Read 180 Summer Institute - First Impressions Count! Move Beyond Rules and Procedures

Presenters: Cathleen Mattia, Agatha Taylor

Used the "Numbered Heads" routine as an opener. Demonstrated it as a way to hold all students accountable for discussion.

Agatha used a pyramid model to structure her presentation: Community building; positive tone; motivation; buy-in; teaching and learning

Community building used a theme to create a classroom community structure:

• Theme tells a story
• The students are active participants in developing the theme.

Theme example: a ship

1. Students are given a ticket and welcomed aboard as they enter the room the first time
2. The ship becomes the symbol of the environment and the community
3. A passenger analogy is used to establish relationship and create motivation
4. The destination represents the goals and successes

Setting a positive tone

1. Environment must be warm and inviting (She plays soothing music as students enter the room on the very first day.
2. Safe environment. Make it clear that no put-downs are ever allowed. The students feel that they can take risks with learning.
3. She used a lifeguard metapho
   

Read 180 Summer Institute - Day 2 Opening Session

Keynote – Scholastic VP asked audience to think of a student whose life they had helped changed through R180.

I choose AQ, an 8^th grader. Her initial SRI showed a Lexile in the low 200’s. She was failing other academic subjects and particularly pre-Algebra. AQ ended the year on the Principal’s honor roll with a Lexile in the high 600’s. She discovered S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders through Read180 Audiobooks. She went home and talked about what she was reading only to discover that S.E. Hinton had been one of her mother’s favorite authors as a teenager. AQ went on to read two more of Hinton’s novels before the year was out.

“Brain research tells us that practice makes permanent.” Patrick Daley

Audiobooks contain a Reading Coach voice that provides metacognitive think-alouds at various points in the reading.

Brian Chernow – California Director for Scholastic Education gave a sneak preview of a new Scholastic product called System 44 which is designed to address the needs of students who need help with decoding and phonics. The program is targeted at grades 4-12. It uses an adaptive technology similar to that in Read180 (adapts to each reader’s needs). It features the Decoding Proficiency Assessment or DPA which provides data to determine the appropriate intervention for each student.

“I don’t mind reading now because the computer doesn’t embarrass me.”

Idea! Use the on-line fluency recording as a student portfolio item to demonstrate progress over time to parents and others.

Idea! The reading area can be formed using inexpensive lawn furniture.

Read180 Summer Institute - Day 1

Look at the Institute website

Keynote speakers - Kate Kinsella, Kevin Feldman, Ted Hasselbring

50% of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans do not graduate from high school. 25% of all h.s. students do not graduate.

only 43% of college students are prepared for college.

Reminder: check out Kevin Feldman's listserv
(It turns out Kevin has a cool web presence )

Focus for next year....

Blogger...

This could be used for all types of writing, collaboration and research projects.


For example, modify the rotation schedule to allow 5 minutes for blogging about what's been learned.

Use the blog to create on-line class community... introduce yourself, share likes and dislikes, book discussion groups.

look into the on-line educator community to find best practices and ideas.

Grants...

my classroom needs resources!

audio listening station
individual cd players
increasing the library and quiz library
projection and screen

Family history assignment

Video on Italian-American Immigration

On my father's side, I am a second generation Californian. He was born in L.A. in 1914, the first of 7 children. His parents had come from Italy via Ellis Island and the Colorado coal mines of John D. Rockefeller (or so the story is told). My grandmother, then Maria G. , arrived in 1909. I have never been told the story firsthand but this is what I have pieced together from the family lore so there are significant gaps in the story.

The family took up residence in a two story Victorian era house a few miles from downtown Los Angeles in a placed they referred to as Happy Valley. As the story goes, dad was born in the room above the living room. Dad took me to the old neighborhood when I was an adult. It was an off the beaten path little valley in a hilly section overlooking downtown L.A. The alleys were still unpaved and the streets without curbs. The family had a garden plot next door and dad loved to regale us with tales of wine making during prohibition.

Dad and Mom bought their first house on 101st street in south central L.A. At the time, the great post-war northern migration of African-Americans had not yet occurred and so it was a white working class enclave. By 1950, the demographics of the area had changed dramatically and my parents chose to relocate to another all-white enclave. This time it was suburban, middle class Glendale. They bought the home for $13,000 which very nearly broke the family budget for many years to follow. I was born in Glendale in 1956 at Glendale Sanitarium (now a huge medical complex called Glendale Adventist Hospital).

We lived in a neighborhood just down the hill from Brand Park which had been willed to the city by Leslie C. Brand, an early developer. He turned his orange groves into the suburban dream. His home and grave site are still in the park.

Google IT Session Notes from 6/19

Writing assignment including video production.

One way of differentiating... recognize those who know and give them explicit permission to go ahead and ignore instruction while those who need to learn should listen.

Cool idea about editing/revising. Have an editing day. Have each student read another's essay for a particular aspect: grammar, spelling, style, etc. Create a cover sheet which has a rubric section for each aspect. Each reviewer completes and signs off the aspect they reviewed.

Embedding Media

apophenia www.zephonia.org

Session Notes Google IT Day 2

Examples:

• Put a blog post up and that's your homework assignment. Students can respond in the blog. It gets time and date stamped.
• Calculus class blog. All students are contributors to the blog. A different student is assigned as class scribe for each day of the month. Scribe posts class notes, diagrams, etc. for the whole class.
• Peer review within google docs. if you have collaborator access then you can see the number of times it's been accessed (was it really revised...)
• Professional portfolio
• Students can have interactive electronic journals. Teacher subscribes so she is notified as soon a student updates his/her journal.

My ideas:

• Could I put the wrl up on the blog? What about access issues? Students who do not have internet access at home?
• What about book discussion groups?

Google Reader:

• tool to keep track of RSS feeds
  
• del.icio.us - web based storehouse for bookmarks and other things