Weekly Update- Friday, December 21, 2018

Happy Last Day before Winter Break!  

Make Sure You Relax Over Break!
It's time to relax, rejuvenate, and spend time with those you love!  Looking for ways to relax and rejuvenate over break... see the article below.  Read a good book, binge watch a Netflix series, or eat some comfort food... just to share a few!  
Click here to access the article 

Transition Day - Jan 2
Just a reminder of our January 2 Transition Day.  Please see this link for details! 

Positive Office Referrals:
In January, we will be starting a "positive office referral" for students.  This office referral is meant to bring students to the office for positive things - above and beyond the normal expectation.  When a student comes down, they will ring the "gong" below (it will be located in the office).  Then, I will take a picture of the student holding their positive office referral.   Then, every week, we will tweet out a collage of the students who received this.

This is NOT meant to take the place of a McKinleyStrong slip.  This is meant for the "above and beyond" situations, not the day to day successes.  Think of it like behavior - is it classroom-managed or office-managed?  We obviously want to celebrate students with the positive office referral; however, we can't have all kids getting them, every day.  I would say one every week (or even every two weeks) would be a general rule.  This really comes down to the amount of time and this losing it's impact if we issue too many.
I'm excited to see how this works out!

ISD 761 Foundation Grant:
The ISD 761 Foundation Grant directions were sent out this week.   This is a great opportunity to request money for those innovative projrects you've been wanting to try.  In the past, we received our guided math, outdoor learning cart, and some of our MakerSpace cart through a foundation grant.  If you want help with this grant, let me know.  If you can think of something we need as a building, I'd be glad to write one!  

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

McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week:
Our McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week goes to 1st Grade Teacher, Jen Schlauderaff!  Jen is a collaborative & compassionate educator who creates an environment focused on every student, every day.  One of the things that impresses me most about Jen is her role as a learner herself.  Jen is always looking for ways to grow and develop as an educator... to ultimately serve her students.  We are so lucky to have Jen at McKinley.  Jen, thank you for being McKinleyStrong! 

Have a great break, everyone!  Enjoy every minute of this time with your loved ones!  Also, take some time to rejuvenate and recharge your "battery"!  

Weekly Update - Friday, December 14, 2018

Good morning!

Winter Break is almost here!   We can do it!  

Just a reminder - please be sensitive and aware of the upcoming winter break.  First, we should not be celebrating Christmas.  Secondly, as I mentioned earlier this month, this is not always a positive time of year for some kids.  It's stressful - they don't know if they are getting presents, if they are going to eat, what their time away from school will look like, etc.  Please be sensitive to this as we finish up December.  

Also, please be aware of behaviors increasing next week.  A lot of the anxiety and uncertainty of break can result in behaviors.  This is the time students need us, more than ever.  

Positive Office Referral:
In January, we will be starting a "positive office referral" for students.  This office referral is meant to bring students to the office for positive things - above and beyond the normal expectation.  When a student comes down, they will ring the "gong" below (it will be located in the office).  Then, I will take a picture of the student holding their positive office referral.   Then, every week, we will tweet out a collage of the students who received this.

This is NOT meant to take the place of a McKinleyStrong slip.  This is meant for the "above and beyond" situations, not the day to day successes.  Think of it like behavior - is it classroom-managed or office-managed?  We obviously want to celebrate students with the positive office referral; however, we can't have all kids getting them, every day.  I would say one every week (or even every two weeks) would be a general rule.  This really comes down to the amount of time and this losing it's impact if we issue too many.

I'm excited to see how this works out!

So, What's Going on at McKinley with Co-Teaching? 
Below is a blog entry written by Jess Zupansic, Jen Schlauderaff, and Liz Stitzmeyer about the work they are doing with co-teaching in 1st Grade.  There is some awesome work in the building going on around co-teaching, particularly with EL and Special Education.  It's been powerful to see the "all hands on deck" approach happening with this model.

We attended an exciting co-teaching training session this summer with Martina Wagner and were introduced to many new co-teaching models. We had a chance to brainstorm how we could integrate these models into our reading block. We loved a lot of her ideas and used them to create a hybrid model that we thought could help meet the kids’ needs in guided reading. Here is a snapshot of a day in the life of first grade co-teaching!

What: Liz spends time with each of our classrooms daily during guided reading and runs guided groups (parallel co-teaching model). We run four groups within a 40 minute period. We then spend the other 20 minutes of time with her in our classrooms focusing on reading strategies or picturing writing projects (team-teaching model).
We have really enjoyed the co-teaching experience so far. The first graders really are benefiting from having two reading teachers that are there to notice their strengths, gains and areas where they may need support. The students are showing such great growth and we feel like we know our students as readers better than we ever have because of the meaningful conversations we have about each one each week.

