November 27, 2017

By Allan  

 

Howdy Roadrunners,

I hope everyone had a refreshing extended weekend and is ready for the three weeks leading up to winter break. With last week so short, there’s not too many announcements this time around.

Seven items of note for this week:

• December PBIS Focus: Generosity – The December PBIS monthly focus is Generosity. The PBIS team created a PBIS/Caring School Community Cheat Sheet that matches our monthly PBIS themes with corresponding Caring School Community class meeting lessons, which is a nice way to tie the two activities together.

• PRIDE Awards, Respect, Dec. 6 – Not this week, but next week on Wednesday, December 6th during lunchtime in the cafeteria will be our PRIDE Awards for Respect. Teachers should remind students about PRIDE and the meaning of Respect (Honor Yourself and Others), and then pick 2-4 students who have been demonstrating Respect. Be sure to get the Respect Certificate to me before the 6th so I can sign them and get them organized.

And if you’d like ideas on how you might discuss RESPECT with your class, below are a few videos teachers could use during a morning meeting or other class meeting time.

• TEDEd: Showing RESPECT in the Classroom – From TEDEd, here’s a lesson titled Showing RESPECT in the Classroom – Kid President. Watch the video and then have your class answer the discussion questions that follow.

• Sesame Street: Respect (Word on the Street) – For younger students, here’s a Sesame Street video where the word on the street is respect: treating people the way you want to be treated.

• Respect Rap – We showed this one at a PRIDE Assembly couple years ago, but it’s a fun video about respect made by another elementary school. The song is also a bit of an earworm.

• Hour of Code Next Week – The Hour of Code is happening next week, December 4-8, during Computer Science Education Week, if teachers can squeeze in an hour of coding. One other resource, besides Code.org, HourofCode.org, and Edutopia shared earlier, there’s also some good resources at Khan Academy. I’ve added a link to Code.org on Howard’s Links for Learners webpages, but let me know if you’d like any other links added.

• Instructional Technology Winter Workshops – Available to all 4J K-12 staff are FREE instructional technology workshops now through January. Workshops being offered include:

• Google Classroom for K-5 Teachers
• Creativity & Digital Storytelling
• Foundations of Google Apps Part 1 & 2
• Digital Portfolios with Seesaw
• Edpuzzle – Engage students with videos
• Create, Update, and Maintain a classroom website
• Introd uiten to SMART Notebook
• Advanced SMART Notebook & CCSS/NGSS Standards

Detailed information for all workshops being offered and online registration can be found at: http://www-old.4j.lane.edu/workshops

• Public Safety Event for Spanish Speaking Families – The 4J Office of Equity, Instruction, and Partnerships is working with the the city and several community entities on a public safety event geared specifically to our Spanish speaking community in the 4J school District. The idea is to provide families a time to interact with our local public safety officers that work and live in our community. There will be dinner, activities for students and a space for the community to ask questions. This event will be at River Road on Wednesday, December 6th from 6:00–8:00 p.m. Flyers will be sent to schools soon for teachers to send home to Spanish speaking families. An autodialer is also going out.

• 3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive – Culturally responsive teaching is less about using racial pride as a motivator and more about mimicking students’ cultural learning styles and tools. In this Cult of Pedagogy post, educator and author Zaretta Hammond shares three specific practices she encourages teachers to use in classrooms; to Gamify It, to Make it Social, and to Storify It.

• Schedule of Upcoming Events – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the next two weeks:

November 27 (M)
2:30-3:30, Site Council (Conference Room)

November 28 (T)
8:15-11:15, Allan to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-3:30, Staff Meeting – Number Talks Part 3 (Ashley’s Room)

November 29 (W)
Picture Retakes (Community Room)
7:50-10:40, Data Team Meetings 5/1/2 (Conference Room)
1:15, Allan to Parent/Teacher Conference
2:30-3:30, Student Care Team Meeting – CANCELLED

November 30 (H)
7:50-10:40, Data Team Meetings 3/4/K (Conference Room)
12:00-3:00, Allan to ILT Meeting (Ed Center)

December 1 (F)
PBIS Monthly Theme – Generosity
11:00-1:50, November Birthday Lunches With the Principal (Community Room)

December 2 (SA)
9:00-2:00, PTO Holiday Bazaar (Cafeteria/Gym)

December 4 (M)
Regular Day

December 5 (T)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Mellissa/Mariah’s Room)
4:00, Allan to LCC Grant Meeting
5:30-7:30, North Region Visioning Community Engagement Event (Kelly MS)

December 6 (W)
Title 1 Progress Monitoring Day – No Groups
11:00-12:50, PRIDE Awards at Lunch – Respect (Cafeteria)

December 7 (H)
1:40, Fire Drill

December 8 (F)
Pretend to be a Time Traveller Day

Have an excellent week, everyone!

Allan

Bonus film nerd points if anyone can name this 1970s film.