Category Archives: Elementary Education

Updated Narrative Standard Referenced Writing Rubrics – 2015

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Good afternoon!

The Narrative Standards Referenced Writing Rubrics have been updated.  There has been a slight change for grades 7 and 8 in the quarterly writing assessment sequence. The ELA Standards shift their emphasis from narrative to informative writing and to support this shift, we will assess informative writing in both first and second quarter.

Click here for Narrative Rubrics

Click here for 7/8 Informative Rubrics

Argument Opinion Writing will remain in place for all grade levels for the third quarter.

Quarter 1: K-6 – Narrative, 7/8 Informative, 9-12 Narrative

Quarter 2: K-12 – Informative

Quarter 3: K-12 Argument/Opinion

*Research – W.4 is assessed when it makes best sense for the teacher to do so.

Prompts, directions and scoring guides will be updated shortly. Information regarding the quarterly writing assessments will be posted on the Instruction Blog, the web page and emailed directly to principals, PD Liaisons, and School Assessment Coordinators.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Melissa Linton, ext. 8861 or mlinton@kpbsd.org

Elementary Administrivia

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Please note the following items apply to all levels, K-12.

These items apply only elementary levels:

  • 2015 Enrollment of Accelerated Elementary Students provides guidance on the appropriate course enrollments for elementary students who are academically accelerated.
  • 2015 Early Entrance reminds principals of the required deadlines to notify the Elementary Education Office of any children screened, or scheduled for screening for admission under the Early Entrance policy.
  • The training for the Kindergarten Developmental Profile is now available online at https://mix.office.com/watch/suamma467bqs and will no longer be delivered through a webinar or Lync session.

 

What’s New in Curriculum for KPBSD?

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Welcome Back!

New Health Curriculum and Materials

HEALTH CURRICULUM WEBPAGE – CLICK HERE

The Great Body Shop program will be the core curriculum material used for Health Education in grades K-8.  Over 40 teachers have been trained in the new materials this summer.  Teachers who have not attended a summer training will receive an email in August to access the online materials. Student subscriptions will be pre-loaded via PowerSchool once student schedules are active. Teacher and student materials have should have been delivered to your schools.

High School Health Course can be taught using the Pearson Health or the Health Course in Canvas (a course developed by our KPBSD teachers in an electronic format)

Health Modules for grades 10, 11, 12 have been identified.  Training for these modules will be offered on September 22. Ideally, each high school will send 1-2 teachers to this training.  Lessons from The Fourth R Plus and Common Sense Media have been chosen as the core material.

Digital Citizenship Program – Common Sense Media replaces ISafe for grades K-12

Common Sense Media Resources – CLICK HERE

 

2014 Revised Health Curriculum (Great Body Shop and Common Sense Media)

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Good morning!

Below are links to the new K-8 Health Curriculum and the aligned Great Body Shop and Common Sense Media resources.  High School Resources will be available in August.

If you have not already done so, there are training opportunities being offered on August 3 and 4 for The Great Body Shop (K-8) and High School Health.  Please visit Generation Ready for a complete schedule of trainings.

See below to access a Demo version of The Great Body Shop Program:

Go to www.TheGreatBodyShop.net

–  Click on the “Current Customer” tab at the top right corner.

Username:  GBSvteacher

Password:  99669

To review the new health curriculum, please click the following links:

Elementary Health (K-6)

Middle School Health (6-8)

High School Health (Health Course and 10-12 Social/Emotional Modules)

New Digital Citizenship Program – Common Sense Media replaces Isafe

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Beginning fall 2015, we will discontinue the use of ISafe lessons and will replace CIPA required digital citizenship curriculum with material from Common Sense Media (CSM).

CSM offers a wide variety of resources beyond digital citizenship lesson, so please feel free to check out all they have to offer.

Visit www.commonsensemedia.org  to learn more. Click here to help you get started!

KPBSD Grade Level Lesson Sequence, Memo and  Forms

Kindergarten                                  Fourth Grade                           Tenth Grade

First Grade                                    Fifth Grade                                Eleventh Grade

Second Grade                               Sixth Grade                               Twelfth Grade

Third Grade                                   Seventh/Eighth Grades

Common Sense Media Introduction Materials

Community Discussion Guides

Elementary Administrivia

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The following information was shared during Administrivia at the 3.25.15 Administrator’s Meeting.

  • The current secretary for Curriculum and Elementary Education is retiring.  Please note that as of 4.1.15, Krissy Mahan will be the contact for these departments.
  • The Year-End Checklist promotion/acceleration information should be submitted to the attention of Krissy Mahan.  A memo indicating the final decision for each considered student must accompany a copy of E 5123. Additional guidance is available by reviewing BP and AR 5123 or contacting Dr. Ermold.
  • The annual KPBSD Leadership Academy will be held on May 27 & 28 at Soldotna High School.  Schools with ten or fewer teachers may register one teacher along with the site’s administrator, while schools with more than ten teachers may register two teachers to attend, along with the site’s administrator(s).  Although fewer participants will be funded to participate, those off contract will receive their per diem rate for these days because the District Instructional Team strongly believes the learning, decision making, and subsequent leadership provided by participants in the Leadership Academy constitutes a higher level of engagement and follow up expectation of shared leadership than participation in a sit-and-get training or materials orientation. Names must be sent to Cindy Cornett for registration.  Travel requests must be entered in Generation Ready.
  • When planning for 2015-16, principals need to ensure there is time allocated during Parent/Teacher conference days for professional development.  Any principal who is concerned or who needs help planning to provide adequate time for conferences should contact his/her director for guidance.

