Week of March 16
Hi Everyone,
Congratulations to our OBOB Team! Although they didn’t advance to the next round, they did get to the elite 8 of 52 Lane County teams participating at this year’s competition. A big thanks to this spirited team and the great coaching efforts of Megan Murphy. It has benefited all our students. Also, a big thank you to parent Sabrina Gordon for volunteering to help our students this winter.
March 16 (M)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
March 17 (T)
Picture Day for all grades in the Library
12:00-4:00, Kinder Teachers Meeting with Reid and Maddy.
1:00, Joel in NERA Meeting with Retired Educator volunteers for homeless youth.
2:45-3:45, Staff Meeting- Agenda,
a. Approve staffing plan, discuss intervention needs for 2015-16.
b. Senderos discussion and listing of pros and cons
2:45-4:45, PLT Meeting- Planning and Parent Handbook Work
March 18 (W)
1:00-1:30, Eugene Emeralds Assembly (All Classes)
1:45-2:45, Grade Level Collaboration Time – Math PLC meets in Library. Please enter on your Google form.
2:45-3:45, Joel, Karen, and Nancy go to STAMP TEST Planning Meeting (Ed Center)
March 19 (H)
8:30,Virtudes Assembly
2:45-4:15, Taking it UP Meeting in the Library with Carmen and John Lockhart
4:30-6:30, Joel to the Equity Committee at the Ed Center
March 20 (F)
12:30-2:00, Movie Award Day in Classrooms
2:00, BEST Field Trip leaves for lunch and boarding the bus.
11:00-2:00, Joel and Jessica Zapata to meet with the Mexican Consulate
March 23-27
Spring Break – No School
12:00-1:00, Spring Break Fun Time – Lunch & Activity (Cafeteria at Howard)
March 30 (M)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
March 31 (T)
STAMP Testing begins in 3rd and 5th Grade.
1:00-2:30, Senderos Consultation Meeting with Zulma Cifuentes (Conference Room)
2:45-4:45, Staff Meeting, 2 hour meeting focused on Math Practices and Maddy and Reid’s work with grade Level Teams. (Library)
April 1 (W)
April Fool’s Day
4:00-5:00, Joel to North Region Principals’ Meeting (NEHS)
April 2 (H)
3:30-5:00, Joel to North Region Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
April 3 (F)
Regular Day
Coming up:
April 15 (W) Guanajuato Teacher Student Exchange Visit to El Camino del Rio- This exchange will bring Mexican students and teachers into every classroom for one day. They want to see how our program is designed and how we teach and support students. It will be a day of learning and cultural exchange.
April 17 (F) Peace Jam Marimba Performance for Rigoberta Menchu Tum at University of Oregon
Here are some of the items of the week:
•Irma De La Guardia wins National Bilingual Teacher of the Year
• HM Journeys/ Senderos and ThinkCentral – In our staff meeting on Tuesday, we will discuss and decide on Journeys and Senderos. After listening to different perspectives on this idea, I will say that I still strongly support a move to have both Senderos and Journeys. I believe that in the long run, we will be able to provide adequate supplementation to these materials in order to avoid redundancy and directly translatable texts. I believe there is more than enough material to use in both languages to support our students with out having issues of redundancy. The value of having curriculum mapping done for use across languages is very important. We will make our decision about Senderos on Tuesday this week after the staffing decision.
On the practical end of things:
Since we had our HM Journeys/ Senderos training last Friday, let me know if you’d like the upgraded HM Journeys materials delivered to your grade level and I’ll put Craig to work bringing them down. Remember, regardless of a Senderos decision, we will be replacing Journeys Materials. And if you misplaced the trainer’s email, it was “Cifuentes, Zulma” <Zulma.Cifuentes@hmhco.com>. Also, all licensed staff should now have access to ThinkCentral if you’d like to check that out. If you’d like to use it with your students this year, let me know and I’ll load your students into the system as well.
And regarding old HM materials, Craig can cart away any materials you don’t want to keep. I’ll probably try to sell our old materials to Follett in Summer, but feel free to keep any leveled readers, big books or others materials from the old curriculum that you still have a use for.
• SLUGGO READING Assembly at 1:00 PM WEDNESDAY– The annual SLUGGO assembly will be on Wednesday. I rescheduled our VIRTUDES assembly forThursday to give teachers one more day to get the awards written and communicated to families. In addition, it seemed like too much to have two assemblies in one day. Please review assembly expectations for both asemblies with your students.
• Virtudes/ Virtues Awards THURSDAY, March. 18th @ 8:30 – This Wednesday is the March Virdudes Awards. Virtudes certificates are located in the office in your boxes. When you turn in your Virtudes nominations, be sure that you let Edna/Yasmin know who and why each student is being recognized so she can put their name up on the board. Also, you are encouraged to communicate with families to invite them to the assembly.
• Employee reimbursement limit increase to $250.00 – The employee reimbursement limit has been increased from $100.00 to $250.00 per reimbursement, subject to the usual criteria of the spending qualifying for reimbursement and timely receipt of the request, which are:
• Should be for small purchases. The district provides contracts for most supplies, so please check first before purchasing supplies with personal funds.
• Have a limit of $250 per reimbursement.
• Must comply with district purchase guidelines including reimbursement amounts and documentation such as copies of detailed invoices.
• Completed reimbursement requests, including mileage, should be received by Financial Services within 60 days of when the expenditure was incurred.
• Smarter Balanced assessment and testing exemption (“opt out”) — process, form and information – With the Smarter Balanced assessment testing window opening last week, you may get inquiries from parents about the Smarter Balanced tests, state testing in general, and/or about opting out of state tests. This is a reminder that the district has created a process and published an exemption request form and accompanying frequently asked questions document. If a parent asks for information or tells you they want to to opt their student out of state tests, you can direct them to me or to the State testing opt out FAQ and request form, the FAQ about the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced assessments or the district information webpage about the Smarter Balanced assessments.
• Concussion – What Teachers Should Know – Attached you will find a one page document called Concussion-What Teachers Should Know. This was shared with principals and we were asked to encourage teachers to post this in their classrooms, for easy reference.
• Lessons for successful maker programs – Students are natural makers, and maker programs can help take learning beyond students’ comfort zones, according to Guatemala-based educators Adrian Catalan and Ceci Castillo. The pair shared four tips to help educators launch successful maker initiatives during their SXSWEdu session, Making Makers: From Guatemala to the World.
Five days until our nine day Spring Break!
Best,
Joel
Announcements, English Language Learners, Math Training, Opt Out, PLC time, Staff Meeting Agenda, STAMP, Two Way Immersion | Comment (0)