Web chats

After a interesting week of work, I have found that school and community relationships are a drving factor within schools. This is something that goes unnoticed yet is very important. It has been pointed out that it is very important for parents to reinforce teh learning that is happening in schools. But do they? I'm not sure. I understand how hard it is to manage everything in todays world. But our kids/ students are our future. After all they will be changing our feeding tubes :)

School and Community Week 2

Relationships amongst parents and teachers is something that confuses me and that I think has evolved. I am 28 years old therefore, am not to long removed from elementary school or high school (am getting older though). When I was in school in Fort Worth ISD through primary grades PTA was always a active thing. I remember my mother going to PTA meetings. It is my belief now that this doesn't happen. At our school now we have 74 PTA members. We have 620 students. I understand that there are siblings, however, it seems as though PTA has become a thing of the past. This scares me. As teachers we can only teach our students so much in the 6 hours that we have them. Those successful students are the once that have some sort of reinforcement at home. Why is this becoming common? Well I have my thoughts, and perceptions. 1. More family members work now and siblings are raising siblings. 2. Demographics in the state are changing. 3. Families are becoming more transient. 4. Finally it is my opinion that education isn't valued you the way it once was. It is now solely the teachers responsibility to educate the students. Yes it is our responsibility. However, it is also the parents responsibility to help talk about what is being taught and to help reinforce what is being taught at school.

SWOT

During this first week of School and Community Relations I have learned about the SWOT analysis tool. This was unique and helps me break down the way of looking at specific programs. It was something very close to me, because this Saturday we did our third annual Keep Ginnings Beautiful Day. This day is something that can benefit from the SWOT analysis. I used it for my Week 1 assignment. It was something that I loved talking with parents and community members about.

Final week and counting

Hello everyone... Welcome to the final blog, or will it be?? Nope, I will continue to blog on this site periodically. I would love to thank our professors for showing us and giving us the opportunity to learn about and have a blog. I think that this is one of the unsung heroes of this course. I mean... we are moving forward in technology. It will be just like the new movie with Denzel and we will be able to insript things under our skin, have flying cars etc... or maybe like the movie "I'Robot" where robots do everything. So teaching us how to communicate through blogs is something I value a lot with this course. I am also very pleased to be collecting data on my action research plan and hope to make drastic changes with the help of the results I'm thinking it will bring forward. Til later thank you everyone for commenting on my blog and being a part of this course. Let the DATA DRIVE

Measurable?

Through the latest week I've began to wonder... Is my project measurable? I think I'm scaring myself off more than anything so I am going to continue to proceed. Plus it's what is happening right now. With us moving toward the STAAR test Rigor is something that we absolutely have to amp up. Our students have to be able to solve multiple step objective problems. So my concern is something that I am going to overlook. Throughout meeting with my principal and the math specialist they have insisted that I push forwrd. This does ease my concerns some.

Mathematics and The Rigor

Action Planning Template
Goal: To increase student achievement through implementing more rigorous curriculum in Mathematics.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Step 2 Examining the Work Gather the sample size	2nd grade team, math interventionist	8-11 through 4-12	Teacher rosters	Students scores within spread sheets
Step 2 Examining the Work Gather the data based on students achievement	2nd grade team, math interventionist	2-12 through 5-12	Students scores on BOY,MOY,EOY Kathy Richardson Scores on Common assessments	Start graphing what students are where
Step 2 Examining the work Organize the curriculum that was implemented by each teacher	2nd grade team, math interventionist	4-12 through 8-12	All curriculum used within school year	What was successful
Step 3 Examining the work: Developing Deeper Understanding Find all second students from previous years and color mark them	2nd grade team, math interventionist, 3rd grade team	8-12through 9-12	Teacher Rosters from 2011-12 and 2012-13
Track students progress based on any common assessments given in math	2nd grade team, math interventionist, 3rd grade team	8-12 through 12-12	Scores from common assessments or math benchmarks	Look at what students were successful and what classroom they came from in 2nd grade
Step 4 Examining the Work	Kyle Hatcher	Summer 2012	Looking at what teachers have gone to what professional development
Step 4 Examining the work	Kyle Hatcher	Summer 2012- 8-12	Creating a Power Point Presentation with scores related to professional development	How did 2nd graders do on end of year benchmark, after teachers had time to implement instruction
Step 5 Examining the Work exploring Programmatic Patterns	Kyle Hatcher	Summer 2012- 8-12	Notes on where the bias of the experiment lay. Make sure students are evenly dispersed accordingly to ability	Discussion group with Math interventionist
Step 6 Examining the Work	Kyle Hatcher, Carrie Layton, Leslie Koskie	8-12 through 10-12	Decide what is worked out to be best practices	Discussion with math interventionist
Step 6 Examining the Work	Kyle Hatcher, Carrie Layton, Leslie Koskie	Fall 2012	Look at Students 3rd grade scores	Track their progress
Step 7 Examining the Work	Kyle Hatcher	Fall 2012	Present Findings via presentation	Identify what best practices worked within the school
Step 8 Sustaining improvement	Kyle Hatcher	Fall 2012	Survey 3rd grade students too see how they best learned mathematics

