Questions You Should Be Asking Students
- What are you passionate about?
- What do you want to share with the world? How do you want to share it?
- How can you positively impact the lives of others?
- What sort of impact can you have on the world?
- How will you extend your learning beyond this classroom?
Source: fouroclockfaculty.com
Leadership and Participation Opportunities
Committee and Team Survey
In order to participate in school innovation, curriculum, and sectional opportunities for the 2017-2018 academic year, the Committee and Team Survey will be available on August 14.
You will have the opportunity to identify the committee(s) and/or team(s) in which you are interested. You can also express that you do not want to participate in a team or committee this year. Everyone will need to fill out the survey.
The survey will be available Monday and until the end of the day on August 21.
Vertical Team Curriculum Leaders
As mentioned in the Opening Teaching and Learning Presentation on Wednesday, August 3, there is a leadership opportunity to be a vertical curriculum leader. There will be five EY-12 vertical team meetings this year during Early Release Professional Learning and Development Days. The goal of these meetings will be to create cross-sectional opportunities for subject specific discussions and provide greater alignment EY-12.
EY-12 Vertical Team Facilitators. The role of the facilitator will be to work with the Director of Teaching and Learning to create agendas, send agendas, facilitate meetings, and report outcomes. This could be an EY3-12 HOD, but it does not have to be. It could be an Elementary School vertical team leader, but it does not have to be.
Applications closed on August 9 and were vetted by all three principals. Facilitators names will be shared by the beginning of next week.
EY-12 Vertical Team Facilitators for:
- Math
- Science
- Social Studies
- English / Language Arts
- Visual Arts
- Performing Arts
- Information & Design Technology
- World Language
- P.E.
- EAL
- LSS
- Indian Studies
- Counseling
August 16 Faculty Meeting 3:45-5:00 PM Agenda
Wednesday’s Faculty Meeting time will be used to meet in newly formed Vertical Teams. Team Facilitators will lead the meetings. Locations and Vertical Team membership will linked HERE after they are finalized by the beginning of next week. Prior preparation is not required for the meeting. A preliminary agenda is available HERE. Refreshments will be served at each of the meeting locations. Meeting locations, participants, and facilitators are LISTED HERE.
Curriculum Review REVIEW
As discussed in this week’s All Faculty Meeting, here some further details of the Curriculum Review Review. Specifically answering, What are the Deliverables in the AISC Curriculum Review Phases?
The Curriculum Review is divided into four distinct phases:
Vision Phase
Vision: develop a vision for the review & preliminary budget requests for fiscal planning.
Research: engage in scholarly reading and current best practice commentary.
Philosophy: create/revise a philosophy statement specific for your discipline.
Standards: make a recommendation to adopt, revise, or maintain standards and benchmarks.
Planning Phase
Action Plan: Create an action plan to guide the remainder of the curriculum review. Key components should include:
- Timeline - Draft a prediction for target dates for the remaining steps of the process. Recognizing that curriculum review for each discipline will involve varying scopes of work, varying numbers of teachers impacted, and varying degrees of change, the timeline may range from a number of months through to a multi-year implementation. Varying sectional needs should be taken into consideration in drafting the proposed timeline.
- Budget - Identify significant budgetary considerations (i.e. resource adoption) with a prediction about the most appropriate timing of these costs.
- Professional Learning - Suggest necessary professional learning for teachers and with a prediction about the most appropriate timing of these experiences.
Enduring Understanding (Stage 1 of UbD): Create a scope and sequence of enduring understandings by grade and/or course that is vertically articulated and honors the philosophy and standards to be used by others in the department for the Action Phase.
Essential Questions (Stage 1 of UbD): create and align the questions with Enduring Understandings
Action Phase(s)
Unit Mapping (using Understanding by Design)
This phase involves designing units using the UBD framework of Stages 1, 2 and 3 as represented in Rubicon Atlas. The deliverable is complete units in Rubicon Atlas.
Content/Skills (Stage 1 continued)
With the EUs and EQs framing each unit, what standards-based content and skills (knowledge and understandings, communication skills and thinking and transfer skills) will be targeted and assessed?