 

Standards Referenced Reporting Committee Update

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The following message was sent to elementary principals and the PD Liaisons at sites with elementary grades.  Questions regarding the content of this message may be directed to school principals or Christine Ermold, Director of Elementary Education KPBSD.

The Standards Referenced Reporting Committee met on January 27th and reviewed the survey results from the first semester survey to elementary school teachers regarding standards based grading and standards referenced reporting.  If your site had three or more respondents to the survey, the school principal and Effective Instruction coach assigned to the school will receive a separate email with those results.  If you had less than three respondents, you will only receive the summary below. There were 118 respondents, and it is estimated that about 350 teachers teach grades K-6 in some capacity (including special education, specialists, and general education teachers) districtwide, yielding an approximate response rate of 33.7%.  The committee intends to redistribute the same survey again next December, to see what areas we’ve made progress in and which areas still need attention.

Following is a summary of district level data.

Regarding the standards and the report cards:

  • 79.65% of respondents indicated they understand and use the new standards.
  • 82% indicated they know how to help parents/guardians understand standards referenced rubrics and reports.
  • 75.79% indicated their students and/or they regularly refer to the standards that are being taught during regular daily work.
  • 42.48% of respondents indicate they are able to help students, colleagues, and parents understand what Standards Referenced Reporting is, and why we are using it.
  • 4.42% indicated they really don’t know what it is or why it’s being used, while 15.93% indicated they know what it is, but are still wrestling with why it’s being used.
  • 8% of respondents indicated a generally negative view of the standards referenced report card in their comments.

 

Regarding desired support and professional development opportunities:

  • 61.25% indicated grade level or small group in-service training is  something thing they’d most like to have available during the semester ahead.
  • 31.25% indicated a desire for a for-credit book talk on standards and grading.
  • 31.25% also indicated a desire for school-wide in-service training led by a district coach or member of the Standards Referenced Reporting Committee.
  • The desire to have PowerSchool front loaded with more assignments and assessments already linked to the standards was indicated by 55.26% of respondents.

 

Regarding collaboration:

  • 75.01% indicated their collaborative team has used student progress on the standards as a focus of their professional learning and work together.
  • 61.84% requested that the district provide facilitated collaboration during early release or in-service time to create more rubrics and tools for teaching and monitoring progress towards the standards.

 

As a result of the information found in the survey results, the Standards Referenced Reporting Committee took immediate action to:

  • Schedule grade-span focused collaboration sessions via Lync to provide an immediate opportunity that could help meet the identified need (see the email from Michelle Thomasson dated 1/27 sent to PD Liaisons and inserted here: PD For Grade Level Collaboration).   Please note that each school’s principal, in partnership with their PD site Liaison, is charged with assessing and planning for the professional development needs of the staff.  These sessions are a supportive opportunity for your teachers but you may need to schedule more site-specific activities to target your teacher’s needs.  As a reminder, the Effective Instruction Coaches and members of the Standards Referenced Reporting Committee are available to support you in this area, as may be needed.
  • Provide the survey results to principals, PD site liaisons, and coaches in the hopes of promoting conversation and planning of future collaboration and PD that meets each site’s identified needs.
  • Created a one page guidance document regarding standards referenced reporting for students who have IEPs.  The document was reviewed by the special education department.  A copy has also been inserted here Spec Ed Guidance and added to the ‘S’ drive for your easy reference.
  • Work towards creating short videos explaining the standards and the reporting system that can be posted on YouTube and shared with parents.

 

Recommendations for future action (based on the survey results and other input received from our district’s teachers and principals) include:

  • Recommending an allocation of professional development funds in FY16 to support grade-alike collaboration sessions focused on rubrics for assessing the standards and ways students can demonstrate a ‘4’ on various standards.
  • Offering a for-credit course via distance technology focused on a book talk about standards and grading during 2015-16.
  • Continuing to provide as-requested support to specific sites.
  • Continuing to provide just-in-time updates during Coffee/ Tea sessions, on the KP Knowledgebase, and in the ‘S’ drive.
  • Continuing to front-load PowerSchool with assessments tied to the standards, and encouraging curriculum committees to identify any assignments that are likely used by most teachers that can also be front-loaded into PowerSchool.
  • Provide a refined guide for principals, secretaries, and teachers at multi-graded sites regarding the minimum course enrollment required in a student’s schedule.

We will work to get any site-specific data you’re going to receive to principals ASAP-  It should be by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest.

