Web 2.0

So you didn't know there was a Web 2.0? You wonder what came before that? I have been *in class* for 6 weeks finding that the tools of Web 2.0 are almost limitless, and that blogging, WIKIs, podcasts, screencasts and bookmarking are excllent ways to engage student learners. I had to try it to believe it, and now I subscribe to RSS feeds, I can Google Wave, and more.

The high school art department is under construction this summer, so watch for new and exciting changes. I am hoping to collaborate with a colleague and offer Web 2.0 study groups in the fall of 2010 to share our newly enhanced skills.

I also wanted to share a very fun video of our freshmen trip that I put together using a tool called Photostory. Here is the video! Enjoy!

Stay tuned!

April Forum 2010

Forum April 21, 2010

Attendance:
Tech Team: Scarlett Sherman
Art Team: Amber Britt
Math Team: Ann Dorr
Social Studies Team: Celie Perleberg
Language Arts: Joyce Singleton & Clara Clark
Special Ed/Title Team: Heidi Raab
Spanish Team: Ana Young
Admin: Cory Pierce, Russ Kinzer
Counselors Team: Mary Ahnert

Non-Attendees:
Science ?
Health Enhancement ?
Music ?

**A Friendly reminder: when a representative cannot attend the scheduled forum meeting, a replacement representative must be chosen to attend.

Next Meeting is May 19th.


I. GOOD NEWS
• Mr. Kinzer- "Bravo Everyone for doing such a fabulous job with curriculum alignment"
• K-5 team- Thanks the Staff for cooperation with planting trees on Earth Day.
• 6-8 team- Started Advisory again. Getting positive feedback from staff and students; today’s discussion is on bullying.
• Mr. Pierce- Our School is very near being a PLC (Professional Learning Community) school.
• High school is noticing less bullying from the freshman for this year and students are more willing to approach staff when issues arise.

II.REPORT BACK on professional development ideas: These are suggestions and ideas only. Teams will need to report back with final input at the next meeting.
• 1 day Love and Logic Speaker k-12
• Step-up to Writing
• 6 Traits of Writing
• Ruby Payne Project: Understanding the Framework of Generational Poverty training
• MBI (Montana Behavior Initiative)
• Olweus Bullying Prevention Review
• Big 6 Research Model
• Healthy Living Information
• Staff Members might be able to present: Tech Team(network, blogging, best websites, online library, wikis, smartboards, iPad), Doug Peters and bike riding healthy living, Indian Ed
• How to deal with ADD ADHD kids
• Classroom mgmt tricks: Love and logic covers this
• Police/Drug presentation
• Now What: The Curriculum is Aligned
• Copyright Laws with school Lawyer Mr. Dahlam from Whitefish
• Professional Learning Communities (PLC)—training from Phoenix, AZ that several staff members attended
• Suicide Prevention, sexual harassment, drug Prevention at secondary levels
• Refresher on Math Connects and how it connects to Everyday Math
• 1 day Denny program
• Refresher on CRISS strategies
• Training on Aims Web
• Common Prescription drugs/side effects, what they are used for. -Craig Walker, Clinical Psychologist.
• Possible break up with k-8 separation with 9-12 for one day for a session pertaining to those grade levels
• Group training for HPT’s and how they can be effective
• Assessment training so we are all on the same page
Thanks to everyone for all of the great suggestions!


III. HPT Discussion:
• Would like to open the floor to anyone willing to help organize this Fall’s first few days of school for all of us. Please if you are interested in helping contact Scarlett. It is a lot of hard work for just a couple of staff members!

• What training do we need to provide to our staff to make sure the programs that are in place, stay solid and consistent. This will be explored more at the next meeting.

• Restructuring Teams: Possible option for going back to grade level teams for common assessments on the implementation of our newly aligned curriculum. The Forum would like each team to discuss this issue to bring back to the forum. Give feedback on how you would like to restructure teams. Intervention would like to stay together.

