North Side Paw Prints
Staff Newsletter
February 21, 2014
Volume 5, Issue 25
Mission Statement: "Maximize potential in all people every day"
Vision Statement: "To create a culture in which all children can learn lifelong skills to succeed"
Congratulations Pam Jennings and Mary Getts for Going the Extra Mile this Month!
Weekly Quote
"See the light in others and treat them as if that is all you see." – Dr. Wayne Dyer
Weekly Reflection
Ask yourself honestly, who do you want to be and what are you willing to do to become that person.
Upcoming Dates
February:
Feb. 24th - Progress report grades due to office by 8:00 am; Extended school days begin; 10 Day Countdown Begins
Feb. 25th - Progress reports sent home
Feb. 26th - Mclass Math Ends; Parent Teacher Conferences 4:00-6:00 pm
Feb 27th - Math Bowl at Hamilton--early dismissal for participants
Feb. 28th - Read Across America Day; Last day of TinCaps Reading Program, Jump for Heart and Pennies for Patients
March
March 10th-14th - We will run on a 2 hour delay schedule for ISTEP - IA's to report at 8:00
March 10th - SOM Names due to Venita
March 11th - PTO Meeting 5:30 pm
March 14th - 2nd grade to ENHS for play (starts at 9 am)
March 18th - 20th - IREAD 3 window
March 19th - 20th - Mobile Dentist
March 21st - 20 Day Countdown Begins
March 21st - PTO Mother/Son Basketball game 6:00-7:30
March 26th - Music Program for grades 3 and 6, 6:30 pm
March 27th - End of 3rd nine weeks; last day for extended school day unless more cancellations
March 28th - No school....Spring Break!!! Enjoy and Rest and Relax!
This Week's Case Conferences
Feb. 27th @ 3:00 - Garner and Starkey
Featured Instructional Strategy of the Week
Tech Tools!
Animoto. This site allows students to create videos. The students upload photos and music, or they can choose some from the site. It also has the option to add your own video clips.
Glogster - Glogster is an online animated poster. Students can be creative by upload music, pictures, and videos along with adding graphics and text. Students can even add links to the pictures and videos.
Inanimate Alice - “Inanimate Alice” is a multimedia, interactive narrative following the life of Alice, a developing video game designer. Through text, sound, images, music, and games, the story of Alice unfolds. Each of the episodes becomes increasingly interactive and game-like, reflecting Alice’s own developing skills as a game designer and animator. The story is available in five languages and is fully supported by lessons in a teacher education pack that can be downloaded for free.
Rubric Maker – Rubric Maker creates customized assessments for student work for primary, elementary, middle, and high school. The default text has been written for each grade level. After choosing a title and grade level for the rubric, you will be able to choose and edit it.
Voicethread - Voicethread allows students to post pictures or video clips while commenting and/or annotating on each slide.
Wikispaces Classroom - Wikispaces Classroom is a social writing platform workspace where teachers and students can communicate and work on writing projects individually or in teams. It includes assessment tools to measure student contribution and engagement in real-time.
A Wide Variety of Language Arts Resources. Dr. Scott McLeod, director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) has compiled these eclectic, creative, and interesting links and resources related to language arts. Lesson plans, links to magazines and publications, and other educational tools are all included here.
A Smattering of Writing Resources. Dr. Scott McLeod, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) has compiled these links and resources related to writing. Lesson plans, links to magazines and publications, news, comics, student blogs, and other educational tools are all included here.
American Association of School Librarians (AASL). These "Top 25" websites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.
Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies. The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies produces a comprehensive list of the Top Tools for 2011.
Classroom Blogs. Interested in having your students start their own blogs or starting one class blog to share your students’ achievements? This list has a number of links to class blogs with a variety of focuses.
Elementary Teacher Blogs. A wide variety of blogs from education teachers are on this list. From individual content areas to musings about teaching in general, this list is full of ideas and inspirations for the classroom.
Even More Online Language Arts Resources. A great list of resources that encompass literature, grammar, spelling, integrating technology into the curriculum, and a number of other interesting topics for English language arts educators.
Florida Virtual School® Literacy Instructional Support Center. This center boasts a number of resources, including support for English language learners, Web 2.0 tools, literacy links, literacy connections, the ABCs of literacy, and more. The site also includes a virtual library open to the public that contains the Classroom Cache, a repository of hundreds of graphic organizers for use in the classroom.
Florida Virtual School® Student Literacy Resource Center. This resource center includes sections on virtual reader support vocabulary for success, note taking made easy, a guide to Jings and videos, and PowerPoint presentations. It also contains a list of best practices for students to follow while reading. This website is student friendly and easily navigated.
Featured Video of the Week
In this video, Kristina Smekens does a book review of Mythlopedia: Oh My Gods. Great for giving background knowledge on Greek Mythology...4th grade.