Principal Newsletter of the Month
January
January MAP Testing
After students have completed their testing, they will review and revise their goals that they set at the beginning of the school year in reference to their learning growth as measured by their MAP performance. Their goals can be found in their assignment notebooks on page 28.
JLMS Instructional Foci
A second focus is to continue building the capacity of teachers in reference to their use of technology use in the classroom. The world of technology continues to develop and the tools that are available to teachers also continues to grow. Our instructional technology leadership team is working with teachers on developing and integrating new instructional practices that teachers can infuse into their classroom through the Canvas platform.
In addition, the JLMS leadership team continues to attack our assessment practices as a staff to ensure that we are balanced in our approach to how students can display their learning. We will be gathering assessment practice data in the upcoming months and using professional development time to compare, dissect, and improve upon our classroom assessment practices at JLMS. Our goal is to ensure that students are exposed to a variety of rigorous assessment practices that better prepare them to be successful for future educational and life experiences.
Chromebook Reminders
Here are some notes about the 1:1 Chromebook program. Some parents had asked about printer installation. We also have had some recent issues with students coming to school without their Chromebook.
Forgotten / Uncharged Chromebooks
Please continue to help your child prepare for school by charging and bringing their Chromebook to school every day. Today at John Long Middle School we ran out of our spare checkout devices from our repair inventory because twenty middle school students came to school today either without a device or forgot to charge their Chromebook. This does affect classroom instruction as teachers are relying on students to be ready to access resources in class. Please check with your child if they need help in preparing for school every day.
Printing
If you have a newer printer that is wifi you can probably print using the directions from your printer or the Google link below. The ideal connection is using Cloud Print v 2.0 as that shares your printer internally on your home network rather than requiring a connection to the internet.
https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/1686197?hl=en
If you have an older printer networked at your home, you could create a shared cloud printer from a Mac or PC. (see directions above for “Connect a printer that’s not cloud-ready”) This is a bit more difficult to do for the average user but would allow the Chromebook to print to an older printer in your house.
Apps or sites for coding
As we approach the winter break, we would like to share with you some tools to continue learning and challenging themselves. There are a number of gamified code learning sites that children can use that allow them to “create” rather than “consume” on the device. Kids will often gravitate to mindless games like slither.io which lack of positive brain activity. Below are some useful links to engaging learning activities for students.
https://hourofcode.com/us/learn - Learn to Code
https://scratch.mit.edu/explore/projects/all/ - Learn to Code
https://www.wevideo.com/ - Video Creation and Editing
Upcoming Important Dates
- January 17 - End of 2nd quarter
- January 20 - No School - Grading
- February 21 - No School - Staff Professional Development
- March 6 - Half Day of School (Students Released at 11:00 a.m.)
John Long Middle School
Email: kdeering@grafton.k12.wi.us
Website: https://jlms.grafton.k12.wi.us/
Location: 700 Hickory Street, Grafton, WI, USA
Phone: (262) 376-5801
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Public-School/Grafton-School-District-332022333548537/
Twitter: @JLMS_Falcons