February 2020
In wanting to make a difference, Konocti resumed the 2020 school year focussing on
key instructional practices that can highly help us in achieving
our goal
every student making one year's gain or more.
Instructional Focus
1. Teacher Clarity
2. Teacher-student relationships
3.
Formative Assessment practices
4. Effective Feedback
This school year, Konocti is particularly focused on all of the strategies or ways for
formative assessment practices. Such strategies that fall under formative assessment practices:
let the teacher can monitor and check for learning throughout the daily lesson.
get more students more involved in their learning journey.
let the student process and practice which is needed to cement their learning let teachers know how their students are progressing.
Some examples of the formative assessment practices are the following:
the use of whiteboards
think-pair-share
turn-talk
table talk
the use of the non-volunteer selection
The Leadership support: to support this instructional focus, the principals, instructional coaches, and I made a commitment to:
1. Plan and/or participate in the necessary professional learning
2. Ensure effective implementation of the above instructional practices and strategies
How: To fulfill these commitments, the principals, coaches, and I meet every month to review the instructional focus, identify the leadership supports, review evidence of a relation between the support and the level of instruction and the level of student growth and achievement.
Some of the leadership supports may be the following:
1. Site workshop
2. After school workshop
3. Site collaboration
4. Grade level and department collaboration
5. Visiting classrooms and giving feedback
6. Modeling a lesson
7. Team planning a lesson
8. Team teaching a lesson
Evidence to monitor the effectiveness of leadership support based on instructional improvement and student growth:
1. Observe classrooms
2. Observe using the district walk-thru guide
3. Interview students
4. Interview staff
5. Star Renaissance reading results
6. IAB results
7. Math results on common assessments
8. writing samples
9. Other student work samples
10.Video clips of class instruction
11. Professional Development Training Days
The purpose of the Professional Learning on January 29:
1. Since it always takes a group of people working together with a common purpose in an atmosphere of trust and collaboration to get extraordinary things done, Konocti has designed and offered this all-day staff development day on January 29.
2. Continue to gain knowledge, skill, and confidence.
3. Utilize the new knowledge and skill in our daily work.
4. Hold a greater impact on the well-being and academic success for all of our students.
As such, people gained some new knowledge in the morning sessions. I know I did. People shared the following:
1. We learned or were reminded of six strategies to use when teaching math (let kids show their understanding in a concrete way, using a pictorial, using symbols, using academic vocabulary). Now I will incorporate one of the six strategies in my daily and weekly lessons.
2. We learned and revisited teh way you read a text three times. Now I will incorporate different questions to serve the purpose for each read.
3. We looked at the new requirements of our program. Now I will look to incorporate some of the new skills into my daily and weekly instruction.
4. I saw how I can use close read to unpack word problems in math. Now I will look to dissect the word problem with students using the close read technique.
5. I was reminded about the use of showing students what success looks like, Now I will look to bring in models for the students, and draw step by step with the students.
I look forward to seeing the new learning being tried in our classrooms and at our school sites. I am confident the students will respond well.
The common goals and the common instructional pillars, the leadership and teacher support, the monitoring of instructional growth and student learning, is all done out of love!
