Tuesday, September 30, 2008

celebrations
A high school mathematics Core Pre-Calculus course has been added to mathematics options on both campuses; Contemporary Mathematics and AP Statistics have been initiated this year on the Pudong campus. These additions make mathematics education for students even more exciting at SAS.

This year we plan to further enrich the mathematical education of our students through the integration of an authentic project into each mathematics class. Authentic student work will supplement and enrich the learning both of students and of teachers. The high school mathematics team across campuses has striven for alignment from the beginning. We will continue to work closely with cross-campus colleagues on our 2008-2009 goal by posting these projects on the Pudong/Puxi shared drive. Puxi department chair, Emily Leopold said, “We have all wanted to continue to make our classes more dynamic. New to SAS, Allan Wager brings project-based mathematics experience to us and Clive Russell has also done interesting projects with his students. Even David Surowski, working from stateside, is sending us project possibilities.” The realization of this goal really is a celebration of the talent and dedication of our staff to continually make the learning better for our students.

Announcements and reminders
For anyone looking for a pretty straightforward discussion of what authentic student work is, how to design the tasks, and how to assess them, try this 2008 site by Jonathan Mueller (North Central College in Naperville, Illinois): http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm

The Ed Programs 2008-2009 Calendar is up and running in the staff section of portal.saschina.org. This year the calendar is in digital format. Regularly updated, the calendar can help you plan ahead. Watch it for professional development dates, for Wednesday meetings, and for task forces and committees.

You will also find the 2008-2009 Curriculum and Professional Development Handbook in the staff section of portal.saschina.org. Limited print copies will be available after break.

PSU:
Sign-ups for PSU courses, The Reflective Teacher, Classroom Assessment and Teacher Leadership, are open now. You must register by November 1. You may not take the course twice for credit, so if you earned credit last year, don’t sign up again this year. To register, please visit the staff section of the SAS Portal. Fill out the appropriate registration form and the PD form and submit to your principal. Course descriptions are in the PSU Course description guide also posted on the portal and here below this posting.  If you have further questions, please email Alan Knobloch.

ed-5500-classroom-assessment-200980.pdf

ed-5500-the-reflective-teacher.pdf

ad-5560-teacher-leadership-i-knobloch-200980-182.pdf

Links to Look At:
Social studies are on deck this week for sites for teachers and kids. There are loads of good sites, but those below address special topics: archeology, polling of opinions on all sorts of issues including the US presidential election, geography and economics.

http://www.pollster.com/polls/us/08-us-pres-ge-mvo.php At this site find the marriage of social science and statistics. For daily updated information about the Obama/McCain race and an analysis of polls of all sorts, including the current economic crisis, have a look. This sit is particularly valuable for high school students, but has applications for middle school students as well.

http://smithsonianeducation.org/students/index.html Three hands-on lesson plans provided by the Smithsonian Institution enabling middle school and high school students to simulate the work of archaeologists..

http://www.econedlink.org/ EconEdLink is a program of the National Council on Economic Education and offers a source of classroom-tested, Internet-based economic lesson materials for K-12 teachers and their students.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/ideas.html Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the site provides lessons, units, and activities designed to bring good geography into the classroom. Click on Kindergarten-4th grade,5th-8th grade and 9th-12 grade to find the lesson plans and activities of your choice.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/ The lessons, developed by the Peace Corps for students in grades 3-12, help teachers integrate global education into daily activities.

Friday,
September 19, 2008

Celebrations
Middle school social studies and humanities teachers celebrate teaching the writing process. A few examples include the Heritage project at Puxi, interviewing, and writing based on three of the interviews and the Pudong conflict research project in 7th grade. In interdisciplinary units, students respond to novels and use 6 Traits writing rubrics as a guide for feedback to improve their writing; students transform literature and present characters, and themes to make writing more authentic. “These examples and others illustrate integrated, interdisciplinary approaches to teaching the writing process,” writes Dave Cole.

Announcements, Reminders, Points of Interest
PSU: Last call for sign-ups for Social Psychology and Myth across Cultures. Those interested in taking this core masters course – either to count toward your masters or for recertification credit, please pop an email to Maddie Leung (maddie.leung@saschina.org) NO LATER THAN September 25. You will need to fill out the PD form as well as the PSU registration form, both attached. At Puxi: Oct 11 and 19. At Pudong: Oct 12 and 18.

Serving on our WASC Visiting Committee are a grade 5 teacher, 2 IT directors, a high school math teacher, a high school social studies teacher, two curriculum coordinators, two superintendents, 1 principal, 2 assistant principals. They arrive Oct 12.

