Friday, February 2, 2018

Weekly Update- February 2, 2018

Happy February, everyone!
I hope you had a great conferences week.  It was great to see families in the building, collaborating around student learning.  You do a great job of building that partnership with families.  Thank you for your relationships and focus on students-first!

#allstudentsmatter Challenge!
During the month of February, I am challenging you to blow up Twitter with #allstudentsmatter tweets!  The challenge- look for words, actions, and things your colleagues (across the entire building) are doing to show that all students matter, every day!   I will be doing weekly drawings in February to highlight some of our tweets - with some great prizes!

So, your challenge - go off and find ways your colleagues are putting ALL STUDENTS FIRST (words, actions, etc).  Then, tweet it out using #allstudentsmatter.

Let's blow up Twitter with all the great people we have at McKinley!



Instructional Levels:
I have appreciated all the work that has gone into knowing, planning, and teaching to instructional levels (based on the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmarking).   This is a great tool for us to know a laser-like focus on reading strategies, skills, and text to use to move our readers forward.

One caution to remember when using instructional levels - they should never define the student.  We should never have students "become" their level ("you are a G reader").  Also, we should never create an environment where students feel they need to master a level to "pass a grade".   We, as a teachers, use this data as a benchmark- we have goals to get students to a level by the end of the year.  That is our internal benchmarking.   I caution us to remember that the level is just that - a level to guide instruction.

PLC Documents:
Thank you for joining me on Monday for a PLC check in.  We are doing some great work - and will continue to get better.  Here are the documents electronically:

Essential Standards Chart Guiding Questions

PLC Process Explained

Engagement Strategy:
This engagement strategy is a specific strategy in the area of math.  I have shared this in the past - it's called "Number Detectives".  It's a great way to warm up and build number sense with students.   It can be used at any grade level!  Click here to access Number Detectives

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

McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week:
The McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week goes to Special Education Teacher, Brianna Luhman.  Brianna is a positive, focused, and compassionate educator who creates a love of learning in her students.  The thing I appreciate the most about Brianna is her "never give up" attitude toward students - she will do whatever it takes to make students successful learners and people.   We are very lucky to have Brianna on our team - keep up the great work, Ms. Luhman!


Have a great weekend, everyone!
-Justin

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