Action Research Plan

Hello all and welcome to another stressful week..... A thorwing up baby, family, self..... what a 7 days. But it has been a interesting 7 days with a lot of learning. We started our Action Research Plans. I decided to stray away from classroom management. I found that there may just be too many things that might effect that. So I have decided to track the progress of our students taught by different teachers. Specifically 2nd graders and how they are being taught and how that will effect them in their growth. Here are the details Tell Me whatcha think!!!!!

The Action Research Plan is something that has hit home with me because I am actually living what I am going to be researching. Here at Ginnings, we are going to do a action research plan where we look at the teachers in 2^nd grade and their math scores. We aren’t just looking at scores we are looking at each individual classroom and the amount of rigor that is taught in mathematics. With the STAAR test changing and upping in rigor we have found that math is going to become multiple steps. Before on standardized tests in Texas you might have seen a test question that hit on one TEK or objective. Now we are looking at seeing a question that will hit multiple TEKS. With that being said we are going to look at the scores of the students who are in a more rigorous environment versus those who who are still being taught with one step objective math problems.

Since we are heavily into PLC’s this will help facilitate more rigor throughout the school. By sharing what we are doing that is the foundation of a great PLC. We will use the data to look at the common assessment scores as well as the benchmark scores of the individual students in each classroom to see what strategies are helping them the best, not only in 2^nd grade, but 3^rd grade also.

To support the statements or findings that we will come up with we will use the scores of the children. As well as the curriculum that each teacher uses and what curriculum is used. We are going to also go through the curriculum and with the math interventionist decide which is more rigorous. Thus will give us a idea of which children fall into which category.

As we conclude on our action plan by December of next year we hope to have a idea that those that are being taught at a more rigorous, multiple step level are the more successful students. However, Im sure that some questions will arrive such as can we not just “drill and kill?” or we are “teaching the curriculum we are given.” Or “I am teaching the TEK.” However, the best practices are whats best for students. I’m hopeful this research will show that.

Driving my Journey

Hello all and welcome to another captivating week in the life of Mr. Hatcher. This week we all learned and read about the 9 passions.... That's right, the PASSIONS. The passions that drive the journey. :) In these passions we looked at them and manipulated our thoughts based on what way we would or could use action research to have a better understanding of all things. I think after reading Dana's book I've realized just how important surveying the individual student is. Not only surveying them, but actually doing something with that data. I quoted Socrates in this weeks assignment and love the quote, thus I will share it with you just in case you have never seen it.....
. “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” –Socrates 450 B.C

The reason for sharing this quote is that my deeply rooted thoughts of understanding students becomes more and more prevalent every time I read it. It was also validated even  more by reading Dana this week. We as educators must some way find out what is driving students and what they like best. This way hopefully we can somehow get out of the dreaded ways that our youth have acted, learned, and thought for the last 2462 some odd years.....

Action Research

This truly does follow the title....."Hatcher's Endeavors." what a great first blog. What have I learned about action research? Well I have definitely learned what it is not. It is not a boring fad that lets other outsiders tell you what to do by researching something that has absolutely nothing to do with your school demographics, scores, and or anything else that doesn't pertain to you, yourself, and the people around you.
Through that I think you do understand that I have learned that it is something that truly drives what should be everyone’s main purpose!! That is to continue to educate you. When looking at data, does some action research, find out what you can do better, or better yet find out what other people are doing better than you and ask them for help. Action research couldn't be better in the educational system. It is something that we can use to look at everything that is valuable to us. I know in my class room alone with a simple survey and some free response questions I could take that data, cut it up and get some insight into what my students like about my teaching style and what bores them to no end.Follow the blog, folow the endeavors and gain some insight.
Leaders?? Leaders can use blogs in so many ways from book studies with one another, to having their staff do a book study and publishing it within their website, to having parents have a blog post for them with questions, comments, concerns, the possibilities are endless. I think one of the most valuable instruments are learning walks...Principals can't do learning walks like teachers... or at least as convenient. However, they can blog and bounce questions and ideas off one another. The possibilities are endless!