FOCUS

The science team is starting their journey into the Mike Schmoker Focus book study.  As I re-read chapters 1 & 2, I found it to be a good reminder of the importance of simplicity, clarity and priority when working to develop our own curriculum.  I think it is good to re-visit our resource as we work to develop guaranteed and viable curriculum.  Here were a few things that stuck out in my mind:

Guaranteed - Can we guarantee that the same curriculum is being taught by every teacher in every classroom?  What gets measured gets done, so how can we develop a simple process for reflection and measurement?

Viable - Ensuring our curriculum doesn't contain more content that can be EFFECTIVELY taught in 180 days.   We do this by focusing on power standards and reducing the number of standards we try to teach in a school year. Also, we need to remember we really do not have 180 teaching days!

Read, Write, Think - Research shows that our students will learn more and retain more if students have opportunities to discuss and write about what they are learning  (Turn and Talks/Quick writes are valuable)

Authentic Literacy - Reading growth depends on our ability to build up students' knowledge base and vocabulary.  This can be achieved by ensuring students have opportunities to read complex fiction and information-rich text.  Emphasis on books, textbooks, newspapers, magazines in all disciplines helps to build learning of core content along with advanced analytical and thinking skills.

Strengthening our Guaranteed and Viable curriculum at Perry Central is our first priority as we work to ensure our students are getting a rich, content knowledge curriculum filled with critical thinking & communication skills. Our goal is to develop our curriculum, work to vertically align standards, add rich reading & writing opportunities across the curriculum and keep the process simple and research based.   By doing this work, we will eliminate the stress of "squeezing" it all in and allow our students the time and opportunity to grow deeper in their learning!   


Important Information:

Visitors in the House - This Monday, Bedford North Lawrence will be bringing their Early College Leadership team to Perry Central to learn more about our program.  They will be visiting in the morning for a couple of hours.  We are excited to bring them to our facility and continue to learn and grow with them!  Their visit is part of the CELL Early College Federal Grant that we were asked to be involved with! 

High School Orientation - This Tuesday evening, our current 8th grade class and their parents are invited to Perry Central to start planning for their high school career.  Students will work to lay out their next four years of high school with leadership from Dana Harris!  It is usually a largely attended event.  Thank you to Dana for making this happen! 

Amazing Shake - Wednesday morning, we will be sending a small team to West Washington to help judge their Amazing Shake event.  The Amazing Shake is a Ron Clark activity that provides students in the 7th and 8th grade the opportunity to learn how to gain valuable 21st Century Professional Skills such as how to make eye contact, think on your feet, communicate, etc.  We are excited to learn from WW and potentially bring back this exciting opportunity for our students.  Students who win the West Washington event will participate in Atlanta at the Ron Clark Academy for the national competition.

Evaluations - Just a reminder that our admin team will be working hard to get into your classrooms for long and short visits for the spring semester.  Typically the second round of evaluations are unannounced.  If you have questions or concerns, please let us know.  I have been seeing a lot of GREAT formative assessment activities and learning objectives on my walk through activity.  I am grateful each and every day to have such an outstanding teaching team!  Keep up the great work!

ISTEP - We will be starting our ISTEP re-testing this week.  You can find a copy of the schedule and students involved at this LINK.  We will take English this week and math next week.  ISTEP for all 10th grade students will begin the last week of February.  Thank you for your flexibility and support!

Valentine's Day -  Stop by the high school office on Friday for our Valentine's Cake-Pops!  We Love our faculty and staff!!