JWL Weekly Update
Volume 7 * Issue 31 * week of March 18, 2019
Welcome back!
Time to achieve and exceed our goals!
Instruction Focus
1. Effective instruction
2. Classroom management with student engagement
In our last weekly bulletin, I shared a few refinement areas that were discussed at our campus leadership meeting. After having time to reflect on these specific areas, how have you personally reflected on your practices in these areas?
- Chunking lessons to check for understanding as lesson progresses
--How do you check for understanding DURING the lesson?
--> Do you facilitate turn and talk opportunities?
--> Do you call out questions?
--> Do you actively monitor guided practice tasks?
--Why is this important to do?
- Differentiation of activities (such as in stations)
--Why is differentiation in your classroom needed?
--> At what level of understanding do you find your students to be?
--> How do you scaffold learning to meet all needs?
--Do you need guidance or assistance in differentiating activities?
--> If so, ask a curriculum coordinator, a mentor teacher, Reed or me.
- Concise use of academic vocabulary during instruction
--Have you noticed what language / terms you use as you instruct?
--> We have iPads that can be checked out to record yourself teaching; then you can view
and listen for your language patterns.
--> Are you consistently using academic language?
--> Are students using the academic language correctly?
--What patterns, if any, have you observed?
If you have suggestions that will benefit our team, please share them here, and I can add them to the next bulletin!
Classroom Mangagement
Over the years, I have come to realize that developing a strong classroom community is probably the most effective classroom-management strategy. When students come together as a cohesive unit that takes pride in learning, disruptions and misbehaviors are greatly reduced. Here are 10 quick and easy ways to increase the sense of community within your own classroom.
- Work as a class to create a classroom constitution. Have students work together to brainstorm their most important guidelines for a successful learning community. Once students have decided on the five or six most important points, write them in a pledge form on posterboard. Have all students sign the pledge and hang it on the wall where the students can see it.
- Every day after the Pledge of Allegiance, have students recite the classroom pledge that they created.
- Conduct a morning meeting. Have students sit in a circle. The first student should turn to the student on his/her right, shake hands and say good morning, being sure to say the name of the student whose hand they are shaking. Once the hand shaking and greeting has gone all the way around the circle, you can open the meeting up for discussion. Students love to share important things in their lives!
- Assign each student a classroom job that changes weekly.
- Periodically invite students to eat lunch with you. Do it just because or for something special like a birthday or congratulatory celebration.
- Move students’ desks together so that they work cooperatively. Allow students time to talk with their partners in their table groups about both academic and personal subjects.
- Purchase some “All About Me” posters from a teacher store (or create your own). Each week assign the role of star student to a different child. The star student should take his/her poster home and fill it out, adding pictures or drawings. Allow the star student to present the poster to the class and give classmates time to ask questions. Hang each star student poster up on the wall for the week.
- Get a large jar and some marbles. Put a handful of marbles in the jar each time the class does something exceptional. When the jar is full, the whole class earns a reward.
- Read the book “How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids” by Tom Rath to the class. After the reading, have a class discussion about the book. Create a bucket bulletin board and leave a stack of raindrops big enough for kids to write on near the bucket. Students can write ways that their classmates filled up their bucket and then stick them up on the bulletin board.
- Read the book “Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge” by Mem Fox. Over the next few days, have students bring in something that makes them laugh, cry, etc. Students can share their items and why they are special with their classmates and then use those items as a starting point for a piece of writing.
Ideas above taken from this website.
Attendance
Goal: 98%+ Attendance
Here are our attendance rates from last week. Thank you so much for encouraging your students to be here on a daily basis.
K: 90.41% Down a bit. We can increase this week.
1: 94.72% On the mend a bit more...
2: 90.16% Decreased a little.
3: 93.67% A little down last week.
4: 91.60% Quite a bit of decrease
5: 95.78% Looking upward! Congrats on your BLUE belt!
JWL: 92.73%
Belt status:
White:
First grade: Week of August 20
Fifth grade: Week of August 27
Third grade: Week of September 17
Second grade: Week of December 3
Fourth grade: Week of December 17
Yellow:
Fifth grade: Week of September 3
Third grade: Week of October 1
First grade: Week of November 5
Second grade: Week of December 10
Fourth grade: Week of January 14
Gold:
Fifth grade: Week of September 10
Third grade: Week of October 15
First Grade: Week of January 21
Fourth Grade: Week of February 11
Orange:
Fifth grade: Week of October 8
Third grade: Week of October 22
Fourth grade: Week of February 18
Green:
Third grade: Week of October 29
Fifth grade: Week of November 12
Blue:
Third grade: Week of January 7
Fifth grade: Week of March 4
Purple:
Third grade: Week of January 28
Brown:
Third grade: Week of February 4
Red:
Third grade: Week of February 25
Black:
What's Your Mindset?
Heads Up
STAAR online modules
You can access these three modules by clicking here.
You will need to submit your certificates to Mrs. Anderson by 4:00pm Monday, March 25th.
STAAR Pep Rally
Our starting point: Don't sweat the STAAR!
Thinking Kinder will partner with 3rd, 1st with 4th, and 2nd with 5th.