Where? We take turns with space. Liz spends a week teaching at our guided reading table in the classroom and we work in the glass conference room with the other group. The next week, we switch spots and groups.

When: Liz co-teaches with Jen for 1 hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon with Jess

Why? We noticed that 45 minutes of independent time for six year olds was leading to some issues with disengagement. The hybrid that we created helped make independent time more guided and purposeful. We are now free during their independent reading time to confer with students and are gaining even more information about them as readers.

How: Liz meets with Jen and Jess each once per week during prep time. We sometimes meet as a group of three when we have a writing project we want to collaborate on. During our planning time we go over any reading record data, anecdotal notes, set new guided reading and language goals, and have really purposeful conversations about each child.

Revisiting Expectations with Student Buy-In:
As we know, this time of year can get hard - lots of indoor recess, little sunshine, etc.  Our approach with PBIS continues to remind me of the importance of continually revisiting and reviewing expectations, and teaching these expectations (much like we would teach reading or math skills on a daily basis).

I came across this on Twitter - a great way to involve students in problematic behavior in your classroom.  Are students too loud during transitions?  Room is left messy?  Below is a tool to bring students together and pose the problem- and let them own the work toward a solution.  As our work with Eric Jensen's "Engaging with Poverty in Mind", we know that a classroom management issue is our issue.  However, this is a great way to bring the issue to students' attention and involve them in the process.

Important Assessment Information:

Fastbridge benchmark assessments are just around the corner.  

Our CBMr (fluency rate - grades 1-5) and e-reading (K&1) assessments will take place January 10th for ALL students.  We are training the team of retired teachers to administer these assessments right after break.  A schedule of your specific time will come back right after break.

A-reading and A-math assessments will be administered by the classroom teacher in the classroom.  We are utilizing the window of January 14-25, so that students are back in routines.  The Fastbridge window closes the 25th, so you will want to leave time for make ups if students are absent.  You may want to have a conversation as a grade level about when you'd like to schedule these and reserve the computer carts soon, as we know those times fill up quickly. 

F&P Benchmark Assessments have a window of February - March to reassess each student grades 1-5.  

Libby will send additional information about all of these closer to the time, but wanted to give a heads up to the date ranges now.  Please let me know what questions you have.  

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

McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week:
Our McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week goes to our Cultural Liaison, Sylvia Zavala!  Sylvia "wears" many hats at McKinley - supporting families, students, and staff.  Sylvia is supportive, compassionate, and flexible with everyone she serves.  One of the things that impresses me most about Sylvia is the relationships she builds with everyone around her, particularly with families.  She is always serving our McKinley families, even in her "outside of work" life.  We are happy you are McKinleyStrong, Sylvia!  Keep up the great work!


Enjoy the weekend- it's going to be a nice, warm weekend!
-Justin

Weekly Update - December 7, 2018

Happy Friday, everyone!
It's going to be a cold one this morning..... how did winter hit us so quickly?

Behavior & SEL Supports @ McKinley:
At our last Power Hour, we discussed the work the PBIS Team has done around identifying where supports are available for behavior and SEL concerns.  This document is still a work in progress, as our PBIS team is currently looking at tier 2 supports for in the classroom (class pass, break cards, etc). 

Also, just a reminder of the tier 2 behavior plans available.  For students who are frequently not following expectations, or students who have more than 2 office referrals, we should be looking at developing these plans. 

We will spend more time at a January Power Hour discussing this.

Click here to see the document 
Tier 2 Behavior Plans 


Use of Social Media:

Just a reminder - social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) should not be used for personal reasons during the day unless it's your break or lunch.  This has become an issue lately - people notice the times you are sharing and liking items.  Please be aware of this. 

If you are using social media, particularly Twitter, for professional reasons, go for it!  As you know, I fully support this as a communication and professional learning tool.  Posting pictures of students, providing updates on classroom and learning work, and/or learning from your colleagues is an appropriate use of work time.

January Family Newsletter:
Our January McKinley Family Newsletter will be transitioning to an e-newsletter called "Smore".  We have been working on making this happen for about a month now.  We will still be sending home translated copies, as this program doesn't translate for our families.  However, the majority of our communication through a newsletter will now move to online. 

Winter Concert:
We had another fabulous winter concert last night, led by Mrs. Moon.  There was magic in the air as our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders showed their musical talent.  Kudos to everyone who was involved!  And, thank you to our teachers who helped supervise this event! 

