Minutes

7/8 PLC Running Minutes

Remember for next year: >
 * teach next year's 8th grade the term paraphrase
 * teach them when it is enough to summarize (a quote would be superfluous).
 * right at the beginning of the year, teach them CRs comparing two pieces of literature, esp theme.
 * Instructional move: Ask kids to analyze an argument essay. What is the claim? What are the three main ideas or subclaims? Where is the evidence? Does the evidence support the claim? Why or why not? What is the reasoning? Does it adequately show how the evidence matches the claim?
 * Instructional move: show them CRs that have failed to prove a claim adequately.
 * Can do short stories wit 8th grade early in the year because we did the short story unit with them as 7th graders (Landlady and Pink and Say). Review parts of a narrative, 5 story elements, etc.

June 2:
 * We are continuing to score
 * Alyssa had an IEP

June 1:
 * Della was absent.
 * Steph, Julie and Alyssa met with Wendy to make literacy lab recommendations for next year's 8th grade.

May 30: Memorial Day May 27: May 26: May 25:
 * We are scoring papers, and will take the rest of PLC to do so, unless someone has a reason to meet.
 * Julie STILL out!
 * Julie and Steph still out.

May 24:
 * Julie was out sick and Steph had a growth removed from her foot, and Alyssa was canoeing with 8th graders

May 23:
 * We worked on the backboard for the service learning celebration

May 18:
 * We are discussing our essential questions and creating our house for To Kill a Mockingbird ﻿.
 * Steph asked how we view and decide using Maine Learning Results. She was asking how we decide what standards we cover.
 * We discussed that there are so many themes throughout the book, we are having a hard time to focusing on essentials.
 * We decided that we want to include some biographical information on Miep Gies.
 * Julie reminded us that we have United Streaming. And we can use that for any clips an info to supplement our TKM.
 * We talked about the fact that we want to still try to do six word stories.
 * We all agreed to share everything that we have for TKM. We all have ideas and files that are going to help us with getting through the novel.

May 17: May 16:
 * We put up a house for TKM. We will be doing well if we even get through the book, so we are not really going to do a big final assessment/project.
 * Alyssa did start her frontloading for TKM by reviewing with kids about Jim Crow - she had a great conversation with her kids and related everything to ROT - she did find that kids who had the "parade of subs" last year did not have strong BK at all, so we should be sure to review vocab and big concepts.
 * Julie mentioned that she sould like to have 8th graders leave MJHS with the ability to write a CR comparing two texts.
 * HW for all: Find a poem or song from the Jim Crow Era that we can use to get kids to write a CR that compare to text. Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes
 * We re kicking around heroism, discrimination, participation vs protest, standing up to discrimination, promoting tolerance, balance, tolercance continuum, the breaking point, the balancing point, at what point you step up to the plate and advocate.
 * Meeting with Matt Robinson: We are concerned with the student choice part of our service learning. Academic integrity, student ownership, apprentice citizenship.
 * We did have a wide open entry point when we asked kids to look at all the service organizations around the world.
 * Guided discovery with kids, working toward a Call to Action? GD - more than one day, more than one layer. The GD period will be longer. Affective and cognitive. Who did I talk to, what did they say, what did I learn?
 * "Playing War" is a great picture book.
 * We agreed that the Call to Action Speech and Multi Media presentation is something we want to hold on to.
 * Matt's suggestion for getting more buy-in (kids who say at the end of the reserach ") Oh, well, I didn't care about landmines anyway." Work in different modalities - perhaps role playing, guest speakers, texts, etc.
 * Contact Lisa Morin at UMaine - Community Outreach/Service Learning
 * Keep the choices broad, but try to bring it back to the community - after kids decide on their topics of interest, adults take time to look at keach kid and see who we could hook them up with as a community partner.
 * Evaluate: Through this project, did I make a difference? Did I impact myself or anyone else that was in my target audience?
 * Next year, can we show kids a factor tree that shows the connections between big service organizations.
 * Contact Ryan Crane at MA Global Studies class.

May 11: May 10
 * We decided to look at NWEA stuff so we could give our kids their individual targets ahead of time. Wendy came to help us! We decided to go with the label stystem that Michelle J. came up with . NEXT YEAR: Remember to print the labels for kids (email is in Julie's NWEA file in First Class).
 * NEXT YEAR: Remember to send out a notice to parents that we plan on showing Freedom Writers.
 * Della shared a website called chasingthefrog.com, that has a section for giving info on movies that are based on true stories. She had her kids look at Freedom Writers.
 * Do we have a unit name for TKM? I know we have done heroes in the past - do we have any thoughts?

May 9
 * We are taking some time off to get caught up on our scoring. We are really in good shape for the end of the year.
 * 7th grade - as we finish ROT we will introduce the trait of voice, and then ask kids to use it to write some pieces in the voices of different characters and people from the Jim Crow time period. Julie is still working on personal narrative with her kids, and may weave voice lessons into that assignment.
 * 8th grade - we are finishing the Freedom Writers movie as a celebration/final reflection for our Rally for Change unit - we are focusing on it as a Call to Action story. As usual, kids are spellbound. We will also go back to our Maturity Memoirs and start our hook for To Kill a Mockingbird within the next days. That should carry us pretty far.
 * Julie also needs to go back to theme and practice writing theme CRs with her 8th grade class. She would like to send kids off to MA able to write a CR about theme in more than one text.

May 6
 * discussed reflections with 8th grade - Steph had her kids write her an open letter of at least 10 sentences about their research - how it went, whatever, and to give themselves a score for the whole project and why they felt they earned that score, what they got out of the experience, etc.
 * Our plan is to purchase bulk DVDs and put together a whole class set for each kid. Wendy has offered 8th grade money to purchase DVDs - we just need to figure out how to have kids export them and then burn the DVDs.
 * Use Quicktime or IDVD.
 * Del and Steph did frontloading for Freedom Writers and did start the movie. Alyssa and Julie will start the movie Monday.
 * We talked about some kids who were not able to come to the banquet, and also parents who were really involved in both the banquet and viewing the presentations. Mrs. Rideout said we should do this every year!

May 5
 * Tomorrow we will have kids be sent right up from Wendy and John's homeroom to set up for showing their presentations (12:20-12:50)
 * When kids come in through the doors we will have kids get their laptops and set up in the library and art room.
 * We are going to check in with Lucretia at 5:00 and make sure she is all set.
 * Della had some observations about __Roll of Thunder__- wondering if other classes are grasping the innuendos.
 * Alyssa mentioned that today some were confused about the concept of credit and collateral.
 * How can we explain the idea of share cropping.... remember the game that Heidi had with the beans?
 * Della got 2 copies of Freedom Writers from NetFlix !

May 3 May 2 April 28
 * We watched the Understanding by Design DVD about essential questions
 * How do we get kids to show us what their big ideas are around essential questions
 * Del would like to see us not give all the essential questions to the students and have them come up with them after we do the unit, or to not come up with a "study in" and have students come up with the "study in"
 * Julie noticed that the teacher in the video "trains" his students to relate their thinking back to the essential question by giving lots of small activities and continually redirecting them to the eq
 * The more reflection we can do, the more students will relate learning to their lives the "So What"
 * Julie's kids picked back up with PN today, Del is still thinking about how she wants to jump back into it, Alyssa's kids finished up before we started ROT
 * Alyssa started with voice today
 * Riley Coburn has a great voice over for his presentation, it would make a great model
 * To get kids from the research to the presentation, Del had kids practice with summarizing, she didn't do anything formal but what she did do she will try to get together and share it with us
 * Julie asked us to complete a reflection so that we may obtain quotes for Donna's report.
 * We agreed that the Fun Day was a huge success! The kids did an excellent job!
 * Del shared her login for ROT activities: www.tpet.com login is jcarter65@myfairpoint.net, and the password: warthog
 * We discussed music again for their projects. A student typed in emotional music on Garageband, and it worked well.
 * We discussed how we are going to start TKM, and if we have time, we need to review the video on essential questions, and create questions for our 8th graders.
 * Remind the kids to have power for Friday's viewing of projects.
 * Friday 12:20 to 12:50 to view projects.
 * We looked at Alyssa's quizzes that she did for us on Quibblo for ROT. Thanks again, Alyssa.
 * We talked about the reflection/eval for the hunger banquet. Do we want a big poster type thing or 3X5 cards on each table for people to fill out before they leave?
 * We discussed how we want to set up a Gallery Walk or large presentation for all 8th graders to show their Call to Action projects. We would need to ask other teachers if it's ok that kids not have their laptops that day (we are thinking Friday May 6) and ask Tom about power, and ask about using the library. Steph has said she could adapt!
 * We are talking tomorrow off, but if anyone has any questions, please just ask.

April 27
 * Del shared some questions her students were asking about music and the call to action speech. Some students are having concerns about wording their speeches so they can say they want other people to help without "lying" about what they are choosing to do. (a little wordy, I know)
 * Julie shared the conversation she had with Beth about scoring for the multi-media presentation. How can we score for something we have not unpacked or taught them ourselves? Students are collaborating with each other and helping one another through this process. Julie thought about scoring using the pre-made scoring guide she found online. However, no one has really taught them each of those things on the guide. Unless we score for legal use of pictures and music... we can't lower their score but... we didn't even tell them we would be scoring them for this.
 * We have decided the due date for the presentations will be May 5th. The score will be PASS/FAIL- if students are not finished with their presentations they will be staying after school until the project is completed.
 * Pictures and Text first, then music, then voiceover....have the text match the voiceover or do a voiceover with just pictures.
 * Kids producing media- that looks "slick" but doesn't have substance.. how can we address this as a school (district?)
 * Another reason why this project isn't truly service learning is because they did not choose the topic themselves- we chose hunger for them.
 * Del had an idea to do some warm ups with short videos (3 mins) at the beginning of classes dealing with inference, character traits, story elements, theme, universal positive traits (honesty, courage, maturity, passion, enthusiasm), etc.
 * Donna Vigue has a video about how to teach using essential questions that would be beneficial to watch during PLC.
 * How can we help kids to : Not be shallow ?

April 26 April 25 April 13, 14 and 15: We are taking a break to score before vacation, get organized, etc. April 12 Beth asked Julie to come in to look at her model of the multi-media project for the 8th grade hunger research.
 * Del added the link for more TKM resources under the TKM Document section of the wiki.
 * Del found a video on the website http://www.ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com, and the video (saving the Superman House with Brad Metzler) has Call to Action qualities. Del discussed the Call to Action aspects of the video with the 8th graders.
 * We discussed Call to Action videos.
 * We talked about celebrating the Rally project with the Freedom Writers video and popcorn.
 * Updates on ROT: Del used an example from Read Write Think to create Bio Poems about Mildred Taylor. The students used the model of Rosa Parks as a guide.
 * Del needs to use the quizzes and find her multiple choice questions for chapters 9-12.
 * Alyssa has started notebook files for each chapter so that they are all in one place.
 * We discussed how we are going to assess ROT. We talked about trying to create a multi media project.
 * Julie sent an email to 8th grade homeroom teachers to make sure that students are working on their games, and not misbehaving. Some students are not working diligently.
 * Students need to work on projects next week- and if they think that they are done they must show other students and get feedback for improvements.
 * We discussed personal narrative papers with seventh grade, and do we score for voice next? Julie has scored for leads, and told kids that we are going to get back on track.
 * Alyssa will get voice rubrics on wiki, so that we can all score 7th grade narratives. Julie shared that she will get to narrative scoring for voice before the year is up.
 * Julie shared that we need to step up to the plate to help get kids for speaking parts for Oxfam, and make sure that when turn attendance slips in they have names on them.
 * Alyssa completed an Etch A Sketch with the author's bio for Roll of Thunder with her 7th graders.
 * Alyssa was going to complete the Task Rotation for the first two chapters of the book.
 * Julie suggested using the SAT words with the 7th grade for Roll of Thunder.
 * We are brainstorming ways to get the kids into a routine of locating and discussing vocabulary words...work in progress...

April 11
 * Del was out sick and Julie and Alyssa had Thoughtful Ed

April 8
 * Today Steph shared the game ideas that her kids came up with. We decided that some of them would go into a lottery because we know there will be a lot of throwing game ideas. Students should have a backup plan in case this happens.
 * Alyssa and Julie discussed Jim Crowe material.
 * Alyssa will add to the notebook to do the inductive sort first .... she will merge Julie's inductive sort notebook.

April 7 April 6 April 4
 * ===== Julie shared how to solve the issue of call to action for the 8th grade students' projects for Rally. She also shared a video, and a website called "Look to the Stars." =====
 * Alyssa shared her rubric for the So What? piece for Jim Crow Notebook activity for 7th grade.
 * Julie shared her written plan for game proposals- so that students can submit- we do not want repetition or games that are not appropriate. We do need to do the lottery.
 * We discussed the bus simulation and how we could make the activity more of a dramatic lesson. Julie started a notebook file and we discussed using a "Hotseat", "Good Angel/Bad Angel Activity."
 * In our multimedia project rubric we need to score for how well the speech and the multimedia project support each other. Julie shared that perhaps this is what was missing from last year's work.
 * Julie is wondering exactly how to score notecards - we need a rubric. Also how to help kids get from a written product (fact sheet?) to the narrative behind their multimedia presentation. A persuasive/call to action speech, informing your audience about the topic and then persuading them or calling them to act in their own way to help with the issue? We need to write one as a model! And create a scoring guide! Soon!
 * We also need to finish our Powergrade Expectations sheet so 8th graders know what is going to be checked and scored in PG.
 * Homework: We are going to split ROT into thirds and each make up four multiple choice or T/F questions and answers questions to check kids' understanding (towards the end of the chapter!) for our chapters. Alyssa Ch 2-4, Julie Ch 5-8 and Del Ch 9-12. Get them to Alyssa and she will put them on Quibblo.
 * Del had a great idea! Next year, for chronic RED offenders, assign them short stories and questions from a literature series book, like WE used to have to do!
 * Fun Day:
 * 1. Kids may work on games with friends from another group.
 * 2. 3 kids to a group minimum
 * 3. We need to really talk up the Fun Day so we have enough games.
 * 4. Games need a theme, but a little kid theme, NOT necessarily hunger related. We need lots of DIFFERENT games. We need to have a lottery. Del's kids have already started, but we need to have them generate 5 or 6 different possible games in case they do not win the lottery for their game.
 * By next _ kids need to fill out a game proposal sheet. Can someone do this for homework? Del or Alyssa! Your name, names of group members, theme of game, type of game. They can fill out one proposal sheet per group member who is committing to coming to the Fun Day to be in the lottery.
 * Incentive: Free week of RED and CE for those who attend the Fun Day.
 * Del homework: continue to find good activities and potential quiz sites for TKM and ROT.
 * The bus ticket simulation IS on the wiki!
 * ALL Homework: our speech topic: HIV/AIDS in Africa. Come up with facts and organizations so we can write a speech. Research Call to Aciton persuasive speeches and see if there are any scoring criteria floating around.

