November 6 Update

Happy Friday, McKinley!
I hope you've had a great week of learning and relationships!  A huge thank you to Steph and Selena for organizing our food truck yesterday.  It was a great lunch!

Please make sure you are engaged (camera on, not doing other work) during today's learning.  Today's learning is very important and will greatly help us as educators.  It's going to be a great day! 

COVID Updates:

Thank you for meeting yesterday.  Just to recap some of the big learning(s):

• Class Lists/Contact Tracing -  We need to make sure that students are with the same student(s), as much as possible.  As I told you, we need to go through a student's day to find out what exposure has occurred.  It's critical that we decrease the contact students are having for over 15 minutes. There is more below.   
• Privacy - When we are notified of a case, we begin contact tracing.  We contact those that may have come into contact with someone.  If I do not come to you, and you are concerned, you can come directly to me.  It is a directive that we are not talking/gossiping about the situations with colleagues.  This is a privacy issue.  Again, come to me.   Additionally, this includes students. Please talk to your class/classes about discussing this.  As I stated yesterday, it is extremely hard on a student when kids are saying things like "Oh, I bet they have COVID", etc.  
• Google Classroom - Please continue to use Google Classroom (Meets, too) as much as you can. If we need to move to distance learning, it's imperative that students know how to use the device and your digital classroom.  
• Planning - Please think through long-term planning as we move into the winter months.  In the event your class (or the building) go distance learning, it's very helpful to have things ready to go home.  I'm not asking you to plan out 3-4 weeks; I know that you need to be responsive to your students, too.  It's more of a general idea planning - and having copies and other resources ready.

Thank you for your continued energy and support toward these things.  I know this is not easy and we are all tired of it.  I keep telling myself, we need our students to not feel this.  You've done a great job of keeping McKinley a happy, positive place that is focused on students.  

Conferences

I have heard several of you talking about the excitement around visiting with families.  Here is the preparing guide that Kenneth created that walks through a lot of the logistics of the virtual conference.  

As you plan as a team, you will also want to talk about what information you’ll be sharing for conferences.  This is a great opportunity to hear a little bit more about their stories and share about some of the assets of the students.  

You will not have a data sheet printed from the office this year; this is intentional as Fastbridge is cautioning use of the data since it was not normed for the situation we had last spring.  Therefore, please do not share national percentiles with families, as they are unlikely to paint an accurate picture of the student’s academics.  I know that you have seen a lot of growth even since fall, and we do want to share how students are doing academically (as well as socially).  Here are some ideas of things you could share:

• Progress monitoring information (growth)

• Formative assessment data (could even be anecdotal)

• Reading behaviors or goals (instructional goals)

• Skills or things you are working on and where you are headed (or where we want them to be in this grade level)

You also might share ideas for reading at home (encourage reading at home).

If you have questions about what to share or how to share it, please reach out to Libby as she is more than happy to brainstorm.  

Grouping Students/COVID:

I received several questions about partnering and grouping students based on our conversation yesterday.  One idea that has worked well for a few teachers in the building, is to seat students somewhat near their guided reading group members.   This will reduce the number of students that they are in close contact with throughout the day.  We have collaboration time at the end of the day, and it will be important to collaborate with your teams around the professional development that you all received.  However, if you want to take the last few minutes to talk through how you might shift things in your room based on the discussion yesterday and then implement those changes, please do so.  

Remember to print the seating charts for specialists when you change them, and give them to them every time you make a change.  Minimizing the frequency of changes will help to maximize students’ time in specialists.  

Building Weekly Newsletter:

Click here to access the building weekly newsletter

Have a great weekend, everyone!

-Justin