PTA is looking to repurchase RAZ Kids and IXL for this coming year. However, the prices have jumped for next year.
RAZ Kids is $700 vs $645
IXL is $1700 vs $1250
So we are inquiring about the differences!
Monday, June 1, 2015
June 1 "Odds and Ends"
Here is the IXL usage for the past 3 years.
PTA is looking to repurchase RAZ Kids and IXL for this coming year. However, the prices have jumped for next year.
RAZ Kids is $700 vs $645
IXL is $1700 vs $1250
So we are inquiring about the differences!
PTA is looking to repurchase RAZ Kids and IXL for this coming year. However, the prices have jumped for next year.
RAZ Kids is $700 vs $645
IXL is $1700 vs $1250
So we are inquiring about the differences!
Thursday, April 30, 2015
1895 State Assessment for Kansas
Share this with Students!
So you think this class is hard.
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts. Per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven
months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per >>m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around
which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?
Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein,
raze, raise, rays
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Kyle Schwartz teaches third grade at Doull Elementary in Denver.
Although she says her students are a pleasure to look after, the
educator of three years adds that many of them come from underprivileged
homes.
"Ninety-two percent of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch,"
Schwartz tells ABC News. "As a new teacher, I struggled to understand
the reality of my students' lives and how to best support them. I just
felt like there was something I didn't know about my students."
In a bid to build trust between her and her students, Schwartz thought up a lesson plan called "I Wish My Teacher Knew."
For the activity, Schwartz's third graders jot down a thought for their
teacher, sharing something they'd like her to know about them.
"I let students determine if they would like to answer anonymously," she
says. "I have found that most students are not only willing to include
their name, but also enjoy sharing with the class. Even when what my
students are sharing is sensitive in nature, most students want their
classmates to know.
"Some notes are heartbreaking like the first #iwishmyteacherknew tweet
which read, 'I wish my teacher knew I don't have pencils at home to do
my homework.' I care deeply about each and every one of my students and I
don't want any of them to have to suffer the consequences of living in
poverty, which is my main motivation for teaching."
Blown away by her class' honesty, Schwartz shared some of the notes on Twitter using the hashtag #IWishMyTeacherKnew, encouraging fellow teachers to employ the same lesson with their own students.
The tweets and photos of notes from other schools came pouring in from around the world.
"I think it caught on so fast because teachers are highly collaborative
and freely share and explore resources," Schwartz says. "In the end, all
teachers want to support their students, and #iwishmyteacherknew is a
simple and powerful way to do that.
"Building community in my classroom is a major goal of this lesson.
After one student shared that she had no one to play with at recess, the
rest of the class chimed in and said, 'we got your back.' The next day
during recess, I noticed she was playing with a group of girls. Not only
can I support my students, but my students can support each other."
Schwartz says she also hopes her lesson can help her connect students
and their families with the proper resources they need to live
comfortably.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Math-class makeover encourages a more positive approach to learning
Math-class makeover encourages a more positive approach to learning
By
03.30.15
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Do you hate math? Relax — the problem may not be you, but rather the way math is taught.
Fear of math represents not personal failure or a missing gene but wrongheaded “one-size-fits-all” ways of teaching. So, at least, runs the theory behind a quiet revolution in math education that is exciting teachers nationwide.
More and more math instructors are embracing ideas developed by two Stanford professors who set out to reform math instruction. Their approach includes more visual and creative exercises, discussions of ideas rather than a focus on memorization and speed, and individually tailored lessons.
Math Horror Stories
Mention to people that you teach math, David Foster of the Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative said, and they all “launch into a horror story about high school math. The only mystery is if they blame the algebra teacher or the geometry teacher” for their hatred of math.
Foster, whose organization offers training and resources for teachers, advocates a more positive approach to get kids to love learning.
“Learning to do math is no different from learning to play the piano or learning to play a sport — a lot of it is about hard work and practice.”
Learning From Failure
That idea is rooted in the work of psychology professor Carol Dweck and education professor Jo Boaler, whose approaches to teaching math are spreading quickly. Dweck has found that failure helps students to learn, grow and get better. She urges that math education focus on helping students persevere even if they do not succeed at first.
