out ten, then four out of ten in high school, according to a 2013 Gallop Poll.
"The drop in student engagement for each year students are in school is our monumental, collective national failure," asserts Brandon Busteed, the executive director of Gallup Education.
Research-Supported Methods to Engage Students
From The Highly Engaged Classroom (PDF, 388KB), to School Engagement, Disengagement, Learning Supports, & School Climate (PDF, 133KB), to Strengthening Student Engagement, all the books and articles that have been written on the subject of increasing student engagement could fill a gluttonous orca. But Kristy Cooper's insanely rigorous mixed methods study, "Eliciting Engagement in the High School Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Teaching Practices," published in the April 2014 American Educational Research Journal, does an exceptional job of showing what works.
Cooper, an award-winning researcher at Michigan State University with an MA and Ed.D from Harvard, examined the impact of three well-supported methods that teachers employ to increase student engagement. As you read about each, try to guess which practice had the greatest impact.
Engagement Method #1: Lively Teaching
Involves group work, games, and projects. The emphasis is on the students constructing knowledge, not on the teacher delivering it. Think social and fun.
Engagement Method #2: Academic Rigor
The instructor creates cognitively demanding tasks and environments (called "academic press"), emphasizing that students will need to work hard. The teacher also shows passionate investment in the content. According to research that Cooper cites, students' perception of challenge is a strong predictor of achievement gains.
Engagement Method #3: Connective Instruction
In connective instruction, the teacher helps students make personal connections to the class, content, and learning. The power of connective instruction comes from the instructor helping students see the curriculum as critical to their current lives, their future, and their culture. Additionally, six instructor behaviors play into creating high quality relationships where, according to Andrew Martin, students "actually internalize the beliefs valued by significant others."
- Promoting relevance: relating content to students' lives.
- Conveying care: understanding learners' perspectives.
- Concern for students' well-being: demonstrating knowledge of students' lives.
- Providing affirmation: telling students they are capable of doing well; using praise, written feedback, and opportunities for success.
- Relating to students through humor: showing that you enjoy working with young people (not as a class, as individuals).
- Enabling self-expression: connecting learning and identity by encouraging students' expression of ideas, values, and conceptions of self.
Although lively teaching and academic rigor independently and collectively increase engagement, the single biggest effect, according to Cooper's study, resulted from connective instruction of a magnitude seven times that of the other two well-established practices. Why? Because of kids' desperate longing for high-quality relationships. When a teacher fulfills that desire, students' achievement behaviors and intellectual functioning soars (PDF, 380KB).
For all teachers, regardless of subject or grade level, intensive effort to connect with learners is nonnegotiable -- if you want them engaged.
Tell us how you engage students.
