Dos Rios Elementary
Weekly Rocket * October 23, 2017
Principal's PLC-Connection
I hope you all enjoyed your well deserved Fall Break! We've dipped our toes in the WHOLE Objective pool and now it's time to follow the lead of so many teachers who have dove into the deep end and planning and teaching with fidelity to prepare our students to be absolutely successful.
Galileo Testing
It's time to see the growth of our students and the correlation between our teaching and student learning as the take the FoY Galileo test this week. We had a number of requests for 4 days of testing and a number for 2 days. Looking at the schedule and taking into account different factors, our testing will be done over three (3) days.
Testing directions are in your mailbox as well as other resources. Please come to the conference room on testing days(Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) between 7:00- 7:25 am to pick up your materials.
Specials will remain the same with the exception of Kinder, 5th and 6th grade switching times on Tuesday. Lunch and recess will be the same (reminder about 7th Grade NO RECESS).
Mrs. Greer, Mr. Meyers and Mr. Mutschler will pull their students for testing. They will notify you of their schedule. Mrs. Simopolous will have a revised schedule for her groups.
Paraprofessionals will have a different schedule due to testing:
Saenz, Harper, Tellez- kinder testing- Tuesday- Thursday
Hamilton & Barraza- make up support in the afternoon (Wednesday- Thursday-1:00- 3:00pm and Friday 8:30-10:30)
THANK YOU to Mr. Rivera & Mrs. Berazza & Mr. Brestler for assisting in and covering our Middle School Writing position. PLEASE WELCOME Mary Ann Brown to our Middle School Team.
Principally yours,
Mrs. Annamarie Dowling-Garrott
Please be encouraged... "It works if you work it."
LOOKING AHEAD - October 31 / Halloween
- 5th-8th Grade students MUST carry the book or a copy (or printout) of the book cover to identify their character.
- Please specify NO WEAPONS of any kind.
- K-3rd Grade Students will have a parade through 4th-8th Rooms.
Please consider having candy to pass out to the students.
Any staff who brings or emails the Survey Completed Confirmation page will be given a DRESS-DOWN pass for any day.
Weekly Launch Codes
Week-at-a-Glance
Weekly SEaL Sessions Calendar on OneDrive
Quarterly Academic Awards Assembly
We will be having our first quarterly assembly on Friday, October 27th in the gym. This is a time to celebrate our students. There will be certificate in the workroom for you to hand write the names of the students that have earned a certificate and sign. On Tuesday, October 24th please send home the notice to parents that their child will receive an award, a notice will be in the workroom for you to write student names. In your mailboxes you will find the list of students that have perfect attendance for the quarter. When you come to your assigned time please bring your whole class and certificates. Please remind our students of appropriate assembly etiquette. The schedule for the assemblies is in the Weekly Launch Codes in addition to the Outlook Invite sent.
Awards- please write the first and last name of the student on each award they are getting.
- Principal’s Honor Roll - all A’s on the quarter 1 report card
- Honor Roll - A’s and B’s on the quarter 1 report card
- Perfect Attendance - all quarter 1- no tardies or leaving early (front office will put list in your mailbox)
- Rocket Pride - one female and one male per class, demonstrate great character during quarter 1
- Most Improved - one in ELA and one in Math and one in behavior- students that demonstrated the most improvement as measures by assessment of choice of the teacher (ex: Diebels/Aims) and behavior
- Specials Blast Off - one in PE/Health, Art and Music per class- students that demonstrate improvement (special area teacher will select one student per homeroom class and put in your mailbox)
Castro's Corner
Weekly Discipline Data (Week of 10/9)
- Out of School Suspensions (OSS): 1
- In School Suspensions (ISS): 4
Discipline Incidents Top Infraction: Aggression
*August (31) *September (60) *October (59) so far
Please remember that in the Synergy referral to state ONLY the facts. Rather than include specific such as student names. For example, Student punched another student. In the private description, you may include as much details as you would like. For example, Leticia punched Annamarie in the stomach because she would not give her an out of uniform day.
Aggression Intervention Tips
1. Provide the student with as many social and academic successes as possible.
2. Maintain supervision at all times and in all parts of the school environment.
3. Teach and encourage the student to use problem-solving skills: a) identify the problem, b) identify goals and objectives, c) develop strategies, d) develop a plan of action, and e) carry out the plan.
4. Remove the student from the group or activity until he/she can demonstrate appropriate behavior and self-control.
5. Communicate with parents to share information concerning the student’s progress.
6. Reinforce those students who demonstrate physical self-control.
7. Write a contract with the student specifying what behavior is expected and what reinforcement will be made available when the terms of the contract have been met.
