Week of September 15

Where will we fly to? Only our student’s imagination can say!

Calendar of the Week Plus

September 15 (M)
Tier 2 Groups begin
10:00-11:00, Joel conducting walk through observations for general dual language characteristics.

September 16 (T)
8:15-11:30, Joel to CICO Training (Lane ESD)
12:00-12:30 , Joel in meeting in office to discuss bible group program.
1:00-2:00, Joel in meeting with  Julie Heffernan on Transgender Resources in the Community
2:45-3:45 TLT Meeting to approve Technology Plan (Library)
6:00-8:00 Latino Advisory Committee at NEHS

September 17 (W)
Tier 3 Title Interventions commence.
1:40-2:40, Grade Level Collaboration –  1st through 5th grades, please meet with your team in the library and plan amongst peers. Karen and Sarah, and Aline will provide support for your planning.
Kinder and ELL will meet in Room 6 with Lavin, Fleming, Bucklew, Lauer, and Schaal.
2:45-3:45, PBIS Meeting Conference Room- need one or two classified representatives.

September 18 (H)
2:45-5:00, Design Committee Meeting

September 19 (F)
Regular Day
September 22 (M)
8:00-11:00, Joel to Skillful Teacher Co-Observation (Ed Center)
1:30-2:30, Title Coordinator & Principal Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)

September 23 (T)
Kathy Larson visit. (All day)
9:00-10:00, Data Meeting Analysis of General Trends before Data Consult Day
2:45- 4:45, Staff Meeting with PD on Effective PLC Practices
4:30-6:30, Joel to 4J Equity Committee

September 24 (W)
1:40-2:40, Grade Level Collaborative Planning Time (Library with support from Sarah, Aline, Karen and Joel)

September 25 (H)
12:30-2:30, Joel to Skillful Principal Being A Writer Training (Ed Center)
4:30-5:30 Design Committee (Library)
5:30-7:30, New School Design Public Meeting- Camino del Rio (Library)

September 26 (F)
Regular Day

September 29 (M)
2:45-3:45, September Site Council (Conference Room)

September 30 (T)
Kathy Larson Visit
Life Touch Picture Day (Gym All Day)

October 1st (W)
1:40-2:40,Collaborative Planning Time
6:00-8:00,Curriculum Night- Plan de Estudios de Noche

October 2 (H)
Joel in Portland at Coaches and Principal’s Meeting
2:45-4:45, Design Committee

October 3 (F)
Academy Day- No School
8:00-12:00, Maravillas Training with a Maravillas PD Consultant
12:00-4:00, Teacher Planning Time

This week on duty:

 

• Safety Week-ish, Sept. 26 – Oct. 2 – Safety Week changes due to Being a Writer. Craig, Edna and I are still working on new maps. We will get those to you soon along with updated procedures.

• Friday, Sept. 26– Fire Drill, 9:00

• Monday, Sept. 29– No Drills Many Staff out due to Being a Writer

• Tuesday, Sept. 30– Room Clear, time decided by teachers

• Wednesday, Oct. 1 –  9:00, Earthquake/Fire Drill

• Thursday, Oct. 2–  8:30 Lock Down (Code Blue and Code Red)

 

• Shiniest Stars of the Week- There are so many!

Cathy- Thanks so much for your amazing efforts to get Maravillas up and running. This was a great help to many teachers and to the office.

Aline- Thank you for working on so many schedules and documents for the start of the year. Your organization, leadership and vision for data team and IIPM support for our kids is greatly appreciated.

Karen- Your work on data team, easy CBM testing, and overall positive upbeat mindset have been so helpful in the last thee weeks.  It is truly amazing that we have finished KRA, Easy Cbm and are now moving into a new era of Spanish Summative assessment with your support.

Sara and Nancy-   Wow! ELL Powerhouse. It is so fun to watch how quickly and efficiently you both work together to help our English Language Learners. Your flexibility and innovative approach are so supportive of our whole program.

Sarah- Puzzle master and visionary.  I am so impressed with your great thinking and clear vision for SLD supports, Dual Language Fidelity and Programmatic Support. Thanks for helping to redesign so many schedules so that everything we do fits together so well.

Edna- Our school is just humming along, thanks to you.  Our families react so positively to your support.  It is such a pleasure to know that our kids and staff can rely on you to help us in so many ways. You rock!

 • All Meeting Minutes will now be on Zimbra Briefcase and on this Blog-

You will be able to access all minutes and structural documents via my blog and the the briefcase on Zimbra. Peggy can support you to access the briefcase if you need support in that area.

 • Website Updating and Media Request-

I need your help to update the website.  Please pass on ideas of content you’d like parents and students to see on there. Share photos with me that we can put on there.  Also, look for errors  that you see on there.

