Lincoln Lion's Local Buzz
December 14, 2018
Reminder for the last 5 days until break
Here is the reminder of the themes for the last week of school for our modified 10 days!
December 17: Everyone wear green! (Highlight this with your kids! Have them wear green too!)
December 18: Ugly Sweater Day
December 19: Cookie Party! Bring cookies to the conference room to share with everyone!
December 20: Best Classroom Snowman--With your class create a snowman and post it outside your classroom door. Make it as big as you would like. Our esteemed judge, also known as our illustrious Mr. Stokely, will go around to view snowmen after 1:30 to identify the winners in the following categories:
- Snowman with the most Lincoln Lion Spirit
- Snowman with the most holiday spirit
- Most creative snowman
(You can start building your snowman over the course of the week if that is better with your schedule)
December 21: Snowball Fight: Write a compliment or kind thing in a piece of paper about a person or kind things that would be thoughtful for anyone to read. Then crumple the paper into a "snow ball". Individually or as a class/team throw your snowballs at the person/class that you want to share your kind words with before we leave for break!
White Elephant Party
Where: Lincoln Library
Who: All staff are invited--that includes IAs, Cafeteria staff, custodians, office staff...everyone!
What to bring: If you would like to participate, we will have a white elephant gift exchange. We welcome all ridiculous gifts and know that serious gifts are welcome too--but keep it under $10. Otherwise, bring room for some Barberitos in the belly!!!
What to wear: GREEN!!! It is green day for our 12 days!!
Just one person can make a difference
Tennessee Policy Report
The link below is the State of Tennessee Policy Report. Typically I wouldn't find this a priority read, but with a new governor coming in, an new commissioner, and new priorities (for example providing Tennessee Families with vouchers for school choice), I found it to be an interesting read. The document contains helpful information that informed my thoughts about the next state level administration's approach to supporting education in Tennessee.
Grade 3-5 conversion to online CICO
Mr. Stokely will also join us for part of the grade 3, 4 and 5 PLC on Tuesday so we can go over what we hoped to when we were out for snow.
Lions leaving the Pack
Data and Goals
TVASS Data--link to power point is below
The big things here as you look at our data is to see that we have some great things happening in ELA. We have growth in 4th and 5th grade with ELA and we need to continue this trend. I feel very confident that we have the tools in place to do this. Our work in grades K-3 with Read to be Ready and our strong phonics work with Benchmark fidelity will pay off in coming years. We need to continue to grow our intermediate students, but we are doing the right things to set up our students for success in reading. In math, we are struggling. 4th grade math was a high point. We had great gains there and that means that this year's 5th graders are set up and ready to also continue making growth. It is important for us to continue to work with our students from the beginning to build strong number sense, master basic facts, and push for our students to understand conceptually what they are doing not just procedural math.
One final thing that our TVAAS data is telling us is that we are very good at moving the low students. We have good growth with our second quin-tile (so not out lowest of the low, but the next low group of performing students). We are able to make good growth with them at a higher rate than our students who are projected to be at or near mastery (third and fourth quin-tile)--we just aren't moving them as well. What this tells me is that as a collective group we need to do better with our tier 1 instruction. I'm not talking about the RTI Tier 1--that is just part of it. We need to do better with our main, bread and butter, tier 1 instruction so we are truly challenging students and pushing them to learn/do more. Our data shows us that we are not doing that and we are really teaching to the lower group of students in our building and not as well with the on or above grade level kids. We will continue to discuss this last point in January at our next PLCs but in a very fast and quick "nutshell" that is what our TVAAS data is telling us.
Tennessee State Report Card--
Well. It isn't pretty. But it is a reflection of our start. Our vision is to really make a clear difference in the next 5 years and we can call this our bottom. It is only up from here. We know we have things in place to make significant growth for our students. We will improve upon this and use this as motivation to keep pushing and working to get our students achieving at the level that we know they are capable of meeting.
https://reportcard.tnk12.gov/districts/822/schools/30/page/SchoolOverall
Lincoln Goals for 2018-2019--link below
As part of my evaluation with Dr. Moorhouse I needed to identify three measurable goals for our school that supported our big rocks. As you know, our rocks are directly tied to our vision that we worked on and adopted last spring. We are focusing on raising our reading achievement, following our district curriculum with fidelity, and improving our climate though positive discipline/behavior models (Restorative practice/Zones) The second link below is a copy of my goals and where we were in our work towards those goals when I met with the superintendent right after Thanksgiving. The data will be updated soon since we are completing testing now for winter benchmarks etc, but it gives all of us a clear picture of where we are in connection to our goals.
The one goal that needs explanation would be our behavior goal. When you take a look at our data you'll see that we will likely not meet that goal. One reason that we will not make that goal is because I'm not sure that last year was a true base line for our data. What I think it could be thought of as is a reset year, but this year might truly be a better base line. We will continue to monitor and look at our data though out the year and use that to help us to improve. With chronic behaviors being our highest area and reason for suspension, I believe that points to our use of restorative practices and address thing the top 3% of our students who are continuing to have difficulty with our expectations and policies. We are talking about 15 students. That is really just 15 students school wide that are increasing our suspension numbers. Perspective on this is good.