South Middle School
Staff Weekly Newsletter: January 27 - January 31
Week at a Glance
- Annual IEP for LN (Room 1, 7:40 a.m.)
- Annual IEP for SPR (Room 4, 7:45 a.m.)
- Speech IEP for DJ (Room 2 Office, 7:45 a.m.)
- Schedule Hand-Out (Main Gym, 8:00 - 8:30 a.m.)
- Schedule Committee Meeting #2 (Barret's Office, 3:15 - 4:30 p.m.)
Tuesday, January 28
- Annual IEP for CM (Room 1, 7:40 a.m.)
- Annual IEP for NM (Room 4, 7:45 a.m.)
- School Board Meeting (District Office, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.)
Wednesday, January 29
- PLC - Instruction (SMS Library, 7:37 - 8:40 a.m.)
Thursday, January 30
- Annual IEP for LG (Room 4, 7:45 a.m.)
- Walk-Through Observations (SMS, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.)
Friday, January 31
- 3-Year Eligibility for DC (Room 1, 7:40 a.m.)
- Change of Placement for NM (Room 4, 7:45 a.m.)
- Discovery 2.0 Planning (District Office, 8:30 - 11:00 a.m.)
- NMS/SMS Leadership Retreat (SMS Gym, 3:30 - 11:00 p.m.)
Supervision Schedule
Supervision Schedule (8:10 - 8:25 a.m.) - 15 minutes a day as assigned.
Team 4:
6th Grade Hall: Ward
T @ 7th/8th Grade Hall: DeHarmony
8th Grade Hall: Serrage
Large Gym: Bigelow/Baertschiger
Parking Lot AM: Willaman
Parking Lot PM & Buses PM: Gottula & Pell
Daily Supervision Schedule:
Parking Lot/Exit AM: Aguilera, Huerta & Admin
Parking Lot/Exit PM: Aguilera, Kindrick & Admin
Cafeteria AM: Miller/McCarty & Hopkins/Karbowski
Bus PM (3:09 - 3:25): Hopkins/Karbowski, Admin & Team Teacher
Staff Shout-Out
Carlee Nelson
Brain Bowl is off to a great start with our students crushing the competition. They'll be looking to get back to the finals this year under the coaching of Ms. Nelson! Way to go, team!
Weekly Article
Staff,
In light of our "WICOR Challenge" this week, I found this article interesting. The best lesson planning comes from looking at our district-adopted curriculum, and embedding WICOR strategies (i.e. getting students to think deeper and think critically) while we give them the tools (e.g. vocabulary, modes of thinking skills) they need to reach proficiency in our content areas.
Enjoy!
Another Problem with Random Lesson Plans from the Internet
In this Education Gadfly article, Robert Pondiscio comments on the recent Fordham Institute report, which found that the “supplemental materials bazaar” of online curriculum materials often provides mediocre worksheets and lesson plans that are poorly aligned to standards. The fact that almost all teachers are scouring Pinterest and Google for ideas is a sign of a deeper problem, says Pondiscio. It means that teachers (a) don’t find a lot of the published curriculum materials supplied by schools very engaging for their varied students; (b) see their job as teaching a curriculum of content-neutral skills (like finding the main idea and critical thinking), and (c) regard knowledge as “a mere delivery mechanism, just a ploy to keep students’ attention while they practice and master a ‘skill.’”
“But cognitive skills are not content-neutral,” Pondiscio says; “they are ‘domain-specific.’ Background knowledge of a topic is the most significant driver of reading comprehension. Neither is it possible to train students to be all-purpose critical thinkers or problem solvers. These modes of thinking are intertwined with content knowledge… When teachers are encouraged to view every lesson as a one-off, either explicitly or tacitly, curricular coherence is lost. This is how kids wind up studying the environment multiple times and the Bill of Rights never.
“Coherence matters and must be attended to,” Pondiscio concludes. “An excellent education is not just what gets taught today. It’s the cumulative effect of a coherent, cumulative, thoughtfully sequenced, and knowledge-rich curriculum that broadens and deepens over time, within and across grades… This vision is fundamentally incompatible with an approach that treats curriculum as fungible or disconnected, a series of audibles called at the line of scrimmage.”
“Digging in the Dirt for Quality Curriculum” by Robert Pondiscio in The Education Gadfly, January 15, 2020 (Volume 20, #2), https://bit.ly/2uj1Dl4
The Function of Education
We Welcome YOU!
January Students of the Month
January Birthdays!
- Bri Coleman - January 19th
- Mary Chamberlain - January 25th
- Shawn Howell - January 25th