Shout Out
Shout out to Ms. Ferguson and Ms. Signes for their early morning collaboration today! It is great to see colleagues collaborating and supporting one another! Our students will benefit most from this high level of teamwork! Thanks!
Staff Appreciation Breakfast
This Wednesday from 7:30 - 8:30 with a setup similar to last year(breakfast items, coffee, appreciations from students, etc). We will be raffling off a couple baskets of school supplies.School Climate
School Climate Team meeting will take place on Wednesday, December 16th from 3:00pm-4:15pm in room 212. All staff are welcome!
PD
There will be literacy collaborative PD on Thursday for LC Cohort 1 & 2 as well as PACE from 3pm-5pm.
Writing Rubric Tracking
Please see the email from Katie on 12/9/15 regarding the tracking of writing data. We realize how long it has taken us to get this to you all and we apologize. I lot of thought and debate went into how to organize this document. Please check your grade level CPT folder on the drive and you will find your spreadsheet. Teach teams need to complete this for each write task students are completing as part of the writing curriculum map. Staff can have an extension on adding this as an artifact due to the late timing. Everyone should be adding a completed spreadsheet to EDFS by 12/23/15. If you submit it before you head on vacation you won't have to think about it! :) Please direct all questions and feedback to Eileen Cronin.
A2 ANet Testing
All action plans are due to teams administrators by Monday, December 14th (ELA) and Friday, December 18th (math).Safety Plan
We will be having our first Safe Mode Drill on Wednesday, December 16th. We wanted to communicate this so that staff had time to practice this with their students. While the drill is going on no staff or families will be able to enter or exit the building. We hope that when we practice this we will be able to work out any kinks in our plan. Some families have asked for the language that teachers will use when practicing with their students. Here is a sample specifically directed at early childhood aged students, “ We are practicing for an emergency outside the school. Just like a fire drill is practice for an emergency, like a fire, inside, the school, this is practice for an emergency outside. An example of an outside emergency I've given is if a truck spills something dangerous, like a chemical, into the street. It is not real and we have to show Ms. Grassa that we can be safe inside and stay quiet if we need to be.” We hope this language helps to support the conversation you have at home with your students. This language will be shared with families in the Paw Prints this weekend and we will also announce the date of the drill to them as well.
It is crucial that staff practice this with students before next Wednesday and that everyone listens carefully to the announcement once it is made. Students may be transitioning, in bathroom, outside, at lunch and we will look forward to feedback from staff on how to tighten protocols. It is most important that staff remain calm during this time. Also we are aware that facilities are not fully in place to follow all procedures. We are asking that staff do what they can do and we look forward to any creative ideas that may come from this practice. Here is a direct link to our safety plan for your review.
Water Fountains
Our new water fountains are not turned on at this time. There was an issue at another site and they shut down all the fountains in order to find out if this is a district wide or isolated issue.
ELT Planning Meeting
Today 4 staff volunteered to attend the ELT Planning Meeting. We met at the BTU from 8:30am-3:30pm with 7 other schools that will be adding 40 extra minutes to their day in SY2016-2017. We want to be sure to communicate with staff after each meeting to assure that this process is transparent.Here are some key messages we would like to share from today's learning:
- Our Extended Learning Time initiative is about building a better school day for our students, teachers and families.
- With more time, our school will have more opportunities to provide targeted learning time for students, increase small group instruction, provide enrichment opportunities in order to increase student engagement and academic outcomes. At our first session we identified these urgent needs:
- African American and Hispanic males do not perform on standardized tests at the same level as their White and Asian peers.
- ELL and SPED students do not perform on standardized tests at the same level as their general education peers.
- Overall as a school we struggle with reading and writing skills according to standardized tests.
- We are just at the beginning and we need you to play an active role in the process of developing a new school experience for our community.
- Between January and June the ELT Team will implement a community engagement process moving forward, stay tuned for meeting dates and other pertinent updates.
- In the coming weeks you can get involved by reaching out to a member of the ELT team with questions and ideas (Ciardi, Grassa, Kidd, Peters, Wright). Click Here and you can submit your ideas and questions anonymously.
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