New Year, New Beginnings

Its day three of a new year here at the Delaware Area Career Center and there have been quiet a few changes from last year. Our staff has been reorganized in preparation for our building merger and we are now in three separate teams. One of the focuses this summer for our south campus team was how to better prepare students to be successful in our unique learning environments to begin the year(see earlier posts if you are just joining our journey). Reflecting back on the first two days I think we did a much better job of preparing students to jump in to our system. Heres what our schedule looked like for those days. Disclaimer: We only have students for half of the day, the other half they are in their labs so we have about a 3 hour window with them. 

Day One:
1. Started with formal introductions of our staff and administrators

2. Split our group in half. One half was given an orientation and login information on how to use the Chromebooks. The other half did some great team building and get to know you activities to break the ice.

3. Once we switched we broke students into 4 different groups. In these groups we had each one attend a different session 1. Session one was on policies and how to start their day 2. Session 2 was with their math instructor going over class set up on Blackboard or Google Classroom and getting them going on their first assignment. 3. Session 3 was with the science instructor doing the same. 4. Session 4 they completed learning style inventories and another get to know you activity.

4. With only about 30 minutes left until lunch students were given time to complete their first math videos and assignments

Now I know of these sessions don't seem like the most exciting but I think overall we had a good mix of team building activities getting students out of their seats and giving them the necessary skills and knowledge to get them going.

Day 2 was more tech focused and went as follows:

1. We again started them with some team building activities. We wanted to get them talking to one another and make sure they were awake. Our new English teacher, Mrs. Friece,  had some great activities that had the kids laughing and talking.

2. We again broke them into 3 smaller groups. In these sessions we went over the basics of Google Docs, Classroom and Drives as well as having them download some different extensions that we thought would help them be successful.

3. After our tech sessions we split the group in half and had them switch between their English instructor and myself,  their government teachers since we are the only ones who have every student in our setting. After quick intros, discussion on expectations and class set up we gave students the last hour or so to get to work and ask questions.

Moving around and talking to students after all this they seemed to be comfortable with our way of doing things and were really excited to get going. Day three seems to be a reflection of that sentiment as they have really gotten after it and seem to be comfortable in our new learning environment but of course we are in the honeymoon stage :-)

There were lots more changes from last year that we will be sure to update you on over the next week or so. Hope everyone's year starts off as well as ours did.

Hears to a new year and a new beginning.

When you teach...sheet happens.

Some teachers prefer having a spiral bound grade-book.  At the beginning of the year you write all your classes at the top of the pages.  You use your best handwriting to list your students in alphabetical order.  Some grade-books are color coded using different colored pens, colored pencils and riddled with post it note tabs. Towards the end of the year pages are folded over, Names are crossed out for a student who left and new names were added to the bottom of the list (new students who threw off the alphabetical order you used to have). The is a coffee stain from a late night of grading that has permanently warped the pages for periods 3-5.  Good intentions- now a mess.
So here is a solution- Sheets.  I would know. Some people call me the queen of excel sheets.  To be honest, I am not.  I use Google sheets as a glorified chart.  But there are a few tricks I have used and the organization is always clean, neat, and yes, color coded. Now as an intervention specialist, in my situation I don't have a grade-book per say, but I do have a lot of data and the organization is similar to what a teacher with a grade-book likes to have.  Without further ado- here is a sample of my top priority saved sheet.  Of course, names and information has been changed.  I'll show a sample of each tab and have some nifty directions too!

Tab 1- Goals and Accommodations

In my first tab I have some basic information about my IEP students, what intervention specialist I should contact, what lab they belong to (or homeroom teacher would be appropriate), a list of their accommodations and IEP goals, plus testing information. This sheet is shared with other teachers and is a great go to reference for teachers that don't like to comb through multi-page documents to find out accommodations.

Tab 2- Advisory Check-in

So this one is a great one for a traditional teacher grade-book. I use it to track my weekly conferences with students but the "check in" dates could easily be changed to assignments. Reasons to use sheets instead of tabs?  When students leave a classroom or new students are added, rows can be deleted or added to keep the alphabetical organization. You can see I have changed the months to different colors.  I really like this feature and could work for assignments by having each unit a different color.

If you hover over the top row where the cells are labeled A, B, ... you can click on the downward arrow for additional options. The choices I use the most are sorting and hiding. If I wanted to sort my sheet alphabetically by first name I would select column B and choose sort sheet A-Z.  If I wanted the sheet sorted by student ID, I would select column A and sort sheet A-Z.  If I thought I had too much information on the screen and I didn't need to always see the student ID the first name and the Lab (homeroom) I could select these columns and choose hide.  The information is still there but will not appear until I select unhide.  Nifty, right?

Want another tip? Freeze. So the information usually at the top and along the left side is usually important- you want to see it all the time. If you highlight a row or column (or even multiple rows or multiple columns) you can click on VIEW, FREEZE and then select which rows or columns you want to freeze.  These freezes cannot occur in the middle of a page but you can select as many rows/columns you want frozen starting from the top (like rows 1-3) or the left side (like columns A-D). This is a nice tip when you want to always see student names on the side or assignment names up top.

Tab 3- Due Dates

Alright, so my next tab is Due Dates.  As an intervention specialist I have lots of due dates that I need to keep track of. So far, everything I have shown in this post are my "glorified" chart tricks. One of the things that I like to use is automatic color changing codes. When I enter a date (or you can use grade values too) I can set the cell to change colors if the date is next month, this month, or past due.  The values can be set for different ranges so if a teacher wanted all grades below 60% to turn red- sheets can make it happen.  Click here to change cell color based on date proximity- great website!

My sheets are organized, quick to change from tab to tab (as opposed to flipping pages), easy to copy and paste information from one tab to another (like student names rather than rewriting them), and since I use Google Sheets, I can access the information anywhere at anytime.  This can be great when teachers want to work from home (happens all too often, am I right?), or even on my phone during fire drills.

I have other sheets that I am sure will appear in future posts but I'll let you process this for now. ;)

Feel free to comment with any sheet tips or if there is something you want us to detail in a future post!

#nextgenHS
@MrsBKelley1