I Love To Make Movies: S1E3 We Are EG Podcast

For this episode of We Are EG, We would like to give a shout out to Elk Grove senior Ben Jaeger for sharing his story of  his love of making movies. From making films in middle school and high school with his collaborator Nic Baggetto to branching out on his own projects, Ben discusses his evolution as a filmmaker, his opinion on violence in movies and why the arts are important in education. And don't miss the advice he shares at the end regarding the pursuit of our passions.

Enjoy the podcast and be sure to check out the bonus behind-the-scenes video documentary that accompanies this week's podcast!  And be sure to check out WeAreEG.org for previous podcasts!  Enjoy!

Collaborating Across D214: EGHS & The Academy at Forest View

By Linda Ashida




Whenever we collaborate with our colleagues across District 214, we are reminded how much we have to learn from one another and our students!

That reminder came again this week when we visited classes at The Academy at Forest View.

The Academy at Forest View is one of District 214's specialized learning programs. The dedicated staff there works collaboratively to motivate students who have struggled in the larger comprehensive high schools.  Some students strive to integrate back to their home schools, others will choose to stay at The Academy until they graduate.


Our visit to The Academy this week represents a continuation of collaboration that began during the 2016-17 school year when a small team of teachers from both schools met to discuss strategies to align curriculum for the students we share. We also discussed research-based strategies to meet both the academic and social-emotional needs of diverse groups of learners. For example, we talked about trauma informed approaches to support students who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

That initial collaboration led to the idea to share our learning more broadly by inviting the staff from the Academy to join us at Elk Grove for our April Institute Day. Teachers from both schools facilitated workshops. To learn more about what that Institute Day looked like, check out these previous posts:  Spring Brings New Collaborations and Motivating Students with Feedback.

The feedback from staff about our joint Institute Day was so positive that we decided to continue our collaboration during the 2017-18 school year. Staff from The Academy will join us for our monthly Elk Grove Lead Learners Team meetings, and we will also participate in a series of ongoing learning exchanges at both schools.

For our first visit to the Academy this year, Kyle Pfister and Alyssa Zwiercan welcomed us to their History, English, and Social-Emotional Learning classes. In each of those classes we observed how they seamlessly blend both academic and social emotional learning strategies to connect with their students and encourage progress toward high expectations for learning.

Every time we visit The Academy, we leave inspired.  If you are not familiar with The Academy, we think you should consider visiting. Kara Kendrick, the Director of The Academy at Forest View agrees, telling us, "I am incredibly proud of how hard our staff works with some of the most vulnerable students in the district, and I know that without seeing it, it is hard to understand. You are welcome anytime. Bring your friends!" 


 

One Year in AP: Writing (Week Ten)

By Mark Heintz

Context

I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions.  They are:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it.   I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is to see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey.  You can read how last week went here.

Week Ten: Answer the Question

Our content instructional goal this week was centered around the spread of Islam and cultural diffusion in the post-classical era.

Our skill instructional goal was centered on document analysis.  The students displayed their understanding of the documents through short answer and the document based question.

Cite Specific Evidence

How do I know the students learned and know what they were supposed to learn?
Last week the overlap of skills and content was perfect!  To replicate last week, I attempted to do the same thing this week.  There was a shift in the skills (from long essay to dbq).  Despite that shift, the content was on the rise of Islam and all of the documents (skill) were on the rise of Islam.   Each day the students analyzed new documents about the rise of Islam.  So while they were building up their skills reading and analysis skills to interpret the documents, they were learning the content they needed!

One of the days Linda Ashida graciously came into class and documented each phase of the day's lesson with video.  This has been great an opportunity to reflect on what happened in class and to better see and assess what the students know, and where there might be gaps.  I have outlined a few of the videos to cite more specific evidence of the learning that took place.  

Here I am going over what the students need to know for the week. 

Students analyze a document on the spread of Islam in Ghana. 

Students write their short answer response.

Great examples from the short answer using transition words such as prior and before to signify a change. 

