Core Instruction Reminder:
This was interesting to many of us last year- thought it was worth a revisit! These are the guidelines for direct instruction of new content - how long can kids actually stay engaged and focused during new material in your classrooms?
#McKGratitude2017 Challenge:
We have only a few more days left of the challenge - keep tweeting (and watch your spelling of gratitude!). We will announce our winner (and winning team) next week! Engaging with Poverty in Mind:
Last year, we did some learning work around poverty, engagement, and the brain. I spent some time last weekend looking back through this resource - I forgot about all the great ideas in this book! It may be worth a "revisit" on your part, too!
I am going to highlight a strategy or idea each week to keep these ideas fresh.
Monday Review:
In our work, we discovered that many students are arriving to school each day with disregulated thinking - especially on a Monday morning. Brain research shows that students who are exposed to stress and trauma are basically living in their emotional brain, or amygdala. When a student is stuck in their amygdala, they can't access their prefrontal cortext, which is where learning takes place.
Our job is to help students move from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortext. We learned that a few things help, especially on Mondays:
Safe, welcoming environment - students knowing routines in the classroom, as well as knowing their classroom is predictable and safe.
A positive relationship: Greeting students on a Monday morning with a smile and showing them you missed them all weekend!
Spending Mondays reviewing mastery from the previous week. Students need to be regulated before they can access new learning.
Staff Power Hour:
Our Staff Power Hour is this coming Wednesday, November 29th at 2:40pm in Langlois & Seath's room. We will focus on shoutouts, biases, and guided/small group instruction. Can't wait!
This quote stood out to me this week - appreciating what you already have. I am thankful for our McKinley family, each and every day. This place is a special place with special people. We are very lucky ... very lucky.
Have a great weekend with family & friends! Take some time to relax, rejuvenate, and appreciate living "in the moment".
-Justin
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!
Get food out of lounge by 2:00pm (it will be thrown away at this point)
Turn timecards into Lorri by 2:45pm.
Random Updates:
Kelly Johnson will start as our IT Specialist on Monday, April 3. Kelly has worked in the District for many years and does great work. Please help welcome her to McKinley!
Monday, April 3rd is the MN Twins Home Opener. You should have received a ticket to join in on the hot dog lunch. Wear your Twins gear on Monday to help support the Twins!
Congrats to all who received an ISD 761 Foundation Grant - Amanda Gislason (bookmaking & papermaking centers), Kindergarten Team (Power 1/2 Hour Reading Resources), and the STEM Cohort (outdoor learning classroom supplies). Way to go!
Staff Power Hour:
We had a great discussion around equity, poverty, and engagement this week. Below are the 3 action steps we decided to try before our April 26 meeting:
Try a working memory activity with students
Provide think time - design your lesson around 5-8 minute chunks with think time built-in.
Don't let students go home with deficits - remember the 3:1 formula (3 positive experiences to 1 negative)
DIBELS- Spring Benchmarking Dates
We will do our spring benchmarking on May 10-11 in the portable (thank you Amanda and Paige for being flexible with your space!). Our make-up day will be May 12th. More information will come on a schedule; however, save the date!
Student Appreciation Video - KARE 11:
Michelle Meiners shared this video with me - it's a video compilation of teachers explaining what they appreciate about students. Each of the clips is a surprise for the student - the teacher shares what they appreciate. It's a great video - well worth the time to watch! http://www.kare11.com/news/big-lake-teachers-show-students-love-in-viral-video/424403811
Twitter:
For those of you not on Twitter, you are missing out! Below are 7 effective ways to engage in Twitter. See me if you have questions - well worth the time to sign up!
April 11- #lovemyschoolday:
April 11th is #lovemyschoolday. More information is coming on this, but I'm hoping we participate. It's a great way to show what great work we are doing and why we love McKinley!
Valet Parking for the Week:
The Valet Parking for the Week goes to Special Education Paraprofessional, Stacy Champeau! Stacy has a strong background in working with students - and it shows in everything she does. She does a great job of being flexible, patient, and builds strong relationships with our students. Stacy is always focused on helping support students and teachers. Keep up the great work, Stacy!
Have a great Spring Break, everyone! Take some time to re-charge your batteries for a great ending to the 16-17 school year!
-Justin
School Social Worker Week:
Next week is School Social Worker Week - we will honor Mrs. Warner for all the work she does to support our students and families!
PLC's Monday:
This Monday, March 6 is a Teacher Workday. Just a reminder - please let Libby and I know the time your PLC will meet on this date, if it's not at 2:45pm (remember, you can meet during the day on a workday).
