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New England League of Middle Schools 460 Boston Street, Suite 4 Topsfield, MA 01983 Tel: (978) 887-6263 Fax: (978) 887-6504 Email: nelms@nelms.org |
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January 27, 2010 |
New Board Members Elected and Appointed Board members are vitally important to the growth and development of NELMS and are elected to serve a four-year term with full authority and responsibility to develop policies, procedures and regulations for the operation of the League. We are pleased to announce that the following people are now a part of the NELMS Board. Maine 2 (North) Connecticut 2 – Eastern CT Vermont Massachusetts 3 April 8-10, 2010 - Thursday, Friday, & Saturday Brochures have been mailed for our premier event. The program is very strong and the session variety is expansive. Keynote Speakers are Judith Baenen, Debbie Silver, and Jack Berckemeyer. They will be presenting every day either as a keynote or as a session speaker. If you are working on improving AYP, want to get better at RTI, need ideas for effective DI, or want to lead change, you can find all of these and more are at the conference! Register early for this and all NELMS events! Differentiated Instruction, Assessment, and Grading
This conference sold out in 2008 & 2009! Join us for two dynamic days with a national expert as he explains the principles and offers practical advice on how to assess and grade the work of diverse learners in middle level classrooms. Being sensitive to students’ readiness levels and learning styles while holding them accountable for the same standards can be a challenge. What is fair and leads to real student learning? We all know that “assessment informs instruction,” but what does that look like? This workshop will shatter myths about differentiation while explaining how to manage differentiated assessment and grading without losing sanity. Rick tackles many of the most controversial topics in assessment and grading today, such as how we should account for students’ efforts, not just academic performance, what we’ll accept as evidence of mastery, responding to students’ failures, re-takes, formative vs. summative assessment, zeroes on the 100-point scale, how to deal with averaging (or not), homework, late work, 100.0 vs. 4.0 scales, subjectivity, grade books, report cards, “tiering for multiple levels of readiness,” and much more. Click here for a registration form To make reservations or to learn more about the Sheraton Meriden Click for graduate credit registration forms (Plymouth State University). Rick Wormeli brings innovation, energy, validity and high standards to both his presentations, and his instructional practice, including more than 25 years of teaching. He is 2008 Winner of the “NELMS James P. Garvin Distinguished Service Award” and a regular columnist for the NMSA’s Middle Ground magazine. Rick also hosts a discussion board, DI Is Effective Instruction, on the NELMS web site. He is the author of the award-winning book, Meet Me in the Middle: Becoming an Accomplished Middle Level Teacher, as well as the best-selling books, Day One and Beyond: Practical Matters for New Middle Level Teachers, Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom, Differentiation: From Planning to Practice, Grades 6-12 all four from NMSA and Stenhouse Publishers. His newest book, Metaphors and Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching any Subject, is for sale in the NELMS bookstore as well. With his substantive presentations, sense of humor, and unconventional approaches, he has been asked to present nationally and internationally. He lives in Herndon, Virginia with his wife and two high school age children. Recognition Committee Announces Award Recipients for 2010! Promising Practitioner Award Recipients Purpose: NELMS seeks to honor teachers beginning their teaching career, who have one to three years of teaching experience. Selection Criteria:
Congratulations to: Administrator Award Recipients
Congratulations to: New additions to the NELMS Bookstore! Follow the links to these terrific books and all the others that NELMS offers. This We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (revised 2010) Metaphors & Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching Any Subject by Rick Wormeli Managing the Madness by Jack Berckemeyer Making Differentiation a Habit Book with CD-ROM by Diane Heacox, Ed.D. Safe & Caring Schools Resource Guide Grades 6–8 Book with CD-ROM by Katia S. Petersen, Ph.D. RTI Success: Proven Tools and Strategies for Schools and Classrooms (Book with CD-ROM) by Elizabeth Whitten, Ph.D., Kelli J. Esteves, Ed.D., and Alice Woodrow, Ed.D. Effective Classroom Assessment by Catherine Garrison, Dennis Chandler, and Michael Ehringhaus The Educator Room keeps on expanding! Resource Area is just for you! We know that you want up-to-date, just-in-time information, so we are building this just for you in the NELMS Educator Room. Recent additions include over 50 monthly articles written by NELMS Board members and Superintendent and School Board Associations in each of the New England States for publication in their journals and newsletters. There is a wide-ranging list of topics that can easily be adopted for school use. National Middle School Association Seeks Executive Director National Middle School Association (NMSA) is seeking an individual with vision, energy, and skills to lead and sustain our dynamic educational non-profit organization. Since its inception in 1973, National Middle School Association has been a voice for those committed to the education and well-being of young adolescents. With 25,000 members, NMSA represents more than 150,000 middle grades educators and 58 