March 12, 2017

3/13/17 Daily Bulletin

Shout Out

Shout out to Giuseppi Ricciardi(6B) who has been named a Max Warburg Scholar! Thank you to Cara Hins, ELA teacher for her coaching and support of his writing this year! Giuseppi will be recognized at a luncheon this spring as well as have his worked published in a book with all the other scholars. Congrats to you both!

Shout out to Joanne Mylett for helping a colleague figure out her connectivity problems. 

Shout out to Charles Tewksbury, Amika Kemmler-Ernst, Waverly Kidd, Laurie Ciardi and Sara Silverstein for staying late Friday night to help us wrap up our first round of interviews!

BTU Vote

There will be a BTU vote (BTU members only Paras & Teachers) on Monday, March 20th from 7am-8:15am in each main office. The first vote will be about the January 2nd PD date and either reporting to school that day for PD or converting it to hours to be used throughout the school year. The second vote will be part of a waiver that will need approval through the SSC. (See explanation below). Attached is the ballot

Trimester Proposal -- Fact Sheet
The ELT team would like to propose a move to trimesters across the whole school. Currently Grades K-5 use trimesters for grading and Grades 6-8 use quarters. This creates several challenges for teachers, staff and families.

Moving to trimester grading from K through 8 would give us:
  • uniformity and consistency throughout the school
  • opportunity for longer elective classes in MS
  • more equitable distribution of coursework for MS students
  • opportunity for a school-wide report card night
  • less work for teachers and staff
This change would most significantly impact the way that we calculate 6th grade and 8th grade GPAs when reporting these data to exam schools. For both 6th and 8th graders, the first trimester grades would be submitted instead of grades from the first and second quarters. This does not necessarily put our students at a disadvantage; it is however a big change from current practice. This practice is done at other K-8 schools and they have not seen any negative impact on exam school acceptance.

The ELT team believes that this change would greatly benefit our school community by creating uniformity across the grade levels.

MCAS

In preparation for the MCAS please take a look at the MCAS google slides. The administrative team will be visiting grade level meetings to go over MCAS logistics. Please take a look at the MCAS google slides so that you will be prepared to ask any questions you may have when the admin team comes to your grade level meetings. Below is the schedule of when the admin team will be at your grade level meetings.

MCAS Google Slides

Grade 6: Weds 3/15 12:40pm
Grade7/8: Thurs. 3/16 9:00am


Also . . . Please find the MCAS groups below. All questions/concerns should be brought to Jessica's attention by Friday, March 17th (jjburque@bostonpublicschools.org). If you are an ESL and/or Special Education teacher, please make sure you check both lists. We have a large amount of accommodations and will be using staff across grade levels. Homeroom teachers please make sure all students with have an IEP or 504 plan with testing accommodations are listed.
MCAS 2017 3-5.docx
MCAS 2017 6-8

Advisory Meeting

Please join us on Monday, March 13th at 3pm for a meeting about Advisory in the middle school next year. All staff are welcome to plan for advisory next year! We will meet in Room 218 and direct any questions to Sean Guthrie.

SSC

Please join us for the March SSC meeting in Room 209 from 5:30pm-7pm.

School Climate

Please join us for the Climate meeting on Wednesday from 3pm-4:15pm in room 003.

March, 2017 Curley Cares Student Awards

Recognize those students who are doing their best to show growth and support the Curley Cares way by using THIS FORM to submit names so students can receive an award at our upcoming Thursday, March 23, 201 7 Curley Cares assemblies.
Please refer to THIS LIST to see those students who have already received awards this school year .
The intent behind Curley Cares is reinforce positive (caring) behaviors and that each Curley K8 student receive at least one Curley Shares award each year.
All Curley K8 staff members - not just for homeroom teachers - can submit student names for an award.
If you'd like to give more than 3 awards, please coordinate with your grade-level colleagues such as specialists or other staff. If it is for a larger group of students (such as a sports team, etc.) please email Kate (kdavis3@bostonpublicschools.org) directly.
Submissions are DUE by 4:00pm on Monday, March 20 , 2017 .

STAR Reading Progress Monitoring (Grade 3-8 Only)

Progress monitoring is scheduled for March 20th - 24th for all students reading below grade level, including students ranked “On Watch”, “Intervention” and “Urgent Intervention” for the winter STAR Reading Benchmark.

Progress monitoring is completed independently by focus students, and can be scheduled during the WIN block or other convenient time. To begin the assessment, students log into “STAR Reading”, and begin testing. Progress monitoring should take no longer than 20-25 minutes per student.
Please contact Eileen Cronin if you have any questions.

Winter Term Report Card Grading Window for Grades K2-5

The elementary grading (Grades K2 - 5) window is open from March 7th to March 24th. Please refer to the materials below for assistance entering your grades. After entering grades, teachers need to click the "Post Grades" button to write the grades to the report card.
Entering Grades Handout
Elementary Comment Codes Handout
How to verify that your grades are posted

Instructional Focus Review - POSTPONED TILL 3/28/17

On Tuesday, March 28th from 8am-1pm representatives from BPS will join us for a walkthrough of classrooms and look for evidence of our Instructional Focus "Teachers will vary demands and resources, to optimize challenge, so students can express a clear, organized idea." Visitors may enter any classroom during this window.