Boaler offered a free online math course last summer that attracted 85,000 people. Her approach involves less memorization; instead, lessons focus on different ways to solve problems, individualized approaches, small-group discussion and real-life applications of math. Also feeding the teaching revolution is an explosion of online math lessons replacing lectures and one-size-fits-all textbooks.
“We’re in a crisis in math,” Boaler said. “These poor kids are given the idea that math is about performance, and then they get the idea that they can’t do it.”
As Sahib Dokal, a sixth-grader at Piedmont Middle School in San Jose, put it: “It feels like you have to do it faster and I can’t think that hard.”
Program Recognizes Effort
Teachers say that bad classroom experiences with math have led to math failure. Just 36 percent of U.S. eighth-graders score at their grade level on national math tests.
To underline the importance of effort, the Khan Academy — an educational organization that provides free education through video lectures on YouTube — has launched a math contest that recognizes not just mastery, but effort as well. The LearnStorm challenge posts weekly scores and has attracted 41,000 students from the Bay Area.
“I thought I would bring a little more excitement to my students,” said David Hicks of San Francisco 49ers Academy in East Palo Alto, which was in first place in effort, or “grit,” after the contest’s first week last month. The contest tallies student progress in mastering Khan Academy lessons. A computer program gauges each student’s work and tailors lessons to their level. Thus, Hicks said, in his mixed-level class, “my algebra students don’t have to wait for my students who are at a third-grade ability.” Khan’s “dashboard” shows each student’s progress, level, struggles and effort.
“When I complete it, it makes me feel smart,” 49ers eighth-grader Fernando Ibarra said.
Good-Teaching Basics
Online tools do not work for everyone, however. Ana Wallace, a senior at Summit Rainier in San Jose, finds Khan’s video lessons confusing. “You can’t ask Khan questions,” she said, and the daily 30 minutes on Algebra II and other subjects just get her more confused.
There are other approaches. Hicks at the 49ers Academy does number talks, often by posing a puzzle-like question, and illustrating on the whiteboard students’ step-by-step thinking as they solve the problem. “How does counting by 4s relate to multiplication?” a teacher might ask, in deconstructing a math procedure to help students understand.
However, much of what makes math more accessible comes down to just good teaching: keeping track of each student and not leaving anyone perplexed.
Michelle Rojas, 12, said she hated math in elementary school, and when she asked a question, teachers “explained it in their own college way, instead of for the grade level you were in,” she said. Now a sixth-grader at Alpha Blanca Alvarado Middle School in San Jose, she is understanding lessons.
Transforming The Math-Learning Disability
Teachers and students say that relating math to everyday problem-solving and daily life is also important.
“The more you can connect the math to their life,” the better, said math teacher Mona Keeler. It makes it meaningful and "takes off that pressure."
What is the evidence that these new ways work? So far there are only small-scale reports, individual school tests and plenty of stories from teachers themselves.
“I’ve seen humongous growth” in math achievement, Keeler said.
So with cheerleading teachers, can everyone learn trigonometry and calculus?
“Most of humanity is capable,” Khan Academy founder Salman Khan says firmly. He points to humankind’s strides in literacy: 400 years ago, only a small number of people could read, whereas today three-quarters of the world's population can.
What about those with a math-learning disability?
“It’s hard to know who’s born with a math disability, or who becomes disabled because of the way they’ve been treated in math,” Boaler said. “I know we can transform it. We can have kids loving math.”
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
State Budget House Proposal - Dorn Response
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Statement From State Superintendent Randy Dorn on Proposed 2015-17 Operating Budget (HB 1106)
OLYMPIA — March 30, 2015 — The journey to fully fund basic education for our students began well over a decade ago, highlighted by the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision. The first concrete step in this journey was the passage of House Bill 2776. I do not believe this should be the only step.
I applaud the work done in this House budget proposal to fund HB 2776:
However, this budget proposal falls short of fully funding basic education in a number of key areas:
I
am also concerned that the proposal does not address the need to reduce
reliance on local levies. In fact, in terms of compensation, this
budget increases the reliance on levy funds.
