Moments from the day

In Temescal Creek (2/3), students learned about the development of prokaryotes, and then created images showing their understanding of the organisms and their environment. 

In Laurel Creek (K/1), students used the Lost Tooth Chart for creating addition equations.

In Strawberry Creek (4/5), students used a scaffold to develop their comprehension and critical reading skills.

In Cerrito Creek (4/5), a lesson on the human respiratory system engaged students in a variety of learning activities.

In Blackberry Creek (K/1), students practiced making predictions during an interactive read-aloud.

Oct. 5th Professional Development Day

We are always thankful and excited to get the chance to gather as a faculty for a professional development day. I was excited to lead the second segment of the morning's work (the first was spent working on curriculum mapping), which focused on improving our progress reports. This summer I had a series of meetings with Kathy (our Early Childhood Division Head), Gretchen (our Middle School Division Head), and Jeanne (our database manager) to discuss this topic. We generated the following problem statement to drive our work: How can we make our progress reports more effectively and efficiently communicate students growth for both faculty and families?



We decided that to best capitalize on the precious time the entire faculty body had together, we would focus the discussion on one essential component of the reports: the terms we use to describe the stage of developmental mastery a student has reached for each criteria. To do this, we drew on the thinking routines of Project Zero to create an activity that helped faculty make their thinking visible to each other, and to foster a conversation grounded in shared experience and understanding.


Hung up around the room were several pieces of chart paper: one had our current K-8 terms (emerging, developing, comptent, effective, mastering), another had our current ECC terms (not yet observed, in progress, consistently, area of strength) and nine others contained alternative sets of terms we had gathered from various other public and private schools. Some examples of these other sets include novice, apprentice, practitioner, expert; below expectations, developing, at expectations, above expectations; needs support, inconsistently, usually, consistently; and below, approaching, proficient, advanced. Teachers put sticky notes with their thoughts, responses and questions to each set of terms on the appropriate piece of chart paper (or wrote them directly on the sheets).


Faculty were also asked to respond to two other questions. First, were there other sets of terms that they wished to suggest? Second, what did they think about having different sets of terms for different divisions (Early Childhood, Elementary, Middle School)? After about thirty minutes spent posting their ideas and reading the comments of their colleagues, we held a spirited discussion about what terms (and associated definitions) would help us improve the effective and efficient communication about student growth.


After lunch, the faculty worked in divisions. At the K-5 level, we spent most of the time continuing our (re)training on the DRA2 reading assessment that we implement. While this is our third year using the DRA2, we believe it's important to regularly retrain all faculty in how to use the tool to ensure that the assessment data is reliable and valid (and, we have new faculty this year who have not used the DRA2 before!). This was the second half of our training (at Wednesday's division meeting, we reviewed all of the materials and procedures): we watched video of an assessment given last week, and each faculty member scored the oral reading fluency of the student reader, after which we compared and discussed our results in pairs and as a whole group.

The goal of this activity is to both give faculty practice taking oral reading records (which use specific notation to indicate miscues, omissions, repetitions, etc), and to develop inter-rater reliability (thereby improving our reliable and valid use of the assessment). Faculty then looked through the folders of their current students to review assessments from prior years, and, combined with their understanding of the students in the last month, determine the level of text on which to assess each student during the upcoming assessment window.

Booklists!

Nancy Nash (Temescal, 2/3) and Kellyne Darrow (Strawberry, 4/5) went to a literacy workshop put on by the Bay Area Teacher Development Collaborative yesterday, and this morning sent out this link of good booklists to faculty, which they learned about at the training.

Friday Morning Fun

I love Friday mornings at The Berkeley School. Each K-5 grade level has a unique tradition that engages students in their intellectual learning linked to important social learning as well. In the K/1 classrooms,  parents and family members are invited in for Free Friday, a chance to explore materials, collaborate on reading, writing, and math activities, play games and puzzles, and put the child in the role of expert and guide to demonstrate (and thereby consolidate) his/her learning.  