Thank you for all your effort to support our students, their teachers, and their parents!

 

Argument Opinion 3rd Quarter Common Writing Assessment

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Below you will find Common Rubrics, Prompts, Directions and Resources for the 3rd Quarter Argument Opinion Common Writing Assessment.

Click below:

ARGUMENT OPINION RUBRICS, PROMPTS, DIRECTIONS AND RESOURCES

The ELA Committee encourages teachers to use the Rubric for instructional purposes as well as for this on-demand assessment.  Teachers are also developing student friendly rubrics/checklists to assist in their instruction.

Rubrics may not match the pre-load assignments in PowerSchool.  Only input scores for standards that are identified in the common rubric. This misalignment will be corrected in the 2015-2016 school year.  Thank you ahead of time for your patience.

As teachers transition to the standards referenced rubrics from the Six Traits, the following resources from  Education Northwest may be helpful:

http://educationnorthwest.org/resource/crosswalk-between-61-traits-and-ccss-english-language-arts-standards-writing-and-language

Please send specific feedback to Melissa Linton at mlinton@kpbsd.org or ext. 8861

ELA Common Writing Assessment Committee Members

Secondary Education & Student Activities “Administrivia” (1.21.15)

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Secondary Education “Administrivia” (1.21.15)

  • Digital Technology Initiative Mid-Year Update:
    • We are half way through year 1 of our three year grant from the DEED.  Our mid-year report was submitted January 15th to the independent evaluator (Dr. Dale Cope)
    • The 15 teacher cohort is in the middle of their formalized training/PD sessions.
    • Most cohort members have completed the Quality Matters online course training curriculum.
    • Several Blended Learning topic Lync session trainings have/will also take place throughout this school year.
    • 19 Educators attended the iNACOL conference in Palm Springs, CA funded by the grant
    • 20+/- Educators will also attend ASTE this February in Anchorage funded by the grant
  • Activity/Field Trip Travel Possible Technology Assistance:  
    • David Henson and Jim White are working on a prototype activity trip tracking system that will preload trips, participants, emergency paperwork, and the ability to add/subtract trip participants and add notes/details using a smartphone and a QPC code reader application.
    • We are going to be working with some schools to pilot this  year and hope to go live district-wide next Fall for all activity and fieldtrips (K-12).
    • A new Travel regulations memo will be formalized by the end of this year to reflect all current and any new activity travel expectations for schools (i.e. travel range restrictions, when use of ALMR radio is expected, private vehicle transport restrictions, coaches driving restrictions, and driver on duty/driving time restrictions, etc…).
  • Distance Learning Program:
  • Our second semester course enrollment numbers are at 1010 as of this morning (1.21.15).  This is early for numbers to be this large and our teachers are near capacity on their individual teacher loads.
  • Some changes planned include allowing students to enroll in distance classes during the course enrollment period directly from Powerschool (DP/Counselors working on this now)
  • Next year Credit Recovery Courses for Connections and our K-12 program will no longer be supervised/Teacher of Record by the Distance Learning Program.  Like our larger high schools have for years, these schools will now need to oversee Credit Recovery with their own teaching staff.
  • As the program grows we are hearing concerns/worries from teachers about whether they will eventually be replaced by distance education.  This is absolutely not the case and I would be happy to discuss these concerns with anyone.  Please refer questions on this matter to me (John O’Brien)

 

 

  • Summer School Credit Recovery Session:  
  • The session will be run just as it has in the past.
  • Our large high schools provide the program (SoHi, Nikiski, Homer, KCHS, Seward)
  • All CORE areas are provided (Math, Lang. Arts, Social Studies, and Science)
  • The program is an “on-line prescriptive” web based program through Pearson called “GRADPOINT”
  • The Session runs for three weeks in June. Half days (8:00-noon) June 1-19
  • Principals do their own hiring by emailing internal certified staff to solicit interest
  • Staff need to be certified and HQ in one of the four CORE areas (preference)

 

 

  • Policy Change TAKE NOTE: 
  • AR 6146.1 High School Graduation Requirements: Additional quality points will be assigned for College Board Advanced Placement (AP) courses for the purpose of calculating grade point average (GPA). For each passing semester grade in an Advanced Placement course, 0.021 will be added to the student’s cumulative GPA. Effective for SY 2015, the fall semester weighted quality points will be added at the conclusion of the fall semester (like before).  In order to receive the spring semester weighted quality points, students must also complete the National Advanced Placement course examination.

IMPORTANT AND TIME SENSITIVE! MyMath ConnectEd – Please Read!

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It has come to our attention that Electronic Student Editions of MyMath materials in Connected will soon expire.

ALL teachers who use these digital resources will need to extend the date of usage in the Student Editions, Manage Content Tab.

This PowerPoint (MyMath ConnectEd Redeption Code date renewal) will walk you through a very simple four step process to change the date so expiration will not occur.

Please share as needed and call/email Melissa Linton if you need assistance.

Thank you,

Melissa

x8861 mlinton@kpbsd.org