The House budget includes a long overdue cost-of-living adjustment, which I support, but the COLA is only for the personnel funded by the state. School districts will be forced to use levy money to provide similar increases to those staff funded with local funds.
This is wrong.
The
costs of employees providing basic education are a state
responsibility. Passing off this obligation to districts puts a burden
on local taxpayers that is unfair and inequitable to districts, making
it more difficult to close achievement gaps. This goes beyond just an
educational issue to a civil rights issue.
The
State is currently in contempt of court because it has failed to adopt a
complete plan showing year by year how it intends to fully fund basic
education by 2018 without the use of levies. In no way can this budget
be considered such a complete plan.
Last
spring the Legislature sent a message to the Supreme Court, assuring
the justices that it would reach "a grand agreement" on education
funding this session, and asking the Court to wait on possible
sanctions. I also asked the Court to withhold sanctions in order to give
the legislature time to act this session. But now we are in the fourth
quarter of the session and have yet to see the plan the court is
demanding.
The Legislature must adopt a clear plan for full funding of basic education this session. This budget does not.
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Monday, March 23, 2015
Stressed Kids
Stressed Kids: The 3-Year-Old Who 'Grunted And Pointed'
By Ann Dornfeld
•
Oct 12, 2014
They had $5,000 from Chaney’s tax refund, which they figure would easily hold them off until they found work.
“But it didn’t happen like that,” Velma said. “Once we were putting in applications and everything, and we weren’t really getting responses back, the money started getting thin, and eventually it was gone.”
The following months were stressful – not just for her, but for the children. Her 5-year-old wasn’t the same kid anymore. He wanted to be babied. Her 3-year-old wasn’t talking yet and refused to be potty-trained.
Certain childhood stressors – from family strife to violence – can do permanent damage to growing brains. It’s known as toxic stress, and it’s especially prevalent in low-income families. Chaney watched how that stress affected her kids as they bounced from one living situation to another.
At first, she got her family on every waiting list for emergency housing she could find. With time running out, they realized there was only one option left: the Seattle tent city called Nickelsville.
But when she called the camp, the staff said they weren’t sure they could fit a family of five. Chaney remembers that day.
“We had went to the park out there in Kent and we were sitting and it was just sad because we really hadn’t eaten and we were sitting on the bleachers, we didn’t have nothing,” she said. “We just didn’t have nowhere to go.”
The kids didn’t buy it.
“I saw a lot of anger because they started lashing out … I saw a lot of withdrawal where they were holding things back,” Chaney said. “They started lying to me and stuff like that, so it was kinda a spiral.”
Laderrion, her 5-year-old, “just reverted backwards,” she said. “When it came to him being independent, he became more dependent.”
As for her youngest: “Ladamion, I would try to potty-train him. And just when I thought I was one step further to getting him where I needed him, I would have to start all over. I would have to go back to the diapers when I thought I was in the Pull-Ups stage.”
Lia’daya, Chaney’s daughter, noticed her little brother’s problems, too.
“He wasn’t really talking, because he had a speech problem, and the speech problem was really bad for him.”
Kate McLaughlin, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, said that language development is consistently impacted by tough environments. She said traumatic experiences like homelessness can do more than just rattle children in the short term.
McLaughlin’s research examines how the fear and anxiety from toxic stress can actually change the structure of the brain.
They can shrink areas of the brain that children need to succeed in school, like the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
Everything from divorce in the family to exposure to neighborhood violence can impair early brain development.
“There’s a couple of things that we tend to see,” McLaughlin said. “The first is problems with these kinds of executive functioning skills – so difficulty concentrating in school, problems with working memory, being able to inhibit certain behaviors in order to pay attention in the classroom.”
She said early exposure to violence can make children vigilant to potential dangers. And that can disrupt their ability to adapt to change in the classroom.
Although traumatic events can happen in families rich or poor, there’s evidence that the stresses of poverty alone can be enough to rewire young brains.