Students at SAS: 2976
Students new to SAS this year: 605
Parents who attended Coffees in September: 739
Board members: 7
Faculty on Self Study Focus Groups, including the SPC: 48

The SAS Self Study Report is published. It has been distributed to teacher leaders and is available for checkout at all SAS libraries and at Building Offices. Electronic copies are available for download from http://portal.saschina.org

Links to Look At:
Help kids EMPOWER themselves through words . . .

http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/concord/teacherlinks/sixtraits/sixtraits.html At this online writing lab (OWL) for elementary students, you’ll find lots of supplementary resources that align with Lucy Calkins Writers Workshop. Older students can visit the Purdue OWL http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ – some great resources.

The national writing Project folks bring us to http://www.nwp.org/, a website that offers ideas for writing in a variety of subject areas, resources, professional development options and more. Registration on the site is free. It is worthwhile!

As the folks at Oxford University about words, about writing, about global English. http://www.askoxford.com/ Look here for a word a day, for arcane information about language and language change, and for word games.

http://www.etymonline.com/ This one’s fun. Site visitors can search the word histories of thousands of words. It is easy to use and has a nice definition of etymology. But beware, it has etymologies of all sorts of words.Technorati Tags: WASC, SAS, Shanghai American School, Educational Programs

Celebrations…..

K-12 Visual Arts faculty celebrates SAS art facilities, student and teacher access to materials (including online resources), the use of student visual arts journals, and the support they enjoy from their colleagues.

Here Ellen Levenhagen, ceramicist and Puxi HS art teacher works with one of her students.

Announcements and reminders

PD Opportunities:

· Critical Friends Coach’s Institute is coming Sept. 25 - 27:Thursday through Saturday and Sept. 29 - 30: Monday and Tuesday (3 PSU credits). Highly recommended by faculty who have taken it! Pop me an email if you are interested.

· Ask your principal or contact me about taking the Understanding by Design unit planning online course (PSU 3 credits)

· Don’t forget to contact Karen Campbell if you are interested in presenting at EARCOS!

· And while we are on the topic of artistic expression, our own Ginny Sampson and Kate Thornburn will be offering a weekend workshop in November on the creative process. More information to follow.

· Julie Lindsay and Sepi Johnson will conduct leadership training for elementary teacher leaders this Friday, Sept 5.

Links to Look At:

Help kids become LITERATE individuals who can communicate articulately through reading, writing, speaking, listening, and artistic expression . . .

http://www.nga.gov/kids/

The National Gallery of Art’s interactive website invites kids to the art zone to make art online. It currently features still life for kids and the BRUSHster, an interactive online painting machine. Try out the online jungle or the Dutch doll house: you’ll find a myriad of resources and ideas including information about specific artists or works of art that you can tie into lessons in social studies, language arts and English, as well as visual arts.

http://www.teachers.tv/subject Films on a variety of topics ranging from high school-aged Iraqi refugees discussing their future to Exploring the design and construction of cantilever bridges, How the BBC rates films, and Gardner speaking about his new thinking in Five Minds of the Future.

http://www.teachers.tv/artanddesign?order=transmitted&page=0 From the same teachers.tv folks come some 37 15-minute videos filled with ideas, resources for teachers and students in a variety of arts topics including photography, animation, writing opera, and using great paintings across the curriculum.

http://redstudio.moma.org/ The Museum of Modern Art site for teens, and http://www.moma.org/destination/# their site for young students both offer interactive activities for students. The home site, http://www.moma.org/ will lead you to MoMA youtube videos, and invite you to join MoMA on Facebook. It is worth exploring.

Technorati Tags: SAS Looking at Learning, Educational Programs, Shanghai American School

Welcome to the first 2008-2009 edition of Student Success @ SAS.

A huge thank you to everyone for a productive day in conversation with one another in cross campus conversations last Monday.

celebrations are coming in from across the school; the first in were K-12 ESOL, who sent along this week’s photo, courtesy of returning SAS veteran teacher, Jonathan Chambers.

K-12 ESOL teachers celebrate working hard to establish a culture of collaboration both within the ESOL department and with colleagues from other departments. Their aim has been to provide a meaningful, relevant and accessible learning environment for all of our students by integrating the development of academic English language skills into core subject areas and building content.

“We are initiating co-planning, materials development and co-teaching with colleagues.

This intentional practice of professional cooperation helps to improve teaching at SAS

and enriches learning for all students.” - ESOL faculty

Announcements and reminders

• Don’t forget to sign up for the SAS Book Club - there is a reminder in your e-mail this morning.
• The 2008-2009 Curriculum and Professional Development Handbook (with calendar) will be ready September 1

Links to Look At:

This week’s links, discovered while I was working on a homework assignment for Tom Hopkins over the summer, are resources for those of you looking to integrate global-mindedness, adaptable for many subject areas.

