Food for Thought
Principal's Weekly Communication -Week of April 4
PBIS
Our PBIS Team has completed the following tasks set forth from the beginning of the year checklist shared with staff:
- Develop a purpose statement
- Establish a monthly PBIS Leadership team and meet schedule for the school year
- Define Staff vs Administrator managed behaviors (Define them)
- Develop behavior Matrix
We are currently working on:
- Developing PBIS Flowchart
- Developing plans and procedures for encouraging and discouraging behaviors.
April Early Release Day will be for buildings to work on PBIS matters.
Work from District PBIS Team: We revisited the current Office/Major form and Classroom/Minor form to align the behaviors to match the behaviors in the SWIS system that is currently being used collect behavior data. New forms will be rolled out this August. Our next district meeting is April 21.
School Improvement Planning Through Rising Star
Our focus of differentiation will be on three tiers of an assignments during Core Instruction. We are using one task to tier for this school year and utilizing our April staff meeting to reflect on the tier activity. At our April staff meeting we will:
- Bring the product(s) or materials used for your differentiation activity. Share with your base team how the differentiated activity went; use the reflective questions below to guide your discussions.
- Reflective questions
- -What worked well?
- What would you do differently?
- What is one idea you can take from your base team to apply to differentiating in your classroom?
Collaborating with our colleagues will help us all have a big picture of what is going on across the building and give each other ideas to implement in the classroom.
Rising Star Indicators our building is working on:
Educator Quality: ID13 Instructional teams meet for blocks of time sufficient to develop and refine units of instruction and review student learning data.
Teaching and Learning: IIB04 Teachers differentiate instruction based on assessment results to provide support for some students and enhance learning opportunities for others.
Learning Environment: CL8 The school culture supports teachers in practicing effective and responsive instruction to meet individual student needs.
New Student Agendas Being Explored
Tech Advisory Meeting Notes
Some important notes that pertain to us (for the fall):
* K-2 classrooms will receive 4 more iPad airs (3-5 received theirs this year).
* K-5 classrooms will receive 4 chromebooks.
* Almost all buildings will receive new copy machines.
* Teacher laptops will continue to be updated/traded in.
* There will not be a TransLit Conference this year; instead, there will be ERO classes throughout the summer (you can earn credit hours) - I don't know any more information on this as of right now.
In case you didn't know, Emily Schaefer, Kristin Thorsen, and I are on this committee. If you ever have any questions or concerns, for this committee, please let one of us know. Thanks!
New Blackboard Mass Notification System
District 47 will soon be moving to a new mass notifications system with Blackboard, host to our current website and one of the nation’s largest technology companies specializing in education. This new system will replace Honeywell for emergency messaging and will also be useful for routine communications and important updates from the district and our schools. District 47 has decided to make this shift to a new notification system to streamline communications - improving the ease, speed and accuracy of outgoing messages. Both staff and parents will be able to receive important updates about the district and their school via phone, text and email, and soon, even push notification, by downloading our new mobile app! The new system is set to launch sometime in early April.
Math Expressions Initial Overview Training-HR Coordinating Subs-
These dates are allocated for this training. Please do not schedule any release days for mentoring or professional development on these days.
- Kindergarten: Tuesday, May 3 12:40-3:40 Fetzner
- Grade 1: Thursday, May 5 12:40-3:40 Fetzner
- Grade 2 Wednesday, April 20 8:10-11:10 Fetzner
- Grade 3 Tuesday, May 3 8:10-11:10 Fetzner
- Grade 4: Wednesday, April 20 8:10-11:10 Fetzner
- Grade 5 Thursday, May 5 8:10-11:10 Fetzner
- ELL, Learning Specialists, Gifted Facilitators: Wednesday, May 4 8:10-11:10 or 12:40-3:40 Fetzner
4/4
- PLC
- HPTO Clothing drive Starts
- GOTR
4/5
- 5th grade band
- Chess Tournament
- Staff Mtg
4/6
- Picture Day
4/7
- PPS Mtg
- Recycle
- GOTR
- Girl Scouts
4/8
- PBIS Leadership
- 5th Grade band
- Girl Scouts
- Husmann Spirit Day