8. Teach the student appropriate ways to communicate displeasure, anger, frustrations.
9. Maintain consistent expectations and daily routine.
10. Teach the student to verbalize his/her feelings before losing self-control.
(Behavior Intervention Manual)
Tier I Interventions for Aggression/Bullying
Before you start, a few important points:
- Try multiple interventions
- Each intervention should be tried for a minimum of 4 weeks, & more than 1 intervention may be implemented at the same time
- Collect and track specific data on each intervention tried & its effect
- If your data indicates no progress after a minimum of 6 months, you may consider moving to tier 2 interventions
Interventions:
- Call parent or note home
- Card Flip
- Move to a new location in the classroom
- STOP WALK TALK strategy
- Take away privileges
- Take away unstructured or free time
- Talk one on one with student
- Teach conflict resolution skills
- Teach coping skills
- Teach relationship skills
- Teach relaxation techniques
- Teach social skill
*Due to confidentially, lack of supervision, respect to the office staff, and student interest please do not send student to the office. When you submit a referral, we will process it ASAP and retrieve students as needed. Student that come to the office will be send back to class. Students may wait in your OCR classroom for someone to get them.
Attendance
Please continue to encourage our student to come to school every day. During the month of September, we had 94.88% of our students here. This is a drop from August at 95.74%. Students that have perfect attendance for the month will earn an out of uniform day. Students that have perfect attendance for the quarter will receive a certificate and will be recognized in the quarterly assembly. Mrs. Vail’s class had the highest % of students with perfect attendance in September. Congratulations! Fourth grade team had the highest % of student attendance in September. Congratulations!
Castro's Corner (continuted)
Out of Class Reflection Sign-In
In you mailboxes, you will find a Sign-in sheet for student that are sent to your classroom for an out of classroom reflection time. This sign-in sheet is for students that are sent to your classroom from another teacher. Please have students sign-in. Students are to write their name, date, time in, time out, and teacher that sent them. At the end of the month please turn in sheet to Mrs. Castro. This will allow us to collect data as we transition into PBIS.
Dismissal
Students may wait for their car pick up at the gate by the bike rack. Students may not wait in front of the office or library until after 3:20 pm. Students may begin getting picked up after the yellow line. Kinder and first grade teachers, please walk your students that don’t get picked up from the gym all the way to the bike rack. Staff that is on duty please support by waving cars to pick up on the yellow and not the red and also reminding students to go straight home rather than waiting around.
AM and PM Duties
Please review your duty location and make sure to be on time and actively doing your duty. See attached duty schedule for updates. K-8 teachers the expectation is that you are walking your class to your assigned dismissal area and remaining with your classroom until all your students have gone home.
Lunch and Recess Times
Remember to stay with your class until all your students have gone through the lunch line. Please pick up students on time. See the new lunch/recess duty schedule.
Reading Rockets - Contributed by Ryann Miller
Building Fluency: A Fundamental Foundational Skill
By: Judy Zorfass, Alise Brann, PowerUp WHAT WORKS
Introduction
According to Professor Bridget Dalton — a national expert on reading development from the University of Colorado — a reader is fluent when he or she can read with accuracy, speed, and understanding. The English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards call for students to be able to "read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings." Dalton further explains that "to read aloud with expression requires an understanding of the text's meaning beyond simple decoding of individual words."
A growing research base points to the importance of teaching fluency. The recent report issued by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Science — Improving Reading Outcomes for Students with or at Risk for Reading Disabilities (Connor, Alberto, Compton, and O’Connor, 2014) — found that helping students become fluent readers might increase their levels of comprehension. For teachers, and especially those who teach struggling students with learning difficulties, this is very much a shared goal.
Strategies to help students
Teachers know that students who struggle with fluency can experience a variety of difficulties. They may, for example, ignore punctuation and read slowly in a monotone voice, or they may read in choppy start-and-stop rhythms. Often, such readers also have difficulty monitoring understanding and self-correcting.
There are specific strategies you can use to differentiate instruction to help your students overcome these problems.
For example:
- If students are reading slowly and in a monotone voice, have them increase their rate and add dramatic expression.
- If students are reading too fast without pausing for punctuation, have them slow down and pause appropriately to reflect punctuation.
- If students are reading accurately and at the right speed but without expression, have them vary their voice to communicate the character, plot, and tone of the text.
- If students are reading without stopping to self-correct miscues, teach them self-monitoring and word recognition strategies to self-correct.
- If students are reading without understanding, model think-aloud's, showing them how to draw on textual information and prior knowledge.
