9th Grade English Review Stations

Engagement at it's finest!  Katy Kurz and Erin Milton (GISH 9th grade Co-taught English) have been reviewing for their upcoming Final, as well as helping students prepare for a unit assessment over Anchor Books.  To set the stage for the crucial next few weeks where students need to push a little harder to succeed, the students were shown a video as an activator.  The video explained the importance of 1 degree of effort and the students and teachers discussed how today's lesson and station work would allow them the opportunity to push themselves just a bit more and find success in the final stretch of the semester here....good conversation!  Enjoy!

This next video shows students working in one of the teacher-led stations and using a scale to self-assess their learning related to the target at that station.  Two stations were teacher led and two stations were independent stations.  A different learning target was written and posted for each station and students were asked to give themselves a scale score at the beginning of the station with regards to the target, and then again at the completion of the station.

This final video shows the students hard at work in each station.

*One teacher-led station had students reviewing writing process and different modes of writing.  They read descriptions of activities one would take when writing an essay (these descriptions were written on ornaments) and then they had to place the description on the correct stage of the writing process (each stage was represented by a Christmas tree with the name of the stage....so ornament descriptors were hung on a Christmas tree).  Then students placed strips of paper with descriptions of the various modes of writing in a stocking that was marked with a different type of essay or mode of writing.

*One teacher-led station had students working on Vocabulary terms by matching them with a definition or description in a game of Go Fish.

*The other two stations were independent stations were students were working on review for anchor books and for the upcoming final.

Middle School Co-taught Stations

Geri Pagel and Tami Williams (Barr Co-taught 8th grade Language Arts) consistently utilize the Station Teaching approach.  It works well for them and their students understand the process because of their consistency.

Yesterday, students were put into 3 stations.  One station dealt with Author's Purpose and the students had activities to do related to that concept.  Another station dealt with identifying nouns and coming up with adjectives to create more descriptive language (as that is the mode of writing they are working on).  The final station included students working on essays and then doing individual conferencing with one of the teachers, referencing the Descriptive Writing rubric and looking at strengths and weaknesses.

The first video shows Geri Pagel giving instructions on each station and then Tami following it up with repetition and visuals reinforcing the directions.  A great example of Duet Teaching.

The next video shows students working in the various stations and conferencing with the teachers about writing.

High School Science Classes Using Scales

GISH has really started using Marzano scales in it's classes.  Two particular co-taught partnerships that I have met with are using them, in particular - Jeff Ehlers and John LeCompte, as well as Bruce Kier and Taylor Montgomery.

Below is a picture of a scale being used in Ehlers/LeCompte's ESP class.  The students color in a bar graph at the bottom periodically with their current self-assessmet and scale score.  The bar graph allows the students to see their growth.

Below is a picture of a tree that Kier/Montgomery are using for students to self-assess on concepts....they have "leaves" with their names on them for each class and students move themselves up on the tree as they give themselves higher scale scores.  

Also, as preparation for the Biology final in Kier/Montgomery's class, students will be going through review stations covering the various chunks of content that they will assessed over.  Prior to the station review, they are going to self-assess themselves with a general scale over each chunk of concept and then will re-assess using the same scale at the end of their review time and prior to the Biology final.  

See the scale and document being used:  

Biology Final Scale