Anchor Weekly
A newsletter for Alta Vista Staff~Week of April 6, 2020
Don't Forget! Next Week's Calendar
- Monday, April 6 at 9:30 am: Alta Vista Zoom Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/975211125
- NO WEDNESDAY ZOOM MEETING
- Wednesday, April 8: "We Care Wednesday" Phone Call to All Families
- Wednesday, April 8 from 8:00-11:00 AM: Instructional Materials Distribution
- Thursday, April 9 from 3:00-6:00 PM: Instructional Materials Distribution
- Friday, April 10 at 9:30 am: Leadership Team Zoom Meeting
- Friday, April 10: Campus Needs Assessment Data submitted to Helton
Week of April 13: Grade level meetings with Helton via Zoom (to be scheduled)
Weed of April 20: Paraprofessional Performance Appraisals with Helton via Zoom
#WacoISDReads Weekly Challenges
Please encourage students to participate and post pictures of YOU doing the activities too! Post them in the comments and don't forget to tag it #WacoISDReads
- Monday-Post a picture of you working and WEARING AN ALTA VISTA SHIRT
- Tuesday-Post a video of you doing a BOOK TALK
- Wednesday-Post a picture of you working with CRAZY HAIR
- Thursday-Post a picture/video of you reading in a SILLY VOICE
- Friday-Post a picture of you working and WEARING YOUR FAVORITE HAT
Captain's Log
Wow! What a week! I can't thank each of you enough for all the hard work you have been doing. There is absolutely no way I could do any of this without you. I just couldn't.
Whenever I am interviewing someone, I'm asked frequently "What do you love at Alta Vista?" My answer every time is "the staff-we are a family and we work together. Second is the families. We have the best families." I saw both of these in practice on Wednesday-the super long line of cars parading down our neighborhood streets and all the families running outside to wave and show us their posters. So like Kid President says, "Keep Being Awesome!"
Mrs. Helton's Week At A Glance
- Monday-Staff Zoom Meeting; Interview for the Principal Job (Prayers appreciated!!)
- Tuesday- Transformation Waco Zoom Meeting
- Wednesday-We Care Wednesday Phone Calls; Instructional Materials Distribution
- Thursday-Instructional Materials Distribution
- Friday-Leadership Zoom Meeting at 9:30 am
Staff To-Do List
- ALL STAFF-We Care Wednesday Phone Calls (4/8)
- ALL STAFF-Campus Needs Assessment (4/10)
- Become familiar with reporting/assigning lessons in HMH, ImagineMath, Envision & Stemscopes (4/20)
- PK-5 Teachers: Make adjustments to Know-Shows (4/17)
- Behavior Team: Classroom Remodel Wish List
- Add items to the Wish List including Summer Professional Development (ongoing)
We Care Wednesdays
You are doing a great job of calling parents! Please fill out the columns for Contact #4 this week. We need ALL STAFF assisting including aides assisting with this task.
- Homeroom teachers-work on contacting each student weekly (including Special Education/Dyslexia students); use aides as needed. If someone else calls a student for you that week (like a Specials Teachers) you don't have to make an additional call unless you want too.
- Specials teachers, support teachers, and other staff without a homeroom-please choose 20 students to call from across the grade levels; this will support homeroom teachers. Make sure you document on the call log so the homeroom teacher knows this student has already been contacted
- Aides-support the teachers you work with in calling students
- Spanish speaking staff-please help with ALL students highlighted in yellow (especially upper grades)
- Special Education and Dyslexia team-will be reaching out to students in addition to homeroom teacher contacts (so that they are being contacted twice a week)
Student Shout Outs
Thank you Ms. Vallee for the suggestion!
Campus Needs Assessment
- Curriculum, Instruction, & Assessment: Salazar
- Family & Community Involvement: Baker & Ward
- School Context & Organization: Maynard
- School Culture & Climate: Malcom
- Staff Quality Recruitment & Retention: Orchard
- Student Achievement: Spark
- Technology: Boggess
These leaders will be reaching out to you and the rest of the committee to schedule 1-2 meetings to collaborate and provide input on various questions regarding your assigned topic. The folder with the questions, team assignments, and campus data can be found HERE. Only one member of the committee needs to type the input/answers to the discussion questions. The deadline for meeting and providing input is April 10.
