Mid month update: Congratulations to our new Student Council officers- Jake W. President,
Nick M. Vice President, Brielle D. Secretary, and Gianna P. Treasurer. Also, congratulations go out to all of those who ran for an office. Preparing the speech, and giving the speech took a huge amount of determination and self confidence. I am proud of all students who demonstrated the desire to represent Desert Trails!! Thank you!~
Parent-Teacher Conferences will be here before we know it. Please mark these dates on your calendar: Oct. 26-29 and our late night will be Tuesday, Oct. 27. You should have already received the information requesting your prime date and time to meet. We look forward to seeing you and sharing your child's progress with you.
Grading continues to be a focus this year as we move forward in authentic grades and a more accurate grading system. From our book study that several Desert Trails' teachers are involved with this year I would like to share with you some current research. In A Repair Kit for Broken Grades, by Ken O'Conner, we see in chapter 1 the overall shift in how mixing behavior with academics can/will give us distorted achievement. As a positive response to this research, we have now separated behavior from knowledge and reflected that on our report card. We also are making the transistion from reducing marks for work submitted late, or not submitted at all to a more supportive stance where we now are offering students to make the work up or get the work done while at school. Perhaps the student will miss recess to get the work finished, but the important step is to provide support in having the student complete the work and gain the information.
In chapter 2, we reflected on what should grades tell us about students? We discussed the following: Grades should tell us what things a student knows and can do; Whether they have improved during a period of time; What are their strengths;What level their work is at; Whether they are ready to move on; Whether they've reached a standard and a few more factors. In chapter 3 & 4 we will look at low quality evidence and grading calculations.
As we work through these "fixes" for reporting grades, we encourage a conversation between parents and teachers!
School Council would like to hear from you! Please feel free to email the following representatives for any input, especially Tax Credit!
Parent: Lynn Clark at lynnfclark@cox.net --- Parent: Jeff Gaunt at jeff.gaunt@us.henkel.com
and our Community Representative: Armandina Brown at armandina.brown@nau.edu