• EEF Grant Applications – The timeline is a bit later than in the past, but the EEF grant application process is now posted on their website. EEF aims to award $5000 to each school, but every year the amount available in their grants fund varies so they cannot guarantee award amounts. Schools can submit two $2,000 and two $500 grants, or they can combine grants to create one $5,000 grant. This year, we are submitting an entire $5000 grant  proposal towards getting high quality authentic Spanish language books. This will include fiction and non-fiction.  Grants are due to EEF by November 13th. This was approved in June.

• Technology Skills Practice for Smarter Balanced (and practice test) – Here is a nice  site that demonstrates tech skills for SBAC from Vacaville School District in California. They have created a site for teachers to support students becoming proficient in using the keyboard and mouse/trackpad/touchscreen for the tasks they will be asked of by the Smarter Balanced assessment (highlighting, clicking and dragging, etc.). It’s organized by grade level and has direct links activities for each of the skill areas.

• Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Resource – Here is a link to the official Smarter Balanced practice tests. This website also has FAQ’s, teacher information and other resources with options to download. Here is how to try out the practice tests. They are not run of the mill and I must admit that the one I tried did give me pause:

• Click on the box near the bottom of the page labeled, “Take The Practice and Training Tests”
• Once there, click on the green box labeled, “Student interface….”
• Then, click on “Sign in” leave all of the boxes blank
• Finally, select a grade level and click “yes” under “Guest School”

Now go forth and show your math and reading prowess!

Color Printing:  Remember, color printing is very expensive.  Please be mindful that if you need to do color printing to be prudent how much you need.  We can make copies in the main office in a pinch during off hours but not during the busiest portions of the day. Also, consider using Insta Print and plan ahead as this saves a significant amount of supply funds and precious time for office staff.
Food Reminder-

Bring the student’s number cards EVERY time they go to lunch.  Hand them their cards and pick them up at the end. There is no need to hang around with the students in line. Rene and the cooking staff will appreciate it.  This seems to work very well for 1st grade right now and they are trying to learn their numbers quickly.  Please do this at all grades.   Kinder will continue to use their method of pick up of grab and go lunches.

• Synergy New Student Reminder – A quick reminder that if you have had new students added to your class, teachers will need to move them over from the column on the left of the main Teacher VUE screen into where the pictures of all your students are located. There is a red alert triangle at the top of your Synergy screen that will notify you when you have new students added to your class, but be aware you need to move them onto your roster before you will be able to see them for attendance and other Synergy purposes.

• Teacher Effectiveness & Growth Update – HR has let principals know that they have almost transferred all of the necessary information over for teachers to begin using TalentEd for the 2014-2015 school year. I’ll let teachers know once it’s ready to go and will schedule goals meetings at that point, as well as sending out the building goals if you’d like to use them. Also, here’s a link to the district Teacher Effectiveness and Growth Systems website, which can likely answer any questions you may have about the system.

• Camino del Río Staff Handbook Review – Attached is the updated Staff Handbook for 2014-2015. All staff must review the handbook and sign & return the  acknowledgement form  to Edna by Friday, September 26th.

• New Teaching Tolerance Curriculum for Teachers – Three years, 300 texts and 20 anchor standards in the making, Teaching Tolerance’s K-12, literacy-based, anti-bias curriculum is finally here! Start exploring Perspectives for a Diverse America today.

• 2013–14 OAKS results: District-wide analysis & key points – You may have seen the recent article in the Register Guard, but OAKS were released last week by ODE. In terms of measuring growth, Howard held pretty steady, though our overall scores dropped, as did most of the district and state, particularly in math. Attached is a district summary of scores, some of it broken out by school, along with an email that was sent to principals with an analysis of the results.

• Curriculum Night will be October 1st – Aline, Karen, Alicia, and I have been working on a plan to create a passport style curriculum night.  More details to come.  The ad will be sent home on Monday with our first mailer.

Here are some ideas  for sharing on curriculum Night (October 1st from 6:00-8:00)

• Parents want to know what their students are expected to learn this year and how they can help them succeed. Think about creating a handout or packet that gives an overview of your year’s scope and sequence. Bonus points for including information about how parents can help with each big topic/project.

• Explain the standards. If you’re teaching the Common Core, the PTA has put out a great collection of parent guides. These guides are a great way to teach parents about the CCSS.

• Include examples of student work. If you have copies of projects that students have done in the past, show these as examples of the kind of work students will be expected to do this year. Alternatively, show a few (nameless) examples of student work from the beginning of the year. Talk about the work students have been doing and where you will go from there.

• Take a few minutes to preview areas where kids might struggle and how parents can help. For example, your students might use a different strategy to solve math problems than their parents and that might make homework challenging. Or, talk about how the rhythms of a classroom have highs and lows — say, how you’ve noticed that every December your students start to get antsy for the holidays and are easily distracted.

Explaining the Common Core in Spanish to families. Need help explaining the CCSS to families?  Here is a nice video.

 

Have a good week, everyone!

Joel

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