The CIA Report
May/June 2019 Edition
Welcome to the April 2019 Edition of The CIA Report!
Please take some time to read through this prior to the June 6 administrator meeting.
Thanks!
Learning Today... Feeding Your Professional Soul
Trusting, collaborative relationships among teachers, school leaders, and school staff are foundational to improving practice that increases student learning.xii
Assessment
State Assessments
Thank you all so much for your hard work and help to facilitate MAP/EOC testing effectively this year! While there are always interesting bumps in the road, your help and support made it all work!
Welcome, Jill Klahn Smith!
We are excited to welcome to our CIA team, Jill Klahn Smith, our new Assessment Coach! She is very excited to come on board and provide support in the area of assessment - she has already been involved in meetings and learning experiences so she can be ready to help when the school year starts! Please welcome her when you see her!
Important iReady Update
Due to many kindergarten orientations being scheduled for August 9, we will NOT be training kindergarten teachers on the new iReady tool on that date. We will hold a special training date for them in the fall.
Teaching & Learning
For All:
- So much has been moving and shaking in the area of Science! Our Science Content Leader, Derek Scott, has provided a summary of the many happenings in Science from this year leading into expectations for next year. Click here to read this very important information: http://bit.ly/2ESi6PI
For Elementary:
MySci building leader - please make sure you take some time to reach out to your building's MySci leader and connect with him/her. They will be providing in-building support next year, and we want to be sure there is good communication between the MySci leader and the administration.
Pacing Guides were edited in the ELA sections for grades K-6. The edits allow a cleaner stop and start for units surrounding Winter Break. The edits also paced the beginning units slower for K-2 students and a test prep unit has been added to the 6th Grade ELA pacing due to available time.
ELA Scale revision took place with First Grade Unit 2-7 to reflect the deletion of a specific reading level. The scales now ask the student to be able to use decoding strategies regardless of level. Those scales have also been changed to reflect the new TCRWP Running Record accuracy of 96%. Second Grade Reading Unit 4 also mentioned a specific reading level on the Story Elements Scale, the specific level has been deleted on this scale.
Grade chair meetings - please share the following dates with your grade chairs and have them mark their calendars to attend. Please note and remind grade chairs that these meetings are important for information dissemination and collaboration and they are NOT optional:
Kindergarten - First Grade: August 21 and March 16
Second Grade - Third Grade: August 28 and March 18
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Grades: August 29 and March 19
Elementary Nonnegotiables
You asked for it and it's happening! We are giving the nonnegotiables a facelift for the 2019-2020 school year!
Here's what we considered/updated:
- First and foremost - we changed the title! The document is now called "Tier 1 Instructional Expectations." Yay!
- We removed "Best Practices" and added "How it Could Look" - the idea is that we are already asking our teachers to engage in the very best Tier 1 instructional practices that we know, so there isn't a need for the "best practice" column.
- But - we also know that teachers are asking for more flexibility with content and time to allow for things like: morning meetings, integration of content, PBL, literacy embedded in science, inquiry learning - so we added a column to indicate how that could look throughout the day.
- We split reading, writing, and science into grade spans to better outline how those times should be spent at those specific levels.
- We gave time ranges in Science and Social Studies knowing that won't need 40 minutes of Science or 30 minutes of Social Studies EVERY day.
- We indicated that all curriculum units should be taught in order - even if a teacher is doing PBL in his/her classroom.
- We've indicated that time can be flexible. A teacher can steal time from one content area to add to another on one day and then give it back on the next.
Two other important items to note:
1. We will be reviewing these in more depth during our July/August admin meeting. At that time we will have some supporting documentation for the area of word study.
2. We would very much like your feedback on this! If you have questions, suggestions, needs that aren't addressed here, please email me (Skeeters), and I'll work to address those.
Here is a link to the Tier 1 Instructional Expectations. Enjoy!
Technology
Reminder about Technology Purchases
Need to make a technology purchase for your school or classroom? Please remember ALL technology purchases must be approved and purchased through the Technology Department office. Not sure if it is a technology purchase or not or if you have any questions, please contact the Technology Office at x22330.
New iPad Management
The Technology Department is in the process of transferring over to a new system to manage district iPads. To complete this transition, we will need to erase and resetup every iPad to move them over to our new system, Mosyle. Any newly purchased iPads has already been transitioned over to Mosyle. Your building tech will be working with your staff to complete this transition. This will need to be completed by October 31.
