News from the Nest
Week of November 13, 2017 Related Arts "A" Week
Vision
"Wendell Phillips 63 will establish a positive, engaging, and rigorous learning environment that allows each child to “SOAR to Excellence” as a member of the Cardinal Family."
Places to be!!!
Nov. 13- Lesson Plans Due in Google Drive (9:00 am)
Nov. 13- 7th Grade Boys Basketball @ George Julian 57 (6:00 pm)
Nov. 14- K-7 ELA PLC's
Nov. 14- Grade 4-6 Boys Basketball @ CFI 27 (6:00 pm)
Nov 15- K-7 Math PLC's
Nov. 16- Family Thanksgiving Meal with New Light Baptist (5-7 pm)
Nov. 17- VIMME Testing
Nov. 17- Jeans Day
General Need to Knows
Progress Reports should be going home next week on Wednesday. I will be sending a ConnectED message to parents to look for this from their students. The link for the progress report is here Please make sure to make a copy of the form if you are going to use it electronically. It is in English and Spanish.
Benchmark 2 Testing begins this week for Grades 3-7. We will be using multiple sites throughout the building, including the computer lab. Please make sure students are following SOAR procedures throughout the day.
I have attached the Boys Basketball schedules to this email. As you may be aware, we have a Grade 4-6 Team and a Grade 7 Team. Currently, both teams are undefeated!
We will be partnering with our friends at New Light Baptist Church for our Family Thanksgiving Meal on Thursday, November 16th from 5-7. This has been a historically great event and I look forward to providing our families with a great meal. If you would like to assist, please let Ms. Pena or I know. Thanks!
Finally, we are in the season of mini observations! Between now and winter break, your evaluator will be completing two mini observations. These are 5-8 minutes in length. While this is not a long time in the room, we will be providing constructive feedback on your practices. We will be scoring Domain 3C for everyone, as well if you chose a specific domain and indicator for your personal goal.
Vision Aligned Thought Provokers
Positive classrooms: Taking it back to Tier 1 in PBIS...... We should be SOARing everywhere we go. Please make sure we are reinforcing these rules at all times and using universal language throughout the building for consistency. And.....reinforce the heck out of our students with Dojo points and dollars when they are making positive choices. Finally, I know there are some questions about when to call the office for support. The PBIS Team will be meeting to discuss this Monday and will have a "cheat sheet" prepared for everyone and shared next week. THANK YOU for those that are on point with this!!!! For the classroom, please see an article below from PBIS.org.
Engaging instruction: I am coming back to the article shared last week, which is found here. How have you reflected on your pace of instruction? As I walk through classes, I continue to see inconsistencies in this area. Some of our students are disengaging because they can move faster. I hear the comments from teachers as you circulate "Man, you are getting ahead of me!" That's because they are ready to push forward!!! Be mindful of this, as I will be looking at it during walkthroughs and observations next week.
RIGOROUS Instruction: Continue to push the RIGOR in your classrooms each day!! Be intentional in your instruction and look how you are providing them with the appropriate level of RIGOR. This will be discussed during PLC's.