Monthly Archives: January 2020

Posted on by

Jan. 21 2020 Full Department

Submitted by: Tom

21 January 2020

Attended: Tom, Michel, Ann, Peter, Amanda, Jessica, Suzanne, Charlene

We continued our discussion of standards-based grading. In our divisional meetings, the high school had moved from discussing standards-based grading would work in our history electives to writing our first standards. We decided to focus on the 9-10th grade progression. In our meeting, it was invaluable to here from the middle school department members about their experience with jump rope. They shared their list of standards. The consensus was that the standards forced them to be more focused in their assessments and made them more thoughtful about how students received feedback. They said the challenges were that students still focused too much on the overall number they earn in the term. Also, given time constraints, not all standards could be repeated enough to get a clear sense of a student’s level of mastery. They cautioned us against developing too many standards.

After the cross-divisional discussion I met with the middle school teachers to hear what they wanted to work on. They decided they would like some time to work together on updating their curriculum. A half-day PD seemed best.

Standards-Based Grading Across the Divisions

Software: Jump Rope

Middle school range of grades from 1-4

Posted on by

Math Department Meeting #3, 1/21/20

Submitted by: Pat Higgiston

We started with a discussion about motivation based around a blog post, and folks shared their classroom practices relating to problem solving and sharing and learning from errors. Debra caught us up on information about the lower school program.

We discussed our audit of data literacy across the curriculum, and planned how to do that, building on the work we’ve done already. Then we discussed short and long term goals for a  school visit. From prior conversations, we had planned to look at data literacy and differentiation, but our interest seems to expand more broadly to general progressive practice in math, and how schools navigate the tension between values, practices, and institutional priorities. There seem to be some opportunities for trips to institutions like Francis Parker and the Laboratory School, but since we’re so far into the year, we’ve considered closer visits to placed like Calhoun, Avenues, or a project-based school. Inspired by the English department’s writing professional day, we wondered about the possibilities of working on math for a professional development day, perhaps at New York Math Circles.

Posted on by

2019-2020 History Department Focus

Submitted by: Tom Murphy

Focus areas:

  • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum
  • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

We continued to work on our cross divisional writing program. The high school has the additional task of developing our standards for the move to standards based grading. We will role out standards in the year long 9th and 10th grade classes. In addition, Michele will work on developing a model for one of his electives. Middle school teachers were interested in examining their curriculum. They want to explore whether the focus of their social studies program was best for the age groups being served.