Common Assessment (Stage 2)
Design and the assessment plan. What kinds of formative and summative assessments will be used to assess student learning toward the targets and standards? Includes assessments and rubrics.
Learning Activities (Stage 3)
Design, upload and share the lessons, activities and pedagogies used to move students toward mastery of learning targets and standards. Will ideally and eventually include the learning activities and sequences of several teachers/teacher teams, with assignments and activities documents, multiple pathways to mastery, scaffolds and models.
*Periodic status report on progress to cCore by designated individuals involved in Action Phase
Final Phase
Reflection - A group-wide review of the Curriculum Review Continuum experience with specific effort to identify the elements that led to success, and the naming of obstacles encountered for the sake of offering perspective to leadership and other groups who will engage in the full process. The reflection should result in a concise written record of the learning.
Final Report - A detailed, written articulation of the curriculum work completed by the group and the changes that have resulted from the process.
Key Understandings:
- The curriculum review process is not exactly the same for each discipline
- Curriculum review will no longer be tied to specific years. Rather, it will be identified by “phases” that sequentially build on each other and are flexible in timing and duration.
- The duration of each discipline’s review will be determined by the scope and depth of work needed to accomplish the philosophy.
- The frequency of review (i.e. when a subject comes back up for a new cycle) will not be determined by a ‘year count’ (i.e. each subject will no longer be reviewed every five years).
- A discipline will embark on a new cycle after a period of development (completed in the action phase) followed by a period of refining and adjusting.
- A collaborative decision will be made by teachers and administrators about the need for a discipline to embark on a new cycle of curriculum development.
Professional Learning Opportunities
8 Two-Day Institutes, including:
- Developing a Maker Mindset
- Standards-based P.E.
- Proficiency-Based Assessment in the World Language Classroom
- Adaptive Challenges for iLearning Professionals
- Early Childhood Educators: Growing Your Instructional Practice Through Collaboration
- Assessment 2.0: Grading from the Inside Out
- Mining Mentor Texts in the Classroom
- How to Grade for Learning
Teaching and Learning Resources 2017-2018
We have moved away from using Moodle and the Staff Portal as a centralized communication platform. We are moving toward PowerSchool, although many of us are still in learning how to access the necessary information. As planned redundancy, Teaching and Learning Resources will be hosted here and on PowerSchool.
Wellness at AISC
Are you interested in seeing what more is happening with wellness activities at AISC and in Chennai? If so, click HERE for AISC WELLNESS MATTERS BLOG to stay updated. We have lots of exciting events planned so be sure to check in!
Thank You!
Thank you all for the extra time, energy, and enthusiasm you put into getting AISC ready for 2017-2018. It is going to be a great year!
Dates to Remember
Understanding Inquiry Through NGSS Standards--Sept. 4-8--Paul Andersen
Math Specialist in International Schools Training--Sept. 27-29--Erma Anderson
NESA Fall Leadership Conference--Oct. 19-22
NESA Fall Training Institute--Nov. 3-4
Adaptive Schools Foundations Training--Nov. 20-23--Carol Simoneau
Cognitive Coaching Foundations Part 2 (Days 5-8)--Jan. 20-23--Dr. Ochan Kusuma-Powell
NESA Winter Training Institute--Jan. 26-27
Responsive Classroom Training--Feb. 5-9
ECIS Library Conference--Feb. 15-18 (15th is pre-con & 18th is post-conference)
Project Based Learning--Feb. 26-Mar. 2--Suzie Boss
Inquiry in the Elementary Classroom--Mar. 5-9--Tania Lattanzio
NESA Spring Educators Conference--Mar. 30-April 1
Professional Growth and Evaluation Deadlines
Professional Growth Plan Paperwork---completed by September 15
SAP-S Summative Paperwork---completed by September 30
SAP-X Quad Blogging Meeting---October 3
Professional Growth New Teacher Plan--paperwork by September 30, meeting to follow
Worthwhile Reading
Vermont Medical School Says Goodbye To Lectures https://t.co/TgIKI4SN2x via @WNYC. A solid pedagogical move toward more active learning!
Have a great week!
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