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.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment