Weekly Update- October 27, 2017

Happy Friday!
Don't forget, Infinitec trainings need to be completed by Monday!

Checking in on our theme... "Make Every Second Count!"  How is this going?  Are you using it with students?  Yourself?  I can honestly say, I need to reground myself in this.  I'm letting valuable moments and relationships suffer to finish "less important things".  This includes my personal life.  Let's all hold each other accountable and keep this phrase going... we are in this work for people.  Make every second count!

Playground & Morning Arrival:
It's been great seeing the excitement around the playground.  I keep asking myself, "What did we do without a playground?"  It's been great seeing kids play again.

With the new playground, our morning arrival has created some challenges.  I am working with Superintendent Elstad and Bob Olson on some of this plan.  For now, we will continue to do what we have been doing.  But, please know, there is work going into improving morning arrival.  Please continue to be flexible as we get to know our new building!

Unconscious Bias
Below is a one-minute video clip on unconscious bias - and what this means to our work in educating students.  Take a minute to watch this - and start to think about what's familiar and what's unfamiliar in your life, day, etc.  Our unconscious biases matter!

Engaging (with Poverty in Mind) Strategy:
At Site Team, we discussed the need to bring back some of the strategies we learned (last year) from our work around Engaging with Poverty in Mind.  I shared a study guide I found online- click here to see that study guide.

One area we focused on was "building attention skills" in chapter 4.  There were three strategies from this section that could easily be used today in your classrooms:

• Increase buy-in (plan for engagement, don't just assume it will happen.  Plan your "hook"s)
• Allow students to create predictions- and revisit those predictions throughout the learning. 
• Pause & Chunk- throughout students' learning, create times for them to pause and chunk their learning.  This is a hard one- the silence can often be awkward.  Create these times for students to chunk their learning through collaboration, reflection, etc.  

I challenge you to try one of these strategies over the next week- see how it goes!

Building Goals:
Site Team has finalized our building goals and action steps for the 17-18 school year. We are continuing a lot of the great work we have started two years ago.  Please take some time to read through our action steps and reflect on how your role/work influence these goals.  Each of us are educators in some way, shape, or form.  Our focus on all kids, all day will continue into this school year (and forever!).

Click here to access the building goals

Guided Library Project
We are fortunate at McKinley to have a guided library filled with quality text to use in our small group instruction.  Last spring, we realized that some of the books are not leveled with an accurate Fountas and Pinnell level (A-Z).  When lexiles (which include only quantitative data*) were highly utilized, a correlation chart was used to level the books to the Fountas and Pinnell system.  Because Fountas and Pinnell leveling includes both quantitative and qualitative data*, we have discovered that some of the levels are not accurate.

It will be quite an undertaking to check each title in the guided library and relabel all the books, but thankfully we have an awesome volunteer (Nancy Kennon) and amazing staff (Denise Carlson and Jane Carlson) who will be working on this project.  There may be a time where we ask for additional support in portions of this project, but for now we just wanted to make all staff aware of the situation and how it impacts you with planning and instruction.

Until we get things re-leveled, you will want to check the levels of the books you pull (especially if it doesn’t seem accurate).  It is simple to do this by going to https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/bookwizard/ and typing in the title.  I prefer to use the “Level It” app on my phone which allows me to scan barcodes instead of typing in titles, but there is a small fee for this app.  Most of the books we have noticed that are not leveled correctly are in the upper levels.  I want to thank Paige Gilligan for being diligent with checking the levels of text and noticing that things were not lining up; her attention to detail is an incredible asset to our school.   

We hope that this project will be completed quickly, and we appreciate your patience in the meantime.  If you have questions or would like further support in using one of the leveling resources, please let Libby know.
*quantitative data: the number of words on a page, syllables in words, words in a book, etc.
*qualitative data: figurative language used, background knowledge required to comprehend, structure of text, etc.

Staff Development- November 6
Just a reminder- November 6 is a Staff Development Day.  The schedule for the day is:

7:40-8:00 Coffee & light breakfast
8:00-11:00 Professional Learning Session 1
11:00-12:00 Lunch (on your own)
12:00-3:00 Professional Learning Session 2

Please see the email sent out regarding details of the day.  It's going to be a great day of learning!

Family Reading Night- November 9
Our first Family Reading Night is Thursday, November 9 from 6-7pm.  The theme for the night is "Unplug the Electronics and Plug into a Good Book!"  Students will come to school that day dressed in pajamas - and hopefully come to the family night in pajamas, too!   Families are being invited to come in pajamas, bring blankets and stuffed animals, and enjoy an evening of pizza and reading.  If you are free, consider joining us!  We had over 400 students last time we did this!

STEAM Integration Subouts:
We have our first STEAM Integration subouts:
November 7:  Kindergarten (AM) & 1st Grade (PM)
November 8: 3rd Grade (AM) & 2nd Grade (PM)
November 14: 5th Grade (AM) & 4th Grade (PM)

Group Pictures for Entryway:
Here are our group pictures for the entryway.  I will be hanging these up today:

What a photogenic staff that is focused on ALL kids.  Love it! 

Building Weekly Newsletter
Click here to access the building weekly newsletter!


Keep up the great work, everyone!  We are doing GREAT work!

Take some time to enjoy the weekend - and those around you!

-Justin

Weekly Update- Friday, October 13

Happy Friday the 13th! 
This made me laugh this morning...

