Sipley School Weekly Howl
Week of Monday, February 21, 2017
Great teaching is an art. In other arts - painting, sculture, the writing of novels-great masters leverage a proficiency with basic tools to transform the rawest of material (stone, paper, ink) into the most valued assets in society. This alchemy is all the more astounding because the tools often appear unremarkable to others. Who would look at a chisel, a mallet, and a file and imagine them producing Michelangelo's David? Great art relies on the mastery and application of foundational skills, learned individually through diligent study. Those foundational skills are then used at deeper levels where foundational skills are used in application or performance.
Building Consistency Across All Classrooms
I was fortunate to meet with several staff members on Friday to discuss the needs of our students. We developed a list of behaviors that must go to the office of the principal for remediation and the needs of students that shall go to the social worker. We also went through school-wide protocols that we need to make sure our students are safe and that we do all that we can to prevent behaviors from occurring. Watch for this information as it will be sent via e-mail and then discussed at a follow-up meeting, which will occur on February 27th at our next Monday meeting. There will be some changes that I will send out via e-mail that will go into effect on Tuesday, February 22, if I can take time from my weekend to create some needed changes.
Changes are needed to provide the structure that the students of Sipley School need. The adult ownership of student actions need to be at the highest level such that we ourselves as the reason for student success and student failure, which will cause adults to do all the hard work to prevent negative behaviors from occurring and to reward all the positive things students are doing.
Spring STAR Testing
To Do's
- Grade level teachers - one person from each grade level team (1 - 6) shall submit the Defined Learning Google Form that was sent out.
- Some staff were sent a Google Form that will be used to share work related to our WOOP - Formative assessment for purposeful instruction. That Google Form is due by Friday, February 24.
- Do the work needed to prevent misbehavior from occurring and when behavior does occur, respond in a respectful way while providing a consequence that will stop the behavior from reoccurring.
A Glance at the Week Ahead
Monday - No School
Tuesday - New DEB and Learning Lab sessions begin
Tuesday - No Cook Night - McDonald's
Tuesday - I will be out of the building for a meeting in the afternoon
Wednesday - No DEB/Learning Lab as Title I TAs are out of the building - training
Wednesday - Bilingual Information Meeting at Sipley
Thursday - Gifted Audit - JJHS
Friday - I will be out of the building
Saturday - Young Authors
Saturday - Daddy/Daughter Dance