October and November 2020

 

The mantra remains:

Quality First Instruction and Deep Student Learning in whatever the venue.

It will be nice to have some students return to school shortly. 

Listening to Teresa Amabalia in the Principle Progress, when students make gains academically, they also gain confidence, improve their behavior, and want to attend school. Imagine the power behind all of us committing to strategies within the QFI Model that elicit academic interaction from every student every class period.

What is Happening?

The entire staff was trained on the foundation of the Quality First Instructional Model (QFI).

Every staff and administrator has watched a QFI demonstration lesson this fall. Every staff member walked away with a call to action = a strategy to try as early as the next day in their classroom, facilitating even more success from the students!

Each school will get a visit from our QFI coach/consult this fall/winter as a way to monitor the instructional progress as a whole organization; as a way to celebrate the successes; as a way to guide our continued work to improve the instructional practice throughout the entire school district, and, therefore,  to reach every student.

What am I noticing in the four components of Quality First Instruction?

In the reflection following the demonstration lessons, resoundingly people wanted to try strategies that provoked more student interaction in the daily lesson. Within days, I heard highlights from people using some of the observed strategies - chatbox code, unmute and share, cold call of certain names. Then as a result staff was excited to get more student involvement! I imagine students felt better as well.

Staff and students alike want to interact more with each lesson!  There are pockets of success! And we continue to work together as we strive to make social connections and academic interactions with 100% of our students. 

The Fall Season

 

Tis the Season of Digital Distant Learning

Students making connections with each other and their teacher. "Unmute and tell me about yourself today."

Students learning their content knowledge delivered by the teacher and interacting with the teacher and with each other. (I am learning how to decode and say words that end in "s" - see Dogz."

Students gaining strategies on how to learn on their own. "I learned for different ways to solve two-step multiplication programs. I used the lattice method to figure out this answer."

It takes a whole village as paraprofessionals, students, teachers, and family members assist in the teaching and learning journey. For example, some parents sit in the school session and support their child in mastering the day's learning outcome.

Go team! Students reading and annotating a Scholastic News Article together with their teacher and their para. 

What else is happening? 

        Konocti adopted an instructional model called Quality First Instruction. The model gives us a framework and structure to rally behind. The same pillars remain a focus within the structure: a)  teacher clarity, b) high leverage instructional strategies, c) academic interaction or formative assessment practices, and d) feedback.

        As everyone works to improve our instructional practice and our leadership practice, Jason Willoughby, an outside consultant, and coach, visits each school to run a demonstration lesson and collaborate with the staff. So far, KEC, ELS, LLES, and this wee,k LLHS observed a demonstration lesson and collaborated with each other: collaborate on the instruction and the pillars = what strategies and activities to continue in the classroom; what strategies and activities to add to the classroom; and what support structures to add at the school so staff can continue to be successful with their students.

           It takes the whole system working collectively to see significant academic growth in every single student. When staff succeeds, and when students succeed, other factors also fall into place = attendance, behavior, and social-emotional well-being.   

  

            What am I noticing so far?  

Konocti has a common instructional model. 

Konocti set goals to see more students improve academically, and more students reach grade level

Staff want to use strategies and activities that engage and involve more students in their learning.

The teachers in the younger grades, K -3 especially, are making progress by using more strategies each day that let the student interact with each other and the teacher more often. As a result, the students practice their new learning more often so it can stick.

Going forward in the next four weeks, I expect that we will see more of us adding more strategies and activities that let the student interact with each other and the teacher more often. With more practice time, the students' knowledge starts to stick and move into their long-term memory. 

Often, I will read about someone from the most unpromising circumstances - inner city, ghetto, drug family, single-parent home, abandoned by the father, abandoned by both parents sometimes - and the child will have grown up to be a star athlete, a successful politician, or a doctor. the reporter will ask, "How did you get to be who you are?" And the answer will always be with the same four words" "There was this teacher." (Scherer, 1998 p. 22)