This Week at AES
2/1 - 2/5
This Week at a Glance
Monday 2/1
- Dress as your favorite character day (you may wear jeans if you participate)
- Sozo Children’s Choir Performance at 1 pm
- Literacy Committee Meeting at 3:15
Tuesday 2/2
- Math Core Advocate Training at Logsdon Center 8-3
- Caleb out all day
- Christ Club
- Staff Meeting: PLC Time: Please discuss your grade level performance and decide a date for the performance. I would like all dates sent to me by Friday, February 5th.
Wednesday 2/3
- Academic Team
Thursday 2/4
- No Special Events Planned
Friday 2/5
- Intermediate Progress Reports go Home
- House Meeting
- Daddy/Daughter Dance
#educate
#care
#care
Notes for the Week
This Week is a Primary Guidance Week
- As a PLC start working on your timeline to complete these items prior to April 30th : Please refer to past Memos for the list
- Wednesday, February 24th is World Read Aloud Day. We will have numerous guest readers in the building. In addition to the guests, I would also like us to stretch our skill-set and think Out of the Box. I would like for every lesson that day to be tied to a read-aloud. As you work with your PLC Teams, please start planning how your reading, writing, math, social studies, science, language, music, PE, and other content will be taught through read alouds on the 24th.
Hot Links
- Information on the Sessions with Sarah and Barbara can be found here.
- Please be mindful of your printing. When possible, always print to the copy machine and not actual printers. Printer printing costs 5 times the amount of printing to the copier. Reports of our largest printers can be found here.
Engage!
I recently attended a training where one of the topics of discussion was Engagement. I have always thought of engagement as students being actively involved in the instruction. It was easy to measure. In fact, we used to have a walk-through tool that focused on the number of kids who were engaged in the instruction. They were the kids who were working, raising hands, and paying attention.
The reality is that true instructional engagement requires students to be actively involved on a cognitive level. They must be thinking about the content. When I thought about this, I realized that I am often compliant in my learning environments, church, trainings, and meetings. My eyes are on the presenter, I give the occasional head nod, and I may even break out a “yep” or “amen.” Other times, I am truly engaged. I am thinking deeply about the information, looking up related information, turning to a partner to talk about the content, and asking questions.
So how do we make sure that we are cognitively engaging students? Engaging students is building the environment for students to be intellectually stimulated and then carefully planning the lessons to make sure that students have an opportunity for deep engagement. This week look for opportunities to increase the engagement of your students. Are your lessons getting students to think more about a topic/content? After all, if students are not cognitively engaged in a topic, are they really learning?