On Thursday, Oct. 16, I will send home a last reminder letter of Outdoor School information. It will include information on special diets, times that buses are leaving Hosford and arriving back home, information on packing medications, and on a small handful of soil from a special place. Please look for this information. Here is a link to a copy of this letter:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4MpOPBiXv5sRG04TUJ0Q3ZYNkU/view?usp=sharingODS final letter, Oct. 16
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
NOV. 2-4 OUTDOOR SCHOOL FORMS OVERDUE! (Periods 1, 2, 5)
I drove the Outdoor School forms to the Outdoor School office today after work. In the introduction letter I sent home last week, I asked to have the forms back by Oct. 9. If your child attends science period 1, 2, or 5, the forms are now at the Outdoor School office. If your forms have not been turned into me, please get them to the Outdoor School office yourself. The office is off of Airport Way. The address is:
MESD Outdoor School
11611 NE Ainsworth Circle
Portland, OR 97220
503-257-1600
FAX 503-257-1592
The forms are due in the Outdoor School Office by Oct. 17. If your child has lost the forms, s/he can ask me for another packet. The forms are also available online at: http://www.mesd.k12.or.us/os/OutdoorSchool/ForParents.html
Forms for periods 6 & 7, attending Nov. 12-14, are due to me AT THE VERY LATEST by Oct. 22.
Thank you for your understanding.
FIND THE TEXTBOOK ONLINE
Several students have approached me lately asking how to find the textbook online. Here I give the basic directions. For the username and password, you will need to ask your child. I had students write their username and password on the inside front cover of their lab notebooks. At the text publisher's request, I am not publishing them online.
Log onto www.lab-aids.com
In the upper right hand corner of the screen, click on STUDENT.
On the next screen, enter the username and password.
On the next screen, click on the photo of the textbook, Life Science.
On the next screen, click on the Unit we are studying. At this time, we are concluding our study of Unit A.
This will bring you to the pages of the text.
Monday, October 6, 2014
MIDTERM PROGRESS REPORTS; MINING THE BINDER, LAB NOTEBOOK, BACKPACK
MIDTERM PROGRESS REPORTS are printed reports that are generated at the middle of the grading period/ quarter. Tomorrow is midterm day; all scores at midterm are set by 11:59 pm, when the central computer generates the reports. They are then sent to families. If you are tracking your child's grades via ParentVUE, the report will probably be old news by the time it arrives in the mail. The reports are designed to show parents their children's progress toward the final quarter grade.
AS YOU HELP YOUR 6th GRADE CHILD ORGANIZE her/ himself for school success, consider "mining" the binder, the science notebook, and the backpack. Frequently students tell me they don't have a certain worksheet or paper that I ask them to look for among their supplies. I am often able to quickly locate a lost item if a student will let me have access to the binder and notebook. This is a time in their lives when students are growing a multitude of neural pathways, so some disorganization is to be expected. Often a trusted adult, such as parents, can quickly help a disorganized 6th grader square things away.
I suggest you follow this blog for posts about assignments. ParentVUE is another resource for finding out what assignments are due when. Almost all science assignments are written in/ kept in the science notebook. Help your child organize the notebook on occasion, and keep the Table of Contents up to date. A once a week sweep through the backpack is also a good idea, as papers sometimes fall down this "black hole."
AS YOU HELP YOUR 6th GRADE CHILD ORGANIZE her/ himself for school success, consider "mining" the binder, the science notebook, and the backpack. Frequently students tell me they don't have a certain worksheet or paper that I ask them to look for among their supplies. I am often able to quickly locate a lost item if a student will let me have access to the binder and notebook. This is a time in their lives when students are growing a multitude of neural pathways, so some disorganization is to be expected. Often a trusted adult, such as parents, can quickly help a disorganized 6th grader square things away.
I suggest you follow this blog for posts about assignments. ParentVUE is another resource for finding out what assignments are due when. Almost all science assignments are written in/ kept in the science notebook. Help your child organize the notebook on occasion, and keep the Table of Contents up to date. A once a week sweep through the backpack is also a good idea, as papers sometimes fall down this "black hole."
