The Warhawk's Nest
Jan. 6-10
Mark Your Calendars!
January:
- 2nd- All School Assembly Auditorium @ 7:50 am
- 7th- Youth Frontiers (seventh grade)
- 8th- Stand Up & Breakout (Leadership Team)
- 13th- Report Card Window Opens
- 14th- Chorus Concert 7 pm @ Lincoln
- 15th- Staff Meeting: Stand Up & Breakout
- 16th- End of Second Quarter
- 17th- No School for Kids (Records Day)
- 18th Staff Christmas Party
- 20th- No School for Kids (Staff Development Day)
- 22nd- Staff Meeting: State of the Union (Leadership Team to follow @ 4 pm)
- 24th- Winter Ball 6:30-9:00 pm
- 27th- Report Cards Due
- 28th- 5th Gr. Northside Orchestra/Band Concert @ 6:30 pm
- 31st- Report Cards Sent Home
STAR Assessments
STAR Reading:
ELA teachers and special education teachers, please give your students the STAR Reading Assessment during the week of Jan. 6th-13th. Please make sure all students are tested by the end of the day on Jan. 13th. We want to use this data to determine who will need to be further tested using the Fountas & Pinnell Assessment. We appreciate your help with administering this assessment to students.
The breakout on the 15th will include analyzing the ELA data- All ELA teachers, special education teachers, EL and Reading Specialists should attend the breakout session.
Math teachers please give your math students the STAR Math assessment between Jan. 6th-Jan. 16th. This is a great way to see where your kids are at currently and making progress. The results of this assessment can be used to help determine concepts that can be addressed during intervention/enrichment opportunities.
In It to Win It!
Please reach out to your teammates, teachers in your content area (even outside your grade level) and us to problem-solve and seek answers. Remember, we are not in this on our own. It's okay to try strategies and find out they didn't work, mistakes help us to learn. Our PLCs offer time for such conversations/work. PLCs allow us to 1) determine what we want students to know, 2) how we will measure success (formative & summative assessments), 3) analyze data to determine who knows and who doesn't, and 4) what are our next steps for instruction (whole group, interventions, enrichment).
As you move forward know that you will find benefits in building positive relationships with our students, building empathy among our staff and students, and finding ways to engage our students. All of these will help our students to succeed as a whole child: socially, emotionally, and academically. Each and every one of you is just the right person for this critical task. Together, we can use our individual intentions to make a difference.
Empathy Corner: Emotional Explosions
When individuals "flip their lid", their limbic system is exposed and an emotional response can be explosive. Our students who are poverty stricken tend to have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, and because of this, they also have underdeveloped:
- Bodily regulation
- Attuned communication
- Emotional balance
- Response flexibility
- Fear regulation
- Empathy
- Insight
- Moral awareness
- Intuition
What Can We Do During an Emotional Explosion?
First off when our students are unregulated, we need to understand they are working from an emotional brain. Their actions are not reflecting a rational response in which they are in a problem-solving mode. This being said, as an adult, we should remember the individuals response is NOT about disrespect.
Follow These Steps to Regulate the Individual:
- Remove the student temporarily from the situation and start to build supports to help the individual with regulating their emotions.
- Calm the individual using a calming strategy.
- Teach the hand model of the brain to the student. This can lead to a better understanding of what's happening in their brains when they lose control of their emotions.
Calming Techniques:
- Drink some water. When someone is upset the body produces cortisol, the water will help to metabolize the cortisol. A sign of it working will be the individual's shoulders will start to relax.
- Have the student tell a future story. This is a story reflecting what the student would like to do, be, and/or have at the age of 25. You can have them write down their ideas in a series of boxes (see image below).
- Teach Tapping. You can consider sharing the art of tapping with a student- this is what Amy shared with us.
- Have the student look up. Simply looking up at the ceiling starts to calm individuals (especially if he/she was crying). When we have our eyes looking upwards our brain starts to visually process information, whereas, when our eyes are looking downwards, they are processing emotional/kinesthetic information. By having them look up, they are stopping the emotional response. When the individual's shoulders relax it is a sign of regulation.
- Use a breathing technique. Have the student stand up, take a deep breathe in, hold the breathe for a few seconds and then exhale. Repeat a few times.
- Pat your heart and stomach. Have the individual put his/her left hand over his/her heart and rub. Then use the right hand to rub the stomach. This process produces serotonin (a calming chemical).
When working with our students, it is imperative to regulate our students' emotions prior to talking with them about an incident in which they were not demonstrating an expectation.