12/1/16 Daily Bulletin

Shout Out

Shout out to Amanda Quimby, ABA Specialist, for consistently meeting paperwork deadlines and providing thorough and well-written reports.  This timely and high quality data help teams develop programming to meet students needs!

PD

Our 2nd whole staff PD will take place this Thursday, December 1st from 3-4pm in the auditorium. ALL STAFF must attend.

Staff Social

Please join us for our monthly staff social at Costello's on Friday, December 2nd from 3pm-5pm.

ID Cards

If you have a broken, missing or still have not received you ID card please email Kathy Powers by Friday.

Tenacity

Come celebrate with Tenacity on Thursday, December 15th, when we’ll hold our annual ‘Mid-year Ceremony: There’s No Place Like Tenacity’ to showcase program highlights and recognize student accomplishments from the first part of the school year. The event will be from 5:30pm-7:30pm in the Lower School Gym, with dinner being served around 5:45pm. All Curley staff is welcome to stop by! We hope to see you there! If you have any questions please feel free to contact Ms. AuGuste at cathyauguste@tenacity.org

Math PD

They are looking for BPS classrooms to pilot these tasks and collect (identifier-free) student work samples before going public with these offerings. This is totally optional! If interested and excited, continue to read :) If not, feel free to delete or pass along to someone you recommend. All participating schools will get FREE access to pilot the Measured Progress STEM Gauge modules this spring.

• What: ELA and Math Performance Task Pilot (check out attachment overview) 
• Who: 10 math classrooms (Gr2-HS) and 13 ELA classrooms (K-12). If interested in giving both math and ELA to your students please let me know in your response. 
• When: Each task (one per classroom) takes between 60-90 minutes and can be administered starting 12/12 through 1/6. Participating teachers will need to join a 30 minute webinar prior to assessment. 2 hour commitment in total. 
• How: Measured Progress will ship printed materials directly to you for administration. When students are done, simply put all materials back in box and use return labels to send to Measured Progress for scoring. 
• Why: What's better than watching students engage with super rigorous and relevant performance tasks? Measured Progress will send you synthesized data and feedback from your student samples. Not all student work will be graded. They are ultimately looking for how students perform on these tasks to inform their item creation process. 

Next Steps: Email Mike to learn more or to sign up for a specific subject. We only need one classroom per task. Deadline to sign up is this Friday 12/2.As you all know, we now have a new formative assessment system with items created by Measured Progress, all accessed through the platform illuminateed. This formative assessment system will soon include standards-aligned cognitively demanding performance tasks. I want to let all of you know about an opportunity to pilot some of these cognitively demanding performance tasks at the Gr2-high school grade levels that would be included in our formative assessment system. Attached is information about the particulars, including the fact that these would need to be piloted between 12/12 and 1/6 and there would be a webinar to participate in before beginning the pilot. Please email Mike Rubino at mrubino@bostonpublicschools.org to sign up by this Friday, December 2nd.

ABA PD

Attached are two flyers for district wide professional development opportunities presented by the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) department.

Highlights include:

A 3 Part Behavior Management Series (separate flyer)

What Am I Doing Now? (coming up quickly in December!)

Who Needs ABA?

Motivating Reluctant Learners

Mindfulness And ABA, No Way!

RSVP links are in the flyers themselves - hope to see many of you there!

Fall Term Report Card Grading Window for Grades K2 - 5

The fall grading window for students in grades 1-5 is will open from November 21st to December 9th. Please refer to the materials below for instructions on entering grades. Reminder: After entering or editing grades in the scores tab, teachers must click Post Grades to write the grades to the report cards. Grades will be saved as you enter them but they will not appear on the report cards until you click Post Grades.

Entering Grades Handout

Elementary Comment Codes Handout

How to verify that your grades are posted

SAVE THE DATE

2nd Annual Smile and Say Cheers New Year's Party
Formal invitations with RSVP details will be coming soon! 

Staff mark your calendars!!
January 13, 2017 at 4:30pm Bella Luna

Picture Day

You Have Photos now available for viewing! Take some time to view photos from the Curley School Picture Day 2016website. Your favorite photos can be easily ordered with your credit card in a highly secure purchasing environment. Please save this e-mail to quickly access this website, as it contains your unique event information. Please visit http://www.enjoyphotos.com, and fill in the following information:
Username: Curley School Pictures 2016
Password: 42612
Jennifer Connelly Photo
136 Ruthven Street
Dorchester, MA 02121
Jenniferconnellyphoto@gmail.com
(781) 696-1138
jenniferconnellyphoto.com

Missing Item

The litter pick up stick is missing from the Keep it Clean locked bin in the schoolyard. If you borrowed it to use during your buddy clean up, please return it to the bin. The parent volunteers who empty our trash bins every week need it to reach the trash at the bottom of the barrels. Thank you for helping keep our campus clean!