In the 2/3 classrooms, parents and family members join students during a Reader's Workshop period. Children without family members present often spontaneously gather together in groups and simultaneously read and share a variety of (often non-fiction) texts.

Friday mornings at the 4/5 level usually begin with a "Cerritoberry" period, in which all students and teachers from both classrooms come together to do an activity (or play a game) that promotes communication and collaboration. For today's activity, students were broken up into groups of 5 or 6 and given the following survival situation (drawn from secondary Scouting curriculum, which uses it for the purposes of teaching content, whereas for TBS it was used for teaching critical thinking, communication, and collaboration):

You and your companions have just survived the crash of a small plane.  Both the pilot and co-pilot were killed in the crash.  It is mid-January , and you are in Northern Canada.  The daily temperature is 25 below zero, and the night time temperature is 40 below zero.  There is snow on the ground, and the countryside is wooded with several creeks criss-crossing the area. The nearest town is 20 miles away. You are all dressed in city clothes appropriate for a business meeting. Given a group of items you’ve recovered from the wreck (a small ax, a can of Crisco, newspapers, a lighter, etc), create a list of the items in order of importance for your survival, followed by the uses of each item and the reason why you have it in the order you’ve chosen.

What's in a read-aloud?

Interactive read-alouds allow students to experience a variety of quality texts in different genres. While typical read-alouds have teachers read and students listen, period, in interactive read-aloud the teacher pauses at significant points, asks students for comments, and invites brief discussions. Teachers share their own thinking to demonstrate how experienced readers engage with and think about texts as they read. These read-alouds engage students in active learning, expresses enthusiasm for reading and helps students realize the value of reading.

When teachers at TBS prepare for interactive read-alouds, they follow a number of steps. First, they read the book themselves, to be familiar with the content and to guide student discussions. Second, make sure students are seated comfortably and can hear easily (and see easily, if illustrations are part of the text). Third, the establish a purpose for reading by telling students why they selected a book, what they think students will find interesting, and familiarizing them with the author and genre. Teachers might also ask student to make predictions about the text based on the cover, illustrations or setting; encourage students to connect the test to their own lives and experiences; utilize illustrations to help students attend to new aspects of meaning; and connect the topic, theme, characters, setting, or author to other texts the students have read, and invite students to make their own connections.

Want more about the benefits of read-alouds? Check out this article on EdWeek from February.

So what texts did K-5 students listen to during interactive read alouds on campus today? Classroom names are linked to various resources about each of these books.

Laurel Creek (K/1)

Blackberry Creek (K/1)

Sweet Briar Creek (2/3)

Temescal Creek (2/3)

Cerrito Creek (4/5)

Strawberry Creek (4/5)

Moments from the First Day of School

Ah, the first day of school. The excitement, the anxiety, the surprise, the wonderment, the exhilaration....and, the learning! Today I was able to walk through the K-5 classrooms and observe each for a few moments. Here's what I saw:

In both Blackberry and Laurel (the K/1 classrooms), choice time followed the cool-down "siesta" period that comes after lunch. Students had opportunities to engage in group play such as dress up, board games and blocks, or more solitary activities such as art making, working in the sand table, and reading in the library.

In Temescal (2nd/3rd grade), students were working

on collaborative posters titled "All About Us". Using words and pictures, they worked to answer seven questions about each member of the group: What is your name? When is your birthday, and how old are you? What is your favorite animal? What do you look like? What is something you really like to do? And, what question would you like to have the answer to? What are some things you would like todo in your life? Similarly, but different, in Sweet Briar (2nd/3rd grade), students created "Get to Know You" Glyphs based on this handout.

In Strawberry (4th/5th grade), I walked in during a short 15 minute period between a class conversation with Kate Klaire, our Recess Facilitator, and the start of the recess/lunch hour. Students used the time to finish previous work - some continued or finished decorating name tags that will go on their indoor cubbies, others "shopped" for in, or read books pulled from the classroom library, and others talked with the teachers about the relative merits of using online sites such as www.coolmathgames.com for teaching or homework purposes.

