Mark's Monday Morning Memo
October 12, 2015
Students Connecting Through International Service Project
Congratulations to Ahna Miller, 5th grader in Leslie Green's room, for being selected as the Rice Lake representative to this year's Students Connecting Through International Service Project. Ahna will work this year with Tammie Epley, project coordinator, Ann Mock, Oak View principal, and 5th graders from Basswood, Edinbrook, Elm Creek, Oak View, and Park Brook to plan for their school supply drives and their trip to Arizona and Sasabe, Sonora, Mexico. Our school supply drive is the week of March 14-18, 2016, and I'm working to schedule our school-wide Mexico project assembly between May 26-June 8, 2016, avoiding our already scheduled end-of-the-year events. There were twelve 5th graders who wrote wonderful essays this year and thank you to colleagues who read and reviewed those.
How You Can Support Our Food Service Team
Here are four ways you can help our food service team as they work daily to prepare meals for students and find ways to meet staff members' requests. (1) Please limit your access to the kitchen area to the counter where food is available to staff. If you need access beyond that point, for health code expectations, you will need to wear a hair net. (2) If you need to contact or ask questions of a food service staff member that can wait until after service time, please send them an email message or put a note in their box. (3) We are working to equip the lounge with items staff members might need for their own food items so you don't need to go to the kitchen for assistance. (4) If you need assistance from the food service staff with storage of items for instruction or special events, please plan ahead and communicate with the food serve staff. Thank you for your support with these.
Professional Development Day October 26, 2015
The system is planning activities for elementary staff members the morning of October 26, 2015, when we all will gather at MGSH. Stay tuned for more information about that morning. Our building professional development time that afternoon will be in an EdCamp style. The EdCamp structure allows participants to come together, identify topics you want to learn more about, and use the skills and talents among the participants to learn, share, lead, facilitate, and collaborate. All you need to do between now and that afternoon is think about topics you are interested in learning more about and sharing with others.
Dismissal
Thank you for your work on establishing practices and routines for dismissal. Please do not dismiss students until you hear the 3:10, 3:17, and bus announcements from Amy. This helps make sure adults are ready to safely supervise and eliminates any early dismissal of students. Thank you!
Personal Printers
Unfortunately, the district does not support personal printers for use in classrooms with our district computers. If you have a printer in your classroom that is not district purchased, you need to please remove that. Thank you.
TIES Playdate
TIES is hosting a new kind of learning session, a playdate on Friday, October 16, 2015, from 8:30-12:30. I attended one of these last year and it was a good opportunity to learn about and play with some new resources. You can learn about Sphero, Dash and Dot, Osmo, Green screen filming, Tiggly, Wireless doc cams, iPad apps, Chromebooks, Makey Makey, Arduino, and other resources. Go to the TIES website for information and to register. It's free!