Artemus Ward Weekly 10/12-10/16
Every Scholar, Every Moment, Every Day!
Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15th - Oct. 15th)
National Hispanic American Heritage Month is from Sept. 15th to Oct.15th. Celebrate the many great contributions of hispanic people and culture by researching one of the websites below. A thanks to all of our hispanic families,staff, and students. Your contributions are what make America great!
-Mr. Myslenski
Principal's Message
Staff,
Her are some updates along w/ some additional items from our BLT Meeting this past week:
Zoom & Teams: If you are going to use Zoom be sure to install the app in Teams and pin it for future use. When scheduling, use the app. This will integrate the two and allow your meetings to show up in Office365 calendars. To find the app, click on the apps button in your Teams menu. Search for it and then add.
Attendance & Engagement Support: In BLT we discussed the engagement and support doc. and decided to replace the old doc. with a reusable form that you can fill out to seek assistance with a scholar. We will be fazing out the old form. Look for an email from Mrs. Beets with a link to the form. We will also post it in our school Teams folder. Eventually we will be adding an electronic version of our behavior referral to the form in order to consolidate the # of forms you have to go to on any given day. Our goal is to streamline and refine processes in order to simplify things.
Instructional Focus: Formative Assessment (evidenced in gradebook) & Discourse. Continue to focus on ensuring that you are using formative assessments daily when designing your lessons. This will continue to be a topic of PLCs. Bring formative assessment data to your PLC meetings and be prepared to discuss. This should be more than thumbs up/down. Daily assessments should be quantifiable and in line with a measurable objective.
Discourse continues to be a growth point across the board. Challenge students to explain their thinking. Be aware of how much teacher vs. student talk is taking place.
Morning Announcements: Student led morning announcements will begin on Monday. They will be created and recorded by students and appear in student and teacher feeds at the start of each day (excluding Wednesdays). Please play them during morning meeting. They will normally be a few minutes long. Be sure to encourage all students to check their "updates" regularly in Schoology. We are pushing out important information through the update channel. If you would like something included in the announcements, email your information to Mrs. Pecek. Announcements will be pre-recorded in advance.
SST Meetings: SST meetings will occur Wed. Mornings @ 9am. Please use the same process as last year to submit student referrals. If you suspect a student is in need of support, be sure to document the current interventions. Feel free to reach out to anyone on the team for intervention suggestions ahead of the scheduled date for the students case. It's better to get an intervention started as soon as possible rather than wait.
Culture Committee (PBIS/SEL)/ Culture Club: In order to simplify things we have combined the SEL committee and the PBIS committee into the Culture Committee. We have also created a student led club which champions both missions under the banner, "Culture Club" (not to be confused with the band). The lead for the SEL portion of the Committee is Mrs. Torres and the lead for the PBIS portion is Mrs. Beets. Both will meet together regularly. The student portion (Culture Club) will be taking care of things like the morning announcements and leading a variety of initiatives designed to improve overall culture. This could include: anti-bullying, beautification, morning announcements, and anything else that would make Artemus Ward an even better place to be. Let me know if you are interested in participating in the student club or if you have any ideas for it.
Creating Formative Assessments our of PDF and Word docs.: Below this section I am including a short Youtube video on how to turn PDFs into usable assessments. Take a moment to check it out...
Quote:
"Every day begins like a blank chalkboard, upon which each one of us can write the poem of our present and our dreams for the future"
-Ricky Martin
That's it for now. I hope everyone has a relaxing weekend.
-Mr. Myslenski
Testing by Mrs. Cree
The NWEA Testing window for both Reading and Math in grades 4-8, as well as Math in grades 1-3, remains open and will go through Friday, October 30th. Regular ed students will be testing on Wednesday, October 14th. A follow-up testing session will occur Wednesday, October 21st in the morning. There will be no PD that day but PLC's will be held at 1:30 pm. Sped Ed and ELL teachers are continuing to test during asynch time.
The Reading OST for 3rd grade is scheduled for the week of Monday, October 19th. Please remember that we will have to schedule in 2 parts for each student during the 5 day window.
Aimsweb Benchmarking for grades K-3 will continue this week, with a deadline of Friday, October 30th. We are slowly making progress but much work is still needed in order complete the task.
Mr Pempin with 6th Grade
Mrs. Davis & Mrs. Torres w/ our 1st Grade Cardinals
Mrs. Jarosky and our 3rd grade hard at work...
Special Education
Culture Club Updates
Artemus Ward Students S.O.A.R.
They are Scholarly, Organized, Accountable, Respectful
Thank you to those of you that completed the Culture Survey. The information you provided is helpful as we continue to refine our PBIS program and work to improve it.
Below are some highlights of our PBIS Meeting.
- Expectations: A few revisions were made to the Remote Learning Matrix. The common language around S.O.A.R. is important. Students will see reminders of the expectations in announcements and you are encouraged to reinforce the expectations in your classes.
- Incentives: The Culture Club brainstormed ideas for incentives in a remote environment. Some incentives have included student outs, theme days as a reward, positive phone calls and digital coupons. This area is a work in progress. The team also discussed the use of ClassDojo track positive behavior and the survey showed that 42% of teachers are using Dojo and another 42% are willing to try it. We will make a decision on that very soon!
Mrs. Beets
Below is a sample PBIS matrix that can be used to state expectations using the S.O.A.R. language. The committee did meet and make some slight changes. Please make sure you are referring to S.O.A.R in your communication with students.
If you would like a blank template to customize, please email Mrs. Beets.
Social Emotional Learning Resource
Below is a link for a site called Facing History. The specific link has sample opening and closing routines. These activities could be good for Morning Meeting or a way to close out a lesson. Hopefully you find a new idea!
Engagement Team Updates
The students that were identified in the original excel document have been transferred over and the team will continue to work on those cases. If you are not sure if a student is on that list, please complete a referral to ensure that we do not miss anyone. The recommendation would be to save the Forms in your browser and submit the request when you need support.
We are asking that teachers do not refer families to come to the school when a tech need arises. Please fill out the Support Form on their behalf or you can direct them to call the school. Although the office is open, the expectation is that families make an appointment.