Global Gazette
Week of October 21 - October 25
GLA Educators... When Our Scholars See Us..They Should See Greatness!
It was such a joy to celebrate our amazing educators during Staff Spirit Week!
Weekly Challenge: Each week we will give scholars a weekly challenge to complete. This week's challenge is Showing Empathy. This week we are pushing all scholars to show empathy and compassion for others. On Friday in morning meetings/circles, please have scholars share out about the ways they have demonstrated empathy. Teachers are asked to capture footage of these conversations on video and send footage to your Academy Leader and Principal Tyler.
Weekly Anti-Bullying Classroom Activity: Each week we will focus, as a school, on one assignment/activity to encourage scholars to think about bullying (see attached). For this week, we are asking all classrooms to have scholars complete the fourth handout in our anti-bullying packet. This week, scholars will work on the "Snap Your Fingers" activity. In this activity scholars will have the chance to make believe that with the snap of their fingers, they could change themselves. How what what would they become? Teachers are encouraged to adjust the rigor based upon your grade. However, we are expecting to see evidence of the final products posted in classrooms/hallways.
School-wide Mentoring Through Reading Buddies: Reading Buddies is underway and is a huge hit. Thank you teachers for protecting this time for relationship building. Continue to document reading buddy exchanges. This week, please encourage reading buddies to learn more about their partners.
Reading Buddies Highlights
Magnificent Monday
Attire: School Spirit Attire (GLA Button Down, Dress Pants)
- Morning Huddle 7:50a
- Perfect Attendance Raffle Drawing
- Annotated Lesson Plans Due 8:00a
- Interim Reports Due 8:00a
- Support Staff Morning Huddle 8:15a
Terrific Tuesday
Attire: Professional Dress
- Legendary Academy Harambee
- Instructional Strategy Meetings - Evaluation Tools
Cultural Wednesday
Attire: Cultural Wednesday Attire
- Interim Reports Sent Home
- CA Naming Ceremony
- 1p Dismissal
- Cultural Wednesday
- Staff Meeting/Professional Development 1:45p - 4:45p
- Staff Exercise Club 4:45p - 5:30p
Thrilling Thursday
Attire: Professional Dress
- Rising Stars Academy Harambee
- Legendary LiveSchool Party
- Board Meeting 6p @ GLASW
Fantastic Friday
Attire: Fitness Friday T-Shirt, Jeans, Sneakers
- Fitness Friday
- Staff Coffee Bar
- Apple Crunch 10a
- RS LiveSchool Champion Party
Teaching and Learning Corner (with Ms. Snyder)
Instructional Look For:
As we continue our components of a lesson looks for, the remainder of the month is academic ownership. How do you shift the cognitive load to scholars? As you plan for your lessons ask yourself the following questions:
- Are all or almost all scholars complete an appropriately challenging amount of the cognitive work during the lesson, such as reading, writing, discussion, analysis, computation, or problem solving, given the focus of the lesson? Do you rarely finishes any of the cognitive work that students could own?
- Are all or almost all scholars provide meaningful oral or written evidence to support their thinking?
Tools for Ownership:
- Turn & Talks
- Whiteboards
- Warm Calling after Turn & Talks
- Thumbs Up/Down
- Choral Responses
Watch the video below to continue to build your teacher toolkit.
WePac: WePac will continue with a B Week. Please reach out with any questions!
This week's Iready champions!
iReady:
Our highest usage classrooms in Reading this week were:
- McElvaney
- Roman
- Leonard
Our highest usage classrooms in Math this week were:
- McElvaney
- Marazas
- Prieto
IRLA Champions of the Week!
Culture and Climate Corner
See below for an important message from our PBIS Champion, Mr. Kennedy!
GLA West colleagues, research shows that when behavioral expectations are clearly established and taught, “problem” behaviors that exists in our scholars can be prevented or reduced. We as a staff cannot assume that our scholars know our expectations, rules or appropriate ways to behave in different settings. Our scholars will only learn appropriate behaviors when they are given consistent modeling and practice.
What does it mean to teach behavior? We follow the same basic steps when teaching behavior as we would for teaching any new skill, especially academics. Think about any new skill you have learned or that you have taught someone else and reflect on the different steps in the teaching cycle. It is critical to move beyond the tell and show phases and give scholars plenty of practice and feedback about how they did meeting the expectations. Moving forward we must find pockets to reteach expectations and behaviors to strengthen our Global Greatness program in the weeks and months to come. Lastly, remember, just like we would with an academic error, if a scholar makes a behavioral error, we engage in re-teaching the expectations.
Global Greatness Important Tidbit for the Week:
Moving forward, at the beginning of each month, classroom teachers will be required to post their incentives in the classroom. Incentives should be updated on a monthly basis.
Top LiveSchool Users for the Week of October 7th (Staff)
Ms. Hatcher
Ms. Sanchez
Ms. Marazas
Mrs. Dean
Top LiveSchool Users for the Week of October 7th (Scholars)
Zaheer Kennedy-Burroughs – 5C Natural Legends
Shahan Owens – 5C Natural Legends
Sierra Jones – 4C Legendary Explorers
Kai Wilson – 4B Harlem Legends
Top LiveSchool Classrooms for the Week of October 14th
Rising Stars – 1C “Fin-tastic” Stars
Legendary – 3A Sparkling Legends
Collegiate – 7C Montgomery
This Week in Wellness!
This Week:
10/23 - Staff Incentive - Chair Massages, 2-5pm
10/24 - Yoga in the Classroom
10/25 - Garden Club, Apple Crunch 10am
FFVP Snacks this Week:
M: Pears
T: Sugar Snap Peas (w/ranch dip)
Th: Black Seedless Grapes
F: Apple Crunch! + Banana
A huge congratulations to the magnificent Mrs. Martin on receiving your Masters degree from Grand Canyon University. We are so proud of you!
Kudos Corner!
Sincerest gratitude goes out to all of the Rising Stars Champion Educators for celebrating my academic accomplishments, as I reached another milestone in my career. The decor, treats and gifts were awesome. You are hands down, thee best team ever and I love you all!
Kudos to all Riding Stars grade teams for your continuous collaboration and planning, to ensure our scholars are learning with intentionality, rigor and purpose.
Kudos to the second grade team for your creativity and innovation as you hooked your scholars into learning about contractions.
Kudos to Ms. Robinson for a wonderful first week of science
Kudos to the 4th and 5th grade team for great problem solving
Kudos to Mr. Roman and Ms. Marazas for their after school iReady push
Mr. Brown for your leadership with Scholar Council initiatives within the Academy.
Mrs. Wilson for leading the 5/6 lunch in Mrs. Douglas absence on Friday.
Mr. Kennebrew for your leadership and communication with a homebound Scholar in Collegiate.
Important Reminders!
Interim Reports: Be sure to keep your grade book up to date. Oct. 21st is the deadline for the October interims.
Dismissal: Please dismiss scholars according to the announcements and not on their own. Bathroom and water use ends at 3:00p. Scholars should not be sent out of the rooms for any reason after 3:00pm. Getting water is not an emergency!
october calendar
Happy Birthday to Our October Babies!
Ms. Wilson - 10/2
Mrs. Greene - 10/3
Ms. Griffin - 10/3
Ms. Simpson - 10/6
Mrs. Anderson - 10/7
Ms. Thompson - 10/8
Mr. Montgomery - 10/17
Ms. Martinez - 10/18
Mr. Brown - 10/18
Ms. MacElvaney - 10/18
Ms. Thomas - 10/19
Mr. Webster - 10/23