Tiger Times
NEWS AND INFO FOR SLATER STAFF 2.3
Much like often-ignored Black history, there is much more to our students than what meets the eye. They are gifted, talented, and resilient people who have the potential to accomplish great things, if only we help water the seeds of greatness that already reside in them.
There is also more to our parents than traditional narratives would have us believe. This week's Donuts with Dads - Dads Do Literacy event was proof! Over 100 fathers came to engage in literacy with their child! Kudos to everyone involved in planning and executing this event!
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Terrific Tigers
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This week we helped to build bridges by sending 99 messages to families. 17 photos and videos went home giving us a great opportunity for growth next week. The highlight of the week was again, exceeding our goal of 90% positive feedback! Keep up the positivity!
The Culture and Discipline Task Force will be sending you information regarding the ClassDojo audit in the coming days. Remember, we should all only have 5 skills (3 schoolwide + 1 class custom + 1 grade level custom) weighted at 1 point. The same 5 skills should be reflected in “Needs Work” and weighted at 0 points. Flood your class story this week!
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Culture and Safety Reminders
Remember, students can not be effectively supervised from the top of the hill. Please select an area of the field for a better vantage point and proximity. If kids are down the hill playing, you should be as well. Also, remember that the punitive witholding of recess must be approved in advance by administration.
Our next drills will be the week of February 10th. More information will be provided in the coming weeks. ·
Remember, students sent outside of your room for any reason, MUST have hall passes. · Keep in mind we can never put students out of the classroom or invite students to leave. You must visually ensure a student that you have sent to colleague for cool down actually reaches the room you sent them to.
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Culture Resource of the Week
Our discipline data has informed our proactive efforts to reduce physical aggression every day at Slater. This requires explicit instruction on avoiding conflict and a consistent message that physical aggression is never the way to solve problems. This brief youtube video entitled “Fighting in Class is Wrong!” is a great conversation starter for teachers and students. It can be used frequently to address real issues. Play it, pause it, rewind it when necessary. Lastly, connect avoiding physical aggression to the skills acquired through their weekly Mindful Life sessions.
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Instructional Reminders
When posting grades, please add assignments under Term 4 and then post to Term 3 progress report.
Be sure to POST grades weekly to ensure Infinite Campus grades for each student reflects their most current progress.
Aggressive monitoring is an instructional focus for the 2nd semester. Please be sure to capture student data while monitoring.
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Instructional Resource of the Week
What is Exploring Africa?
"Exploring Africa is produced and developed by the African Studies Center (ASC) at Michigan State University in an effort to address the severe shortage of high quality African resources available to students and educators, particularly at the K-12 level. As an academic community comprised of more than 200 scholars who study Africa from a diversity of more than 20 disciplines, we are acutely aware of the need to provide learners and educators with resources that help them to engage Africa in a comprehensive manner, taking into account the continent’s rich diversity and complexities. Recognizing that for many people their only formal introduction to Africa will come in during their K-12 schooling, Exploring Africa is a serious attempt to provide this important community with curricular resources based on solid interdisciplinary scholarship that provide them with the opportunity to adequately engage Africa through knowledge, resources, and thoughtful learning activities that allow students to construct a more comprehensive and sympathetic appreciation for and understanding of Africa."
Curriculum: The Exploring Africa! curriculum is divided into units, modules, and learning activities. Each unit covers a major topic or theme in the study of Africa, which is then divided into thematic, disciplinary, regional, or country modules. Each module is comprised of learning activities, which are each aligned to the Common Core State Standards. The learning activities in each module vary in length of time needed for completion. Both students and teachers should feel free to navigate through the units, modules, and learning activities autonomously, or communally with a class, study partner, or teacher. Feel free to select one or two learning activities from a module, or complete all of the learning activities in the order in which they are presented."
Click HERE to visit this resource.
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TO DO LIST
2. Make sure bulletin boards are changed by 1/31.
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THIS WEEK
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IMPORTANT LINKS AND NUMBERS
Lesson Plans
- Calendar Requests
- YouTube Whitelist:
- Supply Request:
- Tech Requests:
- Digital Instructional Resources: www.portaportal.com Guest Access: dkemp