And in Cerrito, the students gathered in the back room - the library - to discuss their experiences as readers this summer, and get oriented to the reading that they'll be asked and encouraged to do this year. This was exciting to see because I know that Mike worked hard this summer on rethinking his approach to teaching reading, and that the passion for reading that he discovered in himself was truly

driving his instruction.

Some patterns emerging already: reading, play, structure, choice, group work, and self-knowledge.

Parenting Styles and Children’s Emotional Intelligence

An interesting article from the most recent issue of The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families. Come see me for a copy!

Parenting Styles and Children’s Emotional Intelligence: What Do We Know?

By Alberto Alegre

Abstract

The theory of emotional intelligence has elicited great interest both in the academic and the nonacademic world. Therapists, educators, and parents want to know what they can do to help children develop their emotional intelligence. However, most of the research in this field has investigated adults’ emotional intelligence. This study reviews the scarce research literature in the area of children’s emotional intelligence. It also reviews the way in which parenting styles and practices predict children’s emotional intelligence in similar or different ways that they predict other developmental outcomes. Based on the parenting literature, four main dimensions of parenting are identified that are relevant to the study of emotional intelligence: parental responsiveness, parental positive demandingness, parental negative demandingness, and parental emotion-related coaching. Parental responsiveness, parental emotion-related coaching, and parental positive demandingness are related to children’s higher emotional intelligence, while parental negative demandingness is related to children’s lower emotional intelligence. Additionally, social–emotional intervention programs used in schools have succeeded in improving children’s emotional skills. Implications for practitioners are discussed.

NY TIMES: Rethinking teacher evaluation

I just read an interesting article in the New York Times, in which researchers are attempting to develop a model for teacher evaluation that uses a multi-faceted scoring system, rather than the "value-added" model in which only the impact on standardized test scores for students in each class is calculated. The work is being funded by the Gates Foundation, and spearheaded by Educational Testing Services - the publishers of many of those same standardized tests - with a focus on using videos of teachers in the classroom to create scoring norms. Watching videos and conducting critiques, either in groups or in a self-reflective manner, has been an aspect of faculty evaluation for some time - just last week, the TBS faculty study group looking at student conferencing within the Positive Discipline framework used a video that Jed had shot of himself as the basis for their conversation - and to hear about an attempt to create a broad platform for using it is exciting (even if the article is a little short on specifics about what the criteria are that are being applied to develop the scoring rubric).

"When we stop playing, we start dying." - Dr. Stuart Brown

Mitch, Andrea, Paula and I are reading a wonderful book about play right now by Dr. Stuart Brown called Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, as part of our preparation for the second preschool director luncheon we will be hosting this year, in January. The book is based on a huge body of original research by the author, including over 6000 "play histories", as well as research by zoologists, neurobiologists, pediatricians, and scientists in a range of other fields. He begins by defining play, why it occurs, and its role in human development. He then examines how play differs for children, adolescents, and adults; the relationship of play and work; how play fosters social relationships and connections; if there is a "dark side" to play; and concludes with a chapter of advice for living a play-full life. A few of my favorite quotations so far - either for their strikingness, or for the implications for our work.

"I don't think it is too much to say that play can save your life."

"...active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (where emotions get processed) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (where executive decisions are processed)."

"As children, the reward for play is strong because we need it to generate a rapidly developing brain."

"The work that we find most fulfilling is almost always a recreation and extension of youthful play."

"...during play, the brain is making sense of itself through simulation and testing. Play activity is actually helping sculpt the brain."

"Sometimes running is play, and sometimes it is not. What is the difference between the two? It really depends on the emotions experienced by the runner. Play is a state of mind, rather than an activity."

"When we stop playing, we start dying."

If this has caught your fancy, you might also be interested in this video, and this website.