News from the Nest
Week of August 21, 2017 Related Arts "D" Week
Vision
"Wendell Phillips 63 will establish a positive, engaging, and rigorous learning environment that allows each child to “SOAR to Excellence” as a member of the Cardinal Family."
Places to be!!!
Aug 21- Lesson Plans Due in Google Drive (9:00 am)
Aug 21- Solar Eclipse Event- No Outdoor Recess
Aug 22- K-4 ELA PLC's; 5-7 All Content PLC's
Aug 23- K-4 Math PLC's
Aug 25- Cardinal Shirts/Jeans Day
General Need to Knows
Week 3- REINFORCE THE PURPOSE!! We are starting to see some good instruction happening in classrooms. Students are up and moving. carrying on academic conversations, and producing work products. We need to make sure we are communicating the purpose of the activities. WHY are students learning what they are learning in class? How are you connecting this to real-world application that is relevant to our students? Those connections increase the likelihood our students will retain what you are teaching.
On Monday, we will have the Solar Eclipse event for part of our instructional day. We are just outside the path of totality but should see 91% partial eclipse between 12:57 pm and 3:48 pm, with maximum eclipse at 2:24 pm. Due to this event and not having protective eye gear, students will not be allowed outside for recess this day. If you would like to participate in the classroom, you can click here Students will be granted excused absences if they are not in attendance at school if they are participating with their parents at home.
While other parts of the schedule appear to be running smoothly, I am getting concerned about dismissal. We must leave at our designated time slots to ensure we get out on time. As discussed during our beginning of year meeting, we must move our students quickly through the halls. I challenge you to have the buses off the lot by 4:08 pm each day next week. If we can accomplish this goal...lunch is on me Friday of next week!!!!
Long observations will continue this week. Long observations are at least 20 minutes in length and are unannounced. In your post observation conference, we will discuss the observation as well as setting goals in SFS. If you have not received an email from SFS to set up your account, please let me know.
REMINDER- K-3 Teachers and Related Arts Teachers- you will need to complete your pre-assessments to determine your standardized measure goals. Please click on the Standardized Measure Assessments button below for more information. Scores should be entered into their respective data trackers, which are found in SFS under the Assessments-General section. Pre-Assessments should be completed by Friday, August 25th.
Vision Aligned Thought Provokers
Positive classrooms: I hope we were able to take something away from the first chapter of "Teaching with Poverty in Mind". Hopefully this begins to give us insight into our students and to begin to answer some of the "why" questions we have about types of poverty and its impact on our students. How will understanding the impacts of poverty (emotional and social challenges, acute and chronic stressors, cognitive lags, and health and safety issues) guide your work in the classroom?
Engaging instruction: I am seeing some very collaborative instruction going on in classrooms. Cooperative groups, activities requiring movement and rotation through stations, and allowing students to converse about the content are great...as long as they are aligned with a clear purpose. Ms. Ivanov shared the "Inside/Outside Circle" KAGAN strategy this week. How will you implement this strategy in your classroom...with purpose? We look forward to seeing this during walkthroughs over the next month.
RIGOROUS Instruction: Another component of our definition of RIGOR is relevance. As mentioned above, students are more likely to retain the content we teach when they see how it relates to their lives...in and out of the classroom. How are you making your teaching authentic? How does it align to real-world problems that our students will encounter? It's more than using their names in the word problem or question...
Resources and Tools
Links
Shout Outs!!!!
Ms. Moore's Growth Mindset Grading System. Students place their assignments in the bin that aligns with how they think they did. Helping students reflect on their performance. Nice Job!!
Ms. Johnson's class Dojo point tracker. Students being able to set goals and see themselves move from level to level. Powerful for our kindergarten students! Dojo point for Ms. Johnson!!!