affiliate organizations in the United States and around the world. Click for the rest of the story Organizing Learning Teams In Your PLC http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/plcs/ If you get all your advice about configuring the work of professional learning communities from administrators, this is NOT the resource for you. Bill Ferriter is a full-time middle school teacher in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. In this blog post, he draws on his school/team's successful PLC experience to share ideas with principals and teacher leaders looking for ways to organize and improve their own teacher collaboration. By the way, Ferriter has a book coming out from Solution Tree this fall on the same subject titled Building a Professional Learning Community at Word: A guide to the First Year -- with an introduction by PLC guru Rick DuFour. Kids Master Mathematics When They're Challenged But Supported 
New Jersey teachers have found a surprising way to keep students engaged and successful: They let underachieving youngsters get frustrated by math. While working with minority and low-income students at low-performing schools in Newark for the past seven years, researchers at Rutgers University have found that allowing students to struggle with challenging math problems can lead to dramatically improved achievement and test scores. "We've found there is a healthy amount of frustration that's productive; there is a satisfaction after having struggled with it," says Roberta Schorr [1], associate professor in Rutgers University at Newark's Urban Education Department. Her group has also found that, though conventional wisdom says certain abilities are innate, a lot of kids' talents and capabilities go unnoticed unless they are effectively challenged; the key is to do it in a nurturing environment. "Most of the literature describes student engagement and motivation as having to do with their attitudes about math -- whether they like it or not," Schorr says. "That's different from the engagement we've found. When students are working on conceptually complex problems in a supportive environment, they do better. They report feeling frustrated, but also satisfaction, pride and a willingness to work harder next time." Former Newark middle school math teacher Debra Joseph-Charles says the Rutgers training taught her to see her role as that of a guide. In her classes, she assigned rich word problems, then gave students a few minutes to work individually in a way that emphasized their strengths. Using the Rutgers method of group learning, Joseph-Charles's students organized themselves into groups so that each student could explain how she arrived at an answer. The other students in the group gave constructive criticism about the pros and cons of each approach. Each group then decided which method was best and presented it to the class. Naga Madhuri Philkhana, another former teacher turned math coach in Newark, says the Rutgers approach gave her students a sense of accomplishment. "You bring out their confidence by letting them have their own way of looking at problems and sharing it in the classroom," she says. After teachers like Joseph-Charles and Philkhana began applying the Rutgers techniques in the classroom, students showed more interest in math, and the math test scores at what were among the lowest-performing schools in the state began to soar. (In comparison, the language arts scores often remained the same or decreased.) Schorr was delighted but admits she was also surprised at the rising scores and how they have continued to improve year after year. Since 2003, the average standardized math test scores among fourth graders in Newark schools have risen from 45 percent to 79 percent. As a result of its success, math teachers across New Jersey are now receiving professional development in the Rutgers method through a federally funded series of webinars called MathNext [2]. Schorr and her colleagues at Rutgers, with the help of MetroMath [3] researchers in New York City, have begun identifying how and when students appear to be most engaged in math so they can train teachers to create and sustain that engagement. A number of their academic-journal articles on the subject have been published, and more are forthcoming. "Motivation is a key aspect of achievement that we often ignore in math; it's the missing link," Schorr says. "We need to provide kids with conceptually challenging math problems in an emotionally safe environment, and the teacher plays a critical role in that. Kids can view frustration as an opportunity for success instead of an indication of failure, but that won't happen without teachers letting the students experience productive struggles." Bernice Yeung is a contributing editor for Edutopia.
Did you know that NELMS has a discussion board on our website? Well, we do! Some great discussions happen there like DI is Effective Instruction and Emerging Technologies. Our “Can You Help Me Find….” can be a starting place if you are looking for a website, need Web 2.0 Ideas or want to share some of what is happening in your classroom. Our discussion board is located at http://www.nelms.org/discuss2/ and you will need to register for access during your first visit. Do you have an idea about a topic that we might be missing? Or, maybe you would like to moderate a discussion? Just send us an email at nelms@nelms.org with Discussion Board in the subject line.
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NELMS has started a page on Facebook! Our page will have information about upcoming events, photos from past conferences, and other great things. If you are already signed up for Facebook, why not join the New England League of Middle Schools page at