Transcript Bear Lodge High School

Board Retreat August 2011
By
David Lougee
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Spring 2010
Fall 2010
Spring 2011
Norm
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Spring 2010
Fall 2010
Spring 2011
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2010
2008
WHAT HAVE WE
DONE!
New Look to a New Era
Bear Lodge High School has gone through a change
over the summer that has created a new learning
atmosphere to facilitate an environment of
learning. The walls have been painted to create a
mood for focus and learning, furniture has been
purchased that is conducive to higher level thinking
and the classrooms connected to move to project
based learning.
B.L.H.S. Students Reading Comprehension
Strategies Implementation
B.L.H.S. students will spend two forty minute
sessions a day learning and mastering the seven
reading comprehension strategies to improve
their personal and educational reading skills.
The two sessions will begin with small guided
reading groups where students will be taught
one of the seven strategies. The second session
is Silent Sustained Reading with the reader
taking notes over the strategy they have learned
and assessing what they have learned.
On Fridays, the students will be able to
demonstrate their reading skills to the
elementary students and/or teach the skills to
each other.
Implementing
PBL
The 2011 summer has
been a time of change
not only in the makeup
of the classrooms but
also in the direction of
student learning.
Mr. Wayne Dennis
trained the Bear Lodge
teachers and staff
about Project Based
Learning. This training
was met with
enthusiasm and a new
schedule and learning
environment was
created to maximize
student learning.
Along with Mr. Dennis
and the teachers, I
prepared a timeline
and evaluation system
to help monitor the
success of the students
and teachers.
Project Based Learning @ Bear Lodge
High School
Project Based Learning is a systematic teaching method that
engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended
inquiry process structured around a complex, authentic questions and
carefully designed products and tasks. This definition encompasses a
spectrum ranging from brief projects, interdisciplinary projects that
involve community participation and adults outside the classroom.
(Buck Institute for Technology 2003)
In Brief, PBL uses a number of criteria that distinguish carefully
planned projects:
*Recognize students’ inherent drive to learn, their capability to do
important work, and their need to be taken seriously by putting them at
the center of the learning process.
*Engage students in the central concepts and principles of
discipline. The project work is central rather than peripheral to the
curriculum.
* Highlights provocative issues or questions that lead students to
In-depth exploration of authentic and important topics.
*Require the use of essential tools and skills, including
technology, for learning, self management, and project management.
*Specify products that solve problems, explain dilemmas, or
present information generated through investigation, research, or
reasoning.
* Include multiple products that permit frequent feedback and
consistent opportunities for students to learn from experiences.
*Use performance-based assessments that communicate high
expectations, present rigorous challenges, and require a range of skills
and knowledge.
*Encourage collaboration in some form, either through small
groups, student-led presentations, or whole-class evaluations of project
results.
“There is a profound disconnect between what students are taught
and tested on in most high schools today and how they are expected to
learn, versus what the world will demand of them as adults and what
motivates them to do their best.”
-Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap
One of Bear Lodges target goals is to place every student
on an Individual Learning Plan. This will provide the
student with a team of educators to help monitor and set
valuable goals to improve the students learning. The
team is made up of all his/hers teachers,
parents/guardians, Principal, Counselors and most
importantly the individual student.
Individual Learning Plans will help us be able to monitor
the student growth in reading, writing, math, social
studies and science by comparing and contrasting the
local, state and national scores using the Paws, Map and
District Wide Assessments. The teams assessment on
these scores will help individualize the students approach
to his/hers education. Along with these plans the art,
music and vocational areas of education will be
implement to produce 21st Century Learners.
“Current
formal education still prepares students primarily for the world
of the past, rather than for possible worlds of the future.”
-Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future
21st Century Students are young people who need to learn skills to be
successful in the 21st century. These skills are:
Collaboration:
*Take responsibility for the quality and timeliness of his or hers own work; uses
feedback; stays on task during group work
*Accepts shared responsibility for the group; helps improve the quality of the work and
understanding of other members
*Applies or encourages the use of strategies for facilitating discussion and decision
making
*Manages project by identifying and prioritizing goals and tasks, creating timelines,
organizing resources, and monitoring progress
*Respects the ideas, opinions, abilities, values and feelings of other group members
*Works well with diverse group members
*Encourages group cohesion by using conflict management strategies
Presentation
*Organizes ideas and develops content appropriate to audiences and situations
*Uses effective oral presentation skills
*Creates media/visual aides that enhance content delivery
*Gauges audience reaction and/or understanding and adjust presentation appropriately
*Responds to questions appropriately
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
*Recognizes and defines problems accurately; raises relevant questions and issues,
formulating them clearly and precisely
*Gathers pertinent information from a variety of sources; evaluates the quality of
information (source, validity, bias)
*Organizes, analyzes, and synthesizes information to develop well-reasoned conclusions
and solutions, judging them against relevant criteria considers alternatives; recognizes
and assesses assumptions, implications and practical consequences
7 Reading
Comprehension
Strategies
• CREATE MENTAL IMAGES: Good readers create a wide range of visual,
auditory, and sensory images as they read, and they become emotionally
involved with what they read.
•USE BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: Good readers use their relevant prior
knowledge before, during, and after reading to enhance their understanding
of what they’re reading.
•ASK QUESTIONS: Good readers generate questions before, during, and
after reading to clarify meaning, make predictions, and focus their attention
on what’s important.
•MAKE INFERENCES: Good readers use their prior knowledge and
information from what they read to make predictions, seek answers to
questions, draw conclusions, and create interpretations that deepen their
understanding of the text.
•DETERMINE THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS OR THEMES: Good readers
identify key ideas or themes as the read, and the can distinguish between
important and unimportant information.
•SYNTHESIZE INFORMATION: Good readers track their thinking as it evolves
during reading, to get the overall meaning.
•USE “FIX-UP” STRATEGIES: Good readers are aware of when they
understand and when they don’t. If they have trouble understanding specific
works, phrases, or longer passages, they use a wide range of problem-solving
strategies including skipping ahead, rereading, asking questions, using a
dictionary, and reading the passage aloud.