March 31
 * Del shared that she did another formative assessment CR on theme with her 7th grade - The Sneetches. She also showed the Sneetches video on Schooltube - the complete story is there. For an extra point, she asked kids to stand up if they had writing on their t-shirts or sweatshirts - Hollister, etc., or on their sneakers. Then they talked about the fact that the character in the Sneetches makes money off the sneetches - who is getting money from you! Then she moved on the the Holocaust and race - are people better because of who they are.
 * DEL HOMEWORK: Del had couple frontloading activities she found for TKM and ROT - one she shared earlier about the bus and ticket activity, and another about the titles Mr. and Mrs. (used only for white people). The bus and ticket simulation is in the Jim row section of the wiki.
 * We are making a Powergrade Requirements for 8th Grade Research sheet, so kids know exactly what is being marked and scored.

March 30
 * We discussed springtime classroom management.
 * Julie said she loves the poster activity that Alyssa came up with and Steph did in her lab. We should put them up the night of the Oxfam Banquet... Steph will make sure she gets copies in color.
 * We discussed some final details for the 8th grade vs faculty game tonight.
 * Julie's kids all want to do the notecards instead of the concept map.
 * We decided to let them highlight whatever they want with a margin note in the margin to answer who, what , how, where, when, why ?( This will be the title of the notecard) On the expert space notecard they will put the information in their own words underneath the portion of the text that they copied and pasted from the article.
 * The students will be able to print their notecards as an outline from expert space.
 * They will probably have about 15-20 cards ??
 * REMEMBER: We are researching by the subquestion not by the article.

March 29
 * Alyssa shared what she did with her 7th graders concerning their leads for the narrative piece. She had the students email their leads and then she typed them up and allowed the other 7th grade section score the anonymous leads. They will have a chance to revise.
 * Julie shared where he kids were with Rally, and she has told her kids that they will set memoir aside in order to complete research.
 * Next week Julie's group will start designing games for Rally.
 * Julie shared a story that she found for the 7th grade theme. She will put it on the wiki. The name of it is The Littlest Knight.
 * We talked about how to start Roll of Thunder...how do we keep track of kid's reading? Julie suggested mini quizzes online...we came up with short answer questions to use with the kids after every reading session. We are researching how we can present the information to the kids and tally the results to make sure that they are reading.
 * Alyssa created a quiz for chapters 1 and 2. We will continue to make quizzes for each chapter. They quizzes can be accessed by students on 7/8 ELA portaportal. We agreed that the easiest way to record student scores is to walk around and check their screen at the end of the quiz and write down their score.
 * We agreed to give four question quizzes so that we can score 1-4.
 * Julie is going to create a notebook file to introduce Quibblo to her students.

March 28
 * Can we talk tomorrow about what we think might be a consequence of a low score on a quiz-indicating that a student has not read the chapter?
 * Del shared a possible simulation for students about the Mason Dixon line, she will put it under documents
 * Julie came up with a lead activity that had students write three different types of leads (playing with narrative leads), she will put it under documents
 * Alyssa placed the "theme in my own writing" rubric under documents
 * If we run into kids who are not finding enough information for Rally, they may need to beef up their question or subquestions, or they may need to change their question all together
 * Alyssa wanted to remind everyone that there is no digital copy of the Jim Crow Timeline. Alyssa had to hand write it. She has the original if you do not have a copy
 * Julie Homework-A TKM hook notebook, including the Harper Lee bio
 * Julie Homework-Dig out your map for TKM
 * Alyssa Homework-Get TKM and ROT audio onto all kids iTunes

March 25 March 24 March 23 March 22 After School March 22 March 21
 * Del had a great "gap" fill-in - we need to have kids find evidence for theme in their own writing PN or memoir (or each other's!), not just tacked on at the end.
 * We are agreed that we will review inferring theme with 8th grade, and writing theme statements with them, and also squeezing in a theme CR.
 * We discussed the idea of unpacking for 8th grade especially, but 7th grade, too, the idea that once you have the cake format all set, you need to be increasing the sophistication and meaning of your ideas/words. It isn't enough just to slap the cake together. Susan Morris says "Writing that looks good and sounds smart." Cake is only the "looks good" part for a lot of kids.
 * But how do we unpack it? Two sentences of frosting is part of it. Thinking about "the opposite " in your reasoning (a king who was NOT greedy would..., or a society that was free and democratic would...) and repeating the ideas of your "claim" might also help.
 * For homework, 7th grade teachers should look at Jim Crow and Roll of Thunder stuff to get ready to start teaching!
 * Let's decide on some accountability measures for kids reading independently ROT and TKM. Also, let's have some CR prompts figured out ahead of time!
 * It doesn't matter how long it takes your 8th grade class to write their memoirs - as long as we can have a celebration some time and have time to calibrate and score before the end of the trimester!
 * Personal narrative for 7th grade maybe due ___?
 * Alyssa brought copies of her Yertle the Turtle "4"
 * Julie shared her Lead exercise and scoring guide.
 * We worked on cross -scoring the lead activity according to our scoring guide!
 * Steph had Della's class make rally posters for an organization they researched.... she will do this with Alyssa and Julie's class too.
 * Alyssa will get Steph the green folder about theme
 * We talked about the lessons for 8th graders writing theme statements for Green Eggs and Ham because Steph had some questions about that.
 * Stephanie put the research log for Rally on the server (MJHSSSR-her pick up box) so that the students can type up their research electronically and then they can cut and paste their websites and use for sources(notecards).
 * Del shared that her six strand friendship braid was a TOTAL bomb because many boys and some girls can't braid three strands!!! Where was Della's head? (Della is typing this....)
 * DONE - It's under PN Julie: Finish Ideas and Content braid for homework.
 * Julie asked if research logs would go under writing or reading in PG? We decided that they should go under reading.
 * Julie shared what she has entered for grades so far.
 * Del is going to do a few more moves with 8th grade(possibly Yertle) so that the students will be able to have a better understanding of theme and writing theme statements.
 * Julie is going to complete another story to unpack the CR wiht 7th grade using Winged Dinosaurs or another story. When we calibrated last night we found that some students still need practice matching evidence of theme to their theme choice.
 * Julie shared a new document for memoir and personal narrative - AFTER she did the friendship bracelets as the hook, and the highlighting, she focused on the pink: internal thinking "strand" with kids. They identified tag lines, and then used the Prewriting for Internal Thoughts hand out to generate prewriiting for PN. She plans on doing this with 8th grade for memoir, too, but they are still busy with research. This document is in the Memoir section of Documents.
 * Yippee!! Del, Julie and Alyssa had a great calibration session (after the Rally meeting) for our Yertle the Turtle Grade 7 practice constructed responses on theme/author's message. Del and Julie want to unpack a few more pieces of how to write a theme CR, especially adding a second sentence of frosting - a king who was not greedy, or some further explanation.
 * Another suggestion we had was to take a sample piece from a student, remove the name, and give kids the scoring guide and score the piece as a class, showing its strengths and weaknesses.
 * Alyssa, can we have one of your revised 4s or an original 4?
 * Alyssa also unpacked a great step - she modeled for kids how to take a template and TYPE it into a paragraph. Julie, REMEMBER this for next year!
 * There is now a SCORING GUIDE section in Documents.
 * We discussed kids writing a theme CR: some in Del's classes are still having trouble choosing the appropriate evidence to match the theme and some of Julie's kids are still having trouble explaining in their frosting about the theme - using theme words. Alyssa had her kids rewrite the whole theme in every frosting layer - a good idea! Also, consider adding: A king who was NOT greedy would...
 * Alyssa talked about what their bracelets symbolized: CN said the knot was like the lead! Awesome! She had them reflect on what might happen if we took a strand of the braid out.
 * We all three taught the "braiding" differently when we looked texts, but the kids definitely got it!
 * We would like to keep all the CRs from 7th graders for next year, so we can take them out next year and look at them with kids. Julie will make a folder in her MJHSSSR Drop Box for Del's kids to put theirs so we have an electronic copy, too.
 * How do we get kids on Expert Space? We are ready to do the notetaking - Julie just has to do the minilesson about notecards on Expert Space. We decided we were ok if kids wanted to take notes on the concept maps like last year.
 * Powergrade entries for Personal Narrative
 * 1) Topic proposal - check
 * 2) prewriting - check or score if we can figure out how to
 * 3) leads - use scoring guide from memoir
 * 4) Theme - score (Alyssa is typing a scoring guide.)
 * We discussed how well embroidery floss friendship bracelets are going with 7th grade as a visualization of braiding in different aspects of a narrative. The Braiding in a Narrative notebook is almost complete (except for the minilesson about leads) and can be found in the Works in Progress section under Documents. Feel free to use any of that lesson even without the lead part!
 * There should be enough embroidery floss for all 7th and 8th grade classes with what we already have. If you want to buy your own you may, but you do not have to!
 * Del and Julie are going to calibrate Yertle the Turtle CRs for writing about theme, or any practice CR about theme that Del's classes are ready to write - Julie had to be reminded //again// that for formative work, teachers are free to choose their own texts! See bullet below! Del decided that she WOULD use Yertle for her formative assessment, even though she doesn't have to.
 * It is not necessary for formative assessements, such as the theme CRs, to come from the same text. We are free to choose our own texts. When we do summative assessments, we should use the same text to ensure that our assessment is of the same rigor.
 * Del says it is helpful for kids to review the cake, as they are still unsure about what goes where
 * Julie Homework-Add the hook to the braiding notebook to hook the braid to the text. And finish the leads part.
 * We are not sure when the last time 8th graders truly wrote a narrative piece. We focused so much on descriptive writing in seventh grade, and on argument/analysis in 8th (we think 6th does, too, with their comparison essay). 8th graders will need A LOT of review on Ideas and Content, and a lot of unpacking narrative writing.
 * We are going to review FL, mood, writing dialogue (new person, new paragraph), leads
 * A hook for a lead is good, but it only leads to asking what will happen next. A strong lead begs more questions from the reader.
 * What do we want to get into PowerGrade for memoir
 * Prewriting-Check
 * Topic Proposal-Check
 * Leads Practice-Check
 * Final Lead Choice-Score (Julie put together a quick and dirty scoring guide)
 * Theme-Score (my reader can infer my theme and there is evidence throughout the story, not just stuck on at the end.)
 * SDT-Score (formatively, the first few paragraphs)
 * Sentence Fluency-Score
 * Ideas and Content-Score
 * Purposeful Use of Figurative Language-Score (we need a quick scoring guide)
 * On the research log, even if they are not successful at finding an article on a particular day, they should still fill out a log to show that they used their time wisely

March 18 March 17
 * We discussed spring attitudes among 8th graders! We talked especially about how challenging it is to keep lab kids interested. We thought Steph could read aloud to her 8th grade lab kids - picture books about maturing experiences. She could make a graphic organizer with all three books on it and a column for What is the maturing experience? and Theme. We did agree that Hooda Math is NOT ok! (kids ask every day!)
 * Alyssa put the Using Notecards notebook in the Rally wiki under Research.
 * Alyssa will put ROT and TKM stuff from last year on the wiki.
 * Steph took Del's kids in lab and helped them with a browsing pre-research activity
 * We discussed helping kids break down their research question so it feeds into the essential question smoothly
 * Alyssa gave an update on note taking on expert space
 * Read Anita's email about the Oxfam dinner
 * We looked at some really good personal research questions from Julie's kids
 * We are noticing that kids are picking similar topics i.e. landmines, but we are fine with this. We will put these together at the showing and have kids do some generalizing

March 16
 * We need some coordination between social studies and ELA- for example Julie went to do a mini lesson on citation machine but they already know easy bib. We need to find out about their background knowledge on research. We also don't want to teach research if we are teaching it differently from other teachers.
 * For 7th grade Alyssa did a CR for Green Eggs and Ham - She talked about theme- What do you infer the theme is for this story?
 * Alyssa made a group on Freerice called PenCorps. Have the students search for the name and it should come up! The choices are English Vocab and English Grammar.
 * For theme- 8th graders are still struggling with theme. Steph needs to go back and do intro to theme with her class. It seems they can tell you what the theme is but are struggling with creating statements and generalizing.

March 15 March 14
 * We decided that we need to create a product rubric and checklist so that all groups know when they are ready to move on.
 * We discussed what we can have the kids do in order to focus and gain more BK for their topics.
 * We created the Hunger Research Prompt. Julie put it into the Documents.
 * Homework-we need to gather resources to create a notebook mini lesson on citing sources.
 * Steph is out today, hope she is back tomorrow :)
 * Julie has been thinking about: Making sure 8th graders can get a 3 this last trimester in Reading if their strength is not literary text. This should be possible between research and some non-fiction stuff for TKM. In writing, it will be good to focus on 6 trait skills - we have done a lot with essays the first two trimesters. 7th grade should also be doing some non-fiction reading for a score - the constructed response essays this trimester have been literary, as has all the short story work. We need to find some smaller research projects for them - Jim Crow? Also the NECAPS will ask for poetry analysis and research report writing, so we should weave that in. Maybe some Langston Hughes? Gwendolyn Brooks? Could they ask a research question about an event on Alyssa's Jim Crow timeline and write up the info?
 * Did we give Certificates of Participation for the Fun Day last year? We should. Also let's remember to make maps so everyone knows where to be.
 * We need to look at Kids' Consortium stuff for reflection activities. Also check out Julie's timeline - does it look complete and accurate?[[file:Fact sheet for games]]
 * We also need to agree on products and scoring for the research, the write up of the research (I guess that's a product!), the citations and the multi-media presentation.
 * Julie said her kids are doing really well with creating a personal research question-they have done lots of browsing. Del is working with kids on getting kids to this point. Del wants to collect topics from kids. Julie created a topic proposal sheet that will fit just this need.
 * Alyssa Homework: put all Jim Crow documents on the wiki
 * Del is wondering about a product for Jim Crow, we could have students research while they are reading the book
 * We love that Heidi is teaching the Civil War and has already done slavery! This really helps us with ROT!
 * Several students in Del's room want clarification on the R4C product. It is a multimedia presentation, not a movie. Keynotes are fine, as long as they include multimedia
 * Requirements for research:
 * Sub questions (check in pg) - collect these, comment on them, and give them back, in case kids have questions that are too skinny.
 * Daily logs (check in pg)
 * Expert Space Note Cards (We need a rubric for this, to score formatively and summatively) (Alyssa Homework: put together a lesson for using the note cards)
 * Students must find at least 5 articles and take notes over the best 4, which they will hand in with the notes. Students may work with their teacher on these numbers depending on their topic
 * Del Homework: will put together a mini lesson on what to do when statistics don't match
 * Julie Homework: A lesson on what to put on a note card with thoughtful ed notemaking strategies
 * We are really going to make a commitment to cross scoring this trimester, we think this will help us with timely grade entering and making sure we have enough grades
 * Del did a homonym game with 7th grade this morning. She will share it with us

