Pretty Cool-Manhattan 360-Degrees-From the New One World Trade Center

A spectacular 360-degree aerial photo of downtown Manhattan – Check out this Time photo taken from the tippy-top of the just-completed One World Trade Center building in New York City: http://time.com/world-trade-center. Click the down arrow at the bottom, scroll down to the photo, click on it, then click the diagonally angled arrows in the top right-hand corner to expand to full screen, then press your cursor and move left and right to look in every direction – and move it up to look straight down. You can also use the + and – signs to zoom in on any point of interest. Amazing!

 © Copyright 2014 Marshall Memo LLC.
222 Clark Road, Brookline, MA 02445.

“The Top of America” by Josh Sanburn in Time, Mar. 17, 2014

April 12 Professional Development Sites

District PL Secondary	8:00-2:00	Site	Contact
Academic Coaches	8:00-2:00	Core Content sites	T Besgrove
AP Teachers	8:00-2:00	Core Content sites	T Besgrove
Behavior Interventionists	8:00-11:00	010-BHS	C Dubuis
Behavior Interventionists	12:00-2:00	See Elementary Afternoon Rotations	C Dubuis
Career Technology Education Teachers	8:00-2:00	BCTAL	Linda Anderson
Content Mastery Teachers	8:00-2:00	Core Content sites	M Sanders
Counselors	8:00-2:00	TBD	D Layer
Deaf Ed Teachers	8:00-2:00	Core Content sites	M Blackwell
Deaf Ed Interpreters	N/A	N/A	M Blackwell
Diagnosticians	8:00-11:00	010-BHS	P Stanley/M Sanders
Diagnosticians	12:00-2:00	See Elementary Afternoon Rotations	P Stanley/M Sanders
Educational Assistants	8:00-2:00	Home Campus	B Grubbs
English Language Arts Teachers	8:00-2:00	047 N.Ridge MS	A-M Trammell
ESL Teachers	8:00-2:00	047 N.Ridge MS	K Lopez
Fine Arts Teachers	8:00-2:00	Check Workshop for site	D Detrick
Health Teachers	8:00-2:00	Coliseum Arena	L Master
Homeroom Resource/POST Teachers	8:00-11:00	010-BHS	P Stanley/M Sanders
Homeroom Resource/POST Teachers	12:00-2:00	See Elementary Afternoon Rotations	P Stanley/M Sanders
Librarians	8:00-2:00	046-Smithfield MS	K Montgomery
Library Assistants	8:00-2:00	Home Campus	K Montgomery
LOTE Teachers	8:00-2:00	047 N.Ridge MS	A-M Trammell
MS Mathematics Teachers	8:00-2:00	001 HHS	B Mesa
HS Mathematics Teachers	8:00-2:00	001 HHS	B Mesa
Nurses	8:00-2:00	Coliseum Room C	M Provence
PE Teachers	8:00-2:00	Coliseum Arena	L Master
Reading Interventionists	8:00-2:00	047 N.Ridge MS	A-M Trammell
Related Services Providers	8:00-11:00	010-BHS	J Thomas
Related Services Providers	12:00-2:00	See Elementary Afternoon Rotations	J Thomas
Resource Teachers	8:00-2:00	Core Content sites	Cindy Dubuis
Science Teachers	8:00-2:00	002 RHS	D Schweitzer
SELF/ Dev Skills Teachers	8:00-11:00	010-BHS	P Stanley/M Sanders
SELF/ Dev Skills Teachers	12:00-2:00	See Elementary Afternoon Rotations	P Stanley/M Sanders
Social Studies Teachers	8:00-2:00	043 RMS	J Hyman
Speech and Language Therapists	8:00-2:00	010-BHS	J Thomas
Transitional Teachers	8:00-2:00	Core Content sites	M Sanders
Vision Impaired Teachers	8:00-11:00	010-BHS	P Stanley
Vision Impaired Teachers	12:00-2:00	See Elementary Afternoon Rotations	P Stanley

This Week @ HMS-March 23

This Week @ Haltom Middle

Sunday, March 23

Monday, March 24

TELPAS

7^TH AND 8^TH grade Track Meet @ Birdville Stadium

Tuesday, March 25

 

 

TEXAS RANGER GEAR!

