Colt Chronicle
September 28th- October 9th
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The Colt Chronicle is designed to save you time from face to face meetings!
Scott and I are building this smore as an intentional piece of our ongoing professional development and staff meeting needs. Please ensure that you read it each time it is published and look at the links that are provided. The content is provided with great intention: either to further your thinking on a topic, or they are directly related to a campus goal or initiative. It is must that you be knowledgeable about the content we provide.
Additionally, the #coltslearn is being tweeted into all the time. Check that out from time to time for resources that support your efforts in the classroom. Tweet to it now and again from your campus twitter accounts so we can build a learning community with our families that begin to follow your accounts that we established.
Some tweets from the previous two weeks that you might have missed:
https://twitter.com/MissSmith4th/status/644918591922438144
https://twitter.com/JTrent72/status/644873580371554304
Reminders!
9/28: CMITs--please be on time for any meetings you have been invited to attend.
9/29: Picture Day! Please have your individual picture made before school starts at 7:30 AM. Classroom teachers will pick up instructions from the photographers then as well. Scott will send out the schedule and it is attached here as well: https://docs.google.com/a/pisd.edu/document/d/1mMAULPWSkwLi6v5b-G-f0b9zCa1ioKG10KxAhvO1HFA/edit?usp=sharing
Please keep in mind that the schedule ALWAYS moves faster than published.
9/30: Staff Meeting for Professionals in the Library from 3-4:30
10/1 and 10/2: Stacy off campus at a conference
10/5-10/7: Scott, Tracy and the Fifth Grade Team head to CAMP
10/6: Think College Tuesday--wear jeans and college spirit wear. Encourage your kids to participate as well!
10/7: Stacy off campus for training
10/7: Grade Level and Department Meetings at 3 pm (this is revised from the site calendar due to the training session scheduled on the 7th that Stacy must attend).
Conference Day is Coming! It is acceptable to make appointments with parents the week surrounding the official conference date of October 12th. We know it is hard to get everyone in on that one date. Please remember that you should dress professionally when you meet with parents.
PDAS visits will begin sooner rather than later. Be ready!
Stacy and Scott
PLC prep work--PROFESSIONAL STAFF REVIEW BEFORE 9/30
AVID Corner
As I stated a couple of weeks ago, when most people think of AVID they think of organization, which usually means the large AVID binders. These binders are just one aspect of the organizational piece of AVID. In this week’s AVID Corner I would like to share with you the AVID Time Log.
All of us have several items on our calendar each and every day. From taking your child to their different practices throughout the week to remembering to pick up your best friend from the airport when they return from a vacation, we are all pulled in several different directions throughout the week. I would venture to say that each of us has some sort of calendar/agenda/day planner that we use to keep up with all of our appointments. Some may have this on their phone while others may prefer to keep a hard copy around. Whatever the case we all, in some way, document what we have to do, where we have to do it, and when it has to be done. This is a skill that many times we might assume that our students automatically pick up on and know how to do, but that is not necessarily always the case.
The AVID Time Log introduces this concept of planning out your week and lets students see their week at a glance. It is a one sheet page that has an entire week displayed on in. Each day is broken up into 30 minute time increments. There are several ways that you can use this resource based on your grade level, I will share one way you might choose to use it.
First, have students fill in items that they know that they have coming up that week that are already planned. For example, “I know that I have Coding Club on Tuesday at 3:00 pm, soccer practice on Wednesday at 3:00 pm, Chess Club on Friday at 3:00 pm, and that I go to church on Wednesday night at 7:00 pm.” They would then block-out or color in those blocks on the Time Log. This is a good opportunity to show visually that these are times during the week that they will not be able to complete any reading or homework they have as they already have other commitments. Students will then go back in and select hours throughout the week that are available and have them pencil in what schoolwork they want to complete during those times. Point out that they cannot choose a time that is during the school hours or a time that is after their bedtime. The example below is from a 4th grade student who used the Time Log effectively.
I realize that using a day planner might not necessarily fit perfectly into your TEKS. Modeling how you yourself use an agenda and how using them can help with being more productive and organized is one of the life skills that we must help students learn. By doing this we encourage students to start taking some ownership for their own learning and begin effective habits that they can continue using the rest of their lives. I have shared a PDF original of the Time Log with you on Google Drive so that you may use it as you like.
-Scott
McCall Elementary Administrators
Scott Schweikhard, Assistant Principal /@SSchweikhard
Website: http://k12.pisd.edu/mccall-elementary-school
Location: 6601 Cloverhaven Way, Plano, TX, United States
Phone: 469-752-4500
Facebook: facebook.com/mccallcolts
Twitter: @mccallcolts