Bounce Cards:
I have shared this in the past, but it's a great strategy to share again.  The Bounce Card was invented to teach collaboration, particularly how to have a discussion.  During the discussion, students have to respond to each other's statements using one of the "bounces" - bounce, sum it up, or inquire.  It's a great way to support kids in having a purposeful, focused discussion that builds on each other's ideas.

Click here to see the bounce card

Reflection on McKinley:
I had my first Student Advisory Meeting last week where I met with a group of students, had lunch, and asked questions about our school.  It was interesting to hear all their feedback- student voice matters!  Below are some themes I heard:

• Kids love school.  They love their teachers and know their teachers love them! 
• Kids love the new school. Every single one commented on how our school is enormous!
• Most kids feel safe all day at school.  There were a few kids (older ones) who expressed some concern about not having doors in our rooms.  They said "What do we do in a lockdown?"  We will be doing some work around this soon, however, continue to stress that our school is safe. 
• I asked when kids get bored during the day.  I had some interesting responses on when and why they get bored.  One of the students commented that she gets bored during independent reading.  I thought she was referring to just the reading - however, in asking more, she gets bored when she can't talk about what's going on in her book.  She said she needs to share what she is reading and thinking to keep interested in the book.  Very profound thought!   

Overall, kids love school and love you.  Thank you for making McKinley a great place for ALL of our kids.

Small Groups:
It's been great to see everyone start to plan instructional goals around small group needs- in both reading and math.  As we know, small group is the sacred time that produces high levels of student learning. 

I was in a few rooms this week and saw some pretty cool small groups going on - and co-teaching with EL.

Rachel Peterson's Kindergartens during their literacy block.   It was great to see very clear expectations and routines set up in this room- you could feel the environment of learning! 



Dani Rypka & Laurie Wolhart's fourth graders doing guided math stations.  This was cool to see the co-teaching between Laurie and Dani and how engaged students were.  Nice work! 

 Relaxation Room at McKinley:

A lot of you have seen the room next to Annette (and across from Kathy and Michelle) set up for a relaxation room.  This room was an idea of Annette's last year- create a safe, relaxing place for some of our students who need a safe spot to be regulated.   This is especially important with our students who have experienced trauma.  We have a group of students who were "invited" to use the room.  They go there with an adult and follow a process - identify their current feeling, take deep breaths, choose a tool (something to regulate), and then identify their feelings again.  This is a 5-7 process.  It has been working for many of our students!   If you need a break, go check it out!  Thanks for designing and creating this space, Annette! 

Building Weekly Newsletter:
Click here to access the building weekly newsletter


Thanks for a great week!  I can feel the passion and love in our building around our students... they are truly cared for by each of you.  Thank you for that.  Your hard work is not going unnoticed. 

Rest up this weekend... conferences are right around the corner! 

Justin

Weekly Update- October 6, 2017

Happy Friday to the greatest educators in the state of MN!

I hope you've had a great week!  With being out at two different conferences, I feel like I've hardly been here.  A huge thank you to Lorri and Justin Lang for taking the lead on things in the office.  Also, thank you to everyone for being flexible this week with different things. 

I attended two conferences - one on co-teaching and one on coherence/focus.  Both were great and helped give me some strategies to continuing our work on educating all kids. 


A couple of random requests/updates:

• Team Pictures- please get me your team pictures ASAP.  I'd like to get them framed and hung in the main entryway. 
• The community Open House for McKinley and Owatonna Middle School is Monday, October 30th.  The celebration will start at McKinley at 5:00pm and then move to OMS at 6:30pm.  More information will come on this - however, if you are free, consider joining us!
• This Monday, October 9th, the School Board will meet here at McKinley (Learning Studio) at 5:30pm.  They are here for a work session, but also to see our building.  Stop by if you are free!

Sumner Visits:
A team from Sumner Elementary (in Austin) are visiting McKinley on Friday, October 13th.  The team is here to see our PLC process and the use of formative assessments.  This team heard great things from another school who visited last year - and wants to hear more about our work.  We will more than likely make a lap through the building and ask people (who are free) about their use of the PLC process. 

A huge kudos to our team - we have good work going on in this building! 

EL Graduation:
We held our 2nd annual EL Graduation this Tuesday, October 3.  We had a large group of students who exited our program.  This is a huge reflection of the hard work you are doing to support all learners.  It was great to have families, staff, and students come together to celebrate this milestone!

Words You Speak Become the House You Live In...
This came up in my Twitter feed this week - it made me stop and think.  This quote made me appreciate all the work you have done to use student-first language.  As much as it seems like just words, it truly represents your thinking and actions.  There is research to support that an educator's thoughts actually translate to their expectations and interactions with students.  A huge kudos to you for all your work on keeping students first - your language and beliefs.   All means ALL at McKinley. 

Growth Mindset Post-It Notes:
I saw these growth mindset post-it notes on Twitter this week.  I can see our building using these - what a great way to give feedback but keep it focused on growth! 

Site Team Communication:
Click here to access the site team communication tree.  This is your "representative" who will communicate with you to get feedback and ideas to bring back to our leadership team. 

Building Weekly Newsletter:
Click here to access the weekly newsletter


In closing, I had an email from Amanda Heilman (Director of Business & Operations) regarding the Bus Company this week.  She had a conversation this week with the Bus Company who gave the McKinley staff glowing reviews on how friendly, flexible, and happy you are.  It's so true... and we know it.  It's great to hear it from others.


Have a great weekend, everyone!
-Justin