Week Ending April 7, 2017

Busy, Busy, Busy...

We started the week with delicious cupcakes in the Senior Class sponsored Cupcake Wars and our own Joy Tavano won. Congratulations Joy. Monday, we were treated to an appreciation lunch in anticipation of the Crystal Apple Award recipient. Congratulations again to Norma Caiazza. The middle of the week we were entertained by the wonderful voices of the NK Chorus (high school and middle schools) and All Town Strings, we also collaborated with industry leaders for both our Business/Finance and Engineering/Robotics Academies and we have wrapped up the week with fieldtrips; Mr. Carty in Wickford, Mrs. Silveira and Mrs. Boisclair in Philly and Mrs. Caiazza in New York. We have only just begun fourth quarter.

Enjoy this weekend. Four school days and then relaxation.

Health and Wellness

From Karen D’Abrosca

April 7, 2017

The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated April 7th as "World Health Day"

The theme of 2017 World Health Day campaign is depression.

According to  who.int  “ Depression affects people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all countries. It causes mental anguish and impacts on people’s ability to carry out even the simplest everyday tasks, with sometimes devastating consequences for relationships with family and friends and the ability to earn a living. At worst, depression can lead to suicide, now the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year olds.”

Understanding depression and other mental illness is the topic being presented (during the school day) to all Health and Physical Education classes Thursday May 11 and Friday May 12 – Gym 1.

“Inside Mental Illness” is the doorway to obtaining some information on this very important topic – you are invited to sit in during your planning time if you have the chance.  

Upcoming Events/Important Dates

April - Community

11 PTSO Meeting, 7 pm

    School Committee Meeting, 7 pm

14 No school - Good Friday

17-21 Spring Recess

Good News!

The Skipper Pride winner is Jean Leich, who was chosen from the last winner, Emily Bell.

From Emily to Jean:

​Dear Jean,

I have chosen you to receive this week's Skipper Pride Award! You are always the first to lend a helping hand and you are so generous with your time. You are eager, determined, and genuine.  Although your office is busy, I admire how you are always calm under pressure.  Your kindhearted ways are admired by all, and we are so lucky that you choose to walk or ride your bike to NKHS every day!

​Emily ​

NKSD Music Education and Access

Congratulations to NKHS Music Department! They are the only district in RI and 1 of 527 school

districts that are among the Best Communities in the nation for music education.  The award program recognizes outstanding efforts by teachers, administrators, parents, students and community leaders who have made music education part of the curriculum.  Designations are made to districts and schools that demonstrate an exceptionally high commitment and access to music education.

Rotary Nominations

NKHS will be highlighted for the April Rotary Teacher and Student of the Month. We have a diverse faculty and many teachers go out of their way everyday to make a difference. Same goes for our student body. Nominations were due by today. Thank you.  

Thank Goodness for our Volunteers!

Students in the Interact Club spend an afternoon this week making sure our Campus is clean. Thank you very much.

Teaching and Learning

From Barbara Morse:

Last Thursday was the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Student Focus Groups.  The purpose of these groups is to gather feedback about specific topics such as scheduling, student technology, and program of study offerings.  Students are able to sign up via a google form and invitations are sent out for meetings. The members of the group may fluctuate based on the specific interests of the students.
Here's my "why".   First, I am dedicated to the idea of promoting student voice and I know that there are many students who are more comfortable speaking in small groups.  Research training suggests that mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) can be a valuable tool.  The big idea is that quantitative surveys give us data, but qualitative methods can explain that data at a deeper level.  So, when the student survey went out about the proposed schedule, the next natural step was to have more personal conversations with students about common themes we found in the survey results.  Those School Retool sessions are helping me put into action the things I want to accomplish - I'm learning that even a few small steps can yield big results.

I hope the students enjoyed the focus group experience as much as I did.  Their feedback and comments were amazing and I was reminded of what an outstanding group of students we have.

♕♕♕♕♕

Scheduling Update:

If you did not see Dave Avedisian today (Friday) there will be a vote at 6:45 am in the Auditorium on Tuesday morning, April 11th on the MOA.