PBIS- February Data:
Below is a link to our February ORD data at McKinley. As you can see from the data, office referrals are extremely high this month- even compared to this time last year. The PBIS team is currently analyzing this data and will meet on March 14 to provide some recommendations to our staff on the "why" of this data. It's alarming that it's this high, especially since we have been getting outside for recess (usually a lot of indoor recesses raise the level of discipline).
Poverty & Engagement Work Follow-Up:
At our last Staff Power Hour, we committed to trying three things before March 22. How is that going? Here are the three action steps:
Say what you do want instead of what you don't want (rule #4, page 29-30).
Find time to get to know kids. Try a relationship thing every day. Let students know something about you or do a mini-morning meeting (some personal sharing).
Watch your body language throughout the day. As we read, body language sends many messages to students, staff, and families (without us even realizing it!).
Classroom teachers, I will be setting a short training on morning meetings in April.
A SnapShot of Learning:
Dani Rypka's 1st graders used the snow to practice two-digit adding and subtracting by making base ten blocks of snow!
Mark Langlois's 5th graders spent some time at Maple Creek this week. This is part of their year-long trout project with the MN DNR.
Our McKinley Science Fair Regional Winners! A special thank you to Rachael Eickhoff and Lori Huisenga for organizing the science fair!
Valet Parking for the Week:
The Valet Parking for the Week goes to Special Education Paraprofessional Bernie Jensen! Bernie joined us this year, having worked most of her career at the Owatonna ALC. Bernie has been a wonderful addition to our special education team! Bernie is flexible, compassionate, and collaborative. Bernie understands how to de-escalate situations to keep students focused on learning. She also understands that students need strong relationships and to feel valued here at school. Keep up the great work, Bernie!
Happy Snow Day! I hope you stay off the roads and enjoy the day!
I thought this was a great example of all the growth mindset language we are trying to use with student (and ourselves) around the word "yet"....
Some "random" updates:
Integration Subouts start this week. The schedule is attached is the building weekly newsletter (below).
We were accepted into a PBIS grant through the state of MN. This grant will help us continue to develop our work around PBIS. I'm super excited!
The MCA schedule was sent out yesterday. Thank you to Denise Carlson for your work on this schedule!
Staff Power Hour Follow-Up:
At our Staff Power Hour this week, we started our work with Eric Jensen's book "Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind". We had a great conversation centered around ways to engage students. The thing I appreciated the most about this meeting was how reflective and growth mindset-focused we all were. Each staff was looking for ways to get even better.
As a team, we agreed to trying three things before our next meeting: 1. Say what you do want instead of what you don’t want (rule #4 – page 29-30).
2. Finding time to get to know kids. Try a relationship thing every day. Let kids know something about you or do a mini-morning meeting (some personal sharing).
3. Watch your body language throughout your day. As we read, body language sends many messages to students, staff, and families (without us even realizing it!).
Furniture Group for New Building:
The furniture group went to a showroom last week to look at new furniture for our new building. I went into the visit thinking we'd look at desks, tables, chairs, etc. that just looked newer. It was amazing to see how much furniture has changed to meet student and teacher needs. Below are some of the pictures of the furniture (and our McK furniture group). It's amazing to hear all the ways this furniture can be used. The group will continue to explore our options over the next few weeks.
Twitter for Educators:
This has shown up in previous blogs, but it's something worth sharing again! For those of you who are not on Twitter, it's time to join. You will love it. For those of you who are on Twitter, below are some ways to continue your growth on Twitter. This year, I started participating in "Twitter Chats" with fellow principals (below). The conversation and PD is awesome!
Don't forget about our hashtags:
#mckinleystrong for information and events around our school community
#mckinleyPD is a spot to share professional development ideas/articles/links
Valet Parking for the Week:
The Valet Parking for the Week goes to Marie Sjulstad! Marie is an amazing paraprofessional who puts students' needs first. She is flexible, focused on students, and collaborative. One of the things I appreciate the most about Marie is how positive she is - she always finds something good in every situation. Thank you for all you do, Marie!
GO HUSKIES! And, a special good luck to Brent, Eric, and Kyle!
This blog will not be updated until Friday, December 2nd!
LCD Projectors
Just another reminder regarding LCD projectors - turn them off when you aren't using them. The bulbs are very expensive. The IT Department is going to start not replacing them- which means it's our budget. I can tell you, if that becomes a reality, we won't be able to replace bulbs like we should. We have limited funds for the remainder of the year.
