Matt Renwick's List: Theory and Practice

• VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation
• statistical black box

  • Rick Wormeli noted that there is a 30 point variance in VAM. So a teacher who might be a 50 could also be an 80 or a 20.

• Groups that reviewed instructor notes performed best.
• thinking about the information — paraphrasing rather than writing everything verbatim — improves retention
• That means considering points as you take notes and connecting new ideas with information from earlier lectures.
• While typing he organizes material into sections with main ideas, bullet points and asterisks.

  • Is the Frayer model I am using a good note taking tool?

2 more annotations...

• After four years at the charter school, eighth-graders showed average test score gains in math equal to an additional year and a half of school, compared with district students.
• an extra half-year in science and almost an extra half-year in English
• the charter has a lean administrative staff and slightly larger classes—31 students compared with an average of about 26 or 27 in district schools—so it can pour resources into teacher pay and training.
• Teachers are observed by colleagues and get feedback weekly, and they have four weeks of full-day professional development each year.
• Days are long, with teachers at work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and students attending from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Many teachers don’t last. Of 43 hired during the four years studied, 47% didn’t return for a second year, in most cases because they weren’t asked back.

  • I wonder why - performance, or too much stress due to longer hours and out of work expectations? Regardless, this high turnover rate has got to impact the kids in the end.
• Critics of charter schools say, among other complaints, that they drain money from regular public schools, skim talented students and nudge out disruptive ones.

5 more annotations...

• this conversational technique helps students think and talk about a text beyond its literal meaning

• Four groups read the e-book with a dictionary with (1) static visuals (SVs) without the printed focal words, (2) dynamic visuals (DVs) without the printed focal words, (3) SVs with the printed focal words, or (4) DVs with the printed focal words. The fifth group read the e-book without a dictionary (control). The results show that word explanations and word use progressed the most after reading the e-book with DVs and printed focal words. Less progress was observed when reading with SVs with printed focal words and DVs without printed focal words.

• a cross between a hospital operating theatre and a Viking longboat

• ClassDojo does not seek explicit parental consent
• threatening them into compliance
• “I have told all my staff, ‘You cannot display this data publicly,’

1 more annotation...

• some staff members rejected
• no longer in the bottom 5 percent
• strong leaders, supported teachers, and an engaged community
• eliminated the principal position and instead installed two deans at the helm
• incredibly freeing
• I’m a better teacher

4 more annotations...

• seems to engage the kids
• d. Or, to
• Ms. Wertheimer warms them up with a text-dependent question: "Are all of these native peoples nomadic?"

  • "Warms them up" - That is not the descriptor I would use for that question.
• "On page 6, paragraph 2," he says, "the first sentence: 'The Haida and Tlingit of the Northwest built permanent wooden homes called longhouses.' "

  • How is this any different than the outdate practice of call and answer?
• seems to engage the kids

  • Because the hands shot up?
• tiring work for the kids

  • Why is it tiring? Shouldn't it be invigorating?
• dives into the packet

  • An oxymoron if I every saw one.
• kids here have leveled libraries
• It's a way of labeling books based on the skill needed to read them.

  • Or a way of labeling students, at least indirectly.
• counterbalance to the tough stuff

  • Kids will challenge themselves, when the text invites learners to challenge it. The requires provocative reading.

8 more annotations...