 PAYDAY!

TELPAS Cont.

STAAR Training 4:00

7^th and 8^th Grade Track Meet @ Birdville Stadium

Wednesday, March 26


TEXAS RANGER GEAR!
Happy Birthday Janet Farrag!

TELPAS cont.

STAAR Training 7:30

8^th Grade Awards Meeting in the Library 4:00 (all teachers who teach 8^th graders)

Thursday, March 27

College Day

BISD Choir Festival @ North Ridge Middle School (all day)

Friday, March 28

9:30 Office Staff Meeting

Spirit Day

Saturday, March 29

Happy Birthday Ms. Courtney!

Band Pre-UIL Select and Honors Band

 

Note-STAAR training is may done in the afternoon session or the morning session. 

Duty Stations

Outside PM

S1-Newkirk

S2-D. Anderson

S3 D. Burks

S4 J. Pena

S5 D. Flores

S6 D. Holland

Inside AM

Aggie Hall-Rhine

Baylor Hall-Hatcher

Tiger Thumbs Up

Julie Allen-Great Job with the Tigers Are Heroes Assemblies!   

Children’s Books That Turbocharge the Math Curriculum

 

            “Integrating children’s literature into math makes learning more engaging and less intimidating,” says South Carolina educator Candice Brucke in this helpful article in AMLE Magazine. “It can motivate, provoke interest, connect mathematical ideas, promote critical thinking skills, inspire a creating writing experience for students (and teachers), and provide a context that leads to problem solving.” She believes her use of well-chosen books was a major reason for very high achievement in her classes – her class ranked ninth best in the entire state in 2007. Here are some of her suggestions, including one she wrote herself:

-    The Grapes of Math (Tang, 2004) and The Important Book (Brown, 1999) to teach number properties;

-    A Giraffe to France (Hillard, 2000) for measurement and writing and solving equations;

-    The Missing Piece (Silverstein, 2006) for missing-angle measures and sectors of a circle;

-    How I Became a Pirate (Long, 2003) to assess students’ prior knowledge on the coordinate plane;

-    Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi (Neuschwander, 1999) for circumference and π.

-    Skippyjon Jones Lost in Spice (Schachner, 2005) for combinations and permutations;

-    Wrappers Wanted: A Mathematical Adventure in Surface Area (Brucke, 2009) for surface area;

-    Chasing Vermeer (Balliett, 2005) to introduce manipulatives such as pentominoes;

-    My Full Moon Is Square (Pinczes, 2002) for the concept of square numbers;

-    The Lion King (Disney, 1994) for the concept of slope – students can graph the good/ill fate points for a particular character;

-    What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? (Ellis, 2004) for the Pythagorean Theorem applied to everyday situations;

-    One Grain of Rice (Demi, 1997) for exponential growth;

-    Cinder Edna (Jackson, 1998) for box/scatter plots;

-    Multiplying Menace: The Revenge of Rumplestiltskin (Calvert, 2006) to review fractions.

 

“Connecting Children’s Literature to Middle Grades Math” by Candice Brucke in AMLE Magazine, March 2014 (Vol. 1, #7, p. 23-24), www.amle.org; Brucke can be reached at cbrucke@oconee.k12.sc.us.

Hunger Games!

 

Almost to Capacity?

 

 

BIGGEST LOSER is about to hit HMS!!  In the spirit of wellness, moving more, eating well and stressing less Ana and I have decided to have a biggest loser contest here at HMS!!  So if you are interested please email, call, come by the office, text, smoke signal me and let me know J  Here’s the basic rundown:

 

The official start date will be Monday March 24^th and the contest will end Tuesday May 27^th, you may enter any time during that time period but the contest will end May 27^th for everyone.

To encourage teamwork we will be competing in groups of 3 or 4, depending on how many people sign up.

We will be going by percentage lost during the competition time not pounds lost.

Participants will be asked for a $10 entry fee and the winning group will split the pot.

 

I hope everyone is as excited about this as I am, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  First weigh in will be on Monday the 24^th in the nursing office, Ana and I will keep a record of everyone’s weight, no one else will view this.  Also after you have decided to participate let me know who is in your teams.  Let’s Keep Moving Forward Haltom Tigers!