Thursday, October 2, 2014
ACTIVITY 4, ACTIVITY 7, OUTDOOR SCHOOL
ACTIVITY 4, TESTING MEDICINES SCIENTIFICALLY
is a reading activity that students studied with my substitute, Mr. Leo, on Mon., Sept. 29. Students were assigned work that was begun in class and was to be finished at home. Due to the confusion some students feel when they are with a substitute, I extended the due date to Oct. 1 for their work. Many students complained that the textbook website was down on the evening of Sept. 30, so the new due date was today, Oct. 2. I have been scoring the assignment, Analysis Questions 4 & 8, as students work on Activity 7 in their table teams.
ACTIVITY 7, STUDYING PEOPLE QUALITATIVELY & QUANTITATIVELY
is a reading activity that students began on Oct. 1 and are continuing into the beginning of Oct. 3. Students take turns reading sections of text in their table teams, using a strategy called, "Stopping to Think." At each Stopping to Think paragraph, students discuss the reading in their teams and individually write a response in their notebooks. There are 5 Stopping to Thinks. The assigned and scored work is Analysis Q 2.
OUTDOOR SCHOOL MATERIALS WILL GO HOME TOMORROW and are due back to me by Thurs., Oct 9.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
OUTDOOR SCHOOL, MS. PINEGAR'S CLASSES
MY CLASSES WILL GO TO OUTDOOR SCHOOL AS FOLLOWS:
P1 to Howard, Nov. 2-4 with me
P2 to Howard, Nov. 2-4 with Mrs. Baber
P5 to Arrah Wanna Nov. 2-4 with Ms. Morse
P6 to Arrah Wanna Nov. 12-14 with Ms. Morse
P7 to Howard Nov 12-14 with me
Outdoor School forms will go home this week and will be due back next week. Students will write the information about deadlines in their planners.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
GRADES: WHAT'S A 3? WHAT DOES "PROFICIENT" MEAN?
There are three building blocks to my grading system:
I began a form of proficiency-based grading ten years ago after studying it through workshops run by the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) , a Portland-based outfit that has a national reputation and is now owned by Pearson, a textbook firm. I was attracted to this grading philosophy because the A - F system seemed arbitrary to me. I want students to know exactly what they are expected to learn and how to get there.
The ATI philosophy is best summed up by this quote from one of the trainers:
Assessment for learning is a gift we give our students. It is a mirror we hold up to show them how far they have come. It is a promise that we will use assessment, not to punish or reward, but to guide them on their learning journey."
- proficiency- based grading, a 1-4 scale that replaces A - F
- formative assessment
- standards-based grading/ assessment
I began a form of proficiency-based grading ten years ago after studying it through workshops run by the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) , a Portland-based outfit that has a national reputation and is now owned by Pearson, a textbook firm. I was attracted to this grading philosophy because the A - F system seemed arbitrary to me. I want students to know exactly what they are expected to learn and how to get there.
The ATI philosophy is best summed up by this quote from one of the trainers:
Assessment for learning is a gift we give our students. It is a mirror we hold up to show them how far they have come. It is a promise that we will use assessment, not to punish or reward, but to guide them on their learning journey."
- Jan Chappuis
A second important part of my learning from ATI is "formative assessment." This means that my students, just like most of us adults, get a second chance at their work. Proficiency-based grading tells students how well they are doing towards being "100% complete and 100% correct"; a 3/ proficient on the scoring scale. Formative assessment gives students a second (and sometimes a third) chance to redo their work to try again to earn a 3. When I grade, I often make comments on papers and hand them back. If a student wants to raise the score, s/he can redo the paper and hand it back again. When redoing the work, students write an "R" on the paper near the score. This indicates to me that I should score the work again. If the work is in the student's science notebook, the student should use a bookmark to mark the location of the "R" in her/ his notebook. The work should be left on a designated lab table at the end of the class period.
The third piece of my grading system is standards-based grading. Each assignment is tied to one of the PPS science standards for Life Science. I translate the standard into a Learning Target, which is a goal for students in student-friendly language. As students do their work, they will know what they are expected to be able to demonstrate in their scored work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)