12/16/14 Meeting in Rebecca's Room

4th Grade Team Meeting

Rebecca needs to pull together a list for budget related to the ELA Module Central Texts

Module 1-

*A Bad Road for Cats by Cynthia Rylant

Module 2-

*Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo

Module 3-required texts

*If You Lived with the Iroquois/In a Longhouse

*Life in the Times of the First Americans

We will continue to work on a wish list.

Resource for S.S. 

http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/teachandlearn/ss/4.2_guide.pdf

December Meeting

All team members present

*Collaborative scoring on a writing piece from Cathy's student
What we noticed-it's an opinion writing, student was able to state the thesis and point of each paragraph, use of transition words, mature thought about "I'm lucky to have a dad," very concise with limited run-on sentences, well-organized

Questions-was this a published piece? How long did this take? Did you follow all of it Boxes and Bullets?

Cathy-Yes, this was a published piece based on Lucy Calkins. If took a few weeks. I used much of it, but not all of it. It was one of my higher students.

We found it helpful to assess because we are all instructing the same thing which gives us more of a background. We found that it was helpful to share out time frame for completion. Helps to keep the team on track with the year-long plan.  It would be helpful for us to see 3 levels from one class to see each other's perception of low, average, high.

Bring & Brag-discussed what everyone is bringing to the meeting on Wednesday

Math-Goal is to complete Unit 4 by 12/25. The pre-assessment needs to be done before Christmas break. Some are on track, others are not. 

Thursday, October 31st Consultation Day Meeting

Team meeting-all present
Mike, Julie & Joe all brought samples to share of their student's narrative writing. After individually scoring each of the 3 writing pieces, we used the rubric to score. Then we discussed our findings. Here are the conclusions:

Ding-Dong: Agreed on a 2.5. We agreed that it lacked transitions, was missing an ending, but had a strong beginning and 

The Ride of My Life: The group landed between a 3 and 3.5. We discussed discrepancies on the transitions and agreed that the transition words were more basic-next, then even though there was good voice.

Bayblades: We fell between a 2-2.5 and discussed sequencing.

Lucy Calkins Narrative Writing-we are all going to use the rubric from Lucy that Mara adapted. Mara is going to share with us. 

Next writing unit is Boxes and Bullets-persuasive. We agree that we will give students a RAFT writing choice related to Christmas so that we can assess and add to their grades. Annmarie has a great option with a new animals to pull Santa's sleigh and Christy's 4 choices. 

Choose 2 Knowledgeable students to send to Julie or the board. 

IB Principle for November is "Thinker"

Monday, October 28

All team members present

Vocabulary Parade-10:15
HJ Multipurpose-Neu/M-M, Lippencott
HJ Cafe-Ottman, Young
JU-Kuhn, Light, Heise

4th Grade Halloween
Joe-Balanced, Julie-Risk Take, Mike-IB Guy, Mara-Communicator, Rachel-Knowledgeable, Rebecca-Thinker, Annmarie-Inquirer, Cathy-Reflective

Module 1 Assessments-Which assessment are we each doing?

Meeting on Thursday in Cathy's Room. Mike, Julie & Rebecca will each bring a child's narrative and 8 copies of each.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Meeting Notes-Mike, Mara, Rachel, Rebecca, Annmarie, Cathy & Christy were present. Joe & Julie had goal meetings, so they arrived late. 

Math-The team agrees that the the District Math Unit 1 assessment is not aligned to the Investigations program the way that it is. Additional materials must be created in order to prepare the students for the style of questioning on the assessment. More reasoning and real-life connections are recommended in the revision of the Unit 1 assessment (i.e. There are 36 desks in a classroom. Find all the ways that the desks can be arranged in rows and columns.) Overall, the students did not score well. The average score is 6/12. We are hesitant to send this home to parents, to have them see that their child did not "pass" the first major test of the year. Rebecca is going to email the math specialists to request that they create a parent letter to explain the outcome of this first test. Lengthy discussions were had about acceptable answers and what exactly is acceptable for "show your work." We all agree that the kids need more exposure to multi-step word problems. 

Native American Presentations for November-circle talk on how Native Americans use resources or bring in supplies to make husk dolls, the cost would be $80 for the first group presentation, plus $25 for each additional presentation. 

We will request money for bussing from VEPTO to attend Helmer Nature Center. Rebecca and AnnMarie will attend VEPTO meeting to request funds. 

Susan B. Anthony Virtual Trip-Christy called-not available to 4th grade classes, the only option is to travel there. 

Narrative Assessment-the team agrees to push back the district narrative assessment to the week of October 28th. We will update this on the district calendar.

Hello 4th Grade!

We will be using this space to organize our weekly grade level meeting notes beginning the first week of October. 

Next meeting Monday, October 7th at 12:30pm in Rebecca's Room 

No meeting on Monday, October 14th (No School)

Meetings will resume on Monday, October 21st at 12:30pm in Cathy's Room 
*Please bring your narrative writing pre-assessments so that we can collaboratively grade the writing (see Lucy Calkins), prior to administering and assessing the post narrative writing assessments.