It’s the holiday season as well as STAAR retest time.  As you know we’ll have classes and areas around the building redirected throughout the day.  Please try your best to keep the students aware of changes that are occurring. As I told you last week please encourage those students that will be taking tests.  They all want to do well.

It has been great seeing most of our classrooms with visible learning objectives.  We are almost at 100%.  Please remember to have your learning objective posted for your students as well as taking time to explain what they will be expected to know or do by the end of the lesson.  I’m also loving the expanded use of anchor charts in our classrooms.  I appreciate those who have fully embraced this learning strategy.  To those who are late adopters it is time to come fully on board.  Time is running out to adopt this strategy.

I mentioned last week that we will be doing some refining in our PLCs starting this week.  We have to be more intentional about how we look at our standards, our plans to ensure students master what we teach, how we analyze student work, our plans for reteach, and incorporating demonstrations of learning into our daily lessons.  I will include a prezi that addresses demonstrations of learning.  Check it out. Your assistant principal will be working with your teams to refine these processes.  Remember the goal is simple: Increasing student achievement.  Academic improvement doesn’t happen by chance, you have to be intentional about it.

We will also be working with teams and departments on increasing engagement in our lessons.  We are currently at 55% of our classrooms being compliant vs 41% being engaged.  And yes we know this is a snap shot of the time that we enter your classroom, however this is not good enough.  This means that over half of our students are missing a learning experience that engages them while they learn.  The good news is that we have time to correct this.  We just have to all be open about truly engaging our learners.

The choir Christmas concert will be tonight (12/03).  Come out and check out our students if you have time.  They love to see you there!

Have a great week!

This is Naaman!

Events for the week: https://www.garlandisdschools.net/nfhs/activities/calendar

Demonstration of Learning Link: https://prezi.com/uwgooosjhwwk/demonstration-of-learning-dol/

Active Anchor Charts in J. Birtz’s classroom.

Volleyball Banquet