Keep Moving Forward
Nurse Watkins

 

 

Best Practices with Formative Assessment

 

(Originally titled “Formative Assessment in Seven Good Moves”)

            In this thoughtful Educational Leadership article, Brent Duckor (San Jose State University) says that effective use of on-the-spot assessments is the most influential factor in improving student learning. Duckor recommends the following seven “moves”:

            • Explicitly prepare students. “Unfortunately, the literature on formative assessment provides few accounts of the culture shock many students experience when they’re expected to learn in this new and perhaps puzzling manner,” says Duckor:

-    Why is the teacher always answering a question with another question?

-    Why is the teacher asking “Why” all the time?

-    Why is the teacher using Popsicle sticks to call on us?

-    Why is the teacher pausing before taking answers?

-    Why is the teacher writing up all the answers, even the wrong ones?

-    Why can’t the teacher just solve the problem and write the correct answer on the board so we can move on?

• Pose good questions. Many classroom questions are either too simple (“Can someone give me the definition of mitosis?”) or too open-ended (“Why did the French Revolution occur?”). “An effective question sizes up the context for learning, has a purpose related to the lesson and unit plan and, ideally, is related to larger essential questions in the discipline,” says Duckor. For example, in a high-school civics class discussing a segregated skating rink: “Should the integration of public facilities extend beyond the ruling on education addressed by the Brown v. Board of Education decision?”

• Give students time to think. Some teachers feel uncomfortable with silences. Giving adequate wait time for students to process their answers requires planning, patience, and complementary moves – turn-and-talk, think-pair-share, journal writing, polling. All these help the teacher gauge the level of understanding and guide next steps.

• Probe student responses. Many standard classroom questions lead to staccato exchanges with students – “Does everyone understand?” “Can we move on now?” Standard Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? questions have one correct answer, and as soon as a student provides it, there’s no need to follow up since “we” all know the correct answer. Probing, on the other hand, means there’s always more to know. For example, in a lesson on buoyancy, a teacher might ask, “So who thinks things float because they’re hollow? Can you say why? Turn to your partner and ask for an example of a hollow thing that might sink.” “The more one learns about how real students in a particular classroom approach the material,” says Duckor, “the better one can guide them through the bottlenecks, cul-de-sacs, and eddies that will inevitably mark a student’s progression toward an understanding of conceptually difficult material.”

• Question all students. “Feedback is about generating a loop,” says Duckor. “Too often, the loop is too small, occurring mostly between the teacher and a few eager students.” This can give the teacher an inaccurate sense of whole-class understanding and allow most students to rest on their oars. The solution: cold-calling with popsicle sticks or all-class response systems. This is particularly important for low-achieving students and English language learners.

• Use tagging to generate a wide range of responses. For example, the teacher asks the class, “What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word ratio?” and has students jot their ideas, turn and talk to a partner, and then creates a word web on the board. Some teachers are uncomfortable entertaining incorrect answers, but, says Duckor, “If teachers don’t create a space for students to express both their understandings and their misunderstandings, students who are too embarrassed to express a potentially incorrect answer will simply remain silent.”

• Sort answers into “bins.” As students answer questions, the teacher mentally sorts them – correct, misconception, proficient, etc. “A teacher needs to know, through practical training and rich classroom experience, where kids get stuck and why,” says Duckor. For example, teaching a science unit on why things sink or float, teachers need to know common misconceptions about mass, volume, density, and relative density.

 

“Formative Assessment in Seven Good Moves” by Brent Duckor in Educational Leadership, March 2014 (Vol. 71, #6, p. 28-32),

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar14/vol71/num06/toc.aspx; Duckor can be reached at brent.duckor@sjsu.edu.

