May, 2006
1. In April the Jenks, Oklahoma Public Schools officially received the Malcolm Baldridge Award from Vice President Cheney in a Washington, DC ceremony. Over fifty Jenks employees and board members were able to attend. Congratulations to Superintendent Kirby Lehman and Assistant Superintendent Diane Bosworth and all of the dedicated, talented staff who brought about this great honor. If you are interested in visiting Jenks or contacting them for speaking opportunities, call Jenks Public Schools at 918-299-4411; the first message will be the extension for Baldridge related contacts. Also, you may want to visit their website for many details including the actual application. See www.jenksps.org/Baldrige/Index.html.
2. Diane Bosworth will be speaking at the American Society for Quality's annual Leadership Symposium for Superintendents in June. See www.asq.org/conferences/education-summit/ Next November Kirby Lehman will deliver one of the keynote addresses at the National Quality in Education Conference in Dallas, Texas. Diane Bosworth and several Jenks staff members will conduct seminars at the conference. See http://nqec.asq.org/
3. In addition to Jenks, OK, another place to visit, where the LtoJ process is in place, is AB Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, NC. This school led, by Muriel Summers, was featured in Stephen Covey's 8th Habit book and thus is frequented by many visitors. Call (919) 233-4300 to make arrangements.
4. If you have a colleague who would like to attend one of my sessions this summer, please write me for a June, July, August schedule. I will be presenting in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, Louisiana, Illinois, and Minnesota.
5. Newsletter working. The first LtoJ newsletter sent out in April resulted in several e-mails from people I had not written to or spoken with for a couple years. This two-way communication is what I hoped would occur. Please continue writing me at Lee@LtoJConsulting.com. The attachments for this newsletter will only open if you set your e-mail to receive HTML, not text. If you cannot open the attachment for any reason, please write and I'll send it directly to you.
6. LtoJ Basics: When the curriculum is rigorous, we should expect the histogram in the beginning of the year to be in the shape of an "L." When the instruction is working, at the end of the year, the histogram will be in a "J." Attached below is a one page PDF file showing four beginning to ending pairs of histograms. You will see "bell to J", "bell to bell," "L to bell," and then the ideal: an "LtoJ" in the upper right-hand corner.
7. Colleen Confer, consultant with Area Education Agency 13, serving Southwest Iowa, sent to me several wonderful notes. She can be contacted at cconfer@aea13.org.
Colleen,
I had to share my L to J success story with you! I went and wrote all
of the subtraction facts to 12 and then did the square root and wrote
up the problems. Then it was time for the first test. We had a class
score of 83. So, today we took our second test. I had 3 students gone
and we had a score of 92!! The most fun was marking the class graph
because I started at the bottom and went up and stopped at 83 and then
kept going to 92! (They didn't enjoy it as much as I did!)
Our class celebration was rereading one of their favorite books called
Shake Dem Halloween Bones. They got to dance and sing! My ELL student
was smiling and dancing and even singing along, so it was a win-win
situation!
The kids love their own graphs and I'm putting stickers on their
personal best scores!
Their tests show me which problems, if any, the whole class has
mastered. We had 3 today! It shows me which ones we need to work on
and who needs to work on which ones, which is really powerful stuff!
We go over these during our morning calendar time now.
The kids were even asking to take another test this week (they either
liked the celebration or want Mr. Shook to come in and dance when we
reach 100)!
As part of another class that I took, we reviewed at the end of the day
what we did today and #1 on the list was our celebration. I asked this
person to explain why we had a celebration and she could!
So thanks so much Colleen! The kids are pumped and so am I!
Colleen,
My kids were a bit bummed yesterday. We went from a 92 to a 91. We
had 2 students missing. One of my boys was excited about getting a
star for his personal best of all 9, so each day is a new success!
I just finished setting up the standards and benchmarks for L to J, so
I let my helpers choose the popsicle sticks! That's a new exciting
job! The many joys of teaching first grade! It's the BEST!
Now my partner and I just need to look at our standards and benchmarks
and decide what needs changing/adding. It's fun to have it all ready
to go!
3. Colleen,
The following are 3rd Grade student responses from this year's L To J:
L to J is fun! We like searching our vocabulary lists. We like it when we know words ahead of time. We feel smart when we make a vocabulary connection between science and a reading selection. We have fun thinking back to what story the vocabulary word came from. We started L to J in math the 2nd semester. We already knew the L to J process so we felt successful right away. We like to celebrate when we get "The Best Score Yet!" |