Making Math Matter - Contributed by Melanie Blaum
Building Math Fluency
Tip 5: Problem Solving Strategies (Cont.)
Incorporating and teaching different strategies will help children build procedural fluency. This is important for completing future problems and assignments.
Teach problem solving strategies in a variety of ways:
- Create mindful, hands-on, and active lessons that get children using their bodies, hands, and minds in useful ways.
- Children above participated actively in the human number line game to illustrate the strategy of counting, adding, and subtracting using a number line.
- Have students show their understanding in different ways, through actions, illustrations, explanations, representations, and more beyond worksheets and tests.
Health & Wellness
Dr. Fred Jones's
Tools for Teaching
Meaning Business: Part 2
The Body Language of Commitment
Before reading this column, you might want to read or review Dr. Jones's previous column Meaning Business, Part 1: Calm is Strength, Upset is Weakness found in last Weekly Rocket News.
Ask any parent, "Do your children know how to push your buttons?"
"Oh yes!" they will reply.
"Do they know when you've 'had it?'"
"Indeed they do!" they will say with a smile.
Your kids read you like a book. Before they are two years old, they will know your every mood and gesture, and they will know how to play you like a violin -- when to push, when to back off, when to act submissive. Kids read body language. They are born with that ability, and they get better at it with each passing year.
When kids go to school, they already have a Ph.D. in parent management, and all of those skills will transfer to you. They will know what you are going to do before you do it, because you will tell them -- with your body language.
CALM IS STRENGTH, UPSET IS WEAKNESS
"Calm is strength, upset is weakness" was the title of our last segment. We learned how the fight-flight reflex is our natural enemy when attempting to mean business. We can quickly review by asking two questions:
- When you are calm, who is in control of your mind and body?
- When you are upset, who is in control of your mind and body?
One of the first lessons you must learn about discipline management in the classroom is that it is first and foremost emotional. You cannot manage another person's behavior until you can manage your own. We must learn to manage ourselves.
In our previous column, we learned that relaxation is the antidote to the fight-flight reflex and that relaxation is a skill that can be mastered with practice. Relaxation training begins with learning to breathe properly. If you have taken a "prepared childbirth class" or have had training in stress management or yoga, you probably have practiced the slow, rhythmic breathing that relaxes your entire body. In this column, we will begin to examine the body language of meaning business. Meaning business is predicated on your ability to be calm -- rather than upset -- in the face of provocation. We will assume that you have already practiced relaxation and have acquired some mastery.
DISCIPLINE BEFORE INSTRUCTION
Imagine that you are helping a student when, out of the corner of your eye, you catch some "goofing off." You look up to see one student poking another as they both giggle.
This is your moment of truth. It is time to act. Dealing with the disruption immediately signals to the class your main priority - discipline comes before instruction.
Discipline comes before instruction for one simple reason. If students are goofing off, they will not be doing your lesson. And, if you fail to respond, the entire class will know that "the coast is clear."
COMMITMENT VS. CONVENIENCE
Beware! Stopping instruction to deal with such an ordinary disruption might be the last thing in the world you want to do right now. Imagine, for example, that you are in the midst of helping a struggling student who has almost "got it." What could be more important than finishing what you are doing?
It is easy to "pull your punches" at this critical juncture -- to continue instruction while hoping for the best, rather than dealing with the problem. If you fail, however, to commit to the problem as soon as you see it, then all your classroom rules are nothing but hot air. The students know you saw the misbehavior, and they know you chose to do nothing. At the very least, the students know that dealing with typical classroom disruptions is not worth your time.
Accept that discipline management is always inconvenient. It is an unpleasant intrusion into instruction. For that reason, commitment has nothing to do with convenience. Rather, commitment comes from a simple observation of unacceptable behavior. Your response is automatic and immediate. Without mental clarity on this issue, consistency is impossible.
STUDENTS ARE GAMBLERS
Students are gamblers. From time to time, they like to gamble on having a little bit of fun in class instead of doing schoolwork. If students worry about getting caught, they gamble conservatively; they gamble only on occasion; and they gamble only when conditions are right. They might wait until you are on the far side of the room with your back turned, for example. If students know you would rather not deal with the situation, however, they will gamble like bandits.
How do students know whether to gamble long or short? They watch you. You tell them with your body language.
RELAX AND SLOW DOWN
Seeing students goofing off in class is upsetting by its very nature. You will have a fight-flight reflex. As a matter of routine, therefore, take a relaxing breath and slow down. Get control of your emotions before you begin to deal with the situation.