Bringing the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Life

 

            “Far too frequently, many students find history to be boring, rate it as their least favorite subject, or perceive it as irrelevant,” say Scott Waring (University of Central Florida) and Cicely Scheiner-Fisher (Seminole County Schools instructional specialist) in this Middle School Journal article. But they believe that even tech-savvy adolescents will love history if teachers use primary-source documents and focus on how events affected ordinary people. Waring’s and Scheiner-Fisher’s article is a detailed example of how this played out in a unit on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The big question for the unit: What was it like for Lewis and Clark to travel west? Here is the seven-step SOURCES framework they used:

            • Scrutinize the primary source material. From the Library of Congress collection, Waring and Scheiner-Fisher chose Thomas Jefferson’s letter of instructions for the expedition as the best document (see http://tinyurl.com/7b7wbg6). To scaffold students’ close reading of this document, they used a primary source analysis sheet produced by the Library of Congress.

            • Organize thoughts. Students watched a video providing background, including the fact that Jefferson’s letter went through multiple drafts and incorporated feedback from a number of experts and political figures.

            • Understand the context. Students learned about the historical background of the expedition and Jefferson’s goals.

            • Read between the lines. Using this information, students re-read the primary document with new understanding.

            • Corroborate and refute. At this point, students were asked to examine other primary documents on the Library of Congress website to learn more about the expedition:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/lewisandclark/lewis-landc.html.

            • Establish a plausible narrative. Students were assigned the following performance task: pretend you are a member of the expedition and write a journal on how it unfolded.

            • Summarize final thoughts. Students were asked to pull together what they learned and what questions still lingered.

 

“Using SOURCES to Allow Digital Natives to Explore the Lewis and Clark Expedition” by Scott Waring and Cicely Scheiner-Fisher in Middle School Journal, March 2014 (Vol. 45, #4, p. 3-11); www.amle.org; the authors can be reached at Scott.Waring@ucf.edu and Cicely_Fisher@scps.us. The full article is rich with details and suggested websites.

Why is the U.S. Teen Childbirth Rate Going Down?

 

            “In no other developed country are teenagers as likely to get pregnant as in the United States,” says Nicholas Kristof in this New York Times column. “Girls in the United States are almost 10 times as likely to have babies as Swiss girls, and more than twice as likely as Canadian girls.” Kristof says he’s been writing about the issue for years and doesn’t think he’s prevented a single teen pregancy, and other efforts like virginity pledges haven’t worked either.

But a recent study by economists Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine found that the MTV reality show “16 and Pregnant” and spinoffs like “Teen Mom” have had a significant impact. By looking at birth data in areas with particularly high viewership, Kearney and Levine concluded that the shows were responsible for a 5.7 percent reduction in teen births nationwide, or 20,000 fewer births a year. “Because abortion rates fell at the same time,” says Kristof, “the reduced birthrate appears to be the result principally of more use of contraception.” There was other evidence of the link:

-    Right after each new episode of “16 and Pregnant,” Twitter messages containing the words “birth control” increased by 23 percent.

-    Google searches on how to get birth control spiked immediately after each show.

-    The trend toward fewer teen births, which began in the 1990s, accelerated sharply when the shows began airing in 2009.

Of course there are other factors, including low-income girls realizing that career opportunities for women have improved, giving them an economic incentive to defer childbirth. But there’s no denying the impact of the reality TV dramas. “These shows remind youthful viewers that babies cry and vomit, scream in the middle of the night, and poop with abandon,” says Kristof.

“As a haughty journalistic scribbler,” he continues, “I tend to look down on television, so it’s a bit painful to acknowledge its potential for good. But the evidence is overwhelming.” It shows that compelling storytelling (versus lecturing) can work wonders. “If the government tried this,” says MTV president Stephen Friedman, “it would have a good message, but three people would watch it.” Instead, we’re witnessing “one of America’s great social policy successes,” concludes Kristof, “coming even as inequality and family breakdown have worsened.” Since 1991, the U.S. teen birthrate has fallen 52 percent.

 

“TV Lowers Birthrate (Seriously)” by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, Mar. 20, 2014,

http://nyti.ms/1d49rIr

Important-Haltom Middle AVID Information

 

 

FIRST AND IMPORTANTLY THANK YOU, to all the elective teachers that have worked with us the past 2 days as we pulled students from your classes for interviews.  We put a big dent in the list and I appreciate your  support. Over the past 2 days we interviewed 44 7^th graders and 47 6^th graders. We still have about 22, 7^th graders and 50, 6^th graders left to interview.  Thank we appreciate your patience as we continue to pull students to finish the interview process.  I will be calling students out again class periods 1-3 on Thursday and Friday. 

