College and Career Links

Sites to visit:

• The College Board -- research colleges, find money for college, register for the SAT, subscribe to the "SAT Question of the Day," and much more. Great resources here.
• The California State University -- remember, I offer extra credit if you register for CSU Mentor. Some of you have already done this -- this site can help you stay on course, even if you are not planning on going to Cal State.
• The University of California system -- a look into the UC system: UCLA, UCSD, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, UC Davis, UC Merced, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine
• California Community Colleges -- a good way to begin: two years in community college, transfer to the four-year university of your choice.
• Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities
• U.S. New and World Report -- America's Best Colleges -- 2008 Ranking
• Cast a wider net in your college search: Institution of Education Sciences National Center for Education Statistics has a great search engine to help you find colleges that you have never heard of
• The Princeton Review helps you conduct college searches, prepare for tests, find scholarships and aid, and lots of other stuff!
• Mapping Your Future -- planning a career, selecting a school, paying for your education
• Career Cruising -- Mayfair pays for a subscription for you so you can utilize this powerful tool from campus or from home
  
• State of California - Click on "Employment" and Click on "Education"
• California's "One-Stop Career Center System" -- links to all kinds of employment data and resources
• Have you heard of the JobCorps? This is JobCorps Long Beach -- this is a residential program with excellent job training opportunities.
• Jobstar! -- Get a job, write a resume, find a training program
• How to -- a website that tells you, among other things, how to ace an interview, how to become a Laker Girl, or how to become a prince.
• Find out what the job outlook is, what training is required, what skills are needed, get a good description of the work, and find out what the job pays at the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics -- Occupational Outlook Handbook
• Join the Peace Corp! Ask Mr. McCabe about his experiences in the Peace Corps.
• Find out about Today's Military -- get job training and experience through a career in the military. (Think about this one carefully, please.)
• Get a REAL JOB: Be a teacher.
  

The CSU Early Assessment Program

Here is information for the kids:  CSU English Success and CSU Math Success

More helpful information:
The CSU EAP Webpage
The CCC Chancellor's Office EAP Web page

Common Core Standards

Since California adopted the Common Core Standards last August, and you can expect to see a plethora of talk and professional development around these new standards, I thought I'd throw the link up in case you'd like to download the document and examine it:  Common Core State Standards Initiative.  More later. 

How to Access Writing Assessment Scoring Page on Data Director

How to:

• Log in to Data Director  (I put a link to Data Director here on the blog): 
• Students --> Search Options --> Schedule
• Highlight the appropriate course
• Go to --> View Assessments  If necessary, specify 2010-2011, ELA Writing, Grades 9, 10, 11, 12
• Pull down and select
• Select “Click here to edit by page”
• Ta-da!  Enter scores; save periodically

Scientifically Tested Tests

NY Times Op-Ed 9/20/10

Many insightful comments follow this piece.

District Writing Assessments

Mayfair English 9-12 is administering on-demand baseline writing assessments between September 28 and October 7; the large window leaves plenty of room for teachers to work the assessment in at an appropriate time.   We are using the same prompts we developed in grade level PLTs in the 2009-2010 school year:

•   9th -- Expository, Response to Literature
• 10th -- Expository, Persuasive
• 11th -- Expository, Compare/Contrast
• 12th -- Expository, Argument

We will assess in the spring following a grade-level specific expository writing unit.  Again, the essays will be produced on-demand, but this second assessment follows direct reading and writing instruction, giving teachers plenty to talk about in their respective PLTs.

Charlene Bowden came to Mayfair the other day and set up a page in Data Director that enables us to enter writing assessment scores directly into DD, using the holistic 6-point rubric we have been using.  Finally!  The scores will BE somewhere, and we can track and compare, year to year.

Copies of a holistic rubric will be provided at the next PLT and discussed.  Scores will be recorded as a single number, 1-6.  Since the primary purpose of this assessment is to inform our writing instruction (and not communication with students), the holistic score is sufficient; the more detailed, 6x6 full-page 6-Trait Scoring Rubric is useful when communicating with students after a multi-draft process essay.

Benchmark Revision Document

Remember this from June?  I sent this to BHS, and to Charlene Bowden -- it is my understanding that she forwarded this to the people who write the benchmark exam and they are supposed to make sure that these are the convention skills tested quarter by quarter.  Here's what the document said:

Dear Colleagues:

A small, exhausted and beleaguered committee of teachers met in my room today [June 2010], and tried to articulate how the benchmark should roll out.

When we looked at the “Power Standards” in Reading and Writing, we were satisfied with how those standards have been tested.  Those really are recursive, and we teach the same standards all of the time as we read and write with kids.   The only thing we wanted to try and roll out differently was the grammar. 

Now, this can surely be refined, but this is what we came up with this morning:

Qtr	Grades 9-10	Grades 11-12
1	parts of speech verb tenses subject/verb agreement	subject/verb agreement pronoun antecedents wordiness transitions
2	subject/verb agreement pronouns antecedents phrases and clauses	phrases and clauses sentence types subordination transitions
3	sentence types parallelism subordination punctuation/capitalization/abbreviation	active/passive voice tone & diction parallelism sentence combining
4	sentence types run on/fragment/comma splice phrases and clauses	sentence types punctuation/capitalization/abbreviation usage tone & diction

Comments?  Revision?  Please make suggestions.

Anyway, thanks for your time and attention.  I will assume that if I don’t hear back from you that this draft document meets with your approval.

--AF