If you are working with a student, give yourself a moment before you turn to deal with the problem. If you are moving and talking, however, simply stop. The sudden change in behavior signals to students that the problem you observed is on the front burner and everything else is on the back burner.
SHOW YOU ARE SERIOUS
Imagine that, after seeing the problem and committing to it, you turn toward the disruptive students. By the time you have completed your turn, they will know whether or not they need to take you seriously.
Communication with body language takes place rapidly. Let's slow down "the turn" and look at the signals that are being sent. In body language, "the devil is in the details."
Move Slowly: When you are calm, you move slowly, and when you are upset, you move rapidly. So, move slowly. That will take practice.
A normal turn takes two or three seconds; a slow turn might take five or six seconds. When you stand and turn slowly, imagine that you are Queen Victoria turning in regal fashion toward an offending subject. The lack of expression in your face says, "We are not amused."
A regal turn requires some skill. To turn slowly, turn from the top down in four parts; 1) head, 2) shoulders, 3) waist, 4) feet. If you were to turn in a normal fashion, you would begin by picking up your foot and moving your body as a whole. This would force you to move fairly rapidly in order to keep your balance, and you would have a turn of two or three seconds.
Point Your Toes: Bring your second foot around so both feet are pointing directly at the offending students. Never make a half turn in which you point one foot, but not the other. That is a tentative gesture.
A full turn tells the offending students they have your complete attention -- that what they are doing is the most important thing going on in the classroom right now. It tells the students you are committed.
We have been reading the body language of full and partial turns since the beginning of time, and we have been describing it in such common figures of speech as:
- Tentative: "Well, he has one foot in and one foot out. I wish he would make up his mind!"
- Committed: "It is time to face up to the situation."
Make Eye Contact: Get a focal point and relax. Poor eye contact signals anxiety. What would you be worried about? Only rookies might be worried about what's going on in the rest of the room.
Your focus is on the offending students. Looking at them creates a mild tension between you and them. It signals an expectancy on your part. What is that expectancy? You expect them to get back to work, of course.
The students often will look at you for a second or two before it dawns on them that your response is not a momentary one that will go away soon. Then they'll "fold." When they fold, they simply get back to work.
Keep in mind, however, that you are in the passive mode. Your body and face are relaxed, and you simply are waiting for them to make a decision. You are not in the active mode, staring them down with your best "sick and tired" look. Calm is strength, remember?
Relax Your Hands and Shoulders: Waist high gestures are agitated gestures. When your mom was "sick and tired" of your messy room, she was probably gesturing at waist height as she told you to clean it up.
Relax your arms and shoulders and check your fingers for nervous gestures. Tension drains down the arms so that the final bit of nervous energy ends up in your fingers. Rubbing the tips of your fingers together is a common tip-off to students.
Relax Your Jaw: When you relax your face, you have no facial expression. However, when students get caught, they instinctively smile -- a submissive gesture that kids use to "get off the hook."
Beware! Smiling is a trigger mechanism. When a child smiles at an adult, it triggers the adult to smile back -- part of our natural body language for nurturance.
When you withhold the smile you signal, as would Queen Victoria in such a situation, that "We are not amused." Only when students try their "smiley face" routine and fail to get a smile in response do they consider an alternative -- like getting back to work.
Take Another Relaxing Breath: The ball is in the students' court. Give them time to make a choice. Time is on your side -- time to observe and think.
The most common example of doing everything wrong is nagging. Nagging is a form of upset that substitutes noise for action. Rather than signaling commitment, it signals the opposite -- "I want this to go away right now without it taking up my time." You get what you pay for.
BODY LANGUAGE AS CONVERSATION
As you can see through a careful examination of "the turn," body language is a conversation between you and the student. You speak, they read your meaning, and they respond.
For discipline management, the game of poker is an apt analogy. When one party raises, the other party must either bet or fold. You will have to be a player if you want to teach your students to fold quickly and get back to work.
The game -- the conversation in body language -- might go on for a while, however. After all, one of the students might be a player too. He or she might raise you several times before the cost gets too high.
WHAT IF THEY DON'T GO BACK TO WORK?
If you do everything right as you turn and commit to the students, they probably will get back to work. Most teachers have experienced "looking students back to work." That success would indicate that their body language is effective.
On the other hand, the students might not get back to work -- even though you are doing everything right. After all, in human behavior, nothing comes with a guarantee.
In our next column, we will describe a conversation in body language that takes place if a student "raises" you. What would the raise look like? What do you do if the student keeps raising you?
This article is condensed from Dr. Jones' award winning book Tools for Teaching. Illustrations by Brian Jones for Tools for Teaching.