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Dear Parents and Guardians,
There is a great deal of research that focuses on what are the characteristics of a high achieving school. One factor that has a big impact on student achievement is teacher efficacy. What is teacher efficacy? Teachers feel confident that they have the ability to make a positive impact on student learning. There are two ways that a teacher can build on their efficacy in their careers.
Vicarious experiences: For example, a teacher might observe another teacher using a particularly effective practice and thus feel more confident that, through its use, she could be more successful in reaching her students.
Social persuasion: In a school setting, this could take the form of feedback that highlights effective teaching behaviors while providing constructive and specific suggestions for ways to improve. However, such “persuasion” is likely to lose its positive impact if subsequent teacher experiences are not positive. Teacher Efficacy: What Is It and Does It Matter? By Nancy Protheroe
Some experiences that are not positive can be a lack of support by the administration, not having a mentor to assist teachers in developing their skills, or parent feedback that is offensive or misplaced.
When I first came on at Haycock one of the main concerns I heard from parents is retaining strong teachers at the school with less turnover. Where am I going with this? Being in education for close to 40 years, I know how important it is to develop a positive relationship with the parents of my students. I can’t tell you how many nights of sleep I lost from a scathing email from a parent questioning my abilities as a teacher. Please be careful when emailing or talking with the teachers. I can’t put into words how much effort and time they put into your children. We all want what is best for the students. Communication needs to remain positive to build a strong teacher efficacy at Haycock.
Our teachers are extremely thankful when they receive positive feedback from parents. It validates their hard work in creating a positive learning environment for your children.
On another note, some parents have been asking about some programs that the students are experiencing this year at Haycock. We wrote summaries of three programs that are having a large impact on student learning. The activities below are engaging and promote creative and critical thinking skills.
Augie
Problem-Based-Learning
How do you provide independent and collaborative learning opportunities that enable students to construct their own knowledge through inquiry and discovery? Engage students in higher level thinking rather than rote learning. Problem-Based Learning of course. Many of you may have recently seen a change on how students are doing projects and collaborative work in the classroom. You may have heard from your child that the class is doing a PBL or Problem-Based Learning project.
So, what is the Problem-Based Learning model? “PBL offers K-12 teachers a structured method to help their students build thinking and problem-solving skills while students master important subject knowledge. It empowers students with greater freedom while providing a process that teachers can use to guide and lead students. Most of all, PBL transfers the active role in the classroom to students through problems that connect to their lives and procedures that require them to find needed information, think through a situation, solve the problem, and develop a final presentation.”
How to Use Problem-Based Learning in the Classroom by Robert Delisle
PBL is different from the traditional student project. Each PBL contain the following elements:
Inquiry-Based Opportunities
- Students construct their own meaning through inquiry-based learning experiences.
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Students engage in rigorous and relevant learning experiences that support the development of Portrait of a Graduate skills.
- Teachers facilitate students’ investigation of open-ended questions.
Student Engagement
- Students have a voice in how and what they learn.
- Students engage in authentic experiences and can make real-world connections.
- Students are engaged in and lead discussions related to content knowledge that allows for cross-curricular connections.
- Teachers design learning activities that encourage higher-order thinking.
Collaboration
- Students have opportunities to collaborate with a variety of groups.
- Students have opportunities to collaborate with students, teachers, and others in virtual and physical learning environments.
- Teachers create flexible learning structures that promote opportunities for student collaboration.
Public Presentation
- Students share their products and solutions with a real world audience, where they have the opportunity to discuss their project and choices and field questions from the audience.
- Students will practice real-world communication skills, considering how to send their message visually and verbally. These skills will be invaluable to their future success and employment.
- Student options may be sharing with peers, or a larger audience from the community, perhaps even real-world professionals in fields related to the project.
Problem-Based Learning is the process of addressing a real-life challenge in Colleges and Universities, Businesses, Medicine, Engineering, Government, etc. PBL is what is happening in Fairfax County Public Schools.