Stresses like not having enough to eat, frequent moves and financial instability.
Other trauma is more common in poor families, as well – like a family member going to prison, domestic violence, and drug abuse.
The good news, McLaughlin says, is that children’s brains are remarkably plastic.
“Positive inputs can have just as meaningful an impact on brain development in children,” she said.
That’s the work of Wellspring Family Services in Seattle, which serves homeless children in its early learning center.
Sandy Lowe, vice president of community services for Wellspring, says therapists and teachers have little control over children’s home environments. But they can work together to help children build their coping skills.
She recalls one young boy who always came to school angry.
“He shared with the mental health therapist that he always felt like he was burning inside, like there was fire inside of him and he had to roar and rage around and get rid of the fire,” she said.
“And they talked about what puts fire out – well, water puts fire out. Maybe drinking a glass of water would be good when he felt that way.”
Pretty soon, when the boy found himself getting hot under the collar, he’d ask for a drink of water: “He would take a time out at the sink, he would drink his water, and he would go back to his classmates and say, ‘The fire’s gone.’”
Wellspring also focuses on the developmental delays that childhood traumas can cause or exacerbate.
The center is where Velma Chaney’s two sons started to get back on track – including 3-year-old Ladamion, who was barely talking when he started there.
“That was my baby that grunted and pointed for a long time,” Chaney said.
Eight-year-old Lia’daya remembers her brother’s transformation as he worked with Wellspring speech therapists.
“They was, like, saying stuff, and they was making him say it after them, and that was really helping him,” she said. “First he was kinda messed up on the first time he had did it, and then he started getting better and better. That was kinda nice.”
Lia’daya says she’s had challenges of her own.
“I was a little messed up on the reading,” she said. “I feel that I’m doing a lot better since I have growed up.”
Velma Chaney’s family is now living in transitional housing.
The apartment is sparsely furnished, but it’s theirs for two years.
On a recent visit, Lia’daya and Laderrion sat on either side of their mother on the sofa, practicing their reading.
“His dog Bill barked and stared …”
“Uh-uh.”
“Started …”
“There you go.”
“… jumping in the air. The kids laughed.”
Early interventions can help children who’ve experienced toxic stress, but researchers say it’s still early days when it comes to understanding how the damage is done to developing brains – or to what degree that damage can be undone.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Message from Randy Dorn
Dear Principal,
As you are well aware, spring testing is just
around the corner. This year will be particularly challenging as we move
to the new Smarter Balanced tests in English language arts and math.
I want to thank you for your commitment to the
transition – and for your patience as we all work to get there. Once we
get through this first testing season, the process will be much
smoother. And we will have a higher quality assessment
system that shows more accurately the progress students are making
toward career, college, and life.
By now, districts should have testing windows and
schedules set. Accommodations and designated supports can be assigned.
Test coordinators and administrators (formerly known as building
coordinators and proctors) should be identified. Training
plans should be in the works. Practice and training tests should be
used with all teachers and students to become familiar with test engine,
item types, and look and feel of new assessments. Interim assessments
are available to try and explore. And all teachers
should have access to the Digital Library. We’ve heard good things from
folks who are using it to inform instruction.
I want you to know that we are doing everything we can to support districts and schools:
1.
The assessment vendor, AIR, has guaranteed a
24-hour response time when problems arise. Software errors are typically
resolved within two to three days.2. OSPI’s assessment analysts are also responding to technical, data, and technology concerns.
3. OSPI has hired an additional assessment operations staff member to help with customer service.
4. OSPI is providing answers to most assessment questions we receive in monthly webinars and Q & As, and in materials posted on the portal.
5. OSPI has developed a list of resources to help families understand the new learning standards and related assessment system.
6. OSPI has a communications plan that includes hosting a media roundtable to inform the press about Smarter Balanced.
If you have questions, please contact your
district assessment coordinator.
I know this spring will be tough. Trying something
for the first time, especially something this big, is never easy. I
appreciate all you are doing to get this new system integrated into your
school. And for everything you are doing to
help educate the children of our state.
Randy Dorn
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