Movie Night

PACE is hosting a Family Movie Night Fundraiser on Thursday, December 1st from 5:00 to 7:00pm in the auditorium. This event will help raise money for field trips, which provide very important social and community experience for students on the Autism Spectrum. Tickets will be $3 a person and will include the movie ticket, popcorn and water. All students must be accompanied by an adult to this event. We can't tell you the name of the movie, but it's a new movie about a fish finding her way! Please email Cassie Mountain for further details cgendron@bostonpublicschools.org

Principal Breakfast

Please join us for the December Principal Breakfast on Friday, December 2nd from 8:45am-9:45am in Room 221. We will be discussing bullying and the systems and support BPS has in place to support students, families and schools. We will be joined by Iris Nieves, Safe and Welcoming Schools Specialist and Sugeily Santos, Guidance Counselor.

School Previews

We are looking for family volunteers to support our upcoming School Previews. These are building tours for perspective families and Curley families help to lead and share information from a parent’s point of view. All families are welcome to participate and no prior experience is necessary (we will partner you up with others). The preview dates will take place on Saturday, December 3rd from 9am-1pm, Friday, December 9th from 9am-10am, Friday, January 13th from 9am-1pm and Monday, December 23rd from 3pm-4pm. Please email Arusha Hollister (arusha_h@yahoo.com) if you Doodle Poll: Doodle: Curley Preview Tours

Health and Wellness

Please join us for our December meeting on Tuesday, December 6th from 7:30am-8:15am in room 203 Upper School. We will be finalizing our new policy on celebrations at school that will take effect in January 2017.

Artifacts

All artifacts must be uploaded to EDFS by December 15th. Administrators need time to review artifacts prior to writing Formatives. Please remember that 2-3 items should be uploaded for each goal (Student Learning & Professional Practice) AND each standard (I, II, III, IV). This means around 12-18 artifacts, we know you are doing many amazing things but uploading more than that makes it challenging to review each item thoroughly. Be sure that there is evidence tagged to each goal and standard. Also note that it is just as important to include a thorough description of what you uploaded. Do no assume that the evaluator will know why you choose to upload a particular document. Please let your evaluator know if you have any questions.

STAR Math Assessment Window(Gr. 3-8 Only)

The winter screening window for the STAR Math Assessment is December 5 – 9. This assessment will give us growth data for our students. Please make sure that you have looked at the data from the first assessment to identify students in the urgent intervention and intervention category. Use Stars data analysis to begin thinking of ways to support these students growth so that they can start to move out of urgent intervention to intervention and intervention to on watch. If as a grade level you need support doing this please email Sean Guthrie to schedule a grade level meeting. The STAR website can be accessed by all students using the STAR bookmark on Chromebooks. Student user names and passwords are the same as STAR Reading. Students can use blank scratch paper and a pencil while testing, but no calculators or reference materials are allowed. Just a reminder, students must sign into Chromebooks using their email address and password – not as “guest”. Grade level teams should arrange to share access to Chromecarts so that all students are tested during the screening window. Please contact Sean Guthrie if you have any questions.

$1500 Early Retirement Incentive Out; Deadline January 13, 2017

In order to assist hiring for the 2017 - 2018 school year, the Boston Public Schools is offering a one-time incentive for early notification of termination to members of the BTU Teachers’ Unit.
1. An individual must be a permanent BTU Teacher, have a minimum of ten (10) years of continuous service in the Boston Public Schools, and must meet the minimum age requirement of fifty-five (55) years. 

2. Eligible employees presently on paid or unpaid leave of absence can apply.
3. The application, once accepted by the Office of Human Capital by execution of the Separation Agreement, is binding on both parties and irrevocable.
4. Applicants understand that the termination must be effective between June 30, 2017 and August 31, 2017.
http://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20161107/dd/1a/e8/c9/8eeabebfe1475e91be2b1c93/HRS-PP08_Incentive_for_Early_Notification_of_Termination_for_BTU_vF-3.pdf

SPED PD Options

Below are some PD options being offered at the Curley during our contractual PD dates. Staff may want to include one or more of these into their team PD plan. Here is the link to sign up   https://goo.gl/forms/BwtGbumLgXBfLUMF2

• Jan 19th --- Paperwork/IEP Progress Reports 
• Feb 16th --- Tier 1 and Tier 2 Interventions/curriculum modification 
• March 16th --- Behavior Supports 
• April 27th --- Understanding Disabilities and Services available 
• May 18th --- Middle School Transition/Life Skills 
• June 1st --- Inclusion