Turn your LCD projector off when you aren't using it!
Just a couple random things:
On Monday, we will have some teachers from Austin visiting McKinley. They are here to learn about our PLC process, Intervention Blocks, and how you use assessments to guide this. They will be visiting PLCs.
Make sure you have your reading assignment for our November 30th Staff Power Hour. The article is on poverty.
On December 2 (Teacher Workday), I am out of the building from 10-3pm meeting with some administrators from the Burnsville School District. If you need me that day, I will be available by email or text.
Teacher Clarity of Purpose- REPEAT I'm getting around to classrooms, I'm noticing that teachers are doing a great job of stating the Enduring Understanding or Learning Target for the day/week. It's posted and stated to students very clearly. What I am noticing is that the clarity of that EU or LT is missing- students don't know exactly what mastery will look like by the end of the lesson? What should they walk away being able to do? From John Hattie's research around what is effective, you can see that learning clarity has an extremely high impact on learning. Students, as well as teachers, need to be crystal clear about the "end result" - mastery. This is why the Essential Standards Charts work well with this process - your team determines the EU, but also mastery way before you start teaching any lesson/unit. When students know what mastery looks like, they rise to the occasion.
Valet Parking for the Week:
The Valet Parking for the Week goes to Kindergarten Teacher, Jen Koziolek! Jen does amazing work with her Kindergarteners. Jen is patient, compassionate, and focused on each of our students' success. Jen goes above and beyond to make sure her students are socially, emotionally, and academically prepared. Jen's classroom is filled with energy, excitement, and rigorous learning! Keep up the great work, Jen!
With this weather, it feels like September... can you believe it's November? And, I'm not complaining!
We have a lot of information this week- read carefully!
Quick Items:
Reading on Poverty- Staff Power Hour: If you haven't picked up the readings for the Staff Power Hour, please stop in my office to get it. We will use this at our November 30th meeting.
ISD Foundation Grant Available: Sarah Hoffman emailed the information regarding the ISD 761 Foundation Grant. This is a great opportunity to fund an innovative project you'd like to do. Last year, we received $5,000 for our guided math library. If you can think of any projects/resources we need as a building, I'd be glad to write one. Let me know.
Absences - Enter into AESOP: If you know you are going to be gone (appointment, vacation, etc.) please enter it into AESOP in a timely manner. I'm seeing more planned absences getting entered at the last minute. This makes finding a sub harder.
PBIS Discipline Data - October
The PBIS team has been watching our discipline data and putting supports into place for students over the last two months. Below is a link to our current discipline data, broken down to understand it. As you can see, physical aggression and fighting seem to be our highest offense. Please keep aware of this, as well as continue the communication with students about this. We will address some of this at our PBIS Assembly this morning. Click here to access the discipline data
Also, don't forget to keep the idea of "grit" going in your classrooms!
Kayla's Tech Piece: Are you interested in a quick way to gather data to use at your
PLC? You can use your SMART Response devices (“clickers”) to collect data
from a pre-test, formative assessment, or summative assessment. The data
is collected for you and organized in an Excel document which makes it easy to
organize and sort data quickly. It is pretty quick and easy to set up the
assessment in Smart Notebook and it will save you a ton of time correcting
paper copies of tests from your students. It also gives immediate feedback
to your students so they know how they did!
Look for more information to come about upcoming training
sessions for using Clickers in your Classroom, but for now—check out this link
for “7 Clicker Tips for Teachers!”
The first grade team is using some SMART techniques with students, largely due to the support from Brent Yule. The idea behind this is to link movement and learning together. There are ways to have students refocus, too. Brent would be a great resource if you are looking to hear more about this.
Can you believe it's November and we have students outside with no coats on?
EL Graduation Night - we honored our "graduates" of the EL program on Wednesday night.
Friday night was PTO Bingo Night. We had a great time!
It was fun seeing all the creative ways you took Halloween and turned it into engineering projects for the kids. Wow!
"Orange Out Bullying" was last Friday. Thanks to Catie Stephani and Lauren Olson for organizing!
2nd grade engineering Cinderella's carriage as part of their "Cinderella" unit.
Valet Parking for the Week:
The Valet Parking of the Week goes to Tier 3 Interventionist, Gia Davison! Gia's calming, positive presence is felt in any interaction with her. She keeps you grounded, but also focused on what is right for students. Gia is highly invested in our students, finding ways to support and intervene on foundational reading skills. Gia, we truly appreciate having you as a part of the McKinley team!
Have a great weekend, everyone! Get outside!
-Justin
