Panther Updates
News, Resources and Learning for Panther Staff, 1/23/17
News
Good day all,
Welcome back to Track 4 staff. We hope you had a restful and productive break.
A Pine Hollow Middle School Info Session primarily for 5th grade parents will be held in our Media Center on Monday at 9:00-10:00 and at 5:00-6:00 pm. This sessions are for parents of rising 6th graders that will attend Pine Hollow Middle School and/or parents that are interested in obtaining more about the school to make a decision for applying to it.
Our first PTA Meeting of the 2017 is this Tuesday, January 24th at 8:15 in the Teachers’ Lounge. Please send your team rep to the meeting (K-5, special ed. and specialists).
This Thursday, January 26th at 7:45 we will hold our quarterly data share at our Leadership Meeting. The meeting will be held in the Data Room Please be prepared to share your quarterly information that you have shared with Kayla on the data consolidation forms (Report Card Grades, CFA data, mCLASS). For those teams that have not completed all the data that we have requested, please have it ready for your team to discuss at your Wednesday PLT so that your team will be familiar with all of the team’s data. Now that we have two quarters of data, be prepared to give a statement on the grade level trends as to how your team’s students have progressed—how they have improved toward our school-wide goal of 85%, what you attribute that to, and what areas and strategies of note that you are using to enhance instruction or to meet the needs of those that are having difficulties. Thursday is a great opportunity to share the highlights of the first half of the year (grade level goals, outstanding instructional practices, non-traditional assessments that you have used to measure achievement (Seesaw, projects, etc.).
Lara and I are scheduling mid-year progress on their PDPs. If you haven’t already begun putting together that information in NCEES or in a digital format (word or google doc) please begin doing so. Our hope is that we can view this information digitally so that our conversations are richer and more expeditious. In addition, please make sure that you have shared your digital Plan Book with Lara, Kayla and I so that we have a knowledge of what is coming up each week, alerts us of unique lessons and to so that if we know of resources that might be available in or out of the school for your consideration. It is also helpful as we continue to complete observations as to what and when you are covering a particular subject. For those that have not already shared your plan book with us here is a "how to link”. After sharing refer to the “how do I let people know I’ve shared my plan book” so that we are alerted of your plan book being shared. Please have your plan books shared with us by Thursday, January 26th.
Instructional Practices Need to Drive Use of 21st Century Tools
Frequent Reading Makes a Difference
edgalaxy: Cool Stuff for Nerdy Teachers
Writing Prompts, printables, Math Ideas, Technology in the Classroom.
Open House on Thursday
Looking for Outstanding Student & Staff Accomplishments
We are looking for students that have accomplished something significant at our school. Do you have students that have made big strides in a particular subject, are demonstrating outstanding character, or have some other reason that we should recognize them. We want to recognize them with phone calls to parents, texts, and and/or on WPAW News. It could also be that child that would like to share an outstanding project or book review with our students. We would like to make this a weekly feature.
We would like to start a feature on our WPAW News that will recognize our staff. Be on the lookout for a request to interview you.
Emergency Information of Note: Emergency Bags & Lock Down/Emergency Drills
Emergency Bags: See the email sent on Friday, 1/21/17 from Lara for important information concerning Red Emergency Bags.
Lock Down/Emergency Drills: Please go over procedures for lock down and emergency drills with your students this week if you have not done so. We will be having a 2nd semester Lock Down, Severe Weather and ongoing Fire Drills. You should have accurate maps and emergency information posted in your rooms. If you need a map or are missing anything, please email Lfricke@wcpss.net ASAP. All rooms should have a room map, an emergency exit map, two red cards with room numbers, a lockdown handout and an emergency crisis handout in a protective cover.
Track 3 out duties for the weeks of: 1/23-1/27, 1/30-2/3, 2/6-2/10
AM Hallway- Shipley
AM Carpool- DeCain
AM Breakfast- Renfrow
AM Bus- Lavin
Lunch- Crum, Lavin, Britt, Wilburn, Brown, DeCain, Chavis (McEwen,) Renfrow
PM- Carpool: Freer (Calls car numbers beginning at 3:40 PM, Britt and Brown in the cafeteria, Wilburn is outside with students/safety patrol.) Britt (Please get the speaker out of the office conference room to set up in the cafeteria each day.)
PM Hallway- Andrews
PM Bus: Ramsey (1/23-1/27,) Stepnopski (1/30-2/3,) Rich (2/6-2/10) (calls bus routes)
Staff Development from Early Release on 1/20/17
- Lara led two adaptive learning activities. She first had staff order themselves sequentially from 0-100% in response to their answer to the question, What % of people eat cereal each day. It was interesting to see the responses. 62% was the correct answer.
- She then had staff, starting at the 0% part of the line go four at a time into groups. Each group was to move chairs such that there were groups of four facing each other as if they were surrounding a small "campfire". All were asked to close their eyes and think to themselves what one thing would they do differently than they did in the first half of the year. Each person shared while the others sat quietly to hear each response. The groups were asked to share out some of the shared discussion.
- Kevin shared a video titled Making Learning Personalized & Customized. Kevin shared several reflection questions as to how the "Workshop" concepts shared in the video might be used and considered for planning in our classrooms.