Pow Wow Principals Press
February 9, 2018
Conference Sign-In Sheets
Jump Rope for Heart!!
** In the meantime, please remind students turn in their money for Jump Rope for Heart.**
#KDISlowChat
Our #VBEVIP is Ms. Leida! Enjoy your special parking spot, and keep making those nominations on Twitter!
Updates from Ms. Van Brimmer
At this point in the year, we have covered all of our reading standards and are now spiraling back to our Main Idea & Key Details standards.
For our struggling students it's important to be mindful of how we scaffold our instruction and strengthen prerequisite skills necessary to achieve mastery. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and then providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk.
The two most critical elements to keep in mind when scaffolding are modeling and practice with feedback.
Modeling: Students should be able to watch their teacher demonstrate each step in the task or strategy multiple times. This allows students to understand how to perform each step and why each step is important. This is most often accomplished in our Read/Think Alouds and mini lessons.
Practice: Students need the opportunity to practice collaboratively and with teacher feedback in order to master a task or strategy. Small group is a great time
- This can be especially difficult, so here are a few resources that can help generate strategies/lesson language for modeling in ELA:
- Jennifer Serravallo’s Reading & Writing Strategies books. {See your grade chair, Ms. Van Brimmer, or Ms. Moree if you’d like to take a look.}
- The state of Delaware has an awesome Learning Target Progressionthat Leann Nickelsen shared with us last year. This chunks a standard into smaller targets that can be specifically taught.
- The GO TO Strategies Matrix has been developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics and contains specific strategies for English Language Learners.
Updates from Ms. Riddick
Dr. Seuss Day is coming Friday, March 2, 2018! Help celebrate his birthday and the National NEA Read Across America Event! Feel free to get out those Cat in the Hat hats, Thing one and two t-shirts or any other creative regalia to wear that day.
I am scheduling volunteer readers from the chamber of commerce to come read to your class. A schedule will come as soon as it is finalized.
Read a Dr. Seuss book and practice annotating surprising (!) and wondering (?), make a list of nonsense words from the books, talk about the points of view of the characters. The ideas are endless!
We just decorated our doors for Literacy week and they look amazing! Now let’s beef up those bulletin boards around the building that have not been updated in a while! Get your grade level, your class or any group that feels creative to redo a bulletin board. Please use the template below to attach to your display. I will choose a panel of students to choose a winner.
Here is also the website that you will find great activities and ideas.
http://www.seussville.com/Educators/educatorReadAcrossAmerica.php
#ReadAcrossAmerica
Updates from Ms. Ragley
I attended a Cross Grade Level Math discussion on January 24th. Math Teachers from the district that attended were in grades 3 -12. The purpose of our meeting was to:
· Diagnose (or confirm) the most urgent needs our students have in math
· Brainstorm possible solutions
· Begin implementing an action plan to help close the major math gaps
The consensus among teachers from all grade levels (including Algebra and Geometry) was that the most urgent need is FACT FLUENCY. We discussed that teachers are using a variety of resources to help students become fluent, but there has not been a consistency in tracking students who are struggling and/or which facts they are struggling with. So, the problem becomes our students are moving on to middle school unprepared.
The district is currently working on solutions based on ideas that were shared at this meeting. They are in the beginning stages of organizing an end-of-year Fact Fluency competition/celebration for 5th grade students.
I just want to share a website that was created by Jeff Baumes. He created a flow chart of mathematical standards and their dependency on other standards from Kindergarten through eighth grade. https://jeffbaumes.github.io/standards/
The 3rd grade standard (OA.3.7) states that students by the end of 3rd grade, know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers. (standard highlighted green) When looking at this flow chart, you will the prerequisite and dependent standards.
Updates from Ms. Navarro
Greetings from PBIS and Mrs. Navarro,
Here is our current date for January 2018, My goal is for us to have less than 10 referrals for the month of February.
Our data indicates that all our proactive approaches are working, please remember that when a student receives 4 infractions for the same behavior you should contact me via email so we can problem solve and put in place an intervention. I am in the process of creating a share folder where I will have a list of classroom interventions by behavior. Please remember to turn in your applications for Suncoast Mental Health; we also have the lady from New Horizons running groups twice a week, she still has a few spots available. Our February PBIS event is Movie and Popcorn,
Criteria for attendance will be the same as for ice-cones with a friend; students should demonstrate their VIBE, they should not have minor infractions, phone-calls home, or notes to parents in regards to their behavior. This events are the perfect opportunity to shape students behaviors and should serve as an incentive to follow the VIBE. For our students struggling with anxiety, we have Moe the therapy dog in campus twice a week. Please email me any names of students you believe would benefit from a visit with Moe. Thanks so much for everything you do to support our students emotional needs, all the time you invest in building relationships with our students is what makes a difference in their lives.