March 11 Half day - did not meet. Julie was gone. March 10 March 9
 * Julie helped Steph concerning her Inductive Sort for Rally - she is being observed today. We talked about how we completed our sorts and our successes and obstacles with the students.
 * Alyssa shared her compare and contrast with her 7th graders. She shared details that worked with her students. Julie decided that perhaps she will use pieces in order to have a stronger reflection.
 * Julie suggested quizzing the students as a review of narratives vs other types of writing.
 * Del shared some lead examples that might be used. The sheet also has categories of different types of leads.
 * We discussed the differences between narrative writing and descriptive writing and do they have theme, tone, and mood? We also discussed that narrative is not always fictional.
 * We discussed how to discuss creating categories for an inductive sort. (We need to have some sort of hook or intro for the sort.)
 * Del shared a research question list that can be used for Rally. It covers the 5W's, and might help students create their sub topics.
 * We need an assignment sheet for the research for the multi-media presentation. We Julie needs to finish the fact sheet for the games.
 * Del wanted to know if we still are planning to have a checklist, and so we agreed to have a calender, and by the second week of April, all students will have their research completed. And by the end of the next week they will have their storyboard and music finished. Julie stated that transitions have to match-example- students can't sprinkle Fairy Dust with a transition that has death and starvation.
 * Anita came to get us all on Expert Space so that we can use it for our Rally Research with kids
 * We can set kids up on this too, but they are forced to pick a lexile range
 * Julie is worried about browsing, she has an unfinished notebook about it. We are all still wondering about how we are going to get kids to a personal research question that they are passionate about.
 * Julie has a list of question that we would like kids to generate on their own...how do we get there? We have not modeled for kids, can we do this with a few kids ideas maybe?
 * What action is being taken to combat A CONTRIBUTING ISSUE in A PLACE, and how can I help?
 * For the multimedi presentation, students should have to do a story board
 * Bk-what
 * Affected Group-Who
 * Organizations-Who
 * Group A-Mission and founder
 * Group B-Mission and founder
 * Group C-Mission and founder

March 8
 * Del found two great websites: one called Storyline On Line which has great actors reading stories, including Patricia Polacco. Also Dove.com, or The Campaign for Real Beauty for evidence of how media changes appearance. Fabricating Beauty - Body Talk.
 * Julie gave out copies for G7 of The Death of The Princess's Cat. She did two formative assessments with Green Eggs and Ham (read aloud to them), and Yertle the Turtle (read on their own). We are thinking of maybe writing a group CR to prove theme in Green Eggs, and maybe a practice with Yertle - then Princess's Cat could be summative.
 * We talked about doing a comparison/contrast for Gr 7 between descriptive and narrative writing to get kids into the flow of telling a story - they worked so hard on Favorite Treasure, and this is what is foremost in their minds still.
 * We need some minilessons for PN: pacing/braiding, creating strong leads, punctuating dialogue, word choice, esp vivid verbs, 15 minute rule, etc.
 * Need scores for prewriting (amount/richness, Observation Guide including emotional connection/theme), Julie is also going to figure out a way to score Use of Prewriting (she has a scoring guide!)
 * Julie has an old Topic Proposal sheet that asks for theme, mood, etc. We could use with 8th grade and adapt for 7th!
 * We think we would like to ditch A Secret for Two (maybe use as an assessment at the end of the year) and just focus on PN for the next two weeks or so, and the minilessons that will give kids a strong piece!

March 4 March 3 March 2 March 1
 * Julie put a scoring guide for Theme under the Short Story section of Docs. Let's decide on some 7th grade formative assessments for theme to put on 3rd trimester and decide if the scoring guide works or needs revising.
 * We will give at least 2 or 3 practice assessments getting 7th graders to generate their own theme statements with a short text. Then we will move to writing a CR on theme/author's message - we just need a formative piece!
 * Julie found an old MEA fairy tale called the Death of the Princess's Cat that we can use for a common summative assessment on author's message/theme.
 * Del shared her lesson from when she was observed. It came from Learning to Give.org and was lesson 81 Hmmm... What is Philanthropy? This website looks like it is worth looking at potentially for other activities related to Rally.
 * We agreed to be ready to start helping kids to browse for what they might be interested in for a research topic. We called the questions each kid comes up with on their own their Personal Research Topic. The subquestions will be Who, What, Where, When, Why.
 * Julie still needs to finish the Smartboard Notebook on the Rally wiki under Documents under Works In Progress: Browsing for Research Topic - Activity One is the Inductive Vocab Sort - you can teach this without doing Activity 2 which Julie is still working on. This is the notebook we discussed yesterday as fitting between Lesson 1 and 2 on the timeline from last year (sort of a Lesson 1A)
 * We discussed the picture book __Willy and Hugh__ by Anthony Browne, and how well it fit in with 7th grade and the theme of friendship. It also has similarities with __Pink and Say__ by Patricia Polacco, and students can make inferences for practice.
 * Steph shared two lessons that she did with her kids for memoir. She will share it with us by posting it on the wiki. It was called Once I was, Now I am...
 * We talked about how the 7th graders are getting better at theme statements.
 * Our group discussed the need to calibrate our narratives for 7th and our memoirs with 8th grade.
 * Our discussion of Rally revolved around what our next steps are: We need to teach the student to find a topic that they are passionate about. Step two of Julie's lesson time-line deals with using a graphic organizer to browse for their topic. We need them to pre- plan well in order to have a focus for the next eight weeks.
 * Perhaps we can follow up on Alyssa's idea of having the students research a few grassroots organizations. Where do we go with that? Ideas?
 * Julie reviewed her slides for browsing.
 * We discussed the rigor for their Rally projects. We decided that since they did a research project from last year, they will probably not have the level of rigor as last year.
 * For homework we should all check out Expert Space, so that we can see if there are any useful ideas to teach research and our Rally lessons.
 * We agreed to follow the timeline and agree on assessments and then move forward however we decide for our individual classes.
 * Julie homework-scenerios for who is combating hunger.
 * We talked about doing the inductive sort (blind sort) with the vocabulary words for Rally and how that went.
 * Julie brought the graphic organizer that she used (and Alyssa will put it on the wiki) her students looked up some of the words they were unfamiliar with and were quite moved by some of the information they came across ( e.g. slums).
 * Della shared how she conducted the blind sort... she used sticky notes- students were able to collaborate and ask each other questions about certain words they weren't familiar with.
 * A lesson on how to research and use tools to research would be very helpful. For example, using certain words within a search engine and how that can totally change the information that comes up.
 * Are the kids doing a research project on one organization or are they researching several ways that their cause is being combatted?
 * Some kids are so passionate about the topic itself that they want to know about all of the organizations while other kids might be motivated to focus on one organization (maybe because they think it will be "easier")
 * We do not know for sure what the final product is and what our assessment will be : research paper? video? keynote?
 * Our kids need to have an equal opportunity to learn - that is where unpacking the standard comes in ...
 * Della's kids: have done the word sort, talked about what they did last year, and worked together discussing what they have done in the past and brainstormed where they would like to go with their research.
 * We need to work on our Rally/Research house- or make one? We may want to do an ELA Research house / apartment because the ELA part is the research part of Rally.
 * Working on a research house RIGHT NOW ! (ten minutes left in PLC mind you)
 * Mini Assessment: a short piece about what their topic is and why it is important.
 * **HW**: Find this --> Last year there was a video on google search tips !
 * **HW** : Let's make a sheet with a list of steps that must be completed and initialed by teachers in order to go on to the next step.
 * Personal Narrative-We are going to read the model, Little Boys and Tree Houses, read some picture books
 * Del has 3 short stories to use for identifying theme, she will put them on the wiki
 * We are working up an assignment sheet for PN
 * We will have kids write the PN, then teach a small unit on voice, using a revision of voice on the PN for an assessment
 * A move we might consider is have kids work backwards from Mary's PN and generate the prewriting. We could do a web together as a class, memory chains, observation for the character of Mike and for the setting
 * Julie has found when teaching narrative that kids get so invested in their lead that they get confused about where to go next. We are going to need to guide them through this.

February 28
 * We discussed how alternate society papers for the 8th grade ﻿ were not as good as we had hoped. Julie is going to have her kids revise their work. We will all look over our student examples to see if we all need to do revisions.
 * We discussed using picture books to discuss coming of age. How are we going to get kids to come up with topics for their memoirs?
 * Homework- review lessons and ideas to help kids pre-write and choose a topic for memoir.
 * Alyssa shared that she discussed theme with her 7th graders. She was concerned that in the story Pink and Say, what does the author feel about loyalty? She wanted the students to be able to go in depth with trust and loyalty.
 * Rally- we need an interest survey to help kids find topics for both Rally and for memoir. What do kids care about? How do we get kids to recognize what they care about?
 * We discussed using Pink and Say for the 8th graders to think about coming of age. Perhaps using intros such as "Imagine you are...." The topics will become better focused if we can connect and make personal others' experiences concerning hunger.
 * 7th grade PN needs to be about how friendships enrich their lives-not just a descriptive piece about their friends.
 * Homework - find examples to use with the students. Examples of how people are helping-Julie shared the one about the lady in Vermont.
 * Julie mentioned "browsing" and maybe we need to let the kids window shop to see how people are helping- grassroots organizations. Alyssa shared that the kids could find a non-profit, identify the founders, their story and mission statement. And then perhaps use some specific sites together, and then vote or do a gallery walk. (E.P.I.C. girls on MTv)

February 18 February 16
 * We calibrated the 8th grade Alternate Society essay, especially to determine the difference between a 2 and a 3. We decided that 2s may have weak or shallow main ideas that don't really prove that the book is alternate and or evidence that does not clearly explain how that point makes the society alternate, or not enough frosting/explanation - more a list of examples.
 * We also discussed an editing unit for Gr 7 and looked at a slash mark technique for scoring for conventions CUPS.
 * Homework: We really have to complete our Unit Houses: memoir, frienship with PN embedded, and Rally. We will just keep looking for resources and adding to the houses as best we can on our own during the week! We still could use a friendship themed PN for 7th grade.
 * We shared some of our Rally for Change tickets and discussed some of the "kinks" that we might run into.
 * Steph HW: Winged Dinosaurs
 * This afternoon we will be meeting for Rally to plan our next step.
 * For 7th grade we are getting ready to start PN-- start the Monday or Tuesday after vacation?
 * (Alyssa) The kids are having awesome conversations about loyalty and trust- journaling
 * There are some more wrap up activities for Pink and Say.
 * Still have to analyze plot lines and come up with a good closure
 * For 8th grade we have Rally and Memoir
 * Julie heard a story about a shoe-cobler who was burned in a fire in his shop by a KKK members... this would be a good connection for our Jim Crowe era. His name is Frank Morris January 13, 2011 ( NPR)
 * Some 8th graders are asking why they aren't doing a keynote ? They are wondering if they expected to do a video if they can have a partner.
 * We still can't find the video of the Alaskan kids that used the song "Kids in America" !
 * On the Rally4Change Wiki we need a document folder so we can put these things on there : Rally prompt, Prompt for the game
 * We, as in 7/8 ELA (not necessarily with social studies or Beth), need to design our own Rally for Change House Unit for our part of the whole big unit, so that we have an overarching Essential Question that the research project and Kids Fun Day fit into.

February 15
 * Julie felt like the Pink and Say emotion timeline did not work well, she was wondering how we did it. Del wasn't sure it worked very well for her either. She had kids answer the question, "How was Say's life like a roller coaster?" but they were not able to really answer it. They were still trying to compare Pink and Say. Alyssa shared the way she did it. She had kids plot Pink and Say on the same line then students were able to see the give and take of the friendship.
 * What can we use for a reflective question that will get kids to see the give and take without us pointing it out?
 * We should map the emotions on the bigger plot line?
 * Beth came after school to ask us about Expert Space - Alyssa says there is some good stuff on hunger on there.

After School - 7th grade (but we're talking 8th grade, too!)
 * talked about possibly a compare/contrast for memoir and PN for 8th grade, to guide them toward the theme of coming-of-age/maturity, and the differences between the two -
 * We are searching the Internet for lessonplans and student models, especially PNs on the theme of friendship.
 * We talked about the techniques of Exploding a Moment and thoughtshots (in addition to snapshots) and teaching kids these. Julie remembered MANY years ago coming up with a prewriting technique to get kids to think about what they were thinking internally during a certain event: I thought...I dreamed...Half of me felt ___, the other half felt____, I wished...I prayed...I hoped... I couldn't believe...I wondered...I asked myself over and over...I felt.... I pictured...I imagined...
 * Homework: Julie retype the Mary LeBrun PN with paragraphs and find or reproduce the prewriting for thoughtshot thing.
 * Homework ALL: think about how to get to the compare/contrast: criteria might be length, writer's craft, theme, ...and remember to ask Are they more alike or more different?
 * Homework ALL: keep looking for models, esp with a friendship theme, and any good lesson plan ideas.

February 14
 * Where are we with 7th grade? Where are we heading next?
 * Healthy vs unhealthy relationships with rank order sort
 * Stop and do some reflecting on Pink and Say
 * Get back to theme-start with universal main ideas sheet (pink)
 * Do we back down our 8th grade theme unit, or just jump in with theme in Pink and Say?
 * Journal about trust, loyalty
 * We wish we had a bank of figurative langauge to practice, but once you take fl out of the context of the story, students have a harder time explaining what it means
 * Secret for Two used to be an old LAS prompt, but students always struggled with the fl question. How do we help with this?
 * We are starting a personal narrative house
 * After the Rally intro, where do we go?
 * Memoir?
 * Fun Day date change?
 * Rally changes?

February10 : February 8:
 * Julie and Alyssa are at the Vertical Meetings.
 * Steph and I discussed what the other two are doing as far as entering grades or check marks for Opening and Delayed Adjectives. We still want to make sure that we have the same things entered.
 * Steph worked on printing the cards for Rally.
 * We discussed the grades that need to be entered for both 7th and 8th grade.
 * We talked about Truman! The kids are really getting it! We did need to explain to some kids that the movie was actually academic and would require work and thought. Also, kids had an expectation of a Jim Carrey movie that we had to correct.
 * Del's idea was that we could show a short clip related to service at the start of classes for a hook. She is going to send us the Keep Vid files.
 * What are we doing for a celebration? We were talking about a small plain cake for each group that they had the freedom to decorate as they wished, not in a conforming way. Or we could do Decorate-Your-Own ice cream sundaes?
 * Del was talking about Celebration, FL and other subdivisions that have rules for living - Is the cost of conformity the loss of freedom? And Singapore, too!
 * We are talking about the next writing unit for 7th grade - Voice?
 * Del wanted her 7th grade to infer the emotions in the story, so she did a think aloud about the inferential emotions of all 3 characters. She wanted kids to lok for the emotion text clues, not just the obvious emotion words. "You can find ustated emotions in every paragraph." She put a list of emotion words on the board that would apply to the story.
 * Alyssa did just Say's emotions, scanning the story together. She asked them to raise their hands when they came to a place where you could infer Say's emotions. Del said you could use a Flip dictionary. Then she is going to assign kids to do Pink on their own.
 * Del says we should publish the Pink and Say unit!

