May 6, 2013

By Allan  

Hi Everyone,

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank ALL staff for your hard work and dedication to Howard Elementary School. It’s truly your work, attitudes, and efforts with all of our students and families that make our school the great place it is. Thank you all very much!

Fourteen items of note for this week:

• Teacher Appreciation Week Luncheon – The PTO will be providing teachers a delicious luncheon in the staff room this Wednesday during lunch and recess, from 11:00-12:30. Also, look for some treats that will be showing up in the mail room this week!

• Spring Writing Work Samples – Attached are the K-2 and 3-5 writing prompts for the spring writing work samples. Be sure to carefully read the teacher directions before administering the assessment. The assessment window for writing work samples will open Monday, May 6th and will close on Friday, May 24th. All student final copies will be due to me by the end of the day on Friday, May 24th. . I’m working with the writing team on creating a schedule for grading the work samples the week of May 27th, which I expect we will send out later this week. Let me know if you have any questions.

• 13/14 Staffing Communication with Howard Families – I wanted to let people know that it is okay to tell families about changes in our staffing for next school year. I’m putting an article about the staffing changes in our next newsletter, but it’s okay for people to share before then.

On a related note, you may have seen the email from Cheryl Linder about CLBs staying open next year, but I did want to let people know that Kim is still being hired by ESS as an additional behavior consultant and Jen Kirkwood is still set to be our CLC teacher for next year.

• Teacher Laptop Upgrade – I’ve heard all year how teacher laptops are dragging and starting to show their age and limitations, so Lori and I figured out that if we pull funds from a few different pots of money, we should be able to purchase at least 10 new teacher laptops for those of you who believe your current computer could use an upgrade. I’d like to purchase the district recommended model of the MacBook Pro 13″ for teachers, but one word of caution, the new computers run OSX 10.8, which means that older PPC applications will no longer run on them (Inspiration and older versions of MS Word being the two most significant ones) and eSIS has to have a work-around installed for it function (though that will not be an issue once Synergy is up and going in the fall). I plan to purchase the current version MS Office for people, so Word compatibility issues should not be a problem. If every certified staff member wants one, we may not have enough funds to cover everyone, so I would have to do a lottery, putting some people on a waiting list for next school year. However, if you believe a new teacher laptop would help you to better do your job, let me know by the end of this week and I’ll put you down on the list.

• Field Day Update, Tuesday, June 4th in the AM – Unless anyone else is wanting to take this on, I’ve convinced my sister to come back and run the Field Day for this year. During the last week of school, the only morning where all classes are in the building and the gym is available is Tuesday, June 4th. Speaking with Lisa, she said the traditional times have been K-2 from 8:30-9:15 and grades 3-5 from 9:30-11:15. If 4/5s want to do tug-o-war, we’ll want to schedule that around the 4/5 play. Look for an email coming from my sister regarding volunteers to run the stations.

• iPad Mini Pilot Update – Downtown as seen the light and decided to let Howard join the district IT3 iPad Mini Pilot. What this means to Howard is that our classrooms currently using mini’s will be rounded out to full class sets, along with getting to pilot the eBook version of the new HM reading basal, Journeys, which is supposed to better align with the CCSS. There is also the possibility downtown will purchase additional minis for more classrooms next year!

• PBIS Focus: Positive Attitude – It’s a new month and the May PBIS focus is Positive Attitude. Remember you can reference the PBIS team created PBIS/CFK cheat sheet that matches our monthly themes with corresponding Caring for Kids class meeting lessons.

• 2013-2014 Draft Calendar – Attached is a draft calendar that the school board reviewed last Wednesday and will be voting on at their next meeting. Nothing is official yet, but I thought people might find it interesting that it’s proposed for school to start a week later next year. Staff would report back to work after Labor Day and classes would start the following week on Tuesday, September 10th.

• Howard School Website – With building TSS time disappearing, I wanted to see if there was anyone interested taking over the webmaster duties of the Howard School website. Lori and I are willing to do it, but I first wanted to see if there was anyone else interested before we snatched it up.

• May Title 1 Blog Update – This month’s Title 1 Blog update is again mostly compliance deadlines for Title Coordinators, but there is a nice collection of links related to math CCSS that’s worth checking out.

• The Common Core and Technology Integration – Most Howard classrooms have already been infusing technology into ELA lessons (Edmodo, Keynote, QR codes, word processing, etc…), but the following article provides some useful information on how the ELA CCSS are expecting technology integration. It is an interesting article and I believe it lines up well with the skills our classrooms are working on K-5.

• Using Writing Contests to Prepare Students for Writing Tests – In this article in The Reading Teacher, Danielle DeFauw acknowledges the need to prepare students for cold writing prompts in state assessments (which we’ll have again soon with the CCSS), despite the fact that students usually get to select their own topic when they write in school. DeFauw suggests a way to “teach to the test” that really helps students: submitting their work to writing contests.

• Teacher Appreciation Video “What Teachers Make” – This is an old video, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s a great video by slam poet and teacher, Taylor Mali entitled “What Teachers Make”. Be forewarned the video contains some naughty language, but I imagine most of you can handle it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU[/youtube]

• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for this week:

May 6 (M)
Teacher Appreciation Week
9:00-10:00, Allan covering Amber’s class during 5th Grade Human Growth Health Unit
2:30-3:30, Allan to Elementary Principals Meeting

May 7 (T)
9:00-10:00, Allan covering Amber’s class during 5th Grade Human Growth Health Unit
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Room 10)

May 8 (W)
7:45-11:15, Grade 2 Creating Common Formative Assessments in Math PD (Ed Center)
9:00-10:00, Allan covering Amber’s class during 5th Grade Human Growth Health Unit

May 9 (H)
9:00-10:00, April Book Winners
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 10)

May 10 (F)
7:30-4:30, 2nd Grade to Oregon Zoo
7:45-6:15, 5th Grade to OMSI

Just three more full weeks, two four-day weeks and one odd Monday left!

Allan