Cordata Weekly Bulletin
5/28/2019
Good Monday morning, Cordata!
Keep an eye on the calendar for other spring events coming up. Several new ones have been added. This Friday, we get to enjoy Cordata Bobcats' amazing talent - thank you to Lis for organizing!
The week ahead - 5/27 - 5/31
The SEL Calendar, from now through the end of the year, focuses on continuing your class meetings, solving problems as they arise. Those of you using Caring School Communities as your key resource should continue to pull from the Topic Weeks to guide your SEL instruction.
Upcoming Dates
- May 28-30 - Cindy Corzine supporting PA assessments in primary
- May 29 - 6 pm - Special PTA meeting
- May 30 - Staff Picnic Potluck, organized by Sunshine Committee
- May 30 - Teachers Theater stories due to Emily!!
- May 31 - 8:45 - Assembly - TALENT SHOW!
- June 6 - 2:00-3:00 - Cert Staff Collaboration Time - SGC's in the library
- June 7 - 5th grade track meet
- June 10 - 8:45 am - (this is tentative, stay tuned for confirmation) - Show Club performance (includes students from Bennett and Bishop's classes who participated in an after school club)-
- June 13 - 1:00-2:00 - SGC - Cross grade level SGC meetings - K and 1st; 2nd and 3rd; 4th and 5th
- June 13 - 2:00-3:00 - SGC - Cross grade level SGC meetings - 1st and 2nd; 3rd and 4th; K meeting for class placement
- June 14 - Teacher's Theater!
- June 19 - Field Day - this is tentatively being planned with the support of Cornwall Church volunteers . . . much more info to come. If you have ideas, send them to Analisa.
- June 20 - last day of school - morning assembly followed by all-school recess and yearbook signing
- June 20 - Last day of school, and All Staff CELEBRATION at Dan's house! (Thanks, Dan, for hosting our crew for a potluck!)
Other News and Information
- Last week, I cancelled the SGC meetings because we simply don't yet have appropriate data to review. The new structure is below. The goal of these meetings is to review spring assessment data in order to a) share important information with the receiving teacher team, and b) reflect on the year's instruction to inform areas of focus for the future.
June 6 - 2:00-3:00 - All gen ed teachers and intervention specialists will meet in library for teh data review portion of the SGC meeting
June 13 - 1:00-2:00 - K and 1st will meet; 2nd and 3rd will meet; 4th and 5th will meet
June 13 - 2:00-3:00 - 1st and 2nd will meet; 3rd and 4th will meet; K will meet for class placement - Classroom teachers, please connect with your teams and send me your thoughts on two important things:
1) Grade level supply order - Laura will be sending you a document that contains last year's order, which you will need to update and send back to her. Please pay careful attention to overall costs. We anticipate that building budgets will be decreasing next year. I am not asking you to decrease your spending, I know these supplies are necessary. But I will be asking you to watch your supply usage closely, and conserve where you can. It will be more difficult to replenish as we go with the reduced budget
2) Intervention and specials schedule - We will be working on the intervention and specials schedule over the summer. If your grade level has requests for changes, or liked your schedule as it was, please send Analisa an email with that info. I cannot promise that everyone will get their first choice, so will ask you to stay flexible with this. But do let me know if you have preferences. - Please consider joining the PTA meeting this Wednesday at 6 pm in the music room. We will be voting on and discussing the change in organization of our parent support.
- Cert staff, you received emails from Laura and Michelle with some information about reporting your use of Tech Time (15 hours total) and snow-day make-up time (1 day between Feb. 19 and June 20, and a second day between June 14 and June 30). Although you originally had a hard copy form for the tech time, you are now required to record this time in the digital format in Skyward. Please don't forget - this impacts your August paycheck.
- IMPORTANT REQUEST - Please do not allow your students to use sidewalk chalk on the playground. (I have made the same request of our YMCA after-school-care staff.) Chalk can be lots of fun when well supervised, but little pieces left laying around are sometimes used for less-than-positive words and pictures. Thanks for helping take care of our space in this way!
- Classroom teachers, you recently received an email from Dawn Christiana about Concept Quest training. Concept Quest is a high-quality curriculum for math extensions, aligned to Bridges. The goal is for all classroom teachers to be trained - please check your calendars and sign up for the August 15 training if possible!
In closing . . .
Building vocabulary for questioning
Here's a link to a simple game designed to help build questioning skills for kids. Whether or not you use the game format, I thought this article had some interesting info about the importance of different kinds of open questions:
- Why questions help to find the root of a problem
- What If questions open up the floor for creative solutions
- How questions focus on developing practical solutions
The article then goes on to describe how building these questioning skills relates to the development of important qualities for future leaders:
- Logical skills: risk-taking, thinking strategy, creativity, and negotiation.
- Emotional skills: persuasion, emotional connection, body language, and dealing with vulnerability.
I found the article to be an interesting connection between our focus on SEL, on inquiry, and on building vocabulary - three things important to our young population!