Getting Buy-In

Excerpt from Engaging Students with Poverty In Mind by Eric Jensen: 

Rule #3 (5 Rules for Engagement) - Get Buy-In

        One of the most critical skills teachers can learn is never taught to them.  The skill of Salesmanship. For many students, school is an obligation, not a joy and a privilege.  This means you need to "sell" learning to them.  When you step into the classroom of a high-performing teacher, several things will likely jump out at you.  The first is that the teacher is so strongly committed to engaging students that there's a palpable "whatever it takes" attitude in the air.  Passionate, committed teachers do not accept failure as an option.  They are constantly"selling" students on themselves, the content, and the learning process.  Students motivation counts for a strong .48 effect size toward student achievement (Hattie,2008).  Highly effective teachers raise their odds of success by ensuring that students want to participate, will engage, and choose to learn.  The results speak for themselves.

Solutions you can use: 

* Issue a challenge - "I am not sure if you can do this, but let's give it a try."
* Offer an incentive - "Listen, I could use some help.  I'll trade you a free homework pass for your help on this."  
* Pique students' curiosity - "I shouldn't be telling you this," or "I don't know if anyone has done this experiment before;it might not work.  Are you willing to give it a try?"
* Start a competition - "The team with all of the questions right gets one free homework pass next week."  or "We'll work in small teams and see which one gets the solution first."
* Lower the stakes - Have students find partners, then give each pair two minutes to solve a math problem that is missing one part.  Students afraid of failure or embarrassment are less likely to lose their inhibitions and fully immerse themselves in the lesson. 

As you can see this book is full of great reminders about how we can make the classroom experience even better for our students and ourselves!! 

Book Study!
I hope you will want to join us for a low-pressure, fun book study!  Please sign up HERE if you are interested in reading "Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" by Eric Jensen!!
 

Important Information: 

Kudos!  - Congratulations to Commodore Manufacturing, Waupaca Foundry, Jasper Engines and Conexus for being recognized as an "Award of Excellence in Community Partnerships" by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development!   Along with this award, Chase James was recognized as an "Award for Excellence" for Secondary Students.  Both Commodore Manufacturing and Chase will be awarded at a banquet in Indianapolis on February 18th. 

Instructional Rounds - Reminder we will have Instructional Rounds on Tuesday, January 21st andWednesday, January 22nd.  Please find the schedule HERE and reflection sheet HERE.  (Updates were made as of this evening.)

Reporting Topics:  Thank you to everyone who turned in Reporting Topics.  This is just a reminder in case there are others that need to update the system.  This is an important step to ensuring our grades are calculating correctly.  If you would like to know what the system currently has down for you, please let Jody know and she can get it to you.  This is only for standards-based grade books. 

Testing Dates:  For your planning, here are some important test dates for you to mark your calendar with! 

ISTEP Grade 10:

ELA Testing: 

Part 1 - February 25, 26

Part 2 - April 21, 22

Math Testing

Part 1 - March 3,4

Part 2 - April 28, 29

ILEARN 7th & 8th  - and Biology:

April 27, 28, 29 - English 

May 4,5,2 - Math 

May 11, 12 - Biology

RTI Meeting -  Please send names of students you are struggling with to Jody ASAP.  We will be having an RTI meeting this Thursday morning at 7:20 a.m. in the high school library.