Math Workshops
Workshop Model is a collaborative approach in which students work together to solve a mathematical problem. The structures in this model do not resemble traditional delivery of math instruction where the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and lectures the mathematics concept for the majority of the class period. In Math Workshop, the lessons are designed to provide students with smaller time periods of focused instruction with an emphasis on their needs. Students receive whole class need-specific instruction, followed by small group independent/collaborative worktime. Students are assigned engaging activities, stations, and guided math discussions with the teacher in small groups. The model is similar to Readers and Writers Workshop program that has been in use at Haycock for a number of years. This model uses flexible groups. Students are engaged at all times in mathematics practice and reflection. It provides the teacher with an opportunity to closely observe student work and provide strong support for struggling students.
Below is one of our teacher’s comments on the advantage of using the Math Workshop Model:
“The workshop model allows me to instruct students on grade level material in a whole group, while simultaneously differentiating instruction and materials for students while they are in their workshop stations. This year, Mathematics Workshop is a focus of mine due to the high ability level of my class in particular. The workshop model allows me to instruct all students on math, yet supplement by providing enrichment above grade level for high achieving students, on grade level material for students who are proficient and modified grade level and small group instruction for students who are in need of improvement.”
Elementary schools in FCPS and in our McLean Pyramid are embracing the Math Workshop Model of delivering mathematics instruction. Teachers at the four local elementary schools attended a training on “Best Practices” using this model.
Lucy Calkins
The elementary schools in the McLean Pyramid have been focused on the work of Lucy Calkins over the past few years. Lucy Calkins is a former elementary school teacher and professor from Columbia University who has developed curriculum to teach both writing and reading. The past two summers, The Pyramid hosted trainers to come to McLean to provide a workshop for our teachers.
The Lucy Calkins’ Workshop model in reading and writing provide students with directed as well as independent choices. Student collaboration is built into the lessons, including partner assignments and small group conversations. Students spend the bulk of their time reading and writing with time to take notes and partake in discussions.
Similar to the Math Workshop model, the Lucy Calkins’ program is designed around focus or mini lessons often including teachers designing anchor charts with the students. Units are designed to allow choice within the program where students choose what they are reading within a genre unit and projects based around authentic products such as companion guides, TED Talk style share-outs, writing to be published for peers, etc.
Lucy Calkins writes, “Every unit has a couple of texts that kids read and reread and turn inside-out, returning to those texts many times. Kids work to figure out how the author made those texts and what can we learn from them. The second connection between reading and writing is that it is also important for kids to learn to write literary essays about specific texts.”
The mission of the Lucy Calkins workshop is to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers. This will guarantee that students will become lifelong learners with the skills to be successful in secondary school and beyond.
Haycock Math Olympiads
If you have a child in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade, he/she is welcome
to participate in Math Olympiads. The team-based problem-solving
competition is based on cumulative individual scores in five contests. We
request that your child be present for all five competitions if he/she chooses
to participate. This year, 4th and 5th graders will participate in
Division E, while 6th graders will participate in Division M.
The Division E (4th and 5th grade) contest dates are:
- Wednesday, November 14,
2018
- Tuesday, December 11,
2018
- Tuesday, January 15,
2019
- Tuesday, February 12,
2019
- Tuesday, March 5, 2019
The Division M (6th grade) contest dates are:
- Thursday, November 15,
2018
- Thursday, December 13,
2018
- Thursday, January 17,
2019
- Thursday, February 14,
2019
- Thursday, March 7, 2019
The contests will take place before school, in the cafeteria.
A few mock contests are tentatively planned, also in the
cafeteria, but participation in these is optional.
If your child is interested, email your child's full name,
grade, teacher, parent's full name, and email address for communication to
seunglee98@gmail.com by October 5, 2018. A waiting list will be
formed, if enrollment is above capacity.
For more information, please go to: www.moems.org.
AAP Information
Fall Level IV Screening
The deadline for Fall Level IV Referrals (for ANY student
NEW to FCPS as of January 1, 2018 in 3rd-8th grades) is October 11, 2018.
Please contact Mrs. Brower (lsbrower@fcps.edu)
or Mrs. Trumbull (astrumbull@fcps.edu)
with any questions.
