Monday Morning Motivation
Central Elementary Staff News----January 19-January 22
Good, Better, Best!
Dear Staff,
As we take a moment to remember Martin Luther King Jr., I am reminded of my favorite sections from the I have a Dream Speech.
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
The reason I like this message so much is that in whatever we do, we do our very best. We are not above any job. With every task we are given, we need to dig in and work harder to be even better.
When I was growing up, the saying Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest, until your good is better and your better is best really resonated with me and this has continued throughout my life. Each morning I get up and think, how can I work to make Central Elementary even a better place to learn and grow? You do this, too. I see you here late in the evening or on the weekends. You present a lesson and think that was pretty good, but how can it be better?
Our ISTEP scores were very good both as a school and as a district. We did extremely well despite the significant drops experienced in other school school districts. Out of 297 school corporations in the State of Indiana:
For the combined ELA/Math ISTEP Scores:
Plainfield Grade 3 ranked 20th
Plainfield Grade 4 ranked 7th
Plainfield Grade 5 ranked 8th
For the Science ISTEP Scores:
Plainfield Grade 4 ranked 8th
For all that we have to celebrate, we can grow even more together. I too have a dream that one day we will be considered the best elementary school in the state of Indiana.
Have a great week!
Julie
A Week at a Glance
Central Calendar
MONDAY, January 18
- No School
- Remember and Honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr.
TUESDAY, January 19
- LIteracy Activities
- Community Forum PHS 6:00-7:30 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, January 20
- ISTEP Readiness Test in the computer labs from 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. The labs will be closed during this time.
THURSDAY, January 21
- Social Studies Curriculum meeting for those representing Central at Superintendent's Office 4:00-5:00
- RTI meeting in the LIbrary from 3:50-4:50. Conference Call with Data Coach. Please bring your computer.
FRIDAY, January 22
- Fire Drill 1:00 (Hopefully, it will be warmer at this time.)
Announcements and Reminders
Please remember to have your lesson plans out on your desk.
January 19th Literacy Day (for two hours) to promote Read-A-Thon and a love of reading. Please see suggested literacy time activities for grade-levels, which will come out later this week. Courtney Carmichael has created a bookmark for parents to practice reading skills and to engage in their child's reading. On the back of the bookmark is recommended readings for parents. Thank you Courtney for taking the time to create this! Be sure to communicate your new schedule for the day. Thank you!
January 21st Central K, 2, and 4 body safety presentation during school. Each presentation is given in Individual classrooms and will last approximately 30 minutes.
Benchmark and Cogat Schedule is out! Testing begins January 25th.
Orientation for 5th graders will be held at the Middle School on February 5th at 9:00 a.m. Thanks for your flexibility 5th grade teachers!
Mouthpiece testing for 5th grade students is Thursday, February 11th
1:40-2:05 p.m
2:05-2:30 p.m.
2:30-2:55 p.m.
2:55-3:20 p.m.
February 16th and 18th there will be a parent band meeting at the Middle School.
Curriculum and Instruction
RTI Resources
Below is some information regarding Moby Max Early Reading that is currently available to all students in our district. After our Data Team meetings, there were some teachers looking for additional resources to use for interventions with students. Primary teachers, there are good activities if you are looking for something different for student literacy stations or a website that students might use at at home.
Teachers have to set up the program for their students, but it is available through our Moby Max Subscription and has gotten very good reviews from the field.
EARLY READING TRIO
(www.mobymax.com/Curriculum/EarlyReadingTrio)
MobyMax, a provider of personalized and blended learning curriculum for K-8 students, released Early Reading Trio, a new Touch Curriculum subject. In the curriculum, students start by learning sound-letter correspondences. Next, they practice interacting with familiar words in stories. Lastly, students finish the Trio by dragging and dropping words and pictures to “write” their own stories.
The Early Reading Trio consists of three modules that work together to reinforce early reading skills—the Early Words module prompts students to practice the phonetic sounds they will encounter in Early Stories; the Early Stories module consists of four one-sentence pages where students drag into the sentence the correct word they learned in Early Words; and in Early Writing, students create stories by dragging words and pictures.
Spring Assessments!
- WIDA English Language Learner Assessment January 25-29 (only for ELL students)
- Cogat High Ability Assessment February (all students in kindergarten and second grade and those students new to the district)
- STAR 360 Math and Reading February (all students grades k-5)
- ISTEP Part 1 Window February 29- March 11, 2016
- I-Read-3 Window March 14 - March 18, 2016 (all third grade students)
- ISTEP Part 2 Window April 18-May 6, 2016 (all students grades 3-5)
Very Important ISTEP Information/Resources Grades 3-5
Please take some time to review the updated resources on the DOE. Additionally, I will sent an email with all the information, including a PowerPoint. At the end of last week, I put printed materials in your mailbox. Students should be exposed to ISTEP sample problems once a day!
Look at the grade-level pdf resource guides.
http://www.doe.in.gov/standards/mathematics
Professional Development!
- Please mark your calendars for the following district-wide professional development:
- January 26th for Literacy Stations #1: Using the Classroom Library to Build Stamina (K-5)
- February 9 for Literacy Stations #2: Implementing Literacy Stations for Fluency (K-5)
- February 23 for Literacy Stations #3: Implementing Literacy Stations for Word Work (K-5)
- March 8 for Literacy Stations #4 and #5) Implementing Listening and Reading (K-5)
Celebrate Staff
- Attendance for the week was up to 97.01 percent
- Thanks Randi for all your hard work in creating a Star Benchmark and Cogat Schedule. This was not an easy task and is greatly appreciated!
- Parents appreciate our hard work, especially our secretaries as many extra safety tasks have been added.
- PCSC's awesome ISTEP scores!!
- The data team process of referring students to special education and those students receiving the help they need to be successful students.
- Kathy Crum's hard work leading the Literacy Day committee! Looking forward to a great day promoting the Read-A-Thon!