1. This month I spent a most wonderful day at Columbus, NE High School.  As a part of the day each department shared their progress with LtoJ.  This all began with the math department.  They came as a group to a state-wide math 3-day LtoJ seminar for three consecutive years.  Their success has spread throughout the building.  Attached is a graph showing their average ACT results for the past few years. Last year was their first year to meet the ACT benchmark. 

2.  If any readers are involved in a complete restructuring of a school because of missing AYP targets for multiple years, please write and arrange a time to speak on the phone.  The concepts I'll share are not LtoJ related, but restructuring ideas gleaned from many years of travel.

3.  The kindergarten students in McCook, NE were so excited about building 84 with the unifix cubes to match the 84 questions correct on the LtoJ quiz, that they asked the teacher to tape the blocks on the wall adjacent to the graph.  See attached picture.

4.  I am continually amazed at unique ways students want to celebrate all-time-bests.  A middle school classroom in Albuquerque celebrated with a 5-minute nap.

5.  Many of the power point implementations for LtoJ are now on the LtoJ website.  Go to www.ltojconsulting.com/seminardownloads.htm.


6. When school are able to align their curriculum and have a school-wide focus with LtoJ, great insight occurs with school-wide data and celebrations.  See the school-wide graph from Centennial Elementary School in Columbus, NE that is attached. It is the weekly total for math using the math quizzes developed in Lexington, NE. 

7.  Have you ever thought of a hamster ball for random selection of spelling words?  The attached photograph is also from Centennial School.  The teacher is Codi Hrouda.

8.  I am often asked, in elementary schools, which subject is best to start the LtoJ process.  My response is it depends upon whether you are looking at the school through cultural glasses or curriculum glasses.  If cultural, then the school would begin with spelling and math facts, as these two are used to teach American children how to cram.  If an elementary school used LtoJ for both math facts and spelling, kids would not learn how to cram in their elementary school years.  On the other hand, if one is looking through curriculum glasses, then one would begin with mathematics or various aspects of reading.

 

Lee Jenkins, Lee@LtoJConsulting.com

ALIGNMENT WITH EACH OTHER by Lee Jenkins

Recently at an LtoJ seminar I had lunch with four former elementary teachers who have been assigned the job of academic coach for K-12.  They are in shock.  Why?  They cannot believe how much of middle school and high school is a repeat of elementary school.  Teachers do not know they are repeating what was already taught, over and over, and the students are not telling the teachers, "We have been taught this several times already."

Last month a teacher, from a different state, told me he taught high school geometry for years.  Now he is the technology coach for a middle school and has learned that 50% of what he taught for years was already taught in the middle school.  Nobody ever told him and one could never ascertain this from the textbooks. 

An administrator from a third state told me he was working with social studies teachers from elementary, middle and high schools in his district.  He discovered that nobody was teaching US history from 1900-current time, but all three were teaching the American Revolution and the US Civil War.  Yet again, we are not aligned with each other.

One of the key responsibilities of administrators in every district is to bring teachers together to align the curriculum.  This alignment is NOT to state standards, although these standards are certainly a guide.  This alignment is to each other. 

The alignment documents produced are to be written with students as the audience.  The title will be something like this:  "What you will learn in Grade 8 science."  There must be no duplicates; all content can be written only once.

Since these documents are written for students, multiple years of aligned curriculum must be provided to the students. Geometry teachers will provide students with 4 lists of content.  The first is what they will learn in high school.  The next two are the geometry they were taught in elementary and middle school. They have to remember Algebra I, so this is the 4th list. Students are told that if there is anything they don't remember from elementary and middle school, ask.  High school geometry begins on day 1 of high school.  The LtoJ quizzes, however, could be 70% high school geometry, 10% algebra 1, 10% middle school geometry, and 10% elementary school geometry.  Thus there is some review each week, but not weeks on end of review.  The final exams in high school geometry then should follow the same formula:  70% current course and 30% prior courses.  We can clearly remove "Permission to Forget."

Individual teachers can implement LtoJ in a non-aligned system, but the power of LtoJ comes from implementation in a school district that is aligned K-12 in all subjects.  Jenks, Oklahoma has been on this path since 2000, aligning one subject a year and is now in the process of making alignment adjustments the second time around.