Tiger Beat
Acton Weekly Update 9/20/19
Things to Know
Parent Teacher Conferences: Please do your very best to schedule with all parents. Typically report cards are shared at Parent/Teacher conferences. Grades 1-5, due to the timing of these this year, report cards will not be available yet. Here is a list of suggested items that could guide your conversations with parents:
Celebrations--In what ways are you proud of your student?
GR Data--Have leveled books available to show parents where they are and a leveled book to show parents what the goal is. (Reading level benchmark chart-a helpful resource for parents/teachers)
Reading logs--How are these going at home?
CFA Data--Could share pre/post test
Airways/ILEARN Data
Behavior Concerns
Attendance Concerns
Goals
Share resources with parents (such as programs online like Edulastic, etc.) and ways they can partner with you and support their child at home in their learning.
Chromebook Updates: Over Fall Break I will need ALL Chromebook carts in the LGI room. The IT department is working on a system to make the Chromebook usage more equitable at every school. We've been very fortunate to have more access to Chromebooks than most schools due to our smaller numbers. Over break they will remove 5 Chromebooks from each cart so that we will now have 30 per cart. They will purchase additional carts for other schools and redistribute those Chromebooks. At Acton we will have one RA Cart. Grades 3-5 will each have 2 carts and K-2 will still have one cart to be shared by each grade level.
IT department will also be disassembling computer labs in the near future. Any classrooms that still have the three student desktop computers will most likely have those removed at some point.
School Board Tour: On October 2nd we will be hosting central office personnel and school board members for our annual tour. Molly, Jen and I will have a short presentation and then we will be taking them around to classrooms to observe literacy block time. We will expect to see all of our district initiatives in place and followed. I look forward to showing off your hard work and student progress.
Signing In: Whenever you leave for lunch or 1/2 day or return from a 1/2 day PLEASE sign in at the front office so we know who is in the building and who is not. It's an important safety procedure that we need to track.
Classified- if you leave the building for lunch you MUST clock in and out. Thanks
Safe Schools: Teachers, Please remember that you do NOT have to watch the dyslexia video on the safe schools site at this time. We've reserved a collaboration time for you to watch it.
Coaches Corner
Greetings Friends!
I hope everyone was able to get a start on their GR table. As you run your 20 minute table, remember to be gentle with yourself. You won't be perfect in the beginning, and you may not be able to do it all in 20 minutes at first. That's O.K. Just focus on one component of the lesson to perfect at a time.
Tips and Reminders:
- Remember to use Appendix A in your yellow book. It is a fabulous resource that outlines strategies and skills by levels. A useful tool for your GR table.
- Great way to save time: Look to your grade level team to collaborate on GR lessons. If you have another teacher with the same GR level, work together to plan your GR lessons. Share/collaborate and then tweak the plan to fit your individual group's needs. Save all of your lessons for next year! You will have to tweak it for your specific group, but you will save yourself some time.
- Another time saving tip that grade levels in other buildings have found really helpful: teachers can divide lesson plans. One teacher completes the math lessons for the week, another teacher takes the ELA mini-lessons/IRA lesson plans, and a third teacher plans for science, social studies, writing. You could tweak responsibilities to fit your needs. Just a thought. Other teams in other buildings are having great success with this. Thought it might help.
- Extension thought: other buildings have shared that it has been helpful for all teachers in the grade level to teach the same CFA standard during extensions but break up students based on GR level. So, all teachers would teach main idea (for example), but one teacher would teach to the lowest readers, another teacher would teach to the middle level readers, and the last teacher would teach to the highest level readers. You would also have IAs to give students to based on their levels. All students would be getting extra support on the standard but with appropriately leveled texts. Again, just a thought.
- At the end of each chapter in the yellow book, it gives you a list of criteria students need to meet in order to move them to the next GR group.
- Please check your roster in Scholastic. You not only needed to enter in your students' names, but their STN numbers also. If you have not done so, it needs to be done by MOY. I think there were only 2 teachers that still need to do this.
Below are important upcoming dates:
All 3 GR tables up and running by Sept. 16th
Cycle 2 Post/Benchmark given by Oct. 4th
Cycle 2 Post/Benchmark Data Entered by Oct. 21st
Cycle 2 Post/Benchmark discussed on Oct. 23rd
Q2C1 Pre-assessment given on Oct. 21st
Q2C1 Pre-Assessment data discussed on Oct. 23rd
Below is a great website to find fun and engaging word work activities.Enjoy.
Fun Word Work Activities - Blog
Have a great weekend. As always, let me know how I can help you in your classroom or what questions I can answer. I love working with this group of amazing teachers and appreciate all of the hard work you put in for your kiddos!
Counselor Corner
Classroom Guidance Lessons
I want to make sure everyone knows if you are seeing recurring issues in your classroom (gossip, tattling, personal space, exclusiveness etc.) and would like me to come in and give a lesson or read a book I would love to! Just send me an email and we can set up a time.
Camp Care-A-Lot
-I've had the best time this week during my first sessions of Camp Care-A-Lot! All we did this week is talk about the group and practice "flashlight feelings" where students share how they are feeling that day. I will tell you I can see how much students appreciate being heard by their peers in that small group setting. I can't wait to continue!
Tiger News/CD
- Krug's class, in particular, has had a few students wanting to share a handshake (brain smart start) or breathing technique for me. I love recording them for the news and then adding them to our bank of videos for Conscious Discipline. I was going to start a club, but I think I will just have students who have ideas let me know they have an idea and I'll record them during their recess.
Conscious Discipline
-I just got a set of feelings buddies and safe place goodies from Conscious Discipline! I am so excited to start using them with students and modeling them for you all. Once I put my room back together and can hang things up come check them out! We even got resources in Spanish.
-I liked this analogy conscious discipline posted on their Instagram the other day about brain states.
Coming Up
Airways Assessments Continue
Guided Reading Groups should be started this week!
Monday:IMPD Body Safety Program
Tuesday:
Collaboration: EL Team will present on EL strategies in the classroom
IMPD Body Safety Program
CFA Training Cohort 5 (Gilkerson, Parsons, Beechler)
Wednesday:
Collaboration: HR Dept. Benefits changes (ALL STAFF that take benefits must attend)
CFA Training Cohort 5 (Gilkerson, Parsons, Beechler)
Thursday:
Coaches and Principal Meeting
CFA Training Cohort 5 (Gilkerson, Parsons, Beechler)
PBIS Tier 1 Leadership Training (Jewell, Miller, Adams BWB)
Homecoming Parade
Friday:
PBIS Tier 1 Leadership Training (Jewell, Miller, Adams BWB)
October:
1 Evac Drill
1 Skating Party --WOW
2 Custodian Appreciation Day
2 Board Visit
2-3 Parent Teacher Conferences
3 Vision Screenings
4 End of Quarter
5 Fire Safety Presentation 5th grade
7-18 Fall Break
14 Columbus Day
16 Boss’s Day
21 Students return
21-25 Red Ribbon Week
22 School Store fundraiser
23 Teacher grades posted
24 1st and 3rd grade field trips
24 Student Council
25 Fall Parties
25 Grades post for parents
28 Pro Act (Stevenson, Pryor)
28-11/26 COGAT
29 Acton Not so Scary Fright Lodge
30 Picture retakes
31 Halloween
FTCSC Hedgehog Focus
The Hedgehog Concept is based on an ancient Greek parable that states, "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." ... Hedgehogs, however, simplify the world and focus on a single, overarching vision, which they then achieve.