Blended Learning

Erica Ricci, Deb Santagata, Christine Lyons, Rhonda Kosiver and Grafton Bucklin are all Lighthouse Classrooms. They are working with the Highlander Institute to bring blended learning to their classrooms. I was in Ms. Ricci’s US 1 classroom just over a week ago and she had a dynamic lesson prepared. Three stations: the first, was a small group discussion with her; the second, worked as a team to list specific items on chart paper after they had read on the topic; and the third group worked individually on an online quiz at their own pace. On the Smartboard was a timer so the groups knew when to rotate. This was going on in her 5th period class and I was able to see one rotation. Erica said in her 90 minute class with her juniors the same type of rotation is going really well.

If anyone is looking for information on this Lighthouse Classroom please feel free to ask anyone of the teachers. They, like you, are doing their best everyday to introduce engaging lessons for our students.

Student Services

Excerpt from an April 1 letter from Rosemarie Kraeger
(Middletown Superintendent and MIC3 Commission -- RI)

April is the Month of the Military Child. During April, the MIlitary Interstate Children’s Compact Commission (MIC3) will underscore the important role children play in the Armed Forces Community. Our military children and families help sustain our fighting force on whom we depend for the security and safety of our nation's families and communities. It is important to emphasize and recognize the role that military children play while their service member parents are serving the nation. The MIC3 is committed to resolving the educational transition issues that are faced by these children and their families.

April 25th is “Purple Up! For Military Kids” day. Across the nation, people are being encouraged to show support for our military and veteran children and to thank them for their strength and sacrifices. Let's show our support for our military population in the school by wearing purple. Email Donna with contest ideas to get their student peers involved.

Tech Tip

From Mark DeLucia:

Week Ending April, 2017

Assessments on Google Forms and Student Dishonesty

"...but if I post a quiz or test to Classroom, or e-mail it to my students, won't they be able to share it with others?"

This is a question I receive rather frequently from teachers, which serves as the inspiration for this post.  The unfortunate answer is yes, pressing "Send Form" to e-mail a Google Form test or quiz to students or posting it to classroom, will make it easier for students to share that test with absent students or those in another class.

Here is how you can keep using Google Forms for your assessments and still preserve the integrity of the test:

1) If you have one Classroom page per course rather than per section (which is what I recommend), post the assessment to Google Classroom when students are ready to take the test.  When you’re creating the post, click “All Students”.  You should see a drop-down with all of your students’ names.  Only select the students in that period, omitting any absent students.  This will prevent students from other sections from seeing the assessment ahead of time.  

2) The teacher can "push" the test out to students.  In the upper right hand corner of your browser right now you should see the little green Google Classroom icon (provided you are using Chrome).  If you click that, then click the appropriate class (provided you already have Classroom set up) it will give you the option to ""Push to students".  As long as students have Google Classroom open, the test will appear on all their devices-- just like passing it out.  Really, you can do this with anything you want to "pass out" to students, a web site, a document... anything.

3) Another option is to use a URL shortener such as the Google one (when you see goo.gl....), tinyurl.com or tiny.cc.  The teacher can copy the link to the form then paste it in on the site and name it whatever they want-- "tinyurl.com/chapter1test", for example.  Tiny.cc, specifically, addresses today's topic-- it allows someone to make a URL active or inactive.  So a teacher could create the link, have students take the test, then take it down and reactivate when kids are ready for the test.  By creating a log-in, it also allows you to SAVE them all for future use, which is even nicer.

I would love to hear if anyone has other methods they have used successfully.  I've tried all of the above methods but I find that #2 works best and is very user-friendly.  Of course, none of these can replace good old-fashioned proctoring.  Certainly don't discount the power of using Forms for assessments, particularly  common ones such as midterms or finals.  By having the results of all classes populate to the same response sheet, teachers can now look at the data as a department or team and make adjustments, accordingly.   It's a great way to disaggregate the data and look at the big picture, say the performance of all Algebra 1 students versus as individual classes.

App or Extension of the Week:

Do you find yourself incessantly going back and forth between Classroom and Aspen?  Or trying to resize the windows just right so that you can get to that scroll bar?  Try Tab Resize.  With one click, you'll see a perfect split screen.  As an added bonus, for those of you who are super multitaskers and likely have 27 tabs open at this very moment, it will make as many as 4 tabs viewable on the screen at the same time!  More information can be found here.

Food for Thought

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.
~Albert Schweitzer

Until next time, Think, Create, Innovate...Denise