February 7:
 * Should we consider moving the Kids' Fun Day or is it too late?
 * Del shared again, because Julie wasn't listening the first time, about Keep Vid and Switch Vid. She is playing with Switch Vid - she is SURE she made it work earlier - it will allow you to take just the music off a video and save it to ITunes, which would completely care of our making music equitable issue (for our multi-media presentations!)
 * We've talked about how crazy this week is - Julie had to ditch the compare/contrast and start the movie today, and do Rally tomorrow. Steph will show the movie tomorrow and start Rally on Thursday because she doesn't ahve her kids on Wednesday. (half day on Wed.) We've put Memoir and SF on hold for as long as you decide you need to. Memoir we can jump back into when Rally research is up and running. Julie and Alyssa are adding to the craziness of the week by putting off their ER until Thursday so they can have something for the kids to work on independently while they are at Vertical.
 * Steph says they can work on finishing their Alternate Society Extended Response in lab!
 * Steph is sharing some good revisions of the Pay It Forward tickets. Julie needed Del and Steph to model the whole process because she is still confused! It still seems complicated - can we simplify it?
 * Del's point - KISS - when people see a lot of writing, they don't read it!
 * Can we revamp this? But it has to be soon! Alyssa started Rally for one period but did not start the tickets.
 * We are talking about the chain for Rachel's Challenge, too - how can our tickets contribute to the chain?
 * Alyssa and Julie need to pull up all the research lessons from last year and get out to Del and Steph. What needs to be updated, what worked well last year, what didn't?
 * The good thing is that 8th graders are all finished testing - we don't have to prepare for anything but MA! And continue our curriculum, of course :)
 * We had liked the idea of kids being inspired by a the acts of kindness, but now we think we might just say give kids 10 tickets each and chart how many are given away in a week or two weeks!
 * Steph's homework: Steph will laminate tickets and get them ready.
 * Cards: The 8th graders of MJHS is Lincoln have started a Service Learning Project. Please email us with an act of kindess that you've witnessed. PAY IT FORWARD! Be Kind! Pass this card forward as a reminder!
 * Your SERVICE WAS NOTICED! IN YOUR HONOR, WE WILL KEEP A RECORD OF YOUR SERVICE AND PLEDGE TO PAY IT FORWARD.

February 4: February 3: February 2: Snow day! Julie revised the conventions scoring guide. It is in the Docs section under 6 Trait Scoring Guides. Please use the new one and delete your old ones - it includes fragments and run-ons, which the old one does not have, and which is a MAJOR problem for our kids. February 1 Julie is putting the Grade 8 Memoir Prompt sheet right here for our consideration. If it's a go, she will move it to the documents.
 * We reviewed the Pay It Forward letter that Alyssa wrote for the 8th graders. We like it. We need to start it on.
 * Alyssa brought up the idea of kids dropping significantly from Fall to Winter on NWEA. We are concerned that with kids who drop, it really is NOT work ethic, and that maybe there is something else we should be doing to support these kids. Even kids above the 50th %ile who drop - do they need some kind of special attention? For example a student who scored at the 25th %ile in reading in the fall scored in the 4th %ile in the winter - what do we do? Do we need more info about the test itself, or...?
 * Plot line for Pink and Say - could kids plot the emotional ups and downs of both main characters on a plot line "graph"? Del found a slide show of the book, so we were thinking of asking kids to fill out an emotion plot line by looking at the slides. We want to teach theme more formally (we think!)
 * Steph made a ticket for our Pay It Forward hook. Alyssa will put it on the intro and we will be ready to introduce it next week mixed in with The Truman Show and Alt Soc wrap up.
 * Homework volunteer needed: someone to type up the prompt sheet for the Alternate Society CR for grade 8 by tomorrow. DId I already say I'd do it? Also, when will it be due and when do we see ourselves starting the movie? I have my 8th grade last pr on Fridays, so I'm thinking about an Alt Soc wrap up celebration next Friday, with CR, Truman Show and memoir and maybe some SF between now and then. We need to all bring CRs to the table, calibrate, create our PG assignment and link to standards, score ourselves, cross score and put in PG under Reading and Writing. The scores should all be summative, don't you think?
 * We worked on our Cr for 8th grade.
 * We discussed how little the 7th graders know about simple/complete subject and predicates. The can't recognize that they are missing complete thoughts from their sentences.
 * We discussed our schedule and that we need to put memoir aside in order to introduce Rally for Change.
 * We all have homework-it is to come up with hook ideas for Rally for Change.
 * We need to create a list for teaching for next week.
 * What are we going to use for a graphic organizer for the Truman Show?
 * We are thinking that we will use compare and contrast for our graphic organizer.

January 31 January 28 January 27 January 26
 * We reviewed Julie's document, and think that it is great! We talked about allowing the students to argue what is a defining moment for them. We assume that some students will want to write about their firsts, like getting a deer, visiting theme parks and such, but the student will need to provide evidence that it isn't the accomplishment itself, but the reflection upon it, the learning from it, that meets the coming-of-age criteria.
 * For Pink and Say, Julie had the first jigsaw group read and then do an Etch-A-Sketch notemaking sheet together . The vocabulary is rather complex for the students, so we need to scaffold every chance we get.
 * Del and Steph are going to put together a house on Personal Narrative.
 * DONE and in your mailboxes: Julie will make up a hard copy of Savino's Landscaping to give to 7th graders this week or next as a Constructed Response prompt. All of us will put it into PG as a summative score for 2nd trimester. The Eye to Eye piece was a challenge for kids because the prompt asked how the main character's attitude toward the whales changed - kids did not know what attitude meant in this context (they think it means to give someone attitude!) and they did not write about CHANGE - in many cases all three of their pieces of evidence were of the SAME attitude. Rewriting this Savino's Landscaping prompt to match the attitude question will give kids additional practice.
 * Score this CR for Ideas and Content and Conventions.
 * For their Effective Teaching Course - Steph and Della will be working on a unit for Personal Narrative, which is within the Friendship Unit.
 * Friendship House Grade 7 is now in the Documents, thank you Alyssa !
 * We need to get back to theme...
 * Della has copied off the JIGSAW information she is finding that kids are not fully understanding "drilling"
 * Steph asked about possibly designating Friday PLC for 7th grade so she can meet with a student ( she checked this out with Anita).
 * Julie wants to know what we do with a kid who never writes a complete sentence. Beautiful description but every sentence is a fragment.
 * When we are talking about moments of maturation and coming of age guide the students away from the negative aspects concerning Jonas and Cassie.
 * We think our Giver Lesson from thoughtful ed will be more useful at the end of the lit circles next year
 * Julie has given us a memoir models, she is thinking about how to best introduce these without overwhelming kids
 * Gandhi movie clip to be part of the Rally hook?
 * What about weaving into the prompt sheet the opportunity to let kids write about how they //wish// they had acted differently.
 * Julie is going to try and take the Mr. D memoir and turn it into a digital story.
 * Sugarland video - "Little Miss" - good example of what we would like kids to do with their digital story telling
 * Homework-Julie and Alyssa will update the rally 4 change notebook
 * Homework-Julie will attach the new memoir and updated friendship notebooks
 * We used this day to score
 * Julie recommended adding a T square to the Memoir Notebook right after the Essential Question of Mature and Immature Behaviors - her kids were too vague and general, so needed help getting specific: throwing tantrums, showing off, being irresponsible (late, cutting corners), spending money as soon as you get it, being moody, blaming others, not sticking with a task - jumping from thing to thing, etc.
 * Alyssa scored the Daily Log for lit circles and she says the rubric works well. She did add on the 3 "I had more than one question but I didn't get the MOST relevant." She had a lot of kids fall into this category. She also recommends scoring by book. She got through 2 daily logs in a planning period.
 * We are discussing kids who are absent for lit circles and then don't do a role sheet for the next lit circle. Julie also had several kids who got behind immediately - we didn't talk about consequences. Kids cannot participate without a role sheet. Del's suggestion was we have kids to do a Daily Log and Role Sheet EVERY NIGHT instead of just for lit circle.
 * Julie homework: get memoir models together DONE - I put hard copies on your desks (no electronic copies) for us to decide which we like, and type up a prompt sheet.
 * Del and Julie found weak vocabulary to be a big struggle in writing their adjective sentences. Remind kids to use their on-line resources.
 * Homework All: look at sentence combining activities on the Internet - make up packets for kids to practice. Julie wishes she had done sentence combining activities BEFORE we actually got to the Killgallon stuff.
 * The only two things we really have "open" is to get Rally started and to finish up Pink and Say/Friendship House for the Short Story Unit.
 * We need to give some CRs to 8th grade, and another to 7th here soon!
 * We agreed we are behind in scoring, so we are taking PLC tomorrow to score.

January 25


 * I don't know what kind of time we'll have for PLC today - probably not much. Here is a memoir unit I put together - house, intro notebook and worksheet. Please offer suggestions for adding Thoughtful Ed stuff. I have several student models from previous years, and some published student work from Merlyn's Pen, and we'll need to develop our prompt sheet and requirements/parameters, ie no first deer or championship basketball game stories or beating the video game for the first time. Whatever we decide! I may start this today during Thoughtful Ed with my sub. We also can talk about whether it's ok to write about someone else's rite of passage or coming-of-age.
 * We need a scoring guide for the Killgallon practices -We created a 4 point rubric that Steph will place on the wiki
 * We need to add other sentence fluency moves in shortly, clunky sentences and chunking for meaning
 * We also need a scoring guide for lit circle
 * For scoring Daily Logs, we should all have between 8 and 10 scores for each student. At the end of the trimester we will take the highest 5 scores as summative.
 * Julie will post raw sentence fluency stuff, including clunky sentences.

January 24

See Rally 4 Change wiki.

Also discussed Delayed Adjectives: Part 4 has an error - the puppy whimpering softly sentence has adverbs, not adjectives. Kids need help with vocabulary - we did a list of "smell" words, like rank, swampy, fishy, fetid, etc.

January 20


 * We talked about typing and working on Killgallon lessons and using delayed adverbs and adjectives
 * We need to determine when we are going to start Rally. We also need to create our big essential question in order to get students thinking about their individual questions.
 * We talked about how we can have the students create a digital assessment for Rally, and we are trying to find ways to incorporate music. We feel that the music piece will get kids to buy in...
 * Alyssa showed us how to use Keepvid, and how to incorporate into keynote.
 * We need to remember to copy Killgallon's example page and put their pages into their binders so when students are having a hard time creating delayed adjectives and adverbs, they can refer back. We also need to keep revisiting how to write sentences in this manner so that students learn to write them naturally.

January 19
 * Lit Circles- Julie's lab group will be doing ONLY the daily logs, not the role sheets
 * Scoring for Lit Circles/
 * Julie and Del met yesterday after school and have a start on the short story
 * Next writing for Gr 7-Favorite place or favorite toy
 * Julie HW-place the notebooks for fav place/toy on wiki
 * When Julie taught adjectives she typed the notebook as she taught-she recommends that we type up the notebook before we go
 * Remind kids when they are writing with opening adjectives to think of fairytales, movies, books, etc.
 * Julie is going to pilot a program called Noodle tools that helps kids with MLA format etc, do we all want to pilot it? Can we?

January 18 January 14 > Fill out at the end of the discussion to assign for next time > > **Literature Circle Minutes:** > Fill out together at the end. Students will have enough information from their Daily log and sticky notes to fill these sheets out. > > **Daily Log:** > They will fill this out at home so they will be ready to have something to discuss ( use sticky notes while you are reading!) > > How long will the groups be lasting? > No more than 30 mins
 * We met to discuss 2011-2012 budgets.
 * Del was out
 * We need to discuss RED calendars, lit circles calendars?
 * Remind the kids to not stop reading ... use sticky notes! That way they will have notes for their Daily log.
 * Discussion on Lit Circles and what the routine will look like?
 * We need to talk about Sentence Fluency... Adjectives have been covered and we still have Adverbs to go over.
 * **Literature Circle Task List:**
 * Julie came up with a way to have the Lit Circle Calendar as their bookmark ! Lit Circle Dates, Pages you are supposed to read up to, and the day that you did the reading - we will still be checking these just like RED. It is a mini RED calendar : )

January 13 - did not have PLC

January 12

Left at noon - snow!

January 11
 * We need to design a "house" for 8th grade Memoir, figure out some kind of multi-media practice with alt society lit circle books, and possibly write up the Glogster assignment and agree on a scoring guide as a mini practice.
 * We also need to decide on the first SF activity (adjectives, but from which student worktext?) and get that up and running with kids - we need a notebook taking kids through each exercise step by step, reminding them of the chunking skills they already have. Why is this DOUBLE SPACING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 * We are still tossing around ideas for lit circle packets. Can we have a manila folder or pocket folder? We are meeting after school today to keep hashing this out!
 * Del: We want this to be fun. It's a fine line between teaching kids to document and be accountable to a group but at the same time we don't want them to get bogged down in the paperwork and not enjoy the conversation. We can tell kids this! Harvey Daniels says if you scaffold well enough you can eventually let go of the roles. Del: You want them to embed the role all the time whenever they are reading (this is part of our goal to get kids to not just read to find out what happens next.) Tell the kids their ultimate goal is to embed the roles without the paperwork.
 * The paperwork is just a jumping off place for the discussion, but it's also some accountability for teachers, parents, administrators, etc.
 * NEXT YEAR!! We could even scaffold the roles for kids way early in the year, maybe with picture books or poetry while studying for NECAPS, and with practice on RED calendar. And DEFINITELY with chapters from the Giver. We can't be too hard on ourselves or them - they are just learning this!
 * Alternate society book recommendations: The Pod, Un Lun Dun, Unwind , The Gardener, Maze Runner, Hunger Games series, Candor.
 * Kids don't know what conformity is: Alyssa did a demo with kids: anyone with Hollister, Abercrombie, Aeropostale, and American Eagle/Aerie, skateboarding/motorcycle (Fox, etc.) stand up on this side

January 10


 * We have all been working with grade 7 on Figurative Language. We feel that kids have a pretty good background on this, but we still have some kids who need a little extra guidance. Alyssa, Del and Julie need to develop a notebook with some activities that do not repeat what kids already know, but gives them some extra practice identifying figurative language vs literal, some practice with metaphoric thought (as a way to help them identify figurative similes that use like, as, as if, as though as opposed to literal comparisons or even just the word like in a sentence), and increases their skill in general with inferring the meaning, mood and purpose of figurative language devices: metaphor, simile, personification and hyperbole. The more we can hook this to kids' own writing, in their descriptive pieces for example, the clearer it should be to them in literature.
 * Everybody is going to email Alyssa their class answers to the Giver type characteristics and she will create a handout for all the classes. We should all also make posters for our classrooms.
 * Alyssa will create a "roles" notebook for lit circles.
 * Steph will create a protocol for kids to use each day we do lit circles.
 * Send all book reading assignments to Julie and she will compile them.
 * Steph and Julie met after the Rally for Change meeting to create a protocol for holding a lit circle - it's really good! It incorporates active listening ideas from Steph's Active Listening Smartboard notebook, as well as some reminders of what the "contract" says. We discussed Del's good idea of making a Lit Circle Packet for each member of the group, with a cover sheet (of the book), enough role sheets (we are figuring maybe 4 weeks or approximately 12 lit circles give or take a few), a copy of the calendar/syllabus, copies of the Self Reflection rubric Julie found, copies of any other assignments and corresponding scoring guides as we decide them - likely some work around theme, and we kicked around the idea of a CR comparing Jonas and their main character. Sound good?
 * Fill the contract out as Alternate Society Lit Circle, and the time is approximately 4 weeks.

