Range Finding Reflection

Although I missed our class dearly, I have to admit that I had a great time in Olympia. I’ve talked a lot about “range finding,” and the best way to describe it is this:

We looked at the rubrics for the short answer questions on the math WASL. We looked to make sure the rubrics were fair and reasonable for 3rd-5th grade students.

It was a good experience because I think sometimes we teachers spend a lot of time blaming “the people in Olympia,” but everyone I encountered here had students’ success at the forefront of every decision they made.

Here are some photos from my trip — they’re not terribly exciting because most of what I did was a) confidential, b) eating, c) doing Pilates, or d) sleeping. :)

Olympia is Washington's capitol
Olympia is home to Washington's capitol building

Now, although the domed building is called the capitol, the city of Olympia is called the state’s capital.

This is Capital Footwear, because it is located in the state's capital, Olympia. It is on Capitol Street, because the capitol building is at the end of the street.
This is Capital Footwear, because it is located in the state's capital, Olympia. It is on Capitol Street, because the capitol building is at the end of the street.

I stayed further down the street, in the Phoenix Inn. The employees took very good care of me there.

This was my home for the last three days!
This was my home for the last three days!
Here's where I wrote my blog posts to you all!
Here's where I wrote my blog posts to you all!
Waving from the giant bed
Waving from the giant bed

Keep your fingers crossed that I did a good job and that I’m invited back in the future!

Oh, finally, before we left, I had to determine the total time we spent range finding. Seriously — I was the official time keeper. If I kept time incorrectly, we wouldn’t get paid for the full amount of time we spent working! Remember the discussion we had about real-life problem solving in class last week, ladies and gentlemen? That’s what I was doing! I thought you might enjoy seeing the elapsed time problem I had to solve (I got it wrong the first time, but I fixed it!).

Show your work using words, numbers or pictures
Show your work using words, numbers or pictures

(Note: I rounded a bit at the end at the request of our facilitator.)

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Range Finding, Day 3

Hi there!

I hope Ms. Helm told you I called this afternoon. I was surprised at how quiet the class sounded in the background. I hope you had fun with Menu Math — I can’t wait to see your menus!

Thanks again for your flexibility with the guest teacher craziness yesterday! I must say, I was more disappointed to hear of people spreading completely false gossip today than I was about anything I heard about with the sub yesterday.

I’m excited to share some exciting news with you tomorrow about our listening library! And don’t forget that tomorrow’s the first day of our Book Store!

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Range Finding, Day 2

Hello, ladies and gentlemen!

I miss you all dearly and will see you on Thursday. Remember, that will be the first day of our Wildwood Book Store!

I wanted to thank you for your flexibility today. I spoke with Ms. Brown and she said you did an excellent job of working with Ms. Campbell and Mr. Garrison today. I can’t wait to hear how well you do tomorrow, because Ms. Helm will be back!

I have been very busy, and it has been fun spending time with people who love math as much as I do. I also found out that some of my WASL questions made it as pilot questions on this year’s test, which was quite a surprise!

I’m off to read before I go to bed! I love and miss you!

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