Important Updates from Libby - please read carefully! 

Aww Snap!

Do you often see this popping up on the Streams when students first try to log in?  This happens when the prior user has not logged out properly. It will help us all, but especially our younger learners who take a bit longer to log on in the first place, if we teach students (and remind them) how to properly shut down the Streams after use.  Thank you for helping tech use to run smoothly in all of our classrooms.

Guided Reading PD Follow Up:

We are doing an amazing job of meeting our students’ needs in Guided Reading groups; there is a lot to celebrate around this implementation!  Our staff has such a learner mindset, so it is awesome that people want to continue to grow in this practice. It was brought to Reading Leadership Team that we did not go through the word work or writing components about Guided Reading last year, and people would like more support.  Building Leadership Team suggested common planning time for this learning work. Here are some options for how we can engage collaboratively:

1. Let me know that you’d like to discuss this at common planning time or another team meeting time (I’ll come prepared if I know in advance).
2. Check the Guided Reading book out of the Professional Library (or ask me for a copy of the part you are wondering about).  There are chapters on each portion of the lessons.
3. Invite me in to co-plan and/or co-teach a lesson or two.  We can focus our efforts on the word work or writing portion (or both).
4. Of course, I’m always open to other ideas of how to collaborate!

Guided Reading Resources:

I have heard, and perhaps you have seen emails, about people not being able to locate resources (both in the Scholastic short reads - stored in 5th grade conference room, and in the extra 1st grade F&P Guided Reading set - stored in the library).  Please check out the F&P books with Denise. As for both, you do not ever need more than 2 books or text sets of a level at a time (usually just one - unless you are keeping for a reading record the following day). Please be respectful of the number of people utilizing the resources.  We will not be able to have a week’s worth at a time in our room. I’m so excited that these resources are available for our students; thank you for your support in making them accessible.

Reading Records in F&P:

I have met with several teachers and gone into their classroom to collaborate around the reading records within the Guided Reading Classroom.  This type of reading record has the main purpose of using the data to reflect upon the previous day’s instruction. It’s extremely useful in planning your next day’s teaching points. Let me know when you’d like to connect if we haven’t done so already.   

December 20 PM Groups

All teachers who teach LLI groups will be coming together for collaboration around implementation the afternoon of 12/20 beginning at 11:30. They will not have a sub, so their groups will be cancelled. This will include special ed, tier 3 and tier 2 teachers. Thank you for your flexibility.

Christmas Season:

Just a reminder to be aware of the "celebration" of Christmas that occurs at school.  As much as this is my favorite time of year, I have to change my mindset this time of year.  First, not all students celebrate Christmas.  Secondly, this is isn't always a "happy" time of year for all our students.  Some know they won't get a gift, celebrate, or even have the "happy family time" that I envision when I hear Christmas.  Please be aware of this as we move into the next few weeks.  If you have questions about activities you plan to do, I would be glad to help guide your planning.  Thank you! 

MSU Shout-Out! 

A quick shout out of thanks to Kayla Davis, Rachael Eickhoff, Dani Rypka, Mark Langlois, and Eric Oppegard for hosting MSU-Mankato students in their Block 2 field experience! Candidates are done today, December 7, and are anxiously awaiting their student teaching assignment. Wish them luck!

Michelle Simon, Jess Zupansic, Katie Demmer, and Karla Wilke have hosted student teaching candidates for the last year... thank you! Holly Dahle, Sammi Ladd, Makayla Wichmann, and Gabby Wagner are making the most of their last few days at McKinley! These soon-to-be graduates will finish their student teaching on Wednesday, Dec 12 and are excited to graduate next weekend. We wish them the best as they enter their education career!

Teacher Workday Fun:
Below are some pictures from our Teacher Workday "fun" this last Monday.  Our wonderful teachers participated in some challenges.... one of which was to lip sync and act out their favorite 80's song!  They are FABULOUS!

Building Weekly Newsletter

Click here to access the building weekly newsletter

McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week:

Our McKinleyStrong Educator of the Week goes to 1st Grade Teacher, Michelle Simon!   Michelle is a passionate educator who creates a student-centered environment in her classroom.  Michelle works hard to ensure that every student will be successful in her 1st grade classroom.  One of the things I appreciate most about Michelle is her willingness to always be a learner - she will spend hours learning and growing if it will serve students' needs.  Keep up the great work, Michelle... you are McKinleyStrong!  

Have a great weekend, everyone!  Enjoy some "down time"!

-Justin