Nov2014 C&I Newsletter

C U R R I C U L U M

&

I N S T R U C T I O N

We are Thankful For GISD TEACHERS November 2014

ST EM A ca demy S tu den t- C rea ted

Pa per Sl id e V ideo c ont est Winner !

Imelda Pacheco

Teachers Ignite Their Teaching & Learning Roughly 200 teachers attended the Elementary STEM Academy Connecting the Dots! Teachers challenged their thinking about the beliefs of STEM, and created products of their learning. Check out the Paper Slide Video below!

5th grade Bilingual at Weaver Elementary

http://youtu.be/Y5RY6GK9ARo

Click to Play

http://youtu.be/_4CYpY1Lvvg

Louise Gartrell Celebrates a STARS Accomplishment!

All Elementary PE teachers received a $600 equipment grant from the Dallas Stars, to implement their “Fitness Stars” program into Garland ISD.

The Dallas Stars “Street Squad” presented at the September Elementary Physical Education PLC.

"LOTE teachers go all out for student engagement."

Aldolfo Torne Guerrero Spanish Teacher Sachse HS Rhonda Parker (white jacket) American Sign Language teacher Sachse

Rowena Coronado Spanish teacher at Lyles MS Rebecca Embler French Teacher Garland HS

2

Curriculum Writer Orientation

Teachers engage in UbD principles in order to collaboratively enhance our existing curriculum.

Never Fear CPR Certified here!

Sachse High School Teachers who had 1400 juniors and sophomores complete their HB 897 CPR Requirement for graduation in 3 hours!!

Angie Cheatham captured Freeman Teachers using shared sheets in Google Drive to track minutes live.

Handley teachers are twice the techie with their PCs and iPads at training. #caughtbeingtechie teachers

3

Arley Barton 5 Grade teacher at Vial.

Her students were working on Personal Financial Literacy with also learning how to multiply whole numbers and decimals. th

Mrs. Siratt Watson Technology Center Talking about sums using ten frames.

Montclair Elementary – playing Origo games to help reinforce making ten.

our m fro L e g a ess ual/ES m A ng i l ent i m B t r epa

ring reate du c s t n e d Stu iTime her Glen at Heat

What’s in your learning plan?

http://youtu.be/FBvAgARPg6I 4

Eleven campuses, both middle and high school, participated in a Mock Legislation at Naaman Forest High School November 1, 2014.

The Mock Legislature event allows students an opportunity to experience a very important part of our democracy in action. Students create and present mock legislative bills and argue for and against these bills based upon their impact on people's lives. ~Caleb Tolleson

http://bit.ly/rcatogisd

The Ron Clark Academy was an amazing learning experience: engagement, passion, rigor, empowerment, it was all present and at the forefront of the conversations with 115 GISD runners. The impact throughout GISD campuses and classrooms is becoming more palpable and it will continue to be as we move towards transforming our instruction for the benefit, advancement and enjoyment of our students and faculty. If you want to see a glimpse of the learning that took place during the journey, search for the hashtag #gisdrca14. ~Nelson Orta

Corey Bankston is an experienced VEX Sponsor and he is pictured here with his championship team. Today he is sharing his experience and expertise to the new VEX robotic team sponsors. Garland ISD is very fortunate to have teachers of this caliber helping our students and other teachers.

VEX Robo tics

Gye Kraemer, a 6th grade teacher at Hudson, is offering workshops for the new VEX teams across the district. He had already held an informational meeting and has invited all teams to attend his after school and Saturday sessions. I am thankful for teachers like Gye who are willing to go the extra mile for the students of GISD. ~Laurel Dingrando

Throughout the next year many GISD teachers from all content areas and grade levels will have the opportunity to participate in various Abydos learning sessions. In all sessions, presenters take participants through teaching and learning experiences with a minimum of telling and a maximum of showing!

Here are a few of GISD's first 50 educators who experienced Abydos in October at our first-ever Literacy Symposium!

Myra Crump & Lori Elliott

“Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.�

-John Dewey

The purpose behind the TNT Institutes are to provide GISD beginning teachers with tools to prepare them for a successful year.

Many thanks, Kishawna Wiggins

Special thanks to everyone who came out to experience the Discovery Education Community Night!! The nights were filled with hands-on, minds-on engagement. Check out the Science Music and Movement Videos starring our members of our community!

Elementary Principal, Alex Rivera shows he’s not afraid to dance like a solid when engaging in science movement.

“I attended Monday with my kindergarten grandson. He had a blast and is "pumped up" for science. He is looking forward to some fun activities in his classroom.”

Thank you, Mrs. Belinda Katz ABC -Lister Elementary

When and where will Unit Assessment Previews be available?

Unit Assessment Previews for units throughout the year will be posted no later than the first day of the unit. These Unit Assessment Previews are available with the rest of the curricular materials (e.g., Online Curriculum Planner, GEO, etc.), and will include the item stems (i.e., questions) and standard(s); answer choices and/or passages will not be provided in the previews. Unit Assessment Previews are provided to teachers as an opportunity to review the instructional content of the items and determine the level of rigor at which instruction will be assessed. They are intended for teacher use only.

Unit Assessments are loaded in the Online Curriculum Planner, GEO, etc… in the Unit Assessment Folder for each course one week prior to the assessment window.

Great News!

When teachers log into SchoolNet, on the very first page, they will see active assessments!

Don’t forget all assessment keys are loaded in Schoolnet.

The efficiency of SchoolNet is really coming together!!

Additional timeline information regarding Unit Assessments has been provided on the intranet site http://home.garlandisd.net/pages/RAAD-Local_Assessments

Do you want to provide reflective feedback about the curriculum??

Click on the link to access the information: http://www.garlandisd.net/staff/requiredtraining.asp