H Drive Endgame Debut
Watch how the G Drive (Google Drive File Stream) works!
On August 1, all staff H Drives will be disabled. Please ensure your documents have been backed up to an external drive, Google Drive File Steam (G Drive), or your computer hard drive.
Please note: This is only for staff H Drives. Other network drives are not affected at this time (ie - P Drive, T Drive, etc).
School Improvement
School Improvement Planning Reminder:.
Please be prepared with the following information for the June admin meeting this week:
Data to support your progress on your 18-19 goals (this does not need to be a report or anything, but you should have pulled data to support how you did with your goals)
Responses to action steps which would include what you were able to accomplish, what you may continue to work on in 19-20, and what worked well for your school community
Thoughts on your 19-20 SIP goals...where do you want to focus for 19-20 and why?
Summer Equity Dates: June 24-25, July 15-16, and July 22-23 ***Your team is assigned to one of these date combinations based on your availability. If anything changes, let Megan know. A few FYIs about the trainings:
All equity trainings will be held at AC in the board room
Each day will have an hour-break for lunch, which is on your own
Materials will be given to participants when they arrive, but we encourage you to bring something to write with.
Due to the summer schedule, our start time will be 7:30 a.m. and we will end by 2:30 p.m. each day. Please make sure your teams are aware of the times.
Summer Equity Training Dates:
Spring CWIS Results (from MMD):
Use the link below to find your school’s spring CWIS results. These results should help you see the progress that was made this year as well as help you identify areas you may want to work on as a school next year.
Professional & Program Development
New Teacher Mentors/Buddies:
As you hire new teachers, please indicate their mentor (for teachers with 0-1 year of experience) or buddy (for teachers with 2 or more years of experience) on THIS FORM.
1st year mentor - 2% stipend (on Bachelor’s lane)
2nd year mentor - 1% stipend (on Bachelor’s lane)
Buddy - our undying gratitude!
When choosing a Mentor or Buddy, we (and DESE!) recommend they have these qualities:
BE AVAILABLE OUTSIDE OF THE NORMAL CONTRACTED TIME FOR THEIR MENTEE - Their stipend compensates them for this time. Sometimes our coaches are not the best choice.
Attend mentor meetings after school.
Help mentee complete required work to earn their BTAP.
Have a minimum of four (4) years of experience;
Exhibit enthusiasm and commitment to the profession, maintain confidentiality, and be respected by their colleagues;
Be committed to continuous learning, reflection, and mentoring;
Hold or have held a same or similar position/job or grade/subject area (in or out-of-building/school district);
Understand broad educational issues as well as specific teaching/education issues; and
Have a strong understanding of pedagogy and instructional expertise in content area(s);
Whole Child framework:
We are excited that we have a draft of what it means to be a WSD Learner! We will use this framework to guide our work in WSD. At our Admin meeting, we will be getting your feedback on this. We will ask that you look at this visual through the eyes of a WSD student, WSD staff member, and WSD parent/community member. Be ahead of the game on Tuesday and take a look!
Professional Learning:
Summer PD -
Please encourage your 3rd - 6th grade teachers to attend the Teachers College - Small Group/Conferring Institute July 8-11th. We’d love to see you there, too! TC has some of the best presenters and some amazing learning to support our commitment to high literacy in the district. You and your teachers can show their interest here: https://forms.gle/ZxdbF6iaLQAHAjBf6
Join the learning at: http://tinyurl.com/wsdSummerPD2019
New Teacher Orientation Dates:
ELA - July 29 / 30
Math - July 31 / Aug 1
Secondary all subjects - July 30 / 31
SPED is embedding with ELA 1 day
New Teacher Orientation - Aug 5 / 6 / 7
We will be taking PD CALENDAR SUB requests on this form. The CIA department and Lead Teachers will have first access to the PD/Sub calendar to schedule the large conferences/meetings. On or about July 1, we will use this form to populate the PD/Sub calendar for 2019-20... first come, first served. There is an option at the end of the form to upload a document instead if you have multiple requests. These are the questions:
What is your building or group?
What is the name of your event?
What date(s) are you wanting to schedule?
How many subs are needed per day or half day?
Who are the people needing subs OR is this a request to secure subs before recruiting participants?
Which fund is being used to pay for the subs?
Are you required to attend this event due to your presentation or position as leadership of a conference? Or other reason?
Will you consider giving us your cell phone number in case we have questions over the summer?
Please give us any information you feel is important.
Dr. Megan Stryjevski
Twitter: @DrStryjewski