January 7 January 6
 * Still thinking about Bullet #`1 from yesterday -we need to decide on more moves for Figurative language - the students need to be able to determine the literal meaning, and the comparison. A goal would be to have a mini house, possibly using poetry to give students practice.
 * The Giver wrap up is going well, but it is taking longer than planned. Most of us are not ready to begin handing out Lit Circle books. We are talking about the books with the kids, but not quite ready to jump in just yet.
 * Julie did a notebook to introduce 7th graders to the Favorite Object/Treasure prompt, and revised the prompt sheet. We need to talk about how we are going to teach kids the process of writing a piece, since all we have done so far are "mini" pieces. Alyssa and Julie have never really had this discussion - we sort of know what to do, but haven't laid out exactly what we should all be teaching 7th graders about the writing process so that we can start using it in 8th grade right away. The discussion is probably long overdue!
 * Questions about lit circles: How are kids going to be grouped? Are they completely choosing their own books? Does the alt society lit circle book take the place of RED? How are we going to model the roles? How are we going to teach kids to listen to others, not just talk at them?
 * Books: City of Ember, The Uglies, The White Mountains, Winter of Fire, Among the Hidden, The Last Book In the Universe. Alyssa has a small group reading Hunger Games 2, and Julie has a group reading Fahrenheit 451 (Tanner McCarthy, Reece Crosby, Garrett Sutherland, Ethan Sibley, Andrew Johnson, Isaac White - Petey Quintela is also going to read this book and be in a small group in Del's class with Etrhan. Garrett will have his lit circle with Reece and Tanner on Mon Wed and Fridays last period.
 * Julie is typin g up a contract for signing out the lit circle book and for participation.
 * Del is researching on internet how to teach kids to get comfortable with their roles. Maybe there is a video on line?
 * Del has a self assessment for lit circle participation. Rubric for kids to self assess their participation. (We should be doing this all year!) She mentioned Anita's technique of just using a sticky note - Evidence of what you did to contribute to the discussion.
 * Steph has a notebook on active listening - affirm, give eye contact, etc.
 * NEXT YEAR!!! We should teach the lit circle roles with a few Giver chapters so kids are all ready!
 * We need to start to think about Rally for Change!
 * Del is reminding us that our 7th graders don't know how to organize a descriptive piece, so we can't just tell them - we have to show the, model it, etc.
 * Del shared that "treasures" are more meaningful in context-for example, Del discussed her wedding rings, they are on a chain but used to be worn, but if she takes the off the chain and just sets them on the table they do hold the same memories as when she removes them from her jewelry box with her other treasured pieces. (She explained the circumstances of why her rings are not on fingers.) She also talked about the fact that she found an old gold band in a parking lot, it was obviously worn for many years by a man, and the person that lost it was probably heartbroken and held lots of memories for him, but for Del, it was just gold. The students need to understand that context and background information, like where a student gets the treasure is very important, as well as other contextual information.
 * 7th grade short story unit - we have not yet discussed how we are teaching (not just telling!) the last task, Figurative Language.
 * Kids from Kasey's class showed Julie an interactive plot line chart from Read/Write/Think that they had all used last year in her room. We decided it would not make sense to NOT allow those who wish to use it for their short story packet.
 * Del shared a strategy that she used to help her 8th graders create more effective generalizations.
 * We had a great class with using the Anticipation Guide and trying to help kids see what Lois Lowry's opinions would be. It seems that kids struggle to understand that they need to read ALL of a story to truly see the author's beliefs, opinions, themes. We are happy that we asked them to reflect AFTER reading the story and we want to make sure we emphasize this - lit circles books, short stories, RED books. We could create an RED assignment where kids have to create an Anticipation Guide of say 5 statements for another reader, and include the author's opinion. It's really
 * Julie mentioned that she heard a spot on the radio that China is considering mandating visitation to one's elderly parents. We discussed whether that is an issue of control or of respect! Very Giver-like!
 * Del and Alyssa mentioned sharing Lois Lowry's acceptance speech with kids.
 * Del and Alyssa have both given 7th grade a Favorite Object prompt. Julie is still doing the preteaching. We will all score for Ideas and Content (calibrating first) and Conventions, and it will go in PG - we can decide whether formative or summative. Julie should have some drafts by middle of next week for calibration. We should also talk about teaching kids to peer conference, peer score and revise for a higher score. Julie's kids could use some kind of protocol for revising ANYTHING - they seem confused about how to use feedback to revise/rewrite a piece, esp CR.
 * We need to discuss the next CR for 7 th grade.

January 5 January 4 No Del or Alyssa!
 * Discussion on where we are with the Landlady
 * How we are going to enter the grade
 * We have __Pink and Say__ and __A Secret for Two__ - we are looking at friendship and what that means. We need to incorporate some thoughtful education exercises...
 * When we present theme as the author's personal belief and a message to the reader it really clicks. Having the students talk about some of their own beliefs can lead to some wonderful teaching moments.
 * Alyssa and Julie look at the 7th grade theme notebook and share that with Del.
 * For 8th grade by the end of this week: Giver Wrap Up, Books are picked for Lit Circles,
 * For 7th grade: Alyssa is almost done with Landlady, Julie is about halfway
 * We will enter the tasks in powergrade as checks for The Landlady unit.
 * Healthy vs. unhealthy friendships ( continuum)
 * Julie, Del, Alyssa start to pull stuff together for a mini unit to go inside the short story unit.
 * Alyssa has started a notebook on the introduction to Friendship for the short story unit.
 * It might be nice to have them do some journal entries on : trust, loyalty, betrayal, supportive, etc... maybe have a friendship journal?
 * Have the students read a very short story or song lyrics and see how they relate to them personally.
 * **Homework**: Bring in a piece ( poem about loyalty? song about trust?) to go along with one word related to friendship.
 * Alyssa is working on a notebook for lit circle roles: - **Alyssa is going to e-mail the directions** to us so we can go over them tomorrow at PLC
 * Julie will print out a handout of the prepositions
 * We will have the 7th graders write a personal narrative about friendship
 * A time in your life when you were loyal to a friend
 * A time in your life when a friend was loyal to you
 * Here is my portaportal link for access to the Lit Circle Books : [|Ms. McCoy's Portaportal]
 * Julie and Steph reviewed the parts of speech in the paragraph from the Adjective review notebook.
 * We also discussed the way the book talk with 8th grade should go - very brief, 1-2 minutes per book, just to whet kids' appetite, get them intrigued and let them know which books are a little easier, have bigger font, shorter chapters, etc. which are a little more challenging, smaller font, harder vocab, etc.
 * We THINK we agreed on 6 books? Among the Hidden (The Shadow children series), City of Ember, The Last Book in the Universe, Winter of Fire, The White Mountains, and The Uglies. We will ask kids to rank order their choices 1-6.
 * The pd books we have read about lit circles says that groups of 3-5 work best. Fewer than three is hard if one person is absent, and more than 5 gets crazy. I have in the past run two lit circles for the same book if we get lots of interested kids.
 * Julie thinks we should look into the blogging or posting aspect of Moodle so that kids can communicate with readers from other groups, too.
 * Alyssa and I had talked before vacation about using the role sheets as a comprehension/reading check. We will design rubrics so kids know how they are to be scored.

January 3 Julie photocopied this as a handout (4 slides per page), along with a full sized "grammar tree", both hole punched, for kids to keep in their binders as a reference tool. Kids had to answer all reflection questions, and we discussed.
 * Del had an IEP
 * Julie shared a handout for kids "Grammar: A Study in Rule" and for editing and revising, including CUPS - See Best Intro Grammar Dec. 2010 below.
 * Julie put together a wrap up notebook for The Give
 * We added in a slide that takes kids back to the hook which compared three mystery scenarios
 * To get ready for Sentence Fluency we will cover parts of speech jobs, adjective, adverbs, and prepositions - See POS: A Study in Jobs, and Adjectives and Adverbs Smartboard notebooks below.
 * To do the Killgallon books we will photocopy and have students type the answers on their laptops, we just don't have the time to retype all of the exercises



Julie plans on reviewing this with her 8th grade next, and then moving right into adjectives. It would be great if someone would pick up making up a few worksheets to give kids a little practice identifying adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. we could give each one for homework after the class lesson but before the Killgallon exercises for that POS. December 21
 * Hi - I keep hearing conflicting reports of RED expectations - now would be a great time to review what we all are asking kids to do, and to start fresh after the break. It can be pretty divisive when we each have different requirements. Thank you!
 * So we are discussing the RED stuff - we think kids are maybe being a little sneaky because they think they can away with something, for example, "reading ahead". It's good to pull back together and discuss this!
 * We are still thinking about what to do for a Giver assessment.
 * After Lit circles we could look at the Truman Show to see if it fits our criteria for an end of "alternate society studies" celebration.
 * Alyssa has read __Stuck in Neutral__ and we should read it !
 * Julie homework- Look at POS for SF for 8th grade
 * Monday we should talk about the characteristics about an alternate society.
 * Can Julie put a little notebook together on guiding kids through the process of this ? (generalizing)
 * Julie and Del- look for a thoughtful ed note-taking worksheet for __The Truman__ so they aren't just sitting there putting their feet up !
 * Book talk by Tuesday and let them know which books they can choose from.
 * Maybe they can take notes during the movie to prepare them for a CR on comparing Jonas and Truman
 * Generate ideas on their own, BOGGLE, and then come back as a group to share out.
 * This time we should give them a conventions score along with their CR score- Julie hosting an editing party??
 * Julie- find the vocabulary book that has personified words in it !
 * We are throwing ideas out about changing our idea of "personifying colors" to "figurative language".
 * Julie homework- color my world personification activity- revamp that to figurative language
 * Del homework- find thoughtful ed activities to add to this notebook
 * We need to weave in glogster - do a poster to model for the students.
 * Julie don't forget to remind Steph about the books and which books are a little harder/ easier
 * Tomorrow talk about 7th grade short story packet and whether or not we want to do a favorite object descriptive piece.

December 20
 * Del had her kids start playing around with glogster with the Giver
 * We all signed up for Glogster and added student accounts
 * The nice thing about Glogster is that all student accounts anonymous and listed only under the teacher, only the teacher has the option to publish work. Students cannot make their work public

December 17 December 16
 * We got some ideas from 5th grade about lit circles. They have nice role cards - we need to look at them and tweak them "up" - make them challenging enough for 8th grade. They use them as assessments to put in PG and to give teachers feedback on how well kids are comprehending, and even whether they are reading.
 * Del brought some discussion/reading strategies we could use to improve kids' discussion skills; Mix and Mingle/Tea Party and Save the Last Word for Me.
 * HW: Alyssa printed out some job cards for us to review for homework. She also found a planner that allows teachers/kids to know who has what job, and which chapters are coming up. Del suggested making packets by role instead of by kid.
 * Alyssa has a small lab and she is reading The Hunger Games out loud - we are looking to purchase the sequel, Catching Fire, so they can have a chance to read it for a lit circle.
 * Julie had forgotten about the Ideas and Content Short Story Prewriting activity. Alyssa is doing it slowly, a page at a time, and it is working well. She started with Character. We had decided earlier to do the first packet as a class as a practice, and then have kids stick to the same assignment, but a different set of characters, setting, conflict, etc. She is putting assignments in PG as a check.
 * Julie is also putting all the SF activities (1-4) as a check in PG.
 * Del has a strategy called "Say Something" that may help us with getting kids to have meaningful discussion during Lit. Circles
 * Steph's kids did so well at debating the XYZ societies, that Steph will have their class create a list of 5 or 6 rules of engagement and Steph will write up her intro to debate/discussion that she used when she started the society debate
 * We need set up our SF "moves" before we go on vacation
 * Lit Circles
 * Winter of Fire (More fantasy, girls love it), Among the Hidden (Easier), The Last Book In The Universe (Hard, lots of vocab unique to that society), The Tripods (More Sci-fi), City of Ember (Easier), The Uglies (Hard, bleak),. We need to remember to also take kids back to our EQ: Is the soct of conformity ther loss of freedom? and get them to compare how the themes in the Giver are similar to or different from the themes in their lit circle alt soc book.

December 15
 * Del is home with a cold! Del, hope you feel better.
 * We had arranged yesterday that we would work on 7th grade stuff, so Steph is excused. Alyssa and Julie finished up the Short Story: A Study in Friendship House and talked about not making the unit too long or complex, which it could be!
 * We also talked about some 8th graders having trouble with chunking for meaning already. Sentence fluency is really hard for some kids - a lot like editing - they just don't "hear" what is fluent or disfluent, or what is a meaningful chunk or not a meaningful chunk.
 * Julie made some changes to items from Dec. 13. Please review.
 * Idea for Grade 8 SF assessment to put in PG - have students type a highly detailed " golden paragraph" from an RED book, double space it, and chunk it for meaning.

December 14
 * Julie shared that she has put some checked grades in Powergrade for the seventh graders for Ideas and Content - sensory detials and SDT. She used the Equipment piece, the "green hat" piece, and two pieces written up from the Observation Guide that Alyssa put together. She copied and pasted the Ideas and Content scoring guide into PG, and added a sentence explaining to parents that the pieces are too short to score, but that students did receive feedback using the language of the rubric.
 * We discussed the status of the notebook files for Clunky sentences. We reviewed where to start with grammar with the 8th graders- do we go all the way back to review basic sentence structure, or are parts of speech enough?
 * We need to develop a Notebook file and finish the House for short stories for 7th grade-A Study in Friendship
 * We need to start finding condensing activities for 8th grade. They are part of our assessment/kitchen box in our unit

December 13
 * Julie has completed a Smartboard notebook that introduces students to the sentence composing method of practicing sentence fluency, using the worktexts by Don and Jenny Killgallon as a basis for the exercises. Attached is the three part intro notebook that focuses on the basic SF technique, CHUNKING FOR MEANING, and three practice worksheets, one for each of the slightly different chunking techniques.
 * I did a clunky sentences notebook - thanks, Steph, for your clunky contributions!
 * I will complete a notebook introducing students to the other techniques used in the Killgallon worktexts - there are 5 standard exercises that repeat for each type of sentence.
 * We'll need to decide where Phrases and Clauses should come in.
 * We discussed budget issues. Steph will check with Elivia and Larry about which title to set up her budget under:
 * Scissors
 * Glue sticks
 * Bio poem paper- assorted colors
 * Handheld whiteboards?
 * White lined paper
 * 3 ring binders
 * Spiral bound notebooks
 * Sticky tack
 * Labels for label maker
 * External HD
 * Ear buds
 * Upward Organizers
 * Tables
 * Dry Erase Skins for chalk boards
 * Bulletin Board paper
 * Flip dictionaries
 * Highlighters
 * Markers
 * Julie homework : Adverb Notebook
 * Alyssa homework: Add Prepositions Notebook
 * Someone start an interactive grammar list of activities for our portaportal
 * We need to work together on a phrases and clauses notebook.
 * What is the difference between a dependent clause and a phrase?
 * What is the difference between a dependent clause and a phrase?

