11/20/15 Daily Bulletin

Shout Out

Shout out to Mr. Bertoni, Ms. Willis and the middle school girls volleyball team on a great season! The girls lost last night in the semi finals but put forth a great effort. They learned about about teamwork, sportsmanship and health and should be proud of themselves. Thanks again to our coaches for all their support and efforts throughout the season!

Nurses

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE send your child will a pass to the nurse. This pass should include their full name and a brief description of the symptoms. Our nurses care about 907 students and need to record each visit. We are asking teachers to take and extra moment to assure that the child has a proper pass before heading to the nurse.

ILT Walkthrough Trends

The ILT conducted a walkthrough last week of classrooms looking for UDL engagement strategies in practice. The notes teachers took were low inference and no identifiable information was shared amongst staff and administration. (Teachers can read the full minutes which are posted in the ILT folder on the drive.) This data will help to guide the work of the ILT moving forward. Many positives came out of these observations and it was clear that we have made improvements as a school! The ILT is proud to share the following trends and we hope that teachers continue to grow and improve around finding ways to engage students.

• observation data points can fall into multiple checkpoints under UDL Guidelines
• posted goals during lessons and children referring to them 
• positive feedback from adults to students
• evidence of positive classroom culture
• many pieces of evidence on fostering collaboration and community
• evidence of group and collaborative work 
• a lot of evidence of choice
• more evidence for UDL guidelines 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 than 9….
• content was real life based (authentic) 
• teachers were asking questions 
• different motivators represented across grade levels
• more student talk than teacher talk 
• different learning styles addressed 
• constructive noise

What does the Data tell us? The things we have worked on we are doing well and there is evidence of it in these observations.

It’s International Week!  

ALL HOMEROOM TEACHERS: Be sure to schedule time(s) with your Big-Little Buddy colleagues to visit one another’s classes. Please complete the Country Exchanges spreadsheet(LINK) by this Friday, 11/20. 

November 25th

We will have an early release on November 25th. This means that we will dismiss students starting at 12:25pm and all adults can dismiss starting at 12:45pm. There will be no after school programming on this day including CASP, Tenacity and City Year. Students should be doing school work on this day. If your team is hosting a fun event it should happen towards the end of the day and not throughout the entire day. If your students are not eating lunch in the cafeteria on Wednesday please contact Rina Santillan @ rfernandez@bostonpublicschools.org. Here is the schedule for the day.

A2 ANet Testing

The assessment dates for the A2 are fast approaching. ELA assessments will take place the week of December 1st. Math assessments will take place the week of December 7th. A login roster for each teacher will be emailed by Friday, November 20th. Please be sure to review your roster and notify Adrian Ward-Jackson of any necessary changes. The logins and passwords are the same as the A1 assessment.

Extended Learning Time (ELT)

Today I got this email below about extending the school day next year:

We are very excited to inform you that the Curley has officially been selected to participate in Cohort 2 of Schedule A ELT (SY 2016-2017). We will hold two offerings of the first planning session, the first will from 8:30 AM - 3:30 PMDecember 2nd and the second will be from 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM on December 7th. You should plan to attend one of the two offerings with a team of 2-4 teachers and/or parents.Tomorrow, I'll send an email with some more details as well as an FAQ for school leaders, an FAQ for families, an FAQ for staff, and a toolkit for engaging your community in discussions about ELT. 

I followed up this email asking what the school hours will be for SY 2016-2017 and was informed that the students day would be 8:30am-3:10pm and the teacher day would be 8:15am-3:25pm. At this time this is all the information I know and I will forward any new information in the coming days to you all. I hope that this new will not cause too much anxiety for you all. We will together recreate how we use the school day within the confines of the contract.  If you are not aware each bargaining unit has negotiated pay for all BTU, Guild and BASIS members. Please let me know if you are interested in being on the planning committee we would love to have a wide representation of grade levels, contents and program areas.

Artifacts

Just a friendly reminder to all staff that artifacts should be posted on EDFS by 12/15/15. Every staff member should upload 2-3 items for each standard and 2-3 items for each goal. It is very important that you write a detailed description to accompany each artifacts so it is clear the the evaluator your purpose for choosing it. If you need help with this please contact your evaluator for support. 

Book donation 

- 500 books titled "Savvy" by Ingrid Law have been donated to the Curley for students in grades 4-8. Students may take these books home and keep them! For more information on the book, here's the website:http://www.ingridlaw.com/Site/SAVVY.html

Ms Wright, Ms P and their students will distribute these books to homerooms on Thursday morning during homeroom. 

- 100 copies of "Boys, Girls & Other Hazardous Materials" by Rosalind Wiseman have also been donated. It's a young adult book appropriate for 7th and 8th graders

Please let Lindsey Wright know if you think your students would like to take this book home, or if you would like some for your library.

- There are about 100 other books for upper elementary grades as well. If you would like to send them home with your students or if you would like to add them to your classroom library, please feel free to come by before school any morning to look at them! Room 115. 

- Any thank you notes would be much appreciated and I will be sending them to Generis International (http://www.generisinternational.org/) to show how appreciative we are of the donation!

Laminator Update

The laminator is now in the mailroom of the upper school office. The instructions for use are hanging on the laminator. During CPT or before/after school this week you will be trained to use the laminator by your climate team representative. Please initial the sign off sheet next to your name after you complete your training. Everyone needs to be trained by November 25th. Please contact Mr.Tewksbury ctewksbury@bostonpublicschools.org or Amika amika45@comcast.net to set up an appointment if you miss your training or if your team does not have a representative on the climate team.

New SPED Academic Achievement Testing

The Special Education Department has made the determination to move to the WIAT-III (Wechsler Individual Achievement Test) for the assessment to determine academic achievement levels in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and mathematics. All Special Education Teachers will be administering this beginning January 2016. This will replace the Woodcock Johnson Test of Achievement.

Volunteers

Teachers and Staff:
We want to help you with those one-time projects that keep falling to the bottom of your to-do list because you can't find time to complete them. Some ideas could include cleaning out/organizing a closet, a small construction project, decorating a bulletin board, or whatever comes to mind - we have lots of families with lots of skills so go ahead and give us a try!
Please share your project with us and we will post it to the wish list on the Curley website. A parent or family will contact you directly if the project works for them. To help all of us manage expectations, we think we are likely to be more successful completing your project if your deadline is at least a month away. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nZGc2Zsvu8IcdItDHVDV1Bg-F9BZ5Vlt7se9ladfNNk/viewform?usp=send_form Questions? Email k_brennan2001@yahoo.com

Tech Goes Home

Please make sure to send home the Tech Goes Home flier and encourage students and families to participate. If you have any questions reach out to Traka Smith at tsmith8@bostonpublicschools.org

Bulletin Boards

A new instructional bulletin board should be up by Monday, November 30th. We know that not all boards have been hung up yet and we apologize for this. Please know that we have not forgotten about you! There has been regular reminders sent to facilities to get these boards hung and we are waiting on space in a specific persons schedule to make this happen. You need a special insurance to be able to hang these. Make sure that you are hanging work up inside you class! Also all boards should be accompanied by this form.