A Peek at the Week
January 5, 2019
We talk all the time about how important building relationships are with our students. There is so much power in truly getting to know a child's heart and what is important to them. The pictures of Shaberian above playing basketball on a team are the result of his teacher, Christy Lecroy. Christy paid for Shaberian to play basketball this season. Today, Cody, Matt, and Christy went to watch Shaberian play as Christy took pictures during the game as if Shaberian were her own child. I know that we don't know all that others do for kids every day and that getting recognition is not the reason for doing for others. But, I always want to share when acts of kindness and love are demonstrated in such big ways. :-) Thank you Christy for loving Shaberian and giving him this opportunity that he will always remember! Thank you Cody and Matt for pouring into him every single day! :-)
Tshirt Sizes and House Information
Please update your shirt size and house on the list in the conference room. Thank you so much!
Bookroom
We are having an issue with books being returned and placed on the shelf without the bag and/or teaching cards. Many sets are being returned without the six copies. Please help us take care of the books in the bookroom by returning them in their bags with their teaching cards and the correct number of books. Also, please take the time to place them back in the correct leveled bins. Stacey has worked very hard to organize the book room and lots of money has been spent to purchase the new sets that we all like to use. Let's work together to make sure books are returned the way we find them so that we all have lots of choices to choose from for our small groups. Thank you in advance!
Levels
Continue to level your students keeping in mind that leveling needs to be complete by January 25th. Please send me a copy of your mid-year levels on the same form that you sent in the fall updating the mid-year column. You will also need to add your mid-year levels to your SLO. I love seeing your excitement when a child has grown since the fall! This information is so important as we need data to ensure students are growing as readers.
Common Formative Assessments
Remember your task from our last PLC meeting:
Our Next Steps:
- As a grade level, unpack your essential standard. Do this by looking at sample assessment questions, discussing what product the students should be able to produce after learning this standard.
- As a grade level, create at least two common assessments for your essential standard.
Remember that these assessments should not be long, but can have as few as 5 questions on them. All of the questions need to address your promise standard. Please share these with us as soon as you have them finished. You need to have them created by January 18th. Make sure that you do this as a team and that everyone is involved so that everyone understands the promise standard clearly.
Colt Custom's Cafe
You probably noticed the area marked off in the cafeteria for the Colt Custom's Cafe. We are working to implement some additional things for our fifth graders to help inspire and encourage them to stand out as leaders in our school. We have ordered a banner and plan to decorate the area a bit more with some art that Heather has worked on in her classes with her kids. We hope this will be a special incentive for our oldest kids to follow our customs in order to sit in the special area. As we talked to fifth grade Friday during lunch, they seemed very excited about this. We hope it will give them something to work towards and also be a treat for those students who always follow and practice our customs.
House Council
We will be beginning to work with our four house presidents and house council this week. The book Talk to Me gave us some additional ideas on creating leaders. We plan to implement leadership school for these students where we will learn about manners, how to debate, how to give speeches, how to interview, etc. We hope you will begin seeing some differences in the skills our fifth graders have when it comes to communicating. :-)
Mr. Hoover
Even if you don't teach one of his children, most of you know Mr. Hoover as he is the first car in the carline most days. He has been battling Cancer and is not doing well at all. When he picked up the kids Thursday, he was so weak. Friday, one of his older sons came to get the kids and he said that he had to carry Mr. Hoover inside the house because he was too weak to walk on his own. We plan to provide some meals for Mr. Hoover as he is a single parent for his children. Mr. Hoover's parents will be here to stay with him towards the end of the month. If you would like to help, it would be most appreciated. I think at this time, food is what would help the most so that he wouldn't have to worry about his family eating.
Ethan let me know Friday that he and his wife are expecting their second little girl!
Upcoming Dates:
January 7th: PM work day for K4 and K5
January 17th: Snowball, Rebecca and Gretchen to Clemson to meet their residents for the Master Teacher program. :-)
January 18th: Arrival at 9:30- Read to Succeed and PLC work
January 25th: Levels complete
January 31st: Visit from Gateway Elementary
February 5th: Reading workday for 1st (AM) and 2nd (PM)