First, teach:

ATTENTION: This Killgallon notebook is NEW as of 9:29 on Dec. 14. I added slides of the worktext sheets, so we could use the Smartboard interactively and have kids do the exercises as a class for review. Second teach LESSON 3 from the Killgallon notebook above. Julie STILL doesn't have things in the right order. The worktext sheet would be Practice 4. Then teach LESSON 2 from the Killgallon notebook above, using the Practice 3 worktext sheet. I think this is a clearer progression, although the language on the slides may need tweaking - I am a little sick of looking at this, so for now, it stands as is!

Third: Here is a notebook and worksheet for looking at non-examples - disfluent, or clunky, sentences.

Fourth: Here is an intro to grammar notebook as well - we can discuss this, but it might not hurt to remind 8th graders - it shouldn't take long.

Fifth: Here is the first POS notebook we should do right before we go back to the Killgallon sentence composing activities. The first type of sentence we'll be looking at is a sentence that has an opening adjective.

Sixth will be to go BACK to the Killgallon worktext - at this point we will be ready to teach kids the other exercises and to move into the opening adjective practice. We can put together our Phrases and Clauses notebook, too, and decide where it fits in this flow of activities.

December 10
 * Our group discussed Julie's notebook for Sentence Chunking, - We are going to work together to create a phrase and clause notebook.
 * We need to try to complete the reading for __The Giver__ by Christmas.
 * We discussed assessments and reflection goals for the book,and we will complete those after vacation.
 * Intro to Sentence Fluency, Scoring for Ideas and Content, Sentence Composing Practice, are our goals for the week after vacation and for the remainder of the year.
 * Julie-find Steph's Umbrella graphic to enter overview of SF unit.
 * Let's try to finish the SF House

December 9
 * Del shared a resource for digital storytelling from the microsoft
 * We are need to make sure that we score for sentence fluency in our intro
 * Del and Steph each have a //Landlady// resource that they are going to share with us
 * Julie found her chunking for meaning notebook but she is going to tweak and add to it
 * Julie put together your grammar notebooks
 * Tomorrow we will sit down and look at plan books to make sure we are finishing up what we need to before break

December 8
 * [| Steph Simple Booklet Started]
 * We need to play around with how kids will be signing in to their simple booklet. Maybe we should e-mail Betsy from Freeport Middle School to find out how she goes about this. ( Thank you Julie- Done)
 * Steph will type up some tips about using the simple booklet
 * Speculating on using journal response questions for grading students during __The Giver__ unit.
 * We are right at this moment playing around with simple booklet - we just cannot figure out how to make a booklet without having kids create an account. We are SO FRUSTRATED!
 * Alyssa suggested that maybe we use the still picture feature of Imovie - we are going to try this route.
 * We KNOW that making ELA visible and kinesthetic, that is, adding a visual piece to reading and writing, will hugely hook a small but important number of kids who struggle in our content area. Some kind of creative, graphic arts piece will be just the thing they need. Now if only we can make it happen!!!!! ARGGGG!

December 7 (December 6 snow day)
 * Grade 7: Julie would like to suggest jumpstarting CR again in 7th grade with a piece called Eye to Eye. It has incredible Golden Lines, which would give us a chance to use the text to support writing as well. In spite of the fact that we did a presentation saying kids should do these on a regular basis, we have just not had the time. Let's assign it as homework, like a CE - it's given out on Monday and due on Thursday, or something like that.
 * Alyssa is going to give Del and Julie a hard copy the Grade 7 short story packet for us to photocopy.
 * We spent today finishing up getting ready for SLC - we really could have used yesterday!
 * We looked at a website called simple booklet - we are still determined to have kids do something with multi-media/21st century literacy skills/web 2.0 stuff. Alyssa asked: How are they going to show us their booklet? This is a struggle for us because all the ways we have for kids to show us their work are either A. cumbersome or B. the platforms don't match and so the product may come up in a different form. We decided not to let this stand in our way - we will go back to old fashioned printing so that we can score.

December 3 December
 * We discussed more of our digital storytelling ideas.
 * Just a reminder - make sure 8th graders have generalized about the Giver society and we have posted it, Julie!
 * Del and Julie tried the Larry Brown equipment descriptive writing - kids are so used to "writing about their favorite activity" that they could not stick to the model - they wrote about DOING the activity rather than the equipment. But we both backed off because we didn't want to stress kids on our first descriptive piece!
 * Del tried Alyssa's Observation move and says her kids are getting it! She is having them do it multiple times. Steph is going to do the Observation activity with her 8th graders first, and THEN try Larry Brown.
 * We discussed how to start a digital story telling unit. We have lots of ideas, but we are trying to find guidelines to get the kids started. Del shared some sites that have great examples, but we want to make sure that the kids do not rush through lessons just to search for pictures.
 * Julie shared her moves from Barry Lane. She wants us to be reminded that all of our moves are to tie Ideas and Content together, and we need to remind the kids of this as well.
 * Del tried the observation chart with her 7th graders, and they did a much better job of using their charts to transfer their observations to written language. She used student examples to get the student to visualize observations.
 * We discussed how we could incorporate digital story telling into our Rally for Change unit.



December 1
 * We reviewed what we were having kids do for reflection for SLC.
 * We are frustrated with the lack of specificity in kids' responses, written in particular. Part of the problem is vocabulary - kids use 20 simplistic words to say what one good verb or adjective would say. Part of the problem is a lack of thinking about/accessing the vocab they //do// have. Part of it is that kids don't NOTICE - they don't have practice using their 5 senses. It's a mix of things - STD, vocab (word choice), and details (ideas and content)
 * Homework: Our idea is to collect vague lines as well as clunky lines.
 * Julie: copy the Exploding a Moment from Barry Lane for everyone so we can design some practice moves. We should do more with SDT, too. Del says both 7th and 8th graders need practice/review.
 * We need to go back, look at our house units, and make sure we are doing formative assessments and getting things in powergrade.
 * Alyssa - I want kids to get really familiar with the Observation Charts. She is doing up a short story prewriting activity (wriiting) that will also tie in with story elements (reading). We talked about having kids JUST do the prewriting and we were wondering if we could use the I/C scoring guide - Alyssa thought we could collect their prewriting, see what they gave us, give feedback as practice and then give another, with a story they actually write.
 * Julie has some prewriting rubrics - she will attach and we can see if they would give the type of feedback on prewriting that we are looking to give kids. Maybe we can attach some descriptors from ideas and content to show kids the connection between good prewriting and good writing. We need to give kids a metaphor - if your ingredients (prewriting) are high quality and yummy, your cake (the actual piece) will have a greater cahnce of being high quality and yummy. DONE - See below

Page 1 scores prewriting that is done to generate topics to choose from. Page 2 scores prewriting that is done about a specific topic once that topic has been chosen. Page 3 is a reminder that when student writers develop the skills to write high quality pieces without prewriting, they may, at the teacher's discretion, forgo this step. This is a rough draft - we should talk about it. (typed Dec. 5, 2010) November 30
 * Sentence Fluency-We still need to read picture books and spend 1 1/2-2 Periods on using the scoring guide
 * Six Traits for both grades-Have students use the language of the scoring guide as often as possible with even their smallest pieces and when they have given a score, have them write a feedback note to the author as if they were the teacher
 * Our goal with //The Giver// is to be finished by Christmas
 * Homework - We desperately want some kind of writing assignment for the Giver that is NOT a CR (kids need something new) but that we can get a legitimate comprehension score for. We also need a CR task, so kids keep that skill fresh in their minds.

November 29 Alyssa shared her notebook file that uses the observation chart that she shared with us last week. She plans on adding a few more things for activities for when the students complete the chart independently, and then return to class.

We discussed how we grade. We discussed examples of scores. Del was confused about our keeping track of scores. So we will try to be consistent with entering scores and staying up to date with discussing how we enter grades. To print off Score sheets: • Reports dbl click on score sheet • Click run report • Choose class that you want to print • File print

For next year, we would like to collect The Giver journals before the trimester ends and have scores to enter.

November 22 > > >
 * We decided to work through lunch! [[file:TheGiverRJ.pdf]]
 * We completed our hook/intro for Sentence Fluency in 8th grade
 * We discussed short stories for our grade 7 short story intro.
 * NWEA goal setting: I set a regular classroom goal of __. I think this will help with my NWEA score because....__

November 19
 * Julie attached the short story intro notebook for people to look at over vacation and make suggestions. We really should do a whole house - we might have one started from last year, but I bet it isn't finished.
 * Homework All: Look for great short stories to use with 7th grade - we will introduce short story unit with Landlady and then find an easy, medium and hard story to practice.


 * Dell will let us know what the link is on here for the journal response questions
 * Grade 7 short story house from last year




 * Today we looked at the short stories house - it would be great to think of the basic elements of (something) for a hook.
 * Seventh grade figurative language - can they find it and write about it?
 * Reading "The Landlady" for a hook
 * __Save "The Flowers" until after we read__ Roll of Thunder
 * Julie Homework- put together some kind of review for ideas and content for 8th grade.
 * Fancy Hand - Thumb- Theme, Pinky- Plot, Ring- Types of conflict (conflict sort), Glove - craft techniques, literary devices, the basic ( bones) elements of the story.


 * Alyssa will revise The Landlady notebook

__ November 18 __

>
 * Del is going to tackle creating a digital storytelling notebook over Thanksgiving break. Julie is also working on exploring digital storytelling on her own (see Nov. 15) and with Beth.
 * Julie shared that she has added some moves concerning author's message/theme for the "Firefighter" activity. She will attach them so that we can all review the methods that she used to inspire her students to think deeply about their writing.
 * We worked on our Sentence Fluency House. We actually planned backwards! By this we mean we actually started with our assessments first - we have used the House successfully several times, but somehow we always manage to start with the Foyer or the Library! Our homework is to create a great hook and decide what our foyer needs to be complete. Our group needs to incorporate activities for Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles - Del is good at reminding us to try to use something kinesthetic. Alyssa's kids came up with great hand motions for each trait - maybe we can do something with the "cadence" one for SF.. We also need to do the Reflection Porch.
 * We wanted to note that we use the picture books from the Trait Crates Donna bought us to introduce each trait - sentence fluency will be no exception - thanks, Donna.
 * How to attach files: enter Edit mode, click on File button from top menu, click on Upload files which will open the files on your laptop. Then just choose to Open the right file (like an attachment in FirstClass). The file name will appear on the left - double click in the space and it will magically go to the wiki.
 * You can click on the name of the file and move it around.
 * , [[file:SF_House.doc]]

November 17


 * Alyssa shared some routines for having kids respond to and conference with each other - some useful templates, and questions for kids to get the most out of conferences. She also found some descriptive writing "moves" that would go well with our Ideas and Content Grade 7 unit. She will attach them.
 * We discussed the desire that 8th graders have shared to do some "regular" writing - to them, that means creative writing! We have done CR and persuasive essays with them - time to review Ideas and Content and have them do some despcirptive stuff. The lesson Julie wrote up for Grade 7 about the equipment (Larry Brown, firefighter) would work very well - maybe after Thanksgiving. We should review the I/C scoring guide with them and then introduce the lesson.
 * Del has some video clips that might work well to help us introduce service learning.
 * Del is going to type up some Giver journal prompts and we can decide where they fit. She is also going to type up a task rotation she found and we are going to tweak/improve it.
 * Del shared with us that vocab continuums are a great vocab study tool. We need to weave them into any vocab unit we set up. She did it with her 8th grade to connect to the Giver idea of "precision of language", starting with hot and cold. Apprehensive and excruciating are great to do.
 * A discussion ensued about dictionary skills. Steph has no paper dictionaries (the library used to have some!). Del has kids use any resources - it's a great skill to teach kids to go to a variety of resources - several different dictionaries, a flip dictionary, thesaurus, on line dictionary, etc.
 * Steph is not able to attend a grade level PLC, so it is important that we try to keep her updated. We need to do this on a regular basis, so we don't miss something important with her - for example, she didn't know when the student led conferences were! All kids should have manila folders. We talked about brainstorming with kids: What would be the most informative things to show your parents? and then typing that up and having that in their folders.



November 16 - Grade 7 Del, Alyssa and Julie


 * We reviewed grades on Powergrade.
 * Alyssa shared that she had Gr 7 kids add What I've enjoyed most so far about ELA, what I've struggled with or want to do better, and what I'm most looking forward to. She told them NOT to change the name of the keynote, to ONLY put it on their desktop, not into a folder, and to not change the font, etc. of teh slides. She is going to teach them how to bullet their info and then share - in other words, parents don't want to read 500 words on a slide.
 * We started to discuss Gr 7 reading - we discussed going to short stories because we feel like kids are not getting enough real practice applying their skills of asking relevant questions, inferring, thinking about voacbualry in context, predicting, visualizing details, etc.
 * HW: We are going to look for some fresh, new stories that are easy enough for this group yet that will give them some exposure to ideas that may help mature them a little.

November 16


 * Julie wrote up a "move" for practicing Ideas and Content with 7th grade. It's borrowed from Word Painting: A Guide to Writing Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan (Del, I gave you a copy of the pages it came from.) She emailed a handout and a notebook that goes with it. The notebook is now in the Ideas and Content Hook notebook - it should really have its own notebook - does anyone want that for homework? :)
 * Alyssa reminded us that we already have a summative inference in a short text assessment for Grade 7. And if we want to be able to have enough time to score the Grade 8 summative persuasive pieces, we need to have them collected by Friday.
 * We talked about the standards part of Power Grade. Our categories ARE our standards and they are much more informative about a child's achievement than our current PG standards. We hope to be able to have more discussion about our PG standards for next year - other content areas seem to standards that are not as general as ours.
 * Del shared about her Giver discussions. She brought up the idea of lit circles and trying to teach kids the roles right now, even while we are on the Giver. We discussed how kids don't know how to discuss with EACH OTHER because we as teachers filter everything through us - the IRE thing (initiation, response, evaluation). Maybe we could teach lit circle roles with chapter of the GIver.
 * We are now moving on to getting kids to lead discussions more - starting with an RQ for the day and having a kid lead. We need to get them to respond more specifically to the other person's statement, rather than just be so anxious to say their own thing.
 * Let's add to our research topics: digital storytelling, getting kids to have student generated discussions, getting kids to ask better questions for purposes of their own discussions, rubrics for journal writing, and the most current lit circle best practices - there have to be people who have the same problems we do around lit circles - how do they solve them? Alyssa is tweeting her teacher friends to find out!
 * We are wondering what to do for kids who don't talk during lit circles.
 * Julie is going to check World Update from the BBC. Yesterday there was an interesting spot on Singapore that would be perfect for our Giver unit.
 * Discussion of sentence fluency house, which is going slooowly! We have SF: A Study in Manipulation. We might change to : A Study in Power. Julie mentioned using powerful lines from speeches, like "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." as a way to model for kids how sentences can have extreme power.