Lesson Plans
- Lesson plans are due each Friday before you leave campus.
- The lesson plan template has guiding questions provided to help you plan quality lessons based on pacing guide's scope and sequence.
- Below is a pic with some notes to help you think about your own plans and reflect
- Remember, the purpose of lesson plans is to know
- where in the pacing guide your class is
- how you will frame/communicate the purpose of the lesson/skill (SO)
- how you will lead your students to mastery of SE (PIC | ACT | MAT | GRP)
- how you will know who and who does not understand (TH/PS | SW | ASSESS)
Looking for clear focus on what students are doing to master the SE of focus.
If I can be of further assistance, please let me know. I have added some comments to lesson plans I have checked. I'll continue to read through more and comment accordingly.
UIL Event This Weekend!
Be sure your classrooms are neat and orderly as your rooms will be used for competitions.
Details to know:
--Coaches need to be at school by 8:00am
--Students need to start arriving by 8:30am
--Events should start promptly by 9:00am
--All coaches need to stay on campus for duration of events, even if its not theirs, and until kids are gone
--Must sign in at every event administered/ judged/ graded in order to be paid
--Send reminds home to parents of students on team about meet on 3/23
Summer School...Interested?
Region 10 Road Show @ TISD this summer!
Our teachers and staff can now begin registering for the roadshow on www.region10.org. As a thank you for serving as a host location, registration will be open to our district for the next two weeks to give our educators first priority for attending sessions before it will be opened up to the rest of the region on April 1st.
Here is the link to the Roadshow Google Site for a summary of offerings in one location in an easy to read format that you can share with teachers.
Tutorials: Total students logged in last week . . .
Kinder: 27 students by Morgan, Harvey, Bass & Way
First: 7 students by Vasquez & Robb
Second: 13 students by Ray (both days) & Hurd, Lilley, and Farquhar
Third: 27 students by Lester, Barton, Payne & Stevenson
Fourth: 5 students by Knebel
Fifth: 24 students by Huggins, Snavely, and Jasperson (both days) and Phillips & Denson
Please be sure to have your tutorial students log in each tutorial session they attend. Thanks!
Log In Links:
Lexia
JWL 79%
K 85% Bass (95%), Morgan & Gilliam (100%)
1st 92% Robb (100%), Bosak & Carter (95%), and Stack (90%)
2nd 87% Roseberry & Farquhar (100%), Dove (95%), and Ray & Hurd (94%)
3rd 94% Ledford (97%) and Stevenson (95%)
4th 69%
5th 41%
Dreambox Usage
The following teachers' classes earned an average of more than 10 lessons in a week:
Holloway 12.9
Morgan 11.3
Golden Tickets
Grade levels, you distributed the Golden Tickets to your Tier 3 students to use as passes for their morning computer time from 7:30 - 8:10am. This time, as you will recall, is for students to utilize Lexia and Dreambox as additional support time. These students are to go to computer lab from 7:30am to 8:00am. Then they will be released to classrooms for breakfast (8:00am-8:15am).
Those on duty in these areas: please be sure students are signing in with the Google Form. (see below)
K - 2: Pardoe in Lopez's computer lab
3 - 5: Harvey in Harvey's computer lab
Teachers: If you see that your students are not attending, please ask them why. Let's verify if there are valid concerns (ie, transportation issues) or if they are "skipping".
Parent Communication
Keep up the communication with families!
Remember, each user (homeroom, special interest group, etc.) is to send at minimum one message each week to parents informing them of weekly ongoings, curriculum topics of focus, and/or special projects. Please stay connected with families; they are our partners in educating their kiddos.
Huge thank you to our top 5 users last week:
Mrs. Stack
Mrs. Nichols
Ms. Stevenson
Mrs. Morgan
Mrs. Robb
This Week's Ongoings:
Tuesday
- TELPAS Online Testing: Must be quiet in halls
- Mr. Fields Weatherman @ 9:30am in the gym
- PLCs
- SSTs
- SALT meeting, room 15 @ 4:15pm
Wednesday
- No worksheet Wednesday
- TELPAS Online Testing: Must be quiet in halls
- SSTs
- ARDs
- Faculty Meeting: Safety focus
Thursday
- SSTs
- TELPAS Online Testing: Must be quiet in halls
- PLCs
- JWL STAAR Pep Rally Planning session, 4:30pm in Cafeteria
- Progress Reports go home
- JWL PTO meeting, 6pm in Cafeteria
Friday
- TELPAS Online Testing: Must be quiet in halls
- SSTs
SATURDAY
- UIL Competition @ JWL **Please be sure your classrooms are clean and orderly as we will be using different classrooms for different competitions
Staff Shout Outs!
Amy Ledford
Always quick to help anyone in need, her attitude brings a smile to my face everyday, and she deserves to know how appreciated she is!
Brittany Bosak
Mrs. Bosak always has a sunny disposition and is always willing to assist wherever and whenever needed!
Here is the web address if you can copy and paste in your browser bar:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1RMNzcckPl8qcXo6nSbxIPTYHhivLcMv9dUruyDymW88/edit
Sorry for the inconvenience.