Election Results!

Hunter Beedle and Kayleona Fanning were elected President and Vice President by the class in a mock election on Friday.  Gillian Roberts and Hannah Mae Bushnell came in second (by two votes!).  Next up for President Beedle and Vice President Fanning will be a meeting with Mr. Baker during which their official duties will be drawn up and, eventually, presented to the class. 

The rest of the class will follow suit: applying for jobs, defining the job in the context of the classroom and carrying out the duties therein.  It seems that the real life experience--of nominating candidates, campaigning and voting for a candidate--has inspired the students to experience other adult responsibilities.  We will see how far their enthusiasm takes us.  But knowing this class...the sky is the limit! 

Class Presidential Elections

Presidential Candidates: Hunter Beedle, Gillian Roberts & Peter Johnson...

 

...and their running mates: Lindsey Gibson, Hannah Mae Bushnell & Kayleona Fanning

On Friday, November 14th we will be holding elections in the sixth grade class for class president and vice president.  Nominations were made in mid-october and the candidates have been campaigning for four weeks now.  The Democratic Party nominated Peter Johnson and Lindsey Gibson.  The Republican Party nominated Hunter Beedle and Kayleona Fanning.  And the Independent Party nominated Gillian Roberts and Hannah Mae Bushnell.  Stay tuned for results...

How Do We Assess Academic Growth?

One of the challenges I face as a teacher is finding authentic, informative means for evaluating or assessing my students' academic growth.  The days of pencil and paper examinations seem to be behind us.  True assessment is done through a variety of means: direct observation, summative assessment, projects, portfolios, presentations, etc.  In this class I try to include as many of these forms of assessment as possible, but lately I've been feeling a lack in my ability to concretely assess the students' acadmenic growth.  So, not unlike a lot of people these days, I've turned to the internet for ideas. 

For many students these days, technology is vastly appealing.  From video games to i-pods to internet use, students are immersed in technology.  Some of us may feel that technology is just a bunch of distracting gadgets created to keep people sedate, docile and thoughtless.  But for others the technology is a viable and important tool and a integral part of daily life.  I tend to be a member of the latter--I see the value of technology rather than the danger.  It is one of my goals to use technology as much as possible, particularly in the arena of assessment. 

So, for the next week I will be giving a series of online assessements to measure comprehension skills.  We will then introduce some online activities for increasing comprehension in reading.  After a few weeks, the students will retest themselves, so they can see their own growth and the value of practice. 

See the following link for a great list of assessment tools on the net. 

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skills_6th_original.htm

Mr. Baker is Officially on Paternity Leave

I'm off to welcome our fourth child into the world.  Ms. Leah Foster will be standing in for me starting on Monday, October 27th.  The baby will be coming sometime that same day.  I will be sure to email pictures to school and I'm going to try to post some here on my website too. 

Ms. Foster has some great things up her sleeve for Social Studies.  The kids will be getting their spelling words on Monday so they can study for the spelling test during the Daily Five, "Word Work" session. 

Speaking of Word Work...we are now going full speed ahead in our Daily Five.  The kids picked out a list of twenty words to study over the next couple of weeks.  Meanwhile, they will continue to Read to Self and Someone, focusing on the reading components (fluency, phonological awareness, phonics, comprehension and vocabulary).  Work on Writing is exciting for the students because they are writing for a purpose that is important to them, individually.  During second quarter we will start making plans to publish our work, individually (again) seeking out potential venues through which to publish.  And the fifth Daily Five Component?  Listening to Reading...we're currently immersed in a novel I'm reading aloud called, Wolf Brother. 

As for Math, we've found a groove, studying from a text called Prime Time.  About a third of the class is spending one day a week with Carolyn Poore training for the Math is Cool competition coming up in February.  During that time, the rest of us are working on those all-important, basic skills. 

We just finished investigating the effects of the sun on earth materials in Science.  Ask your son or daughter to see what we've been doing.  They have a yellow Science Notebook in which they've documented their learning, as well as a Scientist's Journal in which they recorded all of their observations and questions.  I'm sure they'd love to hear you ask them about the discoveries we made about solar energy and the materials that capture and it. 

Lastly, in Social Studies we've been experimenting with partisan politics, by separating into three groups: Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  Each group has nominated a candidate for president and vice president and over the next two weeks, the students will be campaigning, giving speeches and ultimately voting on who they think best represents the ideals of our Country.  It's been a bit of a challenge to separate the students from the issues, as that is what we're all primarily concerned about these days.  But I've been trying to steer the toward discussing the ideals rather than the issues.  We've come to the conclusion that aside from the headline issues, the differences between the two major parties are very subtle.

Thank you all so much for all your encouraging thoughts and comments.  Thanks to Carley and her family for the thoughtful card and gifts!  I'm sure baby Baker will love them!  Take care, everyone.  I'll be back before you know it.

   

PTL Training

On Wednesday, October 1st, I was out of the classroom at a PTL training in Colville.  PTL or Powerful Teaching and Learning is a program set up to offer teachers a framework for thinking deeply about their teaching practices.  The originators of PTL have created what they refer to as a Student learning Protocol which breaks teaching into 6 research-based, essential practices:

      1. Positive Behavior Management

        2. Student Engagement

        3. Effective Instruction

        4. Student Centered Instruction

        5. Student Assessment for Learning

        6. Assessment of Learning

Each of these areas have been further broken down into statements that teachers may reflect on to determine the extent to which they are employing these essential practices.  Sounds stuffy, but in reality, I can honestly say that nothing I've done in my career (as far as professional development) has been more enlightening.  I feel empowered to make decisions in lesson planning, instruction and assessment that are truly in the kids' best interest, much more efficiently and with a greater deal of confidence. 

Specifically, I had the opportunity to reflect on planning and assessment on Wednesday and feel like I made some important discoveries about my teaching.  I will be working toward altering some of my assessment practices so that any "grading" I do will reflect the extent of a students academic growth.  (Sounds over-simplistic, I know, but there is genius in simplicity).  I look forward to talking with any of you who'd like to know more about the program or take a look at the SLP protocol. 

I believe this is going to be a great year.

Grades

With progress reports due to be sent out on Monday, October 6th, I thought I'd mention a few things about how the students earn their grade in this class.  I'm not sure I was very clear about this information in the syllabus (in fact I know I wasn't) so I thought I'd give a better explanation here.

Essentially, there are four ways to earn points:

  • Daily Work -- such as journal entries/target practice (daily writing)
  • Participation -- such as class discussion/science labs/Daily-5
  • Homework -- spelling/language arts and math practice
  • Tests -- generally spelling and math are the subjects most often tested

It is my intention to give kids full credit for their work as long as they put forward their best effort.  If they do not meet certain criteria, (which are usually laid out for them in rubrics) points will be taken off accordingly.  I will always provide scoring rubrics for projects, such as our current social studies project entitled "favorite things."  I also have generic rubrics for journal entries, formal writing assignments and presentations, that will be posted to the links portion of this website (soon, hopefully).