CJH Weekly Update
Staff - Week of Feb. 4th
Updates....
Winterfest
We haven't had any lead time, but this week is Winterfest. We will be celebrating with dress up days in our building. Mrs. Selvidge was kind enough to create a daily survey for you to complete to input your headcount daily. You will receive a reminder each day via e-mail that will allow us to determine the winner. Thanks Becky! I will provide a prize to the grade level with the most participation throughout the week.
The High School will be running an Assembly Schedule, but in an effort to maximize instruction after the missed days and keep our building as structured as possible, we will be running a Full Day Regular Schedule. I have set up coverage for shared staff and communicated with anyone that this will directly impact. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Report Cards
Report Cards will go out early this week via e-mail to parents. Parents that do not have an e-mail on file will receive via snail mail.
ICE
We will still follow the ICE Schedule again starting on Feb. 12th, despite missing our last PLC meeting. We will not start our new ICE assignment process until after the next PLC meeting. You are welcome to assign students as you have been assigning them or make the decision by grade level to hold in homerooms. Due to the snow days, I recognize that you may not have very many grades in the gradebook to make a determination based on letter grades.
Count Day
We will start tracking attendance on Monday, Feb. 4th. Suzie will place tracking sheets in your mailboxes. Count Day is Feb. 13th. A copy of Suzie's e-mail to each of you is below
It is time again for count day (Wednesday, February 13, 2019). Please tell your students about count day and that they should be in attendance. The requirements for tracking attendance have changed slightly. We will begin collecting signed attendance the week before count 2/4/19, the week of count and 5 weeks following count (7 weeks total).
Please be diligent entering attendance on count day. Enter in PowerSchool as usual.
I will then print your attendance by hour, by day, for each class, each week. (see attachments)
When an absent student returns, please put a P on the day he/she returns to that class. Use red ink please. When all students have returned: please sign the bottom of the form, date it, and return it to the office. (Please remember you are the official source for attendance.)
Should a student be absent through the Friday after count day I will run attendance for you until he/she returns.
Using your attendance sheets I will then put together a master sheet of absentees for count day.
There will be one final absence verification sheet to sign at the end of the 7 week count period.
Heating Issues
We have another classroom that is having heating issues. Fortunately, we now know the cause of some of the issues that we have been having and it should be able to be addressed quickly. I have set up Room 13 (Allen's old room) so that we have a spot if and when these issues crop up. There are currently only 25 desks in there that I was able to pull out of storage. My hope is that by having a back-up plan ready to go, we won't need it!
Accommodation Tracking Sheets
Our deadline for the accommodation tracking sheets has came and went with the Polar Vortex. I will extend the deadline for everyone until Wednesday. Please just drop them by my office.
Mid Year Reviews
In an effort to give you more flexibility with scheduling Mid Year Review Appointments, I have created a document so that you can choose your date and time. I am hoping that this will reduce the amount of reschedules that we have. Please check out this document linked here and available in the JH Staff Team Drive. You can schedule any time that works for your schedule over the week of Feb. 11th or the week of Feb. 18th. You can choose your planning period if you have one or there are also before and after school appointments available. Please note that some times are blocked out due to my schedule. I would like to ask that everyone claim their appointment slot by Friday, Feb. 8th so that I can plan accordingly.
Winterfest Week
Michigan Morning Monday - PJ Day
Texas Tuesday - Cowboy Day
West Coast Wednesday - Hippie Day
New York Thursday - City Slicker/Preppy
Coloma Pride Friday - Green and Gold Day
Be sure to participate each day, the grade level with the most participation for the week will win a special prize!! #CometPride
Come out and watch your Varsity Comets take on Saugatuck on Friday evening at 6pm.
Week at a Glance
Monday
Regular Schedule
JH Girls Basketball Home vs. Watervliet 5pm
Tuesday
Regular Schedule
THINK Meeting
Wednesday
Regular Schedule
Accommodation Tracking Sheets Due
Thursday
Regular Schedule
Craig Douglas Scheduled to be at JH
Friday
Regular Schedule
Make sure you have claimed your Mid Year Review Appointment by the end of the day
The Results of More-Equitable Grading Practices
In this Education Week article, consultant Joe Feldman (Equitable Grading Project) says that “traditional grading practices result in grades that provide unclear and often misleading information to parents, students, and postsecondary institutions. Teachers often combine a range of unrelated student information into a grade, compressing a bucket of information into a thimble-sized container.” This kind of grading tends to have the most negative effects on students identified as misbehaving and those without access to books, resources, and the Internet at home, perpetuating and amplifying social inequalities.
Feldman suggests the following ways to make grading more accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational for students:
- Shift from a zero-to-100 to a zero-to-4 grading scale. 100-point grading is “mathematically oriented toward failure,” says Feldman.
- Stop giving zeros for missing work.
- Give more weight to recent performance and growth versus averaging performance over time.
- Allow students to retake tests and projects with a chance to improve on previous scores.
- Grade work on required academic content and standards, separately assessing effort, homework, and class participation.
- Lift the veil on what students need to learn and what it takes to get good grades by providing standards-aligned syllabi, rubrics, and simplified grade calculations.
- Facilitate students’ understanding, ownership, and power over their grades by encouraging self-assessment and peer evaluation.
Working with teachers in California schools, Feldman and his colleagues found that implementing these shifts decreased the number of D’s and F’s, produced grades that more accurately reflected the quality of student work, and resulted in a closer correlation between grades and standardized test scores. These improvements were most pronounced with students who qualified for free and reduced-price meals.
What’s more, says Feldman, these changes resulted in improvements in school climate: “[T]eachers and students reported that classrooms are less stressful, teacher-student relationships are stronger and more trusting, and students are more motivated to learn after these interventions.”
“It Is Time to End Inaccurate, Inequitable Grading Policies” by Joe Feldman in Education Week, January 23, 2019 (Vol. 38, #19, p. 18-19), https://bit.ly/2UoTwvf; Feldman can be reached at info@crescendoedgroup.org.
Reminder - Benchmark Testing
PLC Training with Solution Tree
Upcoming Dates
2/11 - Staff Meeting
2/13 - PLC Meeting
2/15 - Mid Winter Break
2/18 - Mid Winter Break
2/20 - Invitation Based Parent Teacher Conferences
2/21 - Pre Festival Band Concert
2/25 - Staff Meeting
2/27 - PLC Meeting
3/5 - JH 7/8 Band District Festival Performance AM
3/6 - Spring Pictures
3/7 - Assembly (Spread the Love)
6/3 - 6/5 - 8th Grade Mackinac Trip
Inspire to Achieve - Empower for Success
Wendy Tremblay, Principal
Email: wtremblay@ccs.coloma.org
Website: https://cjh.coloma.org/
Location: 302 West St. Joseph Street, Coloma, MI, USA
Phone: 269-468-2405
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/colomajh
Twitter: @colomajhs