Examples of pulling evidence from documents and placing the evidence on the map.  

Reasoning

I am in love with the direct overlap of skills and content.  The skills are not in isolation and the content is not isolation. They are learning the content so they can apply the skills.  Then they are using the newly acquired skills to show they know the content!  

Again, the rubric that I used throughout the week was essential in getting the students to self-check their progress.  In truth, the progress on the dbq was good, but there is a lot of room for growth.  By the end of the week, they were going to write a thesis, context, and a paragraph from two sources. However, the students did not end up writing the paragraph by themselves.  Using student evidence and feedback from earlier in the week, I realized––and the students realized––that they were not quite ready. As a result, to give them more time and additional support to better prepare for the writing on their own, I had them work with partners.

To check for understanding on the content standards, the students had a content check.  Most of the students mastered the material.  I gave a small assessment covering the content objectives. From that check, an area of need highlighted from the assessment was cultural diffusion in the post-classical era.  The rest of the content was great with only a few minor tweaks needed.  

Reflection and Impact

I lost a bit of focus for a few days.  I had two students come in and share some of their misconceptions. That with some information released by the AP World chief reader made me question a few of the things I have been doing in class. On a more positive note, I love the attitude of my students and I am so glad they came in to share understandings of the material. I attribute this to the clarity of the learning targets and the meaningful work done daily in class.  The students are constantly trying to learn and are not fearful of making a mistake.  They want to know how to be successful and are willing to attempt it because they know they will get feedback on their progress.

But, I need to stay the course.  Onward and upward! But seriously, this class is hard. I am continually trying to relay centuries of global history and have them read and write about complex documents.  The progress towards the little goals is what I need to be content with, which at this point is stellar.

Read week eleven here. 

The Collab Lab Team Connects, Learns and Shares at #ICIC17

By Linda Ashida


The Collab Lab Team enjoyed a great day of learning and networking at the Illinois Council of Instructional Coaching's Third Annual Conference: Student Centered Coaching, featuring Diane Sweeney. The ICIC is a group of educators dedicated to building the art of coaching to impact learning for both teachers and students of all ages. The conference brought together 800 educators from the across the state of Illinois and beyond.



The day kicked off with a morning keynote session led by Diane Sweeney. Her presentation on Student-Centered Coaching gave the Collab Lab Team new inspiration to inform the planning of our future professional learning experiences.

In the afternoon, in addition to attending workshops, we were happy to have the opportunity to present and share the professional learning journey of the Collab Lab. Our presentation focused on our mission to build a community of learning at Elk Grove High School and beyond, sharing multiple examples of how our collaborative learning is inspired by our motto: Connect-Learn-Share.

To connect to the presentation, click here: https://tinyurl.com/EGCollabPresentation

To get an idea of what the day of learning and networking at the conference looked like, check out this Storify of tweets.

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Engage Students in Learning with Video: EdPuzzle

What is EdPuzzle, you ask?

EdPuzzle is a site that allows users to select a video and easily customize it by editing, cropping, recording audio and adding questions to make an engaging presentation or learning experience. It is also a great formative assessment tool; a unique way for students to demonstrate their understanding.

Kirsten Fletcher has found EdPuzzle to be a great tool to engage her students in learning and she facilitated a workshop to share with her colleagues for our October 2017 Institute Day.

We have heard from several teachers who attended her session about how Kirsten's examples have inspired them to use EdPuzzle in their own classes.

The notes from the session serve as a great resource for those that missed it and due to popular demand, Kirsten has offered to repeat the session for our Teaming on Tuesday Learning Lab on October 24th.

We hope you'll join us! Not at EG? You can join us remotely! Just send us a direct message to the Collab Lab Twitter, and we'll send you a calendar invite and link to join us via Zoom!

One Year in AP: A New Unit, Same Skills (Week Nine)

By Mark Heintz

Context

I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions.  They are:

• How do I know if my students know? 
• How do I get them to know if they know?  

Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it.   I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge.  Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is to see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey.  You can read how last week went here.

Week Nine: Answer the Question

My content instructional goal this week was centered around commerce in the post-classical era.

My skill instructional goal was centered on the long essay.  The essay was: Analyze similarities and differences in TWO of the following trade networks in the period 600 C.E. to 1450 C.E.

Med. Sea

Trans-Saharan

Silk Road

Indian Ocean Basin

The focus was on the thesis, contextualization, and using evidence to support an argument portions of the essay.

Cite Specific Evidence

The content and the skill this week overlapped perfectly.  Each day layered more content that the students could use in their essay.  Students contextualized the prompt first and wrote their response. Then I had them write the thesis.  The next day they selected their evidence.  Finally, on Friday the students put all of the pieces together.

To have students check their content knowledge (and get out of their seats), students grouped together around maps I had hung around all over the room. As I shouted out content questions, the students competed against one another to correctly identify where that information could be found on the maps. The great thing about the activity was that students getting up and walking around the room served as a brain break at the same time that it allowed them––and me––to check their misunderstandings. Here is a short video of that in action:

The students then analyzed a chart on trade to activate background knowledge and to begin pulling evidence to support a claim to prepare for their writing.

Here are the students working on their statements.  

Here are the students chunking information and selecting which evidence best supports their claim to continue to prepare for their writing. At the same time, I circulated and their notes allowed me to see their thinking, ascertain their understanding and respond to misconceptions and questions.

Reasoning

The week was powerful.  The layering of the skills and the content worked great.  The students self-assessed their work every day.  I put the rubric on Schoology so the students constantly referred back to it to check their progress.  At the end of the week, the students worked on the essay by themselves, and the progress was amazing. The self-check went great and they understood the flow.  

The students knew the content.  I posted the objectives on Monday and through the warm-ups and map breaks, they mastered it.  It was fairly easy to comprehend, but it was a lot of information.  I was impressed at how quickly they picked it up and could use it in their essays.  

Reflection and Impact

I loved the week.  I spent a lot of time on one topic and skill set, but I felt like it paid off.  I actually listened to myself for once and stuck to the plan.  I normally lose focus and shift to something else by the end of the week, but this blog helped me stay on course.  On Friday, I was going to change my plan and deviate from writing the essay.  But then I reminded myself that the essay was the focus! It seriously took willpower to have the students write the essay on Friday, but I was so glad I did.

Read week ten here.

Construction Zone: Drafting Blueprints for Learning: EGHS Teacher Led Institute Day

October 16th was a great day of collaboration and learning for our 6th Annual Teacher-Led Institute Day.  24 different workshops were offered in the morning. The workshops were planned and facilitated by 38 staff, 10 students, and 3 community professionals! The topics for the workshops were determined in response to a survey shared with staff weeks before, and from feedback from shared from previous professional learning experiences. In the afternoon, staff had time to work in their PLCs to share and apply their learning from the morning sessions, and to prepare for a great start the the 2nd Quarter!

The following photos and links will give you an idea of what the day looked like.

The Schedule:

Here is the link to the complete Doc with the schedule for the day.

The Blueprints (Shared notes)

Each session had a "Blueprint" Google Doc for shared notes.  These notes will serve as an important an important resource for staff future reference and learning, and to connect to the content of sessions they might not have been able to attend.

Sharing our Story

In addition to curating resources in the shared "Blueprints" for each session, we shared our learning via Twitter using our professional learning hashtag #214Learns. 

Check out this Storify of tweets from the day to see more! 

The feedback from the day was overwhelmingly positive, and there were great suggestions, too. In addition to conversations with staff, we will be guided by the responses on the Institute Day Survey. Nearly 100 staff completed the survey and the feedback will guide us in planning future professional learning experiences. We have already begun using the feedback to plan our 2nd Quarter Teaming on Tuesday sessions to keep the conversations going. We see the Institute Day as a great springboard for ongoing conversations and learning.