Next Forum Meeting each team will need to report the following three items:

1) Now that we have so many ideas for the Fall Professional day; what do we want to see, who is going to help plan and how much time/ money is available. Think of motivational, upbeat and inspiring ideas for the beginning of the year!

2) Discuss team restructuring for next year. Would you like to go back to grade-level teams like we’ve had in the past?

3) What programs can we use for the 9-12 level to address bullying. Olweus is designed for k-8. Would like suggestions from high school teams/staff members as to what possible program would work with secondary levels.


Have a Fabulous Day!
~Amber

Attendance: Tracy S., Matt J, Michelle K., Ann D., Joyce S., Karen P., Mary A., Ana Y., Mr. Kinzer, Clara C., Amber B.,Mrs. Boshka, Scarlett S.

Agenda:

Review of Instructional forum guidelines and procedures

Nomination and Election of Chair and Secretary positions:

Scarlett Sherman Chair

Amber Britt Sec.

Business: Feedback from the team

~Tracy, Intervention: creating a path to intervention, Changed the intervention plan collaborated with k-5 team to make changes.

Working on letting the staff know about the new intervention plan

~Michelle: Social studies reports a very positive group and getting a good start on things

k-4 records on paper, standards, benchmarks, well on their way, format is working well for this team.

~Ann Dorr: Math team, doing well with cross alignment on the curriculum. Have compared CIT scores and finding it very helpful, and enjoyable. Would like to be able to meet as a k4 team so they could line up assessments with each other. To make sure all the grade levels are on the same page with alignment is a goal.

~Joyce Singleton k-4 lang. arts. Have been working on K4 reading scope and sequence. Finding gaps, and finding creative ways to work on the curriculum. Information they are finding is very informative and helpful, making progress.

~Clara Clark: Goal for this team is to have a solid look at what is missing in the curriculum in order to look at individual grade levels and go from there.

~Karen Pogachar: Meeting CRT at 10^th grade, trying to make the curriculum meet the standards. Asking parents what they would like to see from the students as far as expectations. Making progress. “Do we prepare the students to take the test, or prepare them for moving further into the field of science beyond”.

~Mary Ahnert: Careers, Focus is on k12 career education. Noticing weekness in careers for k12 being taught. Collaborating with 9^th grade teachers to find out what is valuable for this goal. Changing the name from the transitions course to career focus.

MCIS, online portfolios, apps, and career exploration are some of the ideas this team has.

~Ana Young, spanish: looking at the standards to make alignment. What applies, what is covered, what do they need to work on and develop a plan. Making progress

~Amber: for the Arts: Goals: meet with other schools to collaborate on subject to make sure they have the curriculum information that is hand; starting with swan river. Starting the blog will help with allowing other staff members, parents, students can access the information online. We are making phenomenal progress with the curriculum guide.

Mr. Kinzer reports Shop is making progress

Scarlett: Tech team is working on infusing technology into everyone’s curriculum, and making huge progress on this and is implementing this already.

FORUM on 6/3

Forum Minutes
June 3, 2009

I. Attendance
¸ K-2: Shults
¸ 3-5: Deskins-President
¸ 6-8: Howie
¸ 9th grade: --------?
¸ 10th: Appleby
¸ 11/12: Boshka
¸ Tech: Sherman
¸ Intervention: -------?
¸ Admin: Boshka, Kinzer, Jensen, Loeffler

II. Good News from Teams
¸ High School reported most seniors got good scholarships
¸ Graduation was short but very sincere
¸ First time for baccalaureate
¸ Elementary school reported Kindergarten graduation at Sliters park went well
¸ L Losing 3 teachers at the Elem level: Deskins, Howie, Moul
¸ 8th grade trip leaves for their trip on Thursday- looks like they have lots of fun planned
¸ 5th has been at Ravenwood this week! Going well!!
¸ Multi-age went to Ravenwood last week and it went really well!

