Bear Lodge High School

1. Bear Lodge High School Board Retreat August 2011 By David Lougee

2. MAP 10th Grade

3. MAP 11th Grade

4. PAWS

5. WHAT HAVE WE DONE! New Look to a New Era Bear Lodge High School has gone through a change over the summer that has created a new learning atmosphere to facilitate an environment of learning. The walls have been painted to create a mood for focus and learning, furniture has been purchased that is conducive to higher level thinking and the classrooms connected to move to project based learning. Implementing PBL The 2011 summer has been a time of change not only in the makeup of the classrooms but also in the direction of student learning. Mr. Wayne Dennis trained the Bear Lodge teachers and staff about Project Based Learning. This training was met with enthusiasm and a new schedule and learning environment was created to maximize student learning. Along with Mr. Dennis and the teachers, I prepared a timeline and evaluation system to help monitor the success of the students and teachers. B.L.H.S. Students Reading Comprehension Strategies Implementation B.L.H.S. students will spend two forty minute sessions a day learning and mastering the seven reading comprehension strategies to improve their personal and educational reading skills. The two sessions will begin with small guidedreading groups where students will be taught one of the seven strategies. The second session is Silent Sustained Reading with the reader taking notes over the strategy they have learned and assessing what they have learned. On Fridays, the students will be able to demonstrate their reading skills to the elementary students and/or teach the skills to each other.

6. Project Based Learning @ Bear Lodge High School Project Based Learning is a systematic teaching method that engages students in learningknowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around a complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks. This definition encompasses a spectrum ranging from brief projects, interdisciplinary projects that involve community participation and adults outside the classroom. (Buck Institute for Technology 2003) In Brief, PBL uses a number of criteria that distinguish carefully planned projects: *Recognize students’ inherent drive to learn, their capability to do important work, and their need to be taken seriously by putting them at the center of the learning process. *Engage students in the central concepts and principles of discipline. The project work is central rather than peripheral to the curriculum. * Highlights provocative issues or questions that lead students to In-depth exploration of authentic and important topics. *Require the use of essential tools and skills, including technology, for learning, self management, and project management. *Specify products that solve problems, explain dilemmas, or present information generated through investigation, research, or reasoning. * Include multiple products that permit frequent feedback and consistent opportunities for students to learn from experiences. *Use performance-based assessments that communicate high expectations, present rigorous challenges, and require a range of skills and knowledge. *Encourage collaboration in some form, either through small groups, student-led presentations, or whole-class evaluations of project results.

7. “There is a profound disconnect between what students are taught and tested on in most high schools today and how they are expected to learn, versus what the world will demand of them as adults and what motivates them to do their best.” -Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap Individual Learning Plans One of Bear Lodges target goals is to place every student on an Individual Learning Plan. This will provide the student with a team of educators to help monitor and set valuable goals to improve the students learning. The team is made up of all his/hers teachers, parents/guardians, Principal, Counselors and most importantly the individual student. Individual Learning Plans will help us be able to monitor the student growth in reading, writing, math, social studies and science by comparing and contrasting the local, state and national scores using the Paws, Map and District Wide Assessments. The teams assessment on these scores will help individualize the students approach to his/hers education. Along with these plans the art, music and vocational areas of education will be implement to produce 21st Century Learners.

8. “Current formal education still prepares students primarily for the world of the past, rather than for possible worlds of the future.” -Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future What is the 21st Century Student? 21st Century Students are young people who need to learn skills to be successful in the 21st century. These skills are: *Take responsibility for the quality and timeliness of his or hers own work; uses feedback; stays on task during group work *Accepts shared responsibility for the group; helps improve the quality of the work and understanding of other members *Applies or encourages the use of strategies for facilitating discussion and decision making *Manages project by identifying and prioritizing goals and tasks, creating timelines, organizing resources, and monitoring progress *Respects the ideas, opinions, abilities, values and feelings of other group members *Works well with diverse group members *Encourages group cohesion by using conflict management strategies *Organizes ideas and develops content appropriate to audiences and situations *Uses effective oral presentation skills *Creates media/visual aides that enhance content delivery *Gauges audience reaction and/or understanding and adjust presentation appropriately *Responds to questions appropriately *Recognizes and defines problems accurately; raises relevant questions and issues, formulating them clearly and precisely *Gathers pertinent information from a variety of sources; evaluates the quality of information (source, validity, bias) *Organizes, analyzes, and synthesizes information to develop well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, judging them against relevant criteriaconsiders alternatives; recognizes and assesses assumptions, implications and practical consequences Collaboration: Presentation Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

9. CREATE MENTAL IMAGES: Good readers create a wide range of visual, auditory, and sensory images as they read, and they become emotionally involved with what they read. • USE BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: Good readers use their relevant prior knowledge before, during, and after reading to enhance their understanding of what they’re reading. • ASK QUESTIONS: Good readers generate questions before, during, and after reading to clarify meaning, make predictions, and focus their attention on what’s important. • MAKE INFERENCES: Good readers use their prior knowledge and information from what they read to make predictions, seek answers to questions, draw conclusions, and create interpretations that deepen their understanding of the text. • DETERMINE THE MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS OR THEMES: Good readers identify key ideas or themes as the read, and the can distinguish between important and unimportant information. • SYNTHESIZE INFORMATION: Good readers track their thinking as it evolves during reading, to get the overall meaning. • USE “FIX-UP” STRATEGIES: Good readers are aware of when they understand and when they don’t. If they have trouble understanding specific works, phrases, or longer passages, they use a wide range of problem-solving strategies including skipping ahead, rereading, asking questions, using a dictionary, and reading the passage aloud.