Secondly,  reminder, AVID students are still trying to raise money for t shirts and a field trip in May so we are selling candy, microwave ACT 2 popcorn and bottled water.  $1 each.  Please let me know if you need a snack in the day, and I can send a student your way.

AVID has purchased a subscription to AVID WEEKLY which provides current event articles in a variety of subject areas to help students with critical reading skills such as vocabulary, connecting ideas, summarizing, marking text, etc.  The subscription not only includes articles but also lesson plans, templates and suggestions.  The subject areas include all topics from all core classes in addition to Health, Law, Business, technology, fine arts, etc.  Our subscription comes with 20 log ins per campus.  If you are interested in using these articles please contact Mary Ann Shaft or Betina Rhine and they can give you the password and instructions. 

 

The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Reducing Bullying

            In this Education Week article, Marc Brackett and Susan Rivers (Yale University Center for Emotional Intelligence) say that most anti-bullying initiatives are ineffective because they address symptoms, not the underlying causes. “Taking the law-and-order approach, characteristic of many existing programs, does not offer youths or adults the fundamental skills needed to regulate powerful emotions that, when unregulated, can lead to psychologically and physically harmful behaviors,” say Brackett and Rivers. The heart of the matter, they believe, is “a lack of emotional intelligence – a set of skills for understanding, communicating about, and regulating feelings… Neglecting the emotional education of children and adults risks leaving children at the mercy of every emotion they feel and every aggressor who comes along.”

            “Emotions matter,” they say, “and they matter a great deal in school. A child who feels anxious, jealous, hopeless, or alienated will have difficulty learning, making sound decisions, and building relationships.” Bullying leaves emotional damage all around:

-    Victims have a higher incidence of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

-    Perpetrators experience depression, anxiety, and hostility and are prone to substance abuse and antisocial behavior.

-    Bystanders can feel hopeless, insecure, and show symptoms of trauma.

-    Those who bully and are bullied have it worst of all, with a higher likelihood of being involved with criminal activity and partner abuse later in life.

“Fortunately, emotional intelligence can be taught just like math or reading,” say Brackett and Rivers. With their colleagues at Yale, they have developed the RULER program and implemented it in more than 500 schools. The program integrates emotional intelligence into daily classroom routines, showing adults and student how to:

            • Recognize emotions

            • Understand what causes them

            • Label emotions

            • Express emotions

            • Regulate emotions

RULER schools write an “emotional intelligence charter” that articulates how colleagues want to feel, what they will do to foster those feelings, and how everyone in the school can work together to prevent unwanted emotions, manage them when they occur, and handle conflict. RULER schools also develop a “mood meter” to help staff and students gauge their feelings, set goals, develop self-regulation strategies, and reach their objectives. For more information on the program, see http://ei.yale.edu/ruler/.

 

“An Emotionally Intelligent Approach to Bullying Prevention” by Marc Brackett and Susan Rivers in Education Week, Feb. 19, 2014 (Vol. 33, #21, p. 40, 32-33), www.edweek.org

Forever in Blue Jeans

Remember Jeans and a spirit or a college shirt this week!

This Week @ HMS

Monday, March 17

7^th Grade Track Meet @ Central Jr.

Tuesday, March 18

8^th Grade Track Meet @ Central Jr.

Band Instrument Fair for incoming 6^th graders in
Cafeteria 6:00

Wednesday, March 19

Tigers are Heroes Assembly 8^th Grade

Happy Birthday
Kathy Levi!

Thursday, March 20

Tigers are Heroes Assembly 7^th Grade

Friday, March 21

Tigers are Heroes Assembly 6^th Grade

Saturday, March 22

Happy Birthday
Marta Benavides and Kim Brown!

*Advisory Schedule

Tiger Thumbs Up

April Bryant-Thanks
for organizing the faculty student games this year! Congratulations to the faculty
on an undefeated school year!  It has
been a long time.

Betina Rhine
and Lindsey Savala-Great job on
the AVID parent night and field trip!

Kathy Richards
and Cammie Hatcher-Sweepstakes
in Varsity Girls Choir! Incredible Accomplishment!