III. HPT Restructure
¸ Right now the school improvement system is bogged down. We need to re-align the entire process. All teams will be restructured by discipline and by grade-level.
¸ Next year we will be working on: Curriculum, Instructive and best practices. This is the time to focus on our students and the curriculum
¸ Next Fall one of those September days will be used for this re-alignment
¸ Content teams will be one big vertical team and then break down into smaller focus groups within the team.
¸ Benchmarks will be assessed.
¸ Next year specific goals will be articulated.
¸ Here are the teams:
¸ Math: Epperley, Bach, Pitz, Dorr, Gross, Pierce, McAnally, Tennant, Johnson, Dolezal, Swope, New
¸ Language Arts: Singleton, Lamar, Shults, Morley, Henion, Bonner, White, Blinn, Pierce, Ball, Appleby, Sullivan, Boskha, Clark
¸ Science: Brown, Trembath, Pogy, Bodenhammer, White, Heupel
¸ Social Studies: Perleberg, Manders, Carter, Aldrich, Taylor
¸ Sped: Wisher, Richter, Pilskalns, Wallin, Hanson, Raab (Aides: Manicke, Standley, Stodghill, Lyons
¸ Art: Britt, Taylor
¸ Music: Blinn, Peters, Richter
¸ Counselors: Wood, Ahnert, Nadeau, Willison, Strong
¸ PE: Epperley, Loeffler
¸ Shop: Melkioty
¸ Spanish: Young, Trenerry
¸ Tech: Richardson, Roberts, Zielanski, Shanks, Porrrovecchio, Sherman, New
¸ *****All questions/concerns will be answered this fall!! There will also be some flexibility in these teams!

IV. The Inservice Days (The First Four Days of School TENTATIVE SCHEDULE)
¸ Orientation/Cluster Day 1
¸ HPT Restructureing Day 2-3
¸ Building Preperations/Meetings Day 3-4

V. MEA Days (October)
¸ You need to have a plan
¸ MEA days are contracturally required
¸ There will be flexibility if you have made prior arrangements to fullful your PIR if prior arrangements have been made (Summer workshops)
¸ Otherwise things will be offered at our school
¸ MEA is in Billings this year

VI. Cluster Day Ideas
o AGATE
o ANKEL TAPING
o SCHOOL ATTOURNEY
o TECH
o INDIAN ED
o SUMMER INSTITURE FROM THE CO-OP
o BIG 6
o Anyone with ideas please contact Scarlett
o You get DOUBLE PIR if you teach one of the classes!!
o Teams planning on presenting a cluster need to put something in writing
o Here is the tentative schedule:

Tues Sept 1st
8:00 Greeting/Orientation
8:30-10:00 Guest Speaker
10-10:15 Break
10:15-11:30 Cluster
11:30-12:30 Lunch
12:30-1:45 Cluster
1:45-2:00 Break
2:00-3:15 Cluster

Wed. Sept 2nd Thur. Sept. 3rd Fri Sept. 4th ----T.B.A.

Subject: 2009 Totally Wired Teacher Award

Our humble colleage, Mike Roberts received the following email from Bri Brewer Head of Community Development for Dell’s Education community.

I would like to personally extend my congratulations to you on being
nominated (multiple entries) and ultimately selected for the
Ypulse 2009 Totally Wired Teacher Award!!

You were selected from more than 200 nominees for your dedication to technology supporting instruction and your commitment to being an advocate for its potential in education.
http://www.ypulse.com/the-2009-totally-wired-teacher-ismike-roberts

Tech HPT

Still working on the finishing touches of the tech plan.

Did you know that as a teacher at Bigfork Schools you can become a tech mentor or mentee? You can also ask for University of Bigfork Credit, PIR time, or personal days as a result???
Ask your building rep for more info!

Elem/Middle School Rep:Scarlett Sherman, Greg Moul, Mike Roberts
High School Rep: Sue Zielanski, Matt Porrovecchio

6-8 HPT

The 6-8 team spent yesterday's HPT meeting recommending sixth and seventh grade students to next year's leadership class. We are looking to involve students that have demonstrated the ability to sway their peers, in either a positive or negative direction. The goal is to teach these natural leaders the skills they need to use their abilities to create a positive social and educational environment. The leadership course will likely be a combination of character education, and a civics curriculum.