Collective Teacher Efficacy

John Hattie, 2016

Collective Teacher Efficacy:
We've all heard about Hattie's research on effective instructional strategies, and how he's used years of observations to determine what works best. His latest research is shown above.  At this week's staff meeting,  we will be discussing Collective Teacher Efficacy as we begin this year's PLC process.  Collective Teacher Efficacy is a belief that together teachers can positively impact student learning. When efficacy is high, teachers show greater persistence and are more likely to try new teaching approaches. This is an area that is already a strength at Houlton, so I'm excited to see the great things we can achieve this year.

Have a great week! Sue

Rethinking Morning Work

We've been talking about the whole child, creativity, getting kids engaged... What if we were to rethink our mornings? What if mornings were a time where students were excited to come into class? What if students were doing activities that involved collaboration, strategy, creativity, rigor, problem-solving, critical thinking, or addressing various learning styles?

I saw the idea of "Morning Choice" floating around on Facebook, and was intrigued... I was curious what it would look like!

The goal of Morning Choice is to provide them with alternative morning “work” that would promote critical 21st century skills, such as teamwork and collaboration. After a few weeks of mastering the routine, they would be able to come in and choose a choice to go to independently each day. You might want to start it off with an assigned "choice" each week until the routine and expectations were mastered. If you're worried about the time it may take, start a five-minute countdown timer. Train students to know that their choice station has to be cleaned up and they must be seated and ready to go by the time the countdown reaches zero and Hawk Talk begins.

The part I loved was that kids were so excited to get to their choice time that they came running (OK, fast-walking) into school to get started. Imagine what that could do to tardies, congregating in the hall, etc.!

For more information, go to: http://mrdovico.blogspot.com/2017/02/rethinking-morning-work.html?m=1 Near the end of the article it gives examples of some of the choices - it could be creative expression, puzzles/logic/problem solving, collaborative building (i.e. Legos), games, or anything else you can come up with!

Let me know how I can support you!
Sue