High school: http://epi.yale.edu/CountryScores High school students can see how the world’s countries rank in 2008 according to Yale’s Environmental Performance Index. There is a good explanation of the policy topics used as performance indicators in the 2006 web brochure of the project at http://www.yale.edu/epi/2006EPI_Brochure.pdf

Adaptable for grades 5-12: The world seed vault, located in Svalbard (setting for the icy parts of The Golden Compass), keeps endangered plants in the deep freeze: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800950.html

http://www.epa.gov/students/ This Environmental Protection Agency site for kids has activities and thought provokers for kids of all ages.

Students can create their own websites on the environment at One Environment: http://www.abc.net.au/civics/environment/03_students.htm

Technorati Tags: Shangahi American School, Student Success @ SAS, Staff Development

Friday, March 14, 2008

If Jeanie Merrill’s reaction is any indication, Self Study work is helping us gain a greater understanding of the SAS organization and transforming the way we work.  “To see a staff that craves to work together like this one does indicates an impressive level of professionalism” says Jeanie, grade four teacher at Pudong and member of the Curriculum and Instruction Self Study Focus Group. She refers to a common plea found in the areas for follow-up submitted by teachers across the school.

Last Thursday, twelve members of the Curriculum and Instruction Focus Group met to read and analyze the considerable work of the faculty on subject area self study. Through the year, all of you from every grade level and in every subject area have looked at how you deliver curriculum and at how you assess students. You have gathered student work and teacher work to analyze what is actually happening in classrooms. Through judging yourselves against WASC and NSSE (National Study of School Evaluation) criteria on a continuum of progress, you have analyzed what you do well and where you need follow-up work.

What have we learned from all this?  Here is a sampling of what Curriculum and Instruction Focus Group members had to say:

• I have learned about what the elementary schools are doing now to link into Shanghai and the China experience, and it sounds great! - Christine Doleman, Puxi HS English
• The diversity of students as well as the diversity of staff is greater than I expected - Mike Williams, Pudong HS Science
• Staff numbers and the growth in student numbers that we are experiencing is very significant, particularly in light of what we are trying to accomplish and the extent to which we are succeeding - Allison Bryant, Pudong ES Kindergarten
• This subject area evidence reflects a lot of hard work and great things happening at SAS - Nicoline Smits, Puxi Parent
• These details show a clear picture of what goes on in other departments. Nice to know what is happening around the school - Ellen Xu, Pudong ES Chinese
• There are a lot of people moving forward with common assessments and the discussions around them. This makes me hopeful for the collaboration we’ll need to accomplish the articulation needs that these reports highlight - Julie Lindsay, Puxi ES Grade 2
• ES and MS reports show that people feel good about the technology and the richness with which the curriculum is delivered - Mary Lane, Puxi ES Principal

Try these links this week!

1. Have a look at Fay Leung’s wiki-under-construction: http://philos.wikispaces.com  Look at the Cities as Classrooms section for some interesting resources for social studies and language arts.

2. The Pudong High School Theory of Knowledge students have a blog that is well worth visiting and responding to. Log on for interesting reads on a variety of subjects. http://blogs.saschina.org/pudongtok/

Cheers from the Ed Programs Office,

Lynne Coleman
Curriculum Coordinator
Shanghai American School
lynne.coleman@saschina.org

Friday, February 15, 2008

At the end of Chinese New Year season and square in the middle of the teacher recruitment season, it seems like the ninety-plus new faculty members who joined us last August have always been a part of the SAS family. New Hire Mentors met last month to evaluate the mentoring program and to set the stage for welcoming those who will join us in August. If you would like to get involved and have had CFG training, please contact Julie Lindsay or Sepi Johnson.

With Michael Thompson’s visit only a month away, I offer a sneak preview of a couple of his workshops. All workshops will be given on both campuses through the course of the day and after school – check this link for content details:The workshops are part of our Partnership with Parents Program and sponsored in part by the PTSA. Teachers are invited to presentations contingent on teaching schedules. A full schedule of presentations will be published in the first week of March.
Michael Thompson is a psychologist, school consultant, and author or co-author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, Speaking of Boys: Answers to the Most-Asked Questions about Raising Sons, The Pressured Child and Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children. A dedicated speaker and traveler, Dr. Thompson has appeared on the Today Show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC 20/20 and CBS 60 Minutes. He was the co-author, host and narrator of a two-hour PBS documentary entitled “Raising Cain: Focus on Boys” which aired in January of 2006.

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For SAS Faculty and Staff:

Critical Friends Groups

If you would like to know more about CFGs and National School Reform Faculty work, check out this site:

CFG: Catalysts for School Change

If you would like to join us for the Summer Institute of CFG training June 16-20, pop an email and a PD form to Maddie Leung or Jill Du.

Cheers from the Ed Programs Office,

Lynne Coleman
Curriculum Coordinator
Shanghai American School
lynne.coleman@saschina.org