What a HOOT!

Leading up to HOOT, here are some images of learning moments (and feel good moments) I saw this week.

First up, big thanks to our SEL coach Angela Cardenas who left me the nicest note when she visited first grade classrooms one day this week.  In fact, she left individual notes for every first grade teacher.  Social Emotional Learning, thinking about how we try to fill each other's buckets with good thoughts and words and deeds...this was SEL in action.  Glad to hear Ms. Cardenas was impressed by what she saw in those classrooms and that teachers are ensuring their own practice is what they preach.  Kudos to them all and truly loved my Happy Note!

Henri Matisse's The Sorrows of the King

Kinder teacher Ms. Nazar teaching all things the letter C to her young students.  When I say connected learning, I mean everything from her learning centers (writing C's, sculpting C's, creating art loosely patterned after the collages of Henri Matisse to math candy and coin game activities and more) connected to the upper and lower case letter C.  Most impressive was both teacher and student consistent emphasis and use of words that had the hard C sound throughout the entire lesson...including an impressive DBI role play where students quickly demonstrated a crawl, a climb, a cat...you get the picture.  Concrete and cool connections.  Love the letter C..and Ms. Nazar's class!

Second grade teacher Ms. Marques jumping in with a bit of creative teaching strategies around the objectives of character traits, sequencing, and summary.  Students had read the selection My Name is Yoon before using DAR (connected to photos from the story) and a bit of DBI "freeze frame"  to underscore story meaning.  I loved that students wrote reflections at the end of this activity.  Can't wait to see where she and they take the learning next!

Mrs. Satterwhite and Mr. Briones giving it their all in Music...as always.  My friend Janie calls these special area teachers "essential areas" and she's right.  They are essential to a child's education.  Mrs. Satterwhite was facilitating a bit of rehearsal time with a few fifth graders before her third grade class arrived (thanks for that extra devotion Mrs. S!), while next door students had earned a reward musical game with Mr. Briones.  Lots of movement as they sang and as he played the piano.  Fun classes with teachers who are always engaged with their students, and yes, I'm always appreciative of that!

Also, in our Special Areas, Mrs. Levine and 2nd graders working with slabs of clay, making their own Owl Hangings this week. Students were using tools, learning vocab, and supporting their inner creativity. Loved the teacher modeling and seeing how each student made their own owls unique, even in small ways! 

Safe place to share with each other!

Spanish teacher Mr. Ayres and fifth grade teacher Mrs. Dean at their very first after school Writing Club of the year.  I hear there are 16 students registered for the first semester class and when I visited Tuesday, students were free writing about various pictures they had selected from a pile...anything that first caught their eye was the direction given.  I most loved the class rule, as writing can be such a difficult thing to share with others; the good news is that final student writings should be posted on our HiPark website at the end of the semester.  For now, just know students in the club are working on their craft.  

And of course, our much loved school regulars have been in grades 3 and 4 classrooms over the past several weeks.  Talkin' about Chad and company from Paramount's Story Wranglers and T5 programs.  Kids love 'em, teachers love 'em, and most importantly, they help our students solidify their learning across many content areas.  Thanks once again and we are glad you are back with us this year!  Looking forward to upcoming 3rd grade Story Wrangler's first performance in December!

Working with students in 4th grade!

Finally, it was a HOOT kind of week...all week.  As you can see from the pics below, staff got in the spirit early and the evening brought great weather, tons of families, and a good vibe all the way around.  This annual school fundraiser is a true hallmark of our PTA, so special props to this year's HOOT queens Elizabeth Rose and Lisa Tully, as well as the sheer masses of volunteers it takes to pull off this event each year.  BIG thanks as well to all the incredible sponsors, including Scott Felder Homes and Austin Aeronauts - we all loved the hot air balloon demo on Thursday!  There's No Place Like HOOT 'cause there's No Place Like Highland Park!

Loved it!

HOOT Queens Elizabeth and Lisa

 

Teacher Balloon ride winners Coach DeLine and Ms. Davidson

Former Scotties!

Ms. Maca, aka Dorothy

Thank You to Our Sponsors!

Ms. Zabilka getting dunked LOTS!

Soon to be Scottie!

Our week

Short instructional week at our campus. I participated in a couple of good district meetings over the last few days and enjoyed my involvement, so I make mention of it here. One was our AISD Expanded Cabinet meeting, where I, along with everyone else in attendance, reflected further on our Gallup Strengths Finder assessments. Though I won't go into detail here about my Top 5 strengths, I will gladly share if you ask when I see you on campus.  Quite an enlightening experience for me as a school leader and person.  For me, it's all about the journey.  Far from perfect and really not the goal...but I keep at it.

Additionally, on Thursday, I participated in a day long District Advisory Council (DAC) retreat.  District admin, several AISD Board of Trustees, and current DAC members from all parts of AISD were in attendance to discuss ideas related to the work of the district.  Really honest conversations happening at my table and afternoon break-out group and truly, I came away thinking how many people we have in Austin who care about our district kids, teachers, and families.  It's never easy being off campus, but I am glad I participated as a stakeholder...important that we all do in some capacity.  I always come away from these type of things with different perspectives to reflect upon and a renewed sense of energy for the work I do. 

That said, in between the above off campus activities and most certainly sad news from one of our AISD high schools, our students and teachers rolled along.
 

An art appreciation night at Roll On Sushi, one of our school's Partners In Ed.  Thanks bunches 'cause we had delicious food, it was a packed house with good conversation, and best of all, first rate student created art was displayed on the walls.  You can still check out these pieces through January, so I hope you stop by to see our art and McCallum HS student art as well. Big thank you to Roll On Sushi, our student artists, and art teachers Robin Maca and Andrea Levine.