November 15


 * __Julie is going to work on creating a digital storytelling lesson/assignment for__ The Giver__ about color.
 * Reminder: grade 7 mini PLC meets on Tuesdays after school. STARTING TOMORROW !!
 * Stephanie will be taking over Julie's bus room duty on Tuesdays so they can get started early.
 * Alyssa and Julie will print off the three kids' test scores that they need.
 * Julie and Alyssa are explaining student lead conferences because her schedule doesn't allow her to attend the 7th/8th grade team meetings.
 * Stephanie will work on persuasive pieces in labs this week. We talked about how we will be utilizing the labs more from now on.
 * Giver:
 * Finish Giver House ? - it looks pretty full !!
 * Come up with CR ideas
 * Hypothetical Generalizations
 * Julie will dig out all of her old memoir stuff and send files to Steph, Del, and Alyssa.
 * Pam McGinn came in to speak with us about the Special Ed. Audit. She will be getting us data on that information.
 * Julie discussed a little more about memoir: Some restrictions : Write about something that happened for 15 minutes not 2 weeks and it should be about 2 pages. Also, they won't be writing about the time they won their championship basketball game,
 * Julie will make copies of models for everyone.
 * We need to meet as a group to discuss grades that will be entered in the grade book.
 * We need to talk about on Monday how we will be weighing everything on powergrade.

November 10 Julie, Del, and Alyssa
 * We agreed that we have not spent enough time teaching students how to generalize their three main ideas when writing their summative persuasive prompt. Some of their essays have a list format.
 * We have new six traits models that we need to calibrate in order to student score.
 * We worked on our "cake " presentation for Friday.

November 9 Julie, Del, and Alyssa
 * 7th grade teachers are going to on Tuesdays after school until at least 3:30
 * Julie ask Steph if she can take your bus room on Tuesdays so we can get started sooner
 * 7th grade students are having a hard time writing complete sentences that have strong detail
 * We need a couple more "moves" for Ideas and Content
 * Practice scoring I&C with the scoring guide, we need to do this more this year because of the students we have
 * When students write a description and it has a lot of nouns they aren't really "showing". Have students count their nouns (thanks Mrs. Smart!)
 * Continue these descriptive quick writes
 * What are we going to do about literary vocabulary - we need a set of routine instructional moves to help kids study vocab. We need an Intro to Vocabulary/Etymology house. Our kids need review on prefixes and suffixes, root words, word families, etymology. Kasey is using the Patricia Cunningham 3 words a week method - we need to research.


 * Julie-Find your Barry Lane book (check your porch)


 * Presentation
 * Hook - what is Constructed Response and why do your kids need it?
 * What is CR cake?
 * How can CR cake help you?
 * How can CR cake help students?
 * What does CR cake look like in my content?

November 8 Alyssa and Julie
 * We looked at some CR prompts in science in preparation for our presentation at the teacher's meeting on Friday. We are not finding high quality science prompts, so we emailed Susan Morris, who had some good suggestions. She says there is data showing improved achievement in math when kids write constructed responses.
 * We discussed things we need to get moving on:
 * 1) Get back to the Giver house - make sure we are all teaching the same things. Decide on whether and what kind of prompts we want to assign to go with our journaling. Also, do we want to do more with the journaling - double entry stuff, quotes about freedom, etc.
 * 2) Make sure we have all analyzed (based on what we know from the text so far) and hypothetically generalized about GIVER society and posted with our American society stuff.
 * 3) Resolve the vocabulary issue!!! With Giver and other texts.
 * Look at syllabus - where should seventh grade reading and writing be? Decide on an after school day. Make sure we are all in the same place with fluency instruction (we have a notebook with several lessons that we all need to have taught), the 6 traits intro, Ideas and Content scoring practice (again, we have a notebook with lessons on how to do this), instructional moves to practice creating details, etc. Del, if you can see any places to weave in Thoughtful ED tools or strategies, please share - like we always say, we get sick of our own ideas - bring those awesome sheets!
 * Work on 8th grade Sentence Fluency house plans. Sentence Fluency: A Study in (Rythm and Blues? Music? Music and Dance?) Create a mini Grammar House to fit within SF. Start with POS review. Grammar and editing are related but different: grammar is the rules of the game, editing is playing the game itself, using the rules.

November 5
 * We calibrated student persuasive writing. We need to save these benchmarks for next year.
 * We discussed how the Ideas and Content notebook has been going and what mini-moves we have added. We will attach the updated notebook file as well.
 * Julie found a file she had done on teaching kids to use 6 trait scoring guides. She will attach that as well as soon as Alyssa shows her how to :)
 * Homework-Julie and Del please attach your Specific Game cards so we can create some more :)

Here are Julie's three Specific Game cards (teddybear, baseball glove and teacher) Updated persuasive scoring guide

November 4
 * We shared a lesson that Julie and Della created to practice Ideas and Content, about writing specific detail. Julie tried it today with 7th graders and they loved the moves. We need to make up more cards for more practice. Julie shared her discussions with the students about the strategy of doing "hands on", kinesthetic activities, which was profound. We also discussed how learners need to recognize how the strategies we use help them learn.
 * We are finding that we need to "slow down to go faster" with this 7th grade. We are getting good at unpacking even more than we thought we could, giving this group more practice, more instructional moves etc. We think it is working.
 * We discussed the 6 Traits binders that are in the classrooms. We need to start adding pieces to complete TE binders.
 * Our group discussed options for meeting after school to create additional moves and lessons.
 * We brainstormed ways that we can present CR to the other teachers during our faculty meeting.
 * We discussed that in other schools or classes we all use different terminology to talk about CR...and some students are getting confused about the length of written responses. So we are working on how to teach the kids our definitions of types of responses. (ie Constructed Response, Extended Response, Journal Response)
 * Our HW is to split up research for our CR presentation to the staff on Friday -Del/Math, Stephanie/Health & PE, Alyssa/Science, Julie/SS
 * We discussed how we need to allow the students a chance to peer review papers, including using a scoring guide and giving feedback.
 * We will try to introduce Persuasive Laptop Prompt on Monday.
 * HW Julie send closure CR to everyone.
 * We all discussed where we are with the book The Giver, and when we will do the hypothetical generalizations.

November 3
 * We agreed to read the instructions for calibration from Donna on our own, and come to the table ready to calibrate the Used Car persuasive letters on Friday. Please bring sample 1 and 2 papers if you have any. This piece was guided practice, so kids have mostly 3s and 4s.
 * We agreed to go over with 8th graders the scored Used Car letters. We will then teach/reteach anything that student work shows we missed.
 * Finally we will assign the second persuasive prompt (Laptop speech to schoolboard) at the earliest next week.
 * Shoot Del and Steph the minilesson on Line Breaks and White Space in poetry - we are feeling guilty about the Bio Poems! We need to carve out some time to finish these - the kids are asking about them.
 * 1) Things to keep in mind: kids have to have enough detail and a perfectly edited poem in order to look for pictures.
 * 2) Teach them LB and WS - see Bullet 4 above.
 * 3) All pictures have to have a different theme - not 5 football pictures, or even 5 sports pictures. Kids have to have a variety of symbolic pictures that represent them. 5-7 pictures of a size to attractively fill the white space.
 * 4) kids may bring in photos from home.
 * 5) Kids will not be scored on their cutting skills! If a kid can't cut, you and ed techs can cut for them. Encourage them to decide whether a picture would look better cut in a shape or square.
 * 6) Poems should be in font small enough to fit on the half sheet of paper - you and ed techs use a cutting board to trim poems down for kids.
 * 7) Teach kids the definition of layout. The rule is you must try three different layouts, get some peer feedback and then decide which layout is most powerful. You may not glue until you have done this.
 * Sentence Fluency Unit is just for 8th grade - 7th is concentrating on Ideas and Content, Voice, Word Choice and Organization. (Conventions is for everyone!) We looked at the Donald Killgallon sentence fluency books that Julie bought last year - we would like to ask Larry or Donna if there is any money available to purchase each of the rest of us a copy for our classrooms. We also are wondering if Don Killgallon would do a video conference or webinar with us.
 * make feedback a word wall word - fill out a See It Say It. Julie will email a notebook she did for feedback - use any bits and pieces, all or none of it as you wish. We need to be

Updated

November 2
 * Alyssa shared who the minutes wiki would work and the features that will be useful to us
 * We looked at some persuasive writing prompts for ideas for our summative persuasive prompt with 8th graders.

October 27 We did not meet for PLC since Del and Alysa were at SPIRE workshop.

October 26 • Discussion of how we want to approach vocabulary for The Giver • Discussion of where we are in the Giver Foyer • Linda Hardesty would like to have a copy of our PLC minutes emailed to her. • We are calibrating scores for persuasive writing.

October 25 -We discussed our scoring and what we believe motivates kids. Does a 2 motivate more kids to get 3s or is it more motivating for kids to get 3s?

-Scoring of RED, we will give one score at the end of the trimester. We should be holding students accountable everyday.

-Inference-Julie and Alyssa both came up with 2 additional moves for inference. Julie will her moves and Alyssa will attach one to this email…the other still needs a little bit of work. Alyssa worked up the It Says, I Say, So… sheet. We have recognized through practice and formative assessment that we have some gaps to fill in. These moves were created to try and close those gaps.

-Alyssa, Del, Julie need to meet and do a quick cross score of inference practice (lets do this after school today) Steph you are invited, but we know this isn’t 8th grade, so don’t feel obligated ☺

-We all need to meet to calibrate for the persuasive piece and we will cross score after. We will calibrate tomorrow.

- We discussed how the Giver is going. Del started reading this morning. We will all have kids list in their journals – character list, vocabulary lists (English and Giver), I wonders, a list of rules of Giver society so far

Homework: -Everyone-Please try to write some short text inference examples. They are hard to write an take some time. -Everyone-Pull a few examples of persuasive pieces to calibrate. -Let’s come up with some constructed responses we can give students once a week on The Giver-Del please bring in the book with task rotations you were telling us about

October 22 Alyssa shared her technique for 6 Traits Intro.

Alyssa homework will add another instructional move to include the movement for the 6 Traits Writing.

Della shared that she had assigned a quick persuasive prompt to reinforce the “Cake Template”. Most students at the 8th grade level had mentioned that since they had finished the NECAPS, they should not have to focus on the “Cake” anymore. Their prompts proved that they had not mastered their organization skills, and now Della is going to have the students highlight key features of their prompts so that they will visualize the elements that are lacking.

We discussed the Rubrics that Donna sent to us. (Thank you Donna!) We made a few word changes, for example, we wanted students to use the word “focus” when reviewing their pieces.

Julie mentioned that she wants to prepare another persuasive assessment so that Stephanie will have a lab activity to complete with the 8th grade.

We also entered grades in Powergrade together, so that we were all on the same page with 8th grade scoring.

October 21 Where we are and where we are going:

7th Grade -Julie: Has started 6 traits intro, has not given revised formative assessment

-Del: Has given the revised inference formative assessment, has not started 6 traits

-Alyssa: Has given the revised inference formative assessment, has not started 6 traits

8th Grade -Julie: Persuasive letters due tomorrow; The Giver-Started foyer, got all the way through day 1 then 5 kids pulled out for testing

-Del: Ready to score persuasive letters; The Giver- Still on first day of foyer

-Alyssa: Persuasive letters due tomorrow; The Giver-Almost through with day 2 of foyer (has gotten ahead because R.N. is coming in to get the hook before he begins reading with his Tech., going straight through so we can get him back into his other classes asap)

-Steph: Persuasive letters due tomorrow; The Giver-Starting tomorrow

• With persuasive letters: o How are we tackling conventions? o Scoring rubric will break down like this: 6&5=4 4=3 3&2=2 1=1 (we may decide the 3 is too narrow when we begin scoring) o Record in powergrade as a formative assessment o Continue to work another assessment for persuasive writing

Homework: -Somebody, Someday- Rewrite the NECAP persuasive rubric in kid friendly language -Julie-Notebook on mastery of CR

Agenda for tomorrow: -Set up powergrade for the persuasive letter together

October 20 PLC ➢ Del shared a discussion she had with her kids about CR. Her kids wanted to not have to follow the CR template any more. She explained that you can let go of the template, but not of the structure of this type of writing. We need to do a better job of The Porch - helping kids understand the genre of Argument/Analysis, and helping them reflect on what a CR can show.

➢ It will also help kids see the value of this type of thinking/writing when we do our presentation for the whole school.

➢ Steph asked about the formative practice for persuasive, and the need to translate a 5 or 6 point rubric into a 4 point. This is a decision we will make together, share with kids, post in our rooms, and share with parents via Powerschool. We also need to develop the persuasive prompt for the formative assessment.

➢ We have been having some interesting discussions about scoring vs grading. It still bears talking about!

➢ We talked about tweaking the Inferring in a Short Text (No Pictures) Formative Assessment - Alyssa’s kids did not do well. We want kids to be able to infer fairly easily and spend more time showing what they know.

➢ We also talked about kids who are not attending to all the text clues - do we teach them to underline, or is there another strategy? Del mentioned “It Says…I Say”. What we love about our formative assessment is that it is showing us that there is more instruction we need to do with kids before we move on - assessment FOR learning! ➢ HW Del - Get us copies of It Says…I Say organizer. Julie found one on the photocopier a few weeks ago - she’ll dig that one out, too. In all honesty, it’s worth discussing ELA 5-8 - we are all teaching inference more deliberately now - we should start a clearinghouse of tools, organizers, etc. It would help the next grade level know what the previous one taught, and also help with differentiating for kids who are not catching on as quickly. We should be using these tools and organizers in our low labs, too.

➢ HW Del, Julie, Alyssa - design more instruction for Inferring in a Short Text. Teach kids a few more strategies and tell them they need to find what works for them - sketching, underlining text clues, It Says… I Say, whatever.

➢ HW All - think about a persuasive prompt for a summative assessment.

➢ Let’s look at some data, too - how many kids ARE getting it and are ready to move on? Can we differentiate without driving ourselves crazy?

➢ Steph offered to do some inference practice with her 8th grade labs. Alyssa and Julie will get her copies of the Check story, and the shortest mystery in the world. Also 6 word stories. Steph will share her lesson plans with us before she instructs. ➢ Del and Julie - make up some inference practice for low 8th grade labs.

➢ HW: Make a schedule for reading the Giver out loud - where we should be by the end of a week.

➢ Del, Alyssa and Julie have just barely started the Giver hook. None of us have finished the persuasive car letter yet. We need to weave that in with Giver and Golden Lines! We have not started Golden Lines yet, and we need to discus tomorrow to see where it might fit.

➢ See what we can get done when we have a whole PLC period?!!!

October 18 We reviewed the diagnostic assessment tool for theme that we are bringing to Thoughtful Ed. tomorrow.

We worked on 7th grade inference assessment. We were worried that some of the examples were too vague so we used this opportunity to tweak this summative assessment.

Julie will email theme house to Del and Steph.

October 14
 * The Giver-The idea is to read the book aloud with students, not assign at home reading
 * 7th grade fluency-Julie will send along the notebook from last year. We want to gear up kids for our into to 6 traits (we will be starting with ideas and content)
 * We discussed what an attainable for looks like (again) ☺ We want to make sure we are all on the same page and provide students equal opportunity

October 13 We discussed how the schedules will hinder our ability to finish our persuasive assessments.

We reviewed Julie’s notebook files that review NECAP writing tests. We discussed types of extended responses, and Julie will make up some packets to use with the kids.

The students need to know that NECAPS may ask them to only write a body paragraph instead of a full response.

We discussed Alert sheets, and how Julie and Alyssa have determined the cutoff grades…our group wants to be on the same page.

