Advisory - What is going well? What do we need to improve? What is one activity that your class enjoyed during advisory? How have you built a connection with your students?

Where are you in the WOLF PACK?

Please take a look at the attached Wolf Pack article.

Reflecting on this year and looking forward to next school year 2017 -18.

What have you learned this year that you can apply for next year? How can we bring out the best academic performance in our students? Who have you benefited from collaborating with this year?  How do you access your students' academic work? How frequently? Do you post their grades? How frequently do you update their posted grades? When and how do we reteach content?  

UCLA Writing Project

YOKA / UCLA Writing Project Partnership 2016-2017

Spring Reflection Questions

Directions: Please take a moment and respond to these two sets of questions. Please upload this to your YOKA blog when finished. If you have a picture that goes along with it, all the better!

Grounding: Thinking about your instructional sequence, professional development themes this year, and other factors influencing your classrooms...

Part 1: DATA ANALYSIS. Take a moment and look at your Fall and Spring spreadsheets based on the information from your study class.

1. What do you notice about the data, especially when comparing Fall to Spring?
2. What might this data capture or address in terms of student learning and your curricular goals?
3. What might this data not capture or address in terms of student learning and your curricular goals?
4. We suggested you use a “high” “medium” “low” rating for scoring student work unless you wanted to use an existing rubric that perhaps your department uses or a rubric from a high stakes assessment. What scoring method would you want to use next year? What would give you the most meaningful information?  Please explain.

Part 2: STUDENT WRITING ANALYSIS. Take a moment and look at a student sample that you are particularly proud of, or that you think shows a need that you’d like to address with future Professional Development.  If possible, compare the sample with a sample of the student’s writing from early in the year.

1. Give a context for the writing assignment, especially given your curricular goals for the year.
2. Give a context for the student, especially given their growth,  stagnation, or decline throughout the year.
3. Describe what is present in the writing, rather than what is missing.
4. Describe what might be next instructional steps for this student.  Would these instructional steps work for many students in your class?  Please elaborate.
5. What ideas is this giving you about how we should shape professional development for next year?
6. Thinking about this PD sequence this year, what worked? What can we (UCLA Writing Project, YOKA Leadership Team, your department, and yourself) improve on for next year?  Also do you agree w/ the instructional foci identified by your peers on the google survey?  Click on the following links and scroll to the bottom for ALL RESPONSES, SOME MATH, SOME SPED.

On behalf of the YOKA Leadership Team, the UCLA Writing Project, and all of our students, Norma and Jason want to thank you all for a wonderful year full of hard work, energy, enthusiasm, inquiry, and writing!  Happy trails to you, ‘till we meet again!

Secrets to a Successful Parent Conference

What is a successful Parent/Teacher Conference?  What do you do to PREPARE for it?  What do you do DURING the conference to make it effective? 

Intervention. What are ten interventions that you do in your class when faced with challenging behavior? What is the single most important thing you do in your class to build a safe and positive classroom climate for learning?

Utilizing the Parent Conference

We all know that parents are critical in our conversations with our students.  What would be some critical elements we would need to include in any one-on-one PARENT CONFERENCE? 

What is the MOST important quality to possess as an educator? Why do you value this quality so highly?

Election Day Take Aways

Students have been tremendously vocal around this year's election.  What are some reflections that your students have shared ?  What are some of your hopes and concerns? 

Election Day Dreams

What is a DREAM that you have for your future? What would you like to DO? What would you like to ACCOMPLISH? What would you like to be when you grow up?

What is your best Middle School Memory? What is something that was a challenge for you in Middle School?

Sharing your secrets to balancing work and life outside of school.

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?  How does this help you to recharge and rethink a problem or practice?  What do you like to do on your vacations?  The weekends?  Please share with us how this helps you find balance and meaning in your life. 

What is one SUCCESS and one CHALLENGE that you had this week?

Where are the 21st Century Learners?

What does a 21st Century Learner look like or sound like? Or what does 21st Century Education look like?

Students with special needs. How are we providing support?

What successful strategies have we used that help us in accommodating special need students?   What questions might we have in best supporting our students with special needs?  What would you like to learn more about?
Resources for teachers:

Sign up for free "Teaching Tolerance" instructional DVD kits with teacher's guides: 

http://www.tolerance.org/teaching-kits/order

Sign up for free "LA Times" newspapers for your students:
http://nieonline.com/latimes/order.cfm
Create a "Donors Choose" account to request funds for any of your class projects:
https://www.donorschoose.org/

 

 

Restorative Justice Circles One Month Reflection. What are you most nervous about as a facilitator? What are some challenges you have faced? What has worked well? What has surprised you?

What is your progress on "It's On Us to Change" Awareness month? What are some struggles or successes that you have had around this campaign?

Sharing our best practices

What are THREE ways that we  BUILT COMMUNITY in our classrooms this week?   What are TWO effective teaching practices we have used the first week?

Summer School Reflections

What has gone well this summer?  What have you done to engage our students?  What have been some challenges?  What lesson would you like to share with us?  What else would you like to share with us?

What Socio-emotional Supports have we created in our classrooms?

How Trauma Is Changing Children's Brains
Being mindful of the challenges that many of our students have had...what systems or supports do we create and use to create a warm and safe environment in our classroom that brings out the best in our students.