Many more Process and Product displays goin' up and good conversations around these creations continue.  I really enjoyed talking with first grade teacher Mrs. Goldsmith this week about her Nocturnal Animals unit, especially her statement that "I was honest on my reflection about how I felt when I started."  She was hesitant to try the DAR activity around art by artist/poet Douglas Florian, but jumped on board with the help of our Any Given Child coach Sloan McLain (thank you!); it was cool to hear her enthusiasm for using visual arts in a different way than she has before.  Strategies included the DAR around Florian's artwork, expository text readings, poetry, music, movement, finishing with student created art and poetry based on all they had learned.  Thanks Mrs. Goldsmith for keepin' it real with me and thanks for the Big Thumbs Up on the creative strategies you used to enhance motivation, engagement, and learning.

I also visited Mrs. Dean's fifth grade classroom.  Students are in the throes of writing Greek mythology plays, with small groups reading different cultural myths to further their understanding of these traditional stories (such as the African tale How the Animals Came and the Chinese tale The Archer and the Suns).  They also were using their Summary Graphic Organizers to get thoughts on paper, then finishing with a group tableau to give the audience (other students in the class) information on the story read by each group.  It was especially cool that students were able to tell me and show me all things annotation on the myths they were reading and to see her array of posted learning tools to help support their understanding.  I was able to catch the model tableau based on the Greek mythological character Dionysus and also saw a practice run in the breezeway by the group who read the South American myth How the Stars Came.  Both groups nailed it!

A dolphin, per chance?

All things HOOT happening this week as well.  As you can see, the HOOT t-shirts are out in full force this week (I wore mine today!) and anticipation is in the air.







Finally, I leave you with a picture of my office mate for the morning.  His name is Tucker, he is first grade teacher Ms. Brunello's newest puppy addition to her family, and he was just what the doctor ordered on a busy Friday.  Tucker and I made the rounds in several classrooms, many oohs and aahs from kids and adults alike, and I have to say, a stress buster if ever there was one.  Hope he visits again.  Tucker definitely topped off my week!

Teachers Matter

Lots of connections through the use of creative strategies and activities.  Here are a few that caught my eye.
Matter, matter everywhere and it was neat to see the progression of the learning from Kinder to Fifth grade.  Note...

Mrs. Proffer's current Process and Product display highlighting several creative ways to teach three states of matter, ie solid, liquid, and gas. We discussed her unit for some time and I was fascinated by the Pinterest activity she found online.  Using balloons in various bags on student bodies to simulate attributes of these states.  Cool.  This simulation, coupled with the strategy Art Talk, the use of music, and student created models using cereal solidified the learning in a variety of ways, and most importantly, per the teacher, students seemed to "get it".  She followed the learning processes with a paper/pencil assessment and from what I saw, yep, they did indeed "get it".

It was interesting to see how the concept of
matter, ie applying heat to solids for example, was carried over to 3rd grade and Mrs. Absher's P and P display.  Great conversation around this lesson.  She had a truly awesome student created art display, used the strategy of donkey to reinforce vocabulary, and ensured students recorded their observations, as well as reflected on their learning.
 

And finally, I caught a bit of Mrs. Matetich's  5th grade lesson on classifying matter. As last reported, Thomas Edison was going to "visit" the class, but instead Mr. Steve, from the BBC show Deadly 60, was on hand.  Mr. Steve explained to the class that his next assignment would be working around electric eels for an upcoming show and he really wanted to know more about matter and its ability to either conduct or insulate electric energy...something important for him to know I'd imagine.  He was at HP in order to get a bit of help.  How cool is that?  Seriously, a fun way to kick the off the lesson and the hand-on exploration to follow.  Thanks Mr. Steve and Mrs. Matetich too!

Expository Pillar from Empowering Writers

Role play, or rather the use of story, seemed to be in high use this week  everywhere.  Brief hooks to reel those students into the lesson.  Mr. Gay's second grade math class was working on all things word problems before moving on to fact families, with active student participation at the board and at their desks with their own fact family castles - facts not part of the family went to the dungeon!  He was in character as King Gay, even as his lovely assistant Princess Read, moved about the room helping students with clarification.  In fact, it was not a day later that Princess Read had morphed into Sherlock Holmes for a well implemented third grade language arts lesson on expository text features.  She was in full character as students searched for evidence in the book Knights and Castles by The Osbornes, which was an informational book tied to 3rd grade's upcoming Medieval Faire unit of study.  Hats off to all these teachers for jumping in and giving kids that extra something to want to learn more.  Kudos!

Ok, what else did I see around campus this week?  Almost too much to mention, but I saw...

Wonderful student created Pop Art in Mr. Gay's classroom.

Mrs. Dean's World of Books board in the 5th grade hallway.  All about genres...

A repeat appearance by Pepperoni Perone from Pollyanna Theatre as fifth grade students begin to craft their own Greek Mythology plays.

And a question of the day in Mrs. Dean's classroom that just made me smile.









And of course, the annual Parade of Pumpkins is on full display this week, leading up to all thing
HOOT at the end of the month.  Lots of really well crafted pumpkins, with bidding well under way from Day One!

Lee, Ian, and their over the top pumpkin creation!

Lots of good stuff around and yep, it really hits home that good teachers matter.  Not only those beginning ones fresh from stronger every year university teacher prep programs, but our reflective, well practiced veterans too.  Both have chosen teaching as a profession for the long haul (takes time to hone your craft in any profession) and that says something and means something in the classroom.  Thanks to those who have chosen to be teachers.  The work you do does matter.