Della is still working on getting her Powergrade updated in order to enter grades, and Julie is still working on her indicators for Powergrade.

Our group is working to present the cake format to the faculty; we are gathering examples to show how all content areas can use the cake template.

October 12 -8th grade counter argument Now I know you will say that I don’t need a car at all, but this is how it will benefit you

-The new Internet blocker is more problematic for us Possible solution: Portaportal-may work better for filter. If you have any items that should be added to protaportal, email to Alyssa and she will update it for all of us. (have Tom permanently unblock our links) -Things to add: Car Websites Safercar.gov Fueleconomy.gov Kelley blue book (try to get it permanently unblocked) Idioms Sentence Fluency Etc.

Inference Continuum No Text-Visual Puns Some Text-Cartoons All Text-No Pictures, Short Text All Text-No Pictures, Long Text (RED) (All Text-You MUST visualize)

Next for Inference Short text – Man and woman on date 3 other scenario practice

Grade 7 Coming up:

Short text inferring Short text assessment (Alyssa will create this) Beginning of next week – Start intro to 6 traits

October 7 Still looking to write up a hook for THE GIVER

Brainstorming Ideas: • What about a sort for conceptual words…. Using the “Circle Organizer” • We would like to have them up and moving • Something about values? • What if we gave students a list of words and had them sort the words into two columns: “Our Society” and “Mystery Society” – could be three columns: X,Y, and Z • Z could be US • X could be The Giver • Y could be Anarchy

• Travel brochure for each society and debate the negatives and the merits for each society. Z has components of X and Y and that is what makes it work. Z is in the middle of X and Y. They will find out why extremism doesn’t work. • Maybe we can get the kids to sell their society??

September 30 -We looked at the grade 8 persuasive writing notebook and went through the slides -We tweaked the frosting sentence starters for the reading cake template

Giver Hook: Something big enough to hook kids into conformity/freedom unit, keep working on it and we will work on it tomorrow

Homework: Julie will look for the persuasive writing template from last year. Alyssa will make it digital. Julie and Alyssa intro to writing test grade 8 (Julie writing All continue to fill in Giver house Julie put your Giver frontloading into notebook

Upcoming: 7th grade 1. continue with inference - move into textual inference with "movie date" scenario, Oolum, and others. 2. start Etymology/Word Origin/Vocabulary unit - unit not designed yet 3. Introduce 6 Traits: Begin with Sentence Fluency - we have activities from the Donald Killgallon books, but no overall unit. Kids do come with decent writing abilities from 6th grade and below - they know Said is Dead, the know what makes a good lead, etc. But we have to connect their BK to 6 Traits.) Note: As I'm looking at the syllabus, and thinking about the fact that we want kids to write every day, or nearly every day, I'm wondering if we should double up and teach Ideas and Content, too, or even switch and do Ideas and Content before Sentence Fluency. Teaching the trait of Ideas and Content allows for a lot of fluency work in writing and lots of fun activities around describing, Show Don't Tell (SDT), sensory detail, etc. We could jump to Sentence Fluency after some I/C work. Plus the Killgallon stuff is a little challenging - maybe it would be better to start with something we can really slow down on if we need to. 4. Keep reading aloud (I haven't started yet!) 5. Golden Lines - I believe between Alyssa and I, we could come up with a notebook about this - not really a unit, just a few lessons.

8th grade: Now: Personal Persuasive writing and any info we can give them on the expectations of the NECAP writing test. (Files already sent) 1. We need to discuss our kickoff to Service. We have not started this. 2. Same as Gr 7 - Etymolgy/Word Origins, including vocabulary vignettes 3. Alternate Society unit, including a reader's journal of some kind (double entry? - we'll take any ideas!) 4. Sentence Fluency (8th graders had a strong intro to 6 Traits last year and did extensive writing/work with Ideas and Content, Voice and Word Choice.)

September 29 Alyssa and Julie shared how to get the kids to practice using the “Cake” template as warm ups…because the NECAPS do not give a template. The students may create their own when they take the NECAP.

We also discussed that students will not have time to do lots of other things while waiting for the testing to finish. They should be making good use of their time.

Julie and Alyssa send 6 Trait Intro to Del and Steph. We are going to do more with Inference with the seventh grade…it needs to continue. We also need to practice locating Golden Lines with students.

Syllabus change-We are not going to do sentence fluency at all with the 7th grade this year…we are going to start with sentence ideas and content.

8th grade needs to finish up bio poems, and begin persuasive writing in order to be ready for testing.

We discussed the Necap Proctoring, and if we will have our homerooms. We need to make sure that we have lists for the students so if they are confused as to where they need to be.

Julie homework- work on Etymology Intro

Del’s homework-find vocabulary activities that we can use with the Etymology Unit

We discussed how we will enter scores for 7th grade in Powergrade. Formative vs. Summative

September 28
 * We expressed our frustration about the fact that constructed response prompts are not given often enough to all students in all content areas all year. If they were, the “cake” structure, including topic sentences/restatements, details/examples, and development of ideas, and clinchers would be quite internalized. We feel we are not just reviewing for NECAP - we are trying to teach kids who have no BK for Constructed Response at all (7th grade). 8th graders did as much CR as we could in ELA last year, but because it wasn’t picked up in other classes, it still isn’t as strong a skill as it could be for every kid.

Kids can read, but because they don’t have this CR process in their repertoire, it looks like they are weaker readers than they may be. What can be done? How can we encourage all teachers to fill in the gaps and to practice this valuable skill? Julie says she would even score for other content teachers - we have designed a universal scoring guide that all subjects could use.

We watch carefully for overkill of test prep, but we are working from the ground up. We have mixed in other concepts, skills and units so kids aren’t burned out, but it isn’t really flowing at all. When we tested in the spring, this was not a problem. Now that we test in the fall, we need help!


 * Julie forgot to email Anita about being on a teacher’s meeting agenda to show folks the Constructed Response process - she will do this TODAY.
 * Alyssa helped us set up our gradebooks - she devised a system we think will work better.

September 27 - we revised the sprinkles scoring guide for next year, a copy was emailed earlier - we looked at student CR scores from last year - on Friday each member should bring a class set of NECAP cr’s from a released item that were finished by students on their own and we will do some cross scoring, let’s not bring items that were done together as a class, just independent work - we discussed the 7th grade’s overall hardship with moving from one prompt to the next. We should expose each 7th grader to at least one of each type of text for the test. We will help students come up with their sprinkles and first layer of cake, as well as their sentence starters for frosting and then they will complete the rest of the cake on their own. Although we know students will have to adapt on the fly during the test, we are running out of time to prepare them.

September 23
 * We discussed strategies for dealing with seventh grade students!
 * (Julie mentioned that she was wondering about letting 8th graders work at their own pace because of power-grade.) so…
 * We discussed whether continuing to let eighth graders work at their own pace on the NECAP still makes sense?

September 22 Our group reviewed our Persuasion Notebook files.

Della wants to add a few visual media literacy items in order to help a few of her slower learners. She feels that perhaps a visual persuasive ad might help students better understand author’s purpose, and target audience.

We discussed how we will incorporate the “Cake” template to our files.

Julie’s homework will be to complete additional slides in the Reading Persuasive Notebook file in order to pull in CR.

We all completed at least one CR this week. We introduced the CR rubric, and the key words that allow the students gain higher scores.

Alyssa explained how she taught the “Cake” template to her kids. She practiced using transition words while they dissected the CR.

September 20 • We are running out of time before NECAPs and 7th grade is struggling with constructed response, we are going to let persuasion go and cover it during the year and hit author’s message really hard next week • Together we put our first assignment into power grade for the quiz Steph created including Alyssa’s sprinkles rubric • We came to the conclusion that we need to teach persuasive reading before we get to writing in order to refer back for students as they write

September 17 We discussed Stephanie’s use of her instructional move and she used some excerpts from released items. Students were expected to cut the excerpts and place them on the “Cake” template.

Della talked about how Stephanie’s instructional move is similar to a reading strategy called “Tea Party” where you cut pieces of a chapter, and allow students to “meet and greet” to put the chapter in chronological order.

Julie’s instructional move was to give examples of text features, using newspapers, a dictionary, and their Red books. Kids filled out a graphic organizer to compare and contrast.

We as a group, have discussed how using one graphic organizer for paragraph structure and constructed response would help all of the grades. We as a school need a common language when we introduce how to set up constructed response. (We happen to like cake.)

Julie- homework…ask for a half hour to present our “Cake” template in our next staff meeting.

We started to construct a Sprinkles rubric for an assessment, so that we can administer it, and enter it on Powergrade.

We also discussed the possibility of how we could allow the 8th grade a way to work through the released items at their own pace, as we would like for the students to keep track of their scores, and let them retake and make changes in order to improve.

September 16 Homework: Alyssa and Julie find a third persuasive text to use as an assessment for 7th and 8th grade (can be formative) Alyssa and Julie look think about additional moves for teaching persuasive writing

We discussed the use of persuasive notebooks reading v. writing. NECAP looks for a personal persuasive piece. We talked through our instructional moves for each.

Talked through the cake organizer and how to use it.

Rubric ideas for Cake Accuracy-doesn’t answer question Closed statement-no examples Magic Rule of 3 4-Nice and smooth

September 15 • NECAP scores- Julie e-mailed Anita

• Picking up multiple choice items during labs would be beneficial and extra sprinkles practice

• We don’t allow kids to skip questions. We say it ahead of the test- come up with something. The rule is to fill the space. If they give you half of a page, fill half of a page. Even if you only come up with a topic sentence at least it is something.

• Alyssa will make a copy of the test scores for everyone.

• Julie is moving through the CR scoring guide.

• Stephanie will send her umbrella objectives to everyone.

• Julie will send her “quick slide” of the NECAP / NWEA description

THIS WEEK:

==> Next Activities: Having 9 moves ==> Sorting, Sprinkles, Cake, Scoring…. Etc. ==> Dell and Stephanie pick up SAT words from color printer

HOMEWORK • Alyssa will put the Scoring Notebook together • Dell will keep looking for the scoring guide. • Julie - Slides about adapting the cake template ( being flexible) * Teach them the system and then teach them how to be flexible within the system. • J & A – Look through persuasion units. Personal persuasion (getting ideas from your own life experiences) VS getting evidence from an outside source. • Dell will type up minutes from yesterday

STARTING NEXT WEEK:

• Introduce persuasive reading and writing

FOLLOWING WEEK:

• Theme – Julie will send theme slides to Dell and Stephanie

September 14

Julie, Stephanie, Alyssa, and Della worked on the Constructed Response Notebook file. We brainstormed ideas for the hook and progression of the “Cake” template.

Julie and Alyssa shared the parts that had been successful in the past. Della gave a brief review of the level in the seventh grade and the confusion because some had no memory of either “Cake” or “Cheeseburger” graphic organizer.

Della was going to try to locate a CR Scoring rubric that had been used in her previous school-as it was a simplified version that was student friendly.

Alyssa sent files for future lessons, and would check into obtaining student scores.

September 13 ➢ Del asked for copies of units and lesson plans further ahead of the timeline that’s in place. We discussed the limitations of email - that the files we send are very jumbled. Alyssa volunteered to put Smartboard notebook lessons on a thumb drive so that Del and Steph can have files that are at least in order. We will try to take care of issues like this after school whenever possible, to leave PLC time for planning, scoring, etc. ➢ NECAP checklist - we chose the texts we are going to teach or plan to teach in class. Any of the rest of the listed texts are “fair game” for lab practice. ➢ Now that we have started NECAP review, we can pick up kids right away in lab who need extra practice time, for example on identifying types of text using the PSS, or turning questions into topic sentences. Del and Julie identified two boys already who need this extra time. ➢ NECAP practice - be aware of not burning kids out - if we don’t get to every text that we’ve marked, that’s fine. It also helps to really mix in the “fun” stuff, such as the bio poem, and The Giver (not until the first full week of October) so they don’t get too much practice, which can really undermine what we want them to do. ➢ Julie mentioned the “goal post” visual - drawing the football goalpost as the dividing line between the 1/2 and the 3/4, between meeting the standard and not. In past years we have also accessed kids’ scores from the year before to use as a motivational tool. Julie will look into this again for those who want to have this information.

September 10
 * We discussed how we would like to set the agenda of our meetings. We decided that every Friday we will do a “what’s coming up list” and sketch out a skeleton of the week in our plan books.

For Next Week: -Do sprinkles practice -Work with Cake template

Homework: Alyssa-Create a PSS/Types of text worksheet and practice notebook Julie-Create a notebook about formal steps of constructed response All-Work on a “good” hook for the CR notebook

September 8 ➢ Grade 7: RED Intro Notebook and start of RED calendar ➢ Grade 7: Intro Inference Notebook (visual puns) ➢ Grade 7 Coming up shortly - o NECAP Intro Notebook (already created - sorting activity, etc.), o Intro to Constructed Response on NECAP (notebook already created - we may need to update) o Theme Notebook (we will need to create this together) o Personal Persuasive Writing (we need to review this notebook together) ➢ Grade 8: RED review (may use gr 7 intro notebook and whiz through it) and start of RED calendar ➢ Grade 8: Intro to Locker Poster (drag out the locker poster project for the next month as a way to break up NECAP practice) (Steph did a Gallery Walk to analyze layout, Del did a vocab continuum for better word choice) ➢ Grade 8 coming up shortly - o review of Theme (notebook already created - Tom Petty and Mike and the Mechanics songs - we can just add some new text) o review of NECAP Intro (it won’t hurt them to sort again, fill out or look at NECAP organizer) o Review of how to write a Constructed Response (Notebook already created)

Homework:

Julie - email RED checkoff sheet Del - get us copies of inference story All - look for fables, folk tales, poems etc. to use with theme/author’s message CR practice Alyssa - email Donna about persuasive reading Other that I forgot?

September 7
 * We met in Julie’s room to sort through MEA and NECAP released items for test prep. All released items are available in Julie’s cabinet or Alyssa’s hanging file boxes.
 * We reviewed the NECAP notebook that Alyssa mailed out last week and picked released items to use with our sort.
 * We discussed the division of lab and reading class as far as test prep goes.
 * We reminded ourselves of the need to intro/review RED with students (notebook is attached)
 * Alyssa will photocopy and give each team member an MEA word wall list and 2009 released items for 7 and 8.

September 3
 * Pam McGinn came in to brief us on 7th grade sped kids
 * We reviewed our intro lesson for NECAP prep for 7th grade and discussed strategies for clearing up kid confusion on different types of prompts.
 * We discussed our mental and physical health ☺

September 2 ➢ Julie Homework - design a brief intro to etymology/word origins for NWEA. Reminder that last year’s scores have nothing to do with this year. ➢ Julie homework - copy Gr 7 syllabus for all classes to put in Section 1 of binder. ➢ Julie and Alyssa - think about what pre-assessments might look like for Constructed Responses for NECAP, for Grade 8 inference. ➢ All - Think about differentiating - what about kids who can score 4s right now or very quickly on all constructed responses. ➢ Alyssa homework - copy NECAP released items from 09/10. ➢ Discussion of 7/8 binders. ➢ Shared strategies for making procedures for binders and assignment folders, handing in scored student writing, etc.