**Please note that you may see some confidential information. This information may not be shared with anyone outside of Alta Vista and should not be discussed except in regards to the discussion questions provided.
PLCs
You will be receiving feedback this week about your Know-Show documents from Mrs. Helton. Please discuss with the team and make needed adjustments.
Your big focus this week is becoming familiar with SmartyAnts/Achieve, HMH, ImagineMath, Envision and Stemscopes. In 2 weeks, starting April 20, you will be pushing out lessons on these platforms based on students' needs. See Professional Development Section for more information.
Instructional Materials & Online Assignments
Starting Monday, April 6, students will be working on the following online assignments:
Reading
- PK: Designated daily activities link on webpage from CLI and Smarty Ants
- K-2: Smarty Ants for 20 Minutes at least 3 times a week
- 3-5: Achieve3000-3 articles/week
Math
- PK: Designated daily activities link on webpage
- K-5: 20 Minutes at least 3 times a week on ImagineMath (NEW-see more details below)
Writing
- PK-5: Write about a prompt (or choose your own) from original packet for 10 minutes daily
Science
- PK: Designated daily activities link on webpage (optional)
- K-2: Stemscopes-2 lessons/week
- 3-5: Stemscopes-3 lessons/week
- Special Education-Alternate assignments on Let's Go Learn
- Dyslexia-Alternate reading assignments on Nessy
- Bilingual/ESL-Optional practice on Imagine Literacy
Remember-We are not trying to make this look like a regular school day. Students are sharing devices and may or may not have adult assistance with them. We are not taking grades at this time but teachers should be monitoring progress on these programs and contacting them on Wednesdays.
Phase 3 starting April 20: We will be pushing out lessons in HMH and Envision to students based on their areas of need
PD Opportunities for Online Programs
- Webinars (Live & Recorded) for Smarty/Ants & Achieve3000: Coming soon; optional based on your comfort with the programs
- Webinars for HMH to learn how to assign lessons: See flier attached below or graphic (flier has live links to the Zoom); highly encouraged because you will be doing this starting April 20
- Imagine Math Getting Started Guide for K-2
- Imagine Math Getting Started Guide for 3-5
- Imagine Math Reports for 3-5
- Imagine Math Lesson Design for 3-5
- Imagine Math How to Assign Learning Paths
- Imagine Learning Webinars (See schedule in graphic below)
- Stemscopes: Webinar Next Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 10am CT. Click here to register. Highly recommended if you don't know how to assign lessons.
- Envision Webinar on Wednesday, April 8 from 10-11; Link Coming Link Coming Soon; highly recommended if you don't know how to assign lessons
- Envision Resources
Please see the video below for more information about ImagineMath and how to access their professional development tools. Students may still work on Dreambox if they prefer but I want to see how ImagineMath works out for us.
Families In Need & Support from Mr. Ward
From, Mr. Ward
Self-Care for You!
The other day, I was scrolling through social media and I saw a positive reframing statement regarding social distancing. The post stated that we should be thinking of social distancing as physical distancing. I thought this was a powerful statement because, yes, social distancing is serious, and we should be following all the precautions. However, social distancing brings about the assumption that we should be withdrawing our connections to people. Rather, I would like to think of it as physical distancing and use this time to connect strongly with others and offer support. Humans are naturally social beings and we thrive off interactions with others. We have technology at our fingertips and can really be taking advantage of the benefits it offers to be social!
Here are a few ideas:
- Zoom: Alta Vista is offering Zoom meetings as a perfect opportunity to stay connected to our work fam and see everybody’s lovely faces! * Well, if you opt to have the camera on ;) *
- Facebook: Another win for Alta Vista – a Facebook page dedicated to staying connected and offering a space to post fun pictures and update each other – make sure to check it out and contribute!
- Facetime/Skype/etc: & you can even do this with multiple people! I’ve seen people doing virtual themed dinners and meeting up to eat together or joining up for a virtual game night! * maybe even a virtual happy hour aka a quarantini hour? * Whatever you and your friends typically do, you can transfer over to virtual!
- Netflix party: This is a fun feature that Netflix offers – the only steps are to download the feature, invite your friends to join and you can all watch a show together with a sidebar that you can chat on!
Staff of the Week
Thank you to all of our bilingual teachers and staff who have been translating like crazy! We appreciate that extra effort.