Gator Weekly
With great power comes great responsibility....
The week ahead.....which is Week 3!
Look fors this week.................posted learning targets and closing product statement
School Holiday
Tuesday, September 8
Wednesday, September 9
Staff Meeting 3:00 @ Library - information from Krisann
Thursday, September 10
DLT and PLC 8:30 - 2:00 Bragg
J & J team 5th grade Ice Cream Social 5:30
Room Parent Meeting 6:00 @ Library
Friday, September 11
ICLE visit all day during conference periods
Coming up.........
September 17 PTA Ice Cream Social 6:30
September 18 Individual pictures
PARENT CURRICULUM MEETINGS
Monday, September 14 - 2nd grade 5:30 @ Cafeteria
Monday, September 14 - 1st grade 6:30 @ Cafeteria
Tuesday, September 15 - 4th grade 6:00 @ Classrooms
Tuesday, September 15 - 4th grade 5:30 & 6:15 @ Classrooms
Tuesday, September 22 - Kinder 5:30 @ Cafeteria
Thursday, September 24 - 3rd 6:00 @ Cafeteria
It's been another great week in the land of the Gators!
Thanks to everyone who has attempted to work with Canvas and Twitter this week.
Thanks to those of you who have been making a conscious effort to work in the Power Zone!
Thanks to those of you who have been posting your learning targets and reviewing them during the lesson with your students!
Thanks to Krisann for hosting an excellent Open House for the teachers!
Thanks to Rebecca for getting the blue ribbons for us to "Back the Blue".
Exciting things I saw this week - Number Corner, new Social Studies books being used, lots of reading and writing, a math dance Woohoo!
Welcome to our new Gators!
Lori Grawunder - 1/2 time PE Aide (we share her with WCE)
Jill Buchanan - 3rd grade
Things to do....
Write your learning target and your I WILL closing on your boards!!
Start or finish your compliance bundle before Friday - either Basic or ProfessionalTurn in your card with your "blinged out" Twitter handle
Turn in individual and/or grade level SMART goals on the appropriate form
Tell your parents how to follow you on twitter and send out at least 1, just 1, tweet!
Thinking Map of the week
This week’s THINKING MAP is the DOUBLE BUBBLE MAP.
The DOUBLE BUBBLE MAP is a tool for comparing and contrasting things and ideas. It is used to determine the similarities and differences between two things, ideas, people, cultures, concepts, or anything else! The DOUBLE BUBBLE MAP is similar to a Venn diagram however it doesn’t limit the number of ways things are alike.
Fundamental Five
The closing question, product or task......
how the student will demonstrate understanding of the learning objective
also written in concrete, student- friendly language
provides proof to the student and teacher that the objective(s) was met
presented as an "I WILL" statement
ex. I WILL create and share a double bubble map with my table group
Weekly academic vocabulary words
RESULT
give an answer; consequence
CALCULATE
work out, compute
Weekly positive character trait
Teach Mindfulness, Invite Happiness
By objective measures, our young people are more anxious, more depressed, and have more psychopathology in general than students did a few decades ago. This has important implications for educators, school administrators, and society at large. What if our traditional school systems are unwittingly contributing to the problem -- and what if a relatively simple practice could help?
Sense of Failure
As we are all well aware, the current educational system is narrowing its definition of what defines student success. It's almost all cognitive knowing, as evidenced by standardized testing. The pros and cons of that system have been widely debated, so I won't rehash them here. However, a side effect of this system is decreased flexibility in how we define success, and we are leaving many students with internal beliefs that they are failures.
A young person could be a prodigy in one or more areas (kinesthetic, inter-personal, musical, ecological), yet still grow up thinking that he or she is a failure based on messaging given by the schools. As some students' light dims and self-doubt grows, there's a good chance that they won't grow into their full brilliance and power. This is a tragic outcome that's a loss for all of us -- yet it's also an avoidable outcome.
How Mindfulness Can Help
Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to present-moment experience and doing so with kindness and curiosity. It is not cognitive but sensory, and so taps into and strengthens different but vitally important parts of the brain that have been neglected by traditional education. One crucial attribute of mindfulness is that it is practiced without judgment. Many of our students are so hard on themselves and their internal critic is so loud that just a few moments of being given permission to not judge can bring huge relief to body and mind. I have seen it bring students to tears.
Just a few weeks ago, I was introducing the practice to some graduate students in a highly competitive health sciences program. Presumably they were all successes in the conventional system. I started by explaining the triangle of awareness to them -- how thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations all affect each other. I then led them through a guided contemplation to illustrate the point. They were invited to imagine a stressful situation and notice how they were feeling in their body, what emotions they were experiencing, and what thoughts they were having. By noticing the thoughts as the final step in the process, students can identify them as just thoughts they're having and not truths that must be believed, especially if these thoughts are causing unpleasant physical sensations and negative emotions.
We then did a five-minute mindful breathing exercise. The students closed their eyes and were invited to let the sensation of breathing command their full attention. When they noticed their attention wandering, they were allowed to notice where it went, but were encouraged to gently and kindly escort their awareness back to the breath.
During the discussion after the practice, one young woman was in tears. She had noticed her thoughts telling her that she was probably breathing wrong and wasn't good at it. This led to tightness in her chest, her heart racing, and a feeling of anxiety. In those few minutes, she recognized how her thoughts have been contributing to her anxiety all these years and also causing discomfort in her body. The ridiculousness of not being good at breathing revealed to her in stark clarity how insidious and unfair her inner critic was. She was excited to have made this connection and to have new tools for working with it.
Honoring True Genius
I think this anecdote illustrates what is going on for many of our students. Sadly, many of them never make the connection between mind and body, and just keep sinking into those self-defeating thoughts as they worry about how they will measure up on the next standardized test. These thoughts are contributing to the rise in mental illness and inhibiting students from reaching their full human potential.
There is now ample evidence that mindfulness practice enhances positive emotions (PDF). Imagine the possibilities if we offered this to young people with developing brains! What if we helped all students make this simple connection and gave them the tools to strengthen their own inner knowing? What if we gave them permission to honor their true genius, even if we can't measure it on a standardized test? What if we practiced full disclosure and acknowledged that there are many different kinds of intelligence, and that some cannot be measured by conventional means? What if schools gave equal time and emphasis to cultivating things like kindness and compassion?
It might just change everything.
What I'm reading......
Campus Instructional Focus
After analysis of our campus data, our instructional focus will be to improve our students’ ability to clearly communicate their thinking through writing across all content areas.
We carry the torch for EMSISD!
Mission
The mission of Eagle Mountain Saginaw ISD and Greenfield Elementary is to foster a culture of excellence that instill a passion for a lifetime of continuous achievement in every student.
Vision
The vision of Greenfield Elementary is to create a physically and emotionally safe environment where every student can engage in challenging, integrated, and collaborative learning in order to become respectful, resourceful and responsible citizens in an ever-changing, diverse world.
Motto
Striving for the best, we rise above the rest.