HOWL
September 17, 2020
Celebrating a Culture of Joy
- Finding Joy Examples from our survey last week.
- The Walk Up Song competition is bad . . . bad to the bone . . . and it continues this week. We are celebrating Kara Thiel for matching Jump Around by House of Pain with one of our colleagues. She won a $100 bill. At the staff meeting last night, we celebrated Bad to the Bone by George Throrogood. Thank you to everyone for doing a little headbanging. You can join the Walk Up song game this week by texting your name and your best guess for who has Bad to the Bone as his or her walk up song to 920-323-0925.
- The 8th grade team won the DragonFly, Hummingbird, Squirrel, Deer, Fox game at the staff meeting last night. Here are some analogies the team created for each other.
- Thank you for your work to create joy in our classrooms. Your work is making our students lives better. As we think about the challenges of blended learning, it is a good time to reflect on four tools for building a culture of joy : Gratitude, Community, Sense of Wonder, and Play. Please take five minutes tomorrow to reflect with your content team on how you might include sense of wonder into your classroom routines. You will not regret the time you spend in joy.
SWIRL
The four supports that we have built into the staff development plan are:
1. Student Learning Goal for the whole building and 4 options of professional practice goals to support the student goal. We have committed to creating PPG groups that meet monthly to support the collective goals. A document with supports for the SLO and PPG is linked here. It is designed so that in 10 minutes or less, you can cut and paste your goals into the Frontline Website.
2. Observational evidence that is collected using this google form. It may be used by colleagues or administrators.
3. Student surveys that are used by every teacher six times throughout the year.
4. Beginning of year and end of year surveys for each teacher recording beliefs about literacy skills.
Character Education
Establishing Classroom Norms
Success shouldn’t be a secret. This belief applies not only to academics, but also behavior. Ask the class, what helps you to learn while you are in class? What stops you from learning? In order for us to have a successful year together, what are some things we can agree on related to how we will all behave and treat each other? How should we respond if someone fails to keep these agreements? Write these down on a piece of paper to start. Then read these out loud to the students and categorize similar ones together and come up with about 5 norms that the class will agree to follow during circle time.
Wait, how do we use those sheets we talked about?
The sheets that were shared during inservice week are tools to act as a guide for having conversations with students about an incident that occured or a way to problem-solve a predictable challenge that may surface due to lagging skills. You can find the links here:
Reactive: To talk about something that just happened - Situation Mediation
- Proactive: To problem solve predictable challenges - Problem Solving Planning (UPDATED)
Student Engagement
We are encouraging every team and/or teacher to make 5 positive connections with our students and their families before seeking additional resources/ help from the guidance or office team. We believe YOU are the best intervention!
Distance Learning Connection Tips
We have put a schedule together for teams/ electives/ specialists to share out all the great things you are doing to our parents. This is a way we are trying to reach out parents since we can't have our PTO meetings.
Reminders & Communication
- Picture Retake is October 5th- a sign up will be shared soon
- Our first safety drill will be a HOLD. It will happen on September 29, 30 and October 1 at approximately 8:15 - 8:20. Please take time to review the HOLD drill plan with your students during advisory next week. A script for students is included in the HOLD plan on page 3.
- Reminder of Mandatory Reporting
- We are so grateful for your patience and perseverance through these first few weeks of blended learning. It is hard to find a way to give you what you need and deserve: more time. However, we are trying. With that goal in mind, we have created an adjustment to our virtual schedule for core teachers during the 90 minute virtual learning blocks and also during the longer virtual learning blocks on Monday and Friday. Please take a look at the schedule with adjustments. In any place you see a blank, take a break, take time for yourself, you deserve it. We are looking forward to conversations with teams about how we can improve our virtual learning schedules. Thank you.
- THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU all for hanging up the PACK posters in your classrooms. We would like every classroom to have a PACK posters. You will also see it through out the halls!!! Please let Lisa D know if you need a PACK poster for your classroom!
- We want to highlight our amazing students and our fabulous staff, so if you are taking pictures please upload them into the drive Gavin shared with us.
- Hot Spots are available for families who do not have WiFi- Hot Spot Information
- Support with ALL technology must have a Web Help Ticket. Thank you for using the help system. #ticketsplease.
- Please post and share the STUDENT Web Help Ticket for their Chromebooks
- PAST REMINDERS & COMMUNICATIONS
Survey Time
Update on Power Standards
1. Starting this Monday, we are asking IC to include the power standards for your classes as categories in the grade book.
2. Next Thursday, September 24, your team will have time allocated to create the common assessments you will use to measure learning for each power standard in quarter 4. Teams will identify a window of one week or less in which the assessments will be administered to students.
3. The next special Monday with our friends on the other side of the river will be used to create common assessments for the power standards in quarter 2.
Staff Meeting Recap
- Feedback Friday!!! Time for feedback= no new content. Please know that elective teachers may choose not to do this. This will start for our core teachers next Friday 9/25
- How to add guardians to Google Classrooms... Thank You Marly!!
- Modeling is good for all of our students- thank you Kody for sharing
- Hacking Ch. 1 Tips and Takeaways- Thanks See, Claire, Angela, & Keeley
- We are so lucky to have these marigolds in our building who are sprinkling smiles and joy: See ViXai Thao & Dale Stuckmann, Claire Patterson & Angela Schardt. Thankyou for being amazing!
- How to share a split screen- Thank Vicki
- September 23 staff meeting agenda
- Past Staff Meeting Agendas