AAP Information Night
Thank you to all the parents who attended the Advanced
Academic Program Parent Information Night. Attached are PDFs of the
PowerPoint and the AAP newsletter.
CogAT Testing
The CogAT testing window is October 1-12, 2018. Please
contact Ms. Boyd (haboyd@fcps.edu) and Mr.
Reeder (wsreeder1@fcps.edu) before
September 28, 2018 if you would like to request a one-time retake of an ability
test.
Mental Health and
Wellness Conference
There is just one week
left to register for the FCPS Mental Health and Wellness Conference.
For the first time, the conference will include an Our Minds Matter Teen
Summit, designed for middle and high school students, and hosted
by the Josh Anderson Foundation. The conference will be held from 8:00 a.m. to
1:30 p.m. at Fairfax High School on Saturday, September 29, 2018. Dr.
Scott Brabrand, FCPS Superintendent, will open the conference, and Dr. Amy Przeworski,
Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western
Reserve University, will present the keynote message: Using Stress to Your
Advantage in Achieving Academic Success and Emotional Well Being. Participants
in this conference, which is free to staff, parents, and community
members, will be able to choose from 35 breakout options, offered across three
sessions, many of which will be available more than once. There will also
be more than 50 resource tables available, representing public and private agencies
providing wellness-related services within our schools and in our community.
Contact
Jill Jakulski
jejakulski@fcps.edu
571.423.4414
This school
year the McLean Pyramid of schools will be working together to support our
McLean community. Our overall goal is to support our students and make
positive connections in our community.
The first
meeting of the school year that will be held will be on September 26 and our
topic is about juuling. We believe this is an important topic for every
parent in our community. The meeting will be held on September 26 at McLean
High School in the Lecture Hall at 7:00pm.
This school
year, we will be reading the book The Self-Driven Child by William
Stixrud and Ned Johnson. We will hold three meetings during the fall and
the winter with McLean High School’s counselor, Kathleen Otal, leading our
discussion. Our culminating meeting being held in the Spring with
the author leading our learning. Here are the times and dates of the upcoming
meetings:
October 10 at
Longfellow Middle School
January 9 at
Chesterbrook Elementary School
March 20 at
McLean High School
April 10 at
McLean High School
All meetings
will begin at 7:00pm. We hope that you secure the book soon and join us
in our community book talk.
Our students
are learning quite differently than when we were in school. The second
Tuesday of every month we will hold morning and evening sessions to teach you
about such programs as Google Slides, Google Docs, and Google Classroom.
Plus, we will learn about digital citizenship, technology tools, and gain
a better understanding of blended learning. All sessions will happen at McLean
High School. You may bring your own computer or use a school computer for
the session.
Morning
session – 9:45-10:45am
Evening
Session – 6:00-7:00pm
Our first
meeting is October 9. We will learn about FCPSon and answer the “what,
why, and how” of this initiative.
By working
together, we will be able to best support all of our students!
Haycock Health Room needs you!
VOLUNTEER TRAINING OPPORTUNITY
2018 -2019 SCHOOL YEAR
This one-time training is provided by the Fairfax County Health Department
& is required for anyone volunteering in the school Health Room.
Annandale - Wed., Oct 17 - 10:00AM-12:00PM 7611 Little River Turnpike, Annandale, VA - Third Floor Conference Room
Herndon-Reston - Tues., Oct 16 - 10:00AM-12:00PM 1850 Cameron Glen Dr., Reston VA - 1st floor Rm 600A
Springfield - Wed., Oct. 10 - 9:30AM-11:30AM 8136 Old Keene Mill Rd Springfield, VA Suite A 100
Pre-registration is not required, pick any training date & location.
For more information, please contact your School Public Health Nurse
or School Health Aide—Leah Crane LKCrane@FCPS.edu or 703-531-4010
*Annandale-Please park on the top two levels of the parking garage behind the building
WE WELCOME VOLUNTEERS TO HELP PROVIDE CARE FOR OUR STUDENTS AND ASSIST WITH ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES
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