Lion King Performances

The Lion King performance dates have been announced:
School Shows
· March 21st and 22nd at 9 a.m. Curley Auditorium
· March 22nd at 1 p.m. Curley Auditorium

Evening Shows
· March 23rd and 24th at 6:30 p.m. Curley Auditorium
*****April 6 Shubert Theatre Doors open at 5 pm & Show starts at 5:30. (This is an amazing opportunity for all of our students!!!!!)
Families are welcome to come to either performance and all students will attend one of the daytime performances.

REVISED SCHEDULE based on feedback

Here is the link for the Lion King schedule:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15CezwWnrjIk8g5avYF30Wkkx02yoV0GCowuFERHrmXs/edit?usp=sharing

10th Annual Curley Silent Auction


The Curley School Parent Council (SPC) will be hosting their 10th Annual Silent Auction at Canary Square on Tuesday, March 28th from 6pm-9pm and would like to extend an invite to all staff, friends and families. The money raised from the Silent Auction goes to directly supporting our school such as Playworks, BalletROX, Arts supplies, science supplies, staff luncheon, Chromebooks etc... There will be more information that will follow about the online auction. Any donations or specific questions can be directed to Ann DeGeorge (ann.c.degeorge@gmail.com) or Eyleen Iraola (eiraola@gmail.com).

Hiring

Hiring season is here! We have 10 jobs posted on www.teachboston.org. We need your help in hiring the best teachers to join our team. Please sign up to be on the interview committee ASAP. No previous experience is necessary but we value your opinions.
Position
Interview Date
Interview Time
K0/K1 ASD
Wednesday, March 22
3pm-6pm
K1/K2 ASD
Wednesday, March 29
3pm-6pm
Grade 1
Tuesday, March 14
3pm-6pm





Grade 5
Thursday, March 16
3pm-6pm
Grade 6 Math
Friday, March 17
3pm-6pm
Grade 7/8 Math
Friday, March 17
3pm-6pm
Grade 7/8 Science
Tuesday, March 14
3pm-6pm
K-8 Theatre Arts
Monday, March 20
3pm-6pm

Save the Date

Please reserve Friday, June 2nd for our End-of-the-Year and Retirement Party.
Place: Florian Hall
Time: 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Appetizers, Buffet, Music, Dance, Celebrations!

Field Trips

Are you going on a field trip soon? Have you shared this information with the nurses and the cafeteria? This is a friendly reminder that the nurse's and cafe should be notified 2 weeks in advance of scheduled field trips. Teachers should also be carefully checking the returned permission slips. They should notify the nurse's office when a parent checks the "yes" box stating that their child requires medication while on the field trip.

MCAS (Yes, it is that time of year again!)

As we get closer to our MCAS testing date we want to make sure we are continuing to make progress towards our team goals that are linked to the school wide instructional focus:
  • Teachers will vary demands and resources, in order to optimize challenge in writing tasks, so students can express a clear organized idea. 
It is important that we are preparing students to express clear organized ideas because this will lead to improved student outcomes. We want to be able to see improvements in our data from last years results.
Please use the link below to prepare students for the technology that they will be using on MCAS 2.0. Our students come to this online test with a range of exposure to technology. It is expected that all students taking MCAS 2.0 will have taken the practice MCAS 2.0 online for math and ELA by Friday March 3rd. The admin team will be checking in with teachers to ensure you are familiar with the online tools of MCAS 2.0.
Please map out how many weeks you have until your MCAS dates and plan to cover the major standards that you want to cover before the MCAS. It’s more important to cover essential standards over trying to cover as much as you can before MCAS. This is a case where less is more and quality trumps quantity.
MCAS Calendar Link
Any questions, concerns or ideas regarding MCAS scheduling or the practice test should be sent to David Diaz.

Using ESS

If you wish to request a day off (medical appointments, religious holidays, professional day, bereavement, personal day etc...), sign on to Boston Employees Self Service (ESS, Please bookmark this page). When possible, request a personal day at least two weeks in advance. Staff members will request sub coverage through SubCentral (https://subcentral.bostonpublicschools.org/logOnInitAction.do). Please do not decide whether you think a sub is needed and submit the request as soon as you know a day you will be absent. We have many unexpected coverage needs that might need sub help. We are attaching a list of subs who usually work at the Curley upon request.
Sick Day Procedure (teachers and paraprofessionals)


    Buddies Update

    Are you struggling to think about what to do with your buddy classroom during these cold, snowy, winter days? Check out this link for ideas and feel free to add any fun ideas you may have!

    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
    • March 16th --- Behavior Supports 
    • April 27th --- Understanding Disabilities and Services available 
    • May 18th --- Middle School Transition/Life Skills 
    • June 1st --- Inclusion


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