Oregon Writing Festival (Grades 4-12)

The 31st annual Oregon Writing Festival will be held on Saturday, May 2, 2015, on the Portland State University campus. This event has showcased the writing of more than 33,500 students (grades 4-12) from school districts all across Oregon and has been an exciting event for students and teachers from PPS who have taken advantage of the opportunity to participate. The festival includes author keynotes, workshops, and the opportunity for students to share their own writing. To learn more about the event, go the the Oregon Writing Festival website.

Schools interested in participating need to have at least one teacher attend the event for up to 10 students. If a school has 11-20 students participating, two teachers will need to attend. The cost per student is $35 and transportation is not provided.  Each student should bring a copy of his/her best writing to share in a breakout group.

Please sign up at this link by January 30th.

Questions should be directed to:

Grades 4-5: Jennifer Buchanan, ELA TOSA, jbuchanan@pps.net

Grades 6-12: Beverly Daggett, ELA TOSA, bdaggett@pps.net

Smarter Balanced Math Assessment

For more information click here.

Teachers, help us spread the word to 6th-8th graders!

Oregon Children’s Theatre’s playwriting contest for middle school students, formerly known as The Bully Project, is back! 6th to 8th graders are invited to submit original, 10-minute plays. Six finalists will be chosen to work with local playwrights to revise and refine their writing. All six plays will then be featured in a staged reading at the Winningstad Theatre on April 25th, 2015.

One lucky student could win a trip to Washington, DC!

One winning play will be submitted to the national Young Playwrights for Change competition, hosted by Theatre for Young Audiences USA and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, for a chance to win a trip to Washington, D.C. and have your play read at the Kennedy Center! More information about the national contest can be found at www.assitej-usa.org.

To read more click here.

Teacher Channel: Deeper Learning

This Week: Productive Struggle in Math

Common Core Math Playlist: Engaging Students with “Productive Struggle” We’ve got 6 new videos showing how Kentucky teachers are using Math Design Collaborative (MDC) to teach students how to persevere while problem-solving. A Passion for Fractions See how Becky Pittard gives students a variety of solutions to encourage deep thinking. Don't Give Up! Plan, Persevere, Revise Watch how Madeline Noonan introduces a new problem to her students and helps them work through tough challenges.

TeacherVue Work Samples

Schools are required to offer a local performance assessment once per year for grades 3-8 and once during high school in each of 4 subjects: writing, math, science and speaking. PPS uses work samples scored with state scoring guides to fulfill this requirement.  The due date for entering work samples into Synergy to fulfill this requirement is May 29, 2015.

High school work samples used for demonstrating proficiency in the Essential Skills should also continue to be recorded in Synergy throughout the year.

Instructions for entry of work sample scores in Synergy for K-8 teachers can be found here and instructions for high school data clerks are here.

For questions about work sample requirements, contact Mike Shadder, mikes@pps.net, (for Essential Skills specific questions contact Susan Payne, spayne@pps.net).  For Synergy questions, contact the IT Service Desk at itservicedesk@pps.net or x63375 option #2.

From Guilt to Google: Experimenting with Tech Tools to Improve Writing Feedback

by Kim Hoffman Kanof, Madison HS Social Studies teacher, on edsurge.com

I have graded essays for years. I have tried all the tricks to get through my stacks of essays with speed and precision--setting a timer with a reward, coffee grading, yoga grading, dog park grading, almost tossing papers out of the window grading. But nothing worked to improve my ability to turn around papers quicker. In fact, after receiving my “Walking Dead TV reward” for getting through my allotted stack of essays on a Saturday morning, I suddenly realized: I was a “Grading Zombie,” and my students were “Grade Zombies.”

I needed to change the tedious and difficult writing process in my classroom. So, I turned to Google tools.

Read on at edsurge.com.