September 9, 2013

By Allan 　

Hi Everyone,

The big show is about to start!

Thirteen items of note for this week:

• September PBIS Focus: Safety – The first monthly PBIS focus of the year is Safety. The PBIS team created a handy PBIS/CFK cheat sheet that matches our monthly themes with corresponding Caring for Kids class meeting lessons.

• Supervision First Week of School – All available staff should help supervise in the morning out front, in the breezeway and the BEST/1st grade hallway. Students and buses generally start arriving at 7:25. Staff should also help out at dismissal in the bus area and by the Howard sign.

• Counselor Vacancy – Now that we have a counselor vacancy, I’ve already put in a request-to-post to HR. I’ve also put out some feelers to schools with strong counselors who might be interested in adding a 0.5 position at Howard to their current assignment. Stay tuned on this, but let me know if you have any questions or know of any good candidates to potentially fill the position.

• Communication to Families about Homework Meeting, Monday at 8:30 – For anyone interested in working on the letter to families about the change in how homework will look this year, we will be meeting on Monday, September 9th at 8:30 in the library. We’ll plan to use the letter Allison has drafted as a starting point, although it looks pretty darn good to me.

• Reflector App – I’ve had a couple people interested getting the Reflector app, which allows you to wirelessly mirror whatever is on your iPad to your computer, so you can project the image and sound for your class. If you’d like to have this app, let me know by Thursday and I’ll order a five or ten pack to save some money.

• Register Guard Newspapers in Education Program – The Register Guard provides free newspapers to classrooms (Wed. – Fri.) and are now adding free access to their Register Guard e-Edition. See the attached letter for details, but you can call or email them if you’d like to sign-up. (541) 338-2310 nancy.guardino@registerguard.com

• EEF Grants – The Eugene Education Foundation hasn’t made their official announcement for this year’s grants, but they did send an email to principals saying that the process will likely be the same as in the past (each school being allowed to apply for two $500 grants and two $2,000, or for one $5,000 grant). And if you’re wondering how the EEF grant reviewers decide what gets funded, they look for grants that do the following:

• Serve the greatest number of students.
• Broaden students’ educational experience.
• Lend direct, immediate support to instructional activities and services.
• Support other efforts that are expanding educational opportunities.
• Encourage completion of a student’s education.
• Support the mission and goals of School District 4J.

Grants need to be approved and rank ordered by Site Council at the September 24th meeting, so let me know if you have any ideas for this year’s grants.

• Synergy Security Issue – CIS has asked principals to remind staff there is a lot of new data we all can see in Synergy and that all information in Synergy is confidential and shouldn’t be shared outside of school.

• Title 1 Newsletter – If you’re curious what’s happening in Title 1 from the district perspective, here is the latest Title 1 Newsletter that went out to all Title 1 Coordinators and principals.

• Classroom Newsletters – Speaking of newsletters, I’d love to have copies of classroom newsletters (electronic version preferred) when teachers send/email them home. This helps me keep up to date on what’s happening (or going to happen) in classes, and also lets me know details of any class activities that I might be able to get the local media to come out and cover. I love to promote our school!

• Principal Visits to Classrooms – If you haven’t done so already, please let me know a time that I can come into your classroom for 15-20 minutes to read a story to your class and introduce myself to your students.

• Kid Snippets: “Back to School” (Imagined by Kids) – I should have ended the staff meeting with this Kid Snippets video, but I came across it too late. Here is the first day of school as imagined by children and acted out by adults.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryeDfr5RnWE[/youtube]

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

September 9 (M)
8:30-9:30, Communication to Families about Homework (optional) (Library)
9:30-10:00, “Push-in”/”Pull-out” Discussion (optional) (Room 12)
10:00, Q&A Session for New Staff (Library)
7:45-9:00, Allan to River Road Community Organization Meeting to discuss new Howard construction

September 10 (T)
First Day for Students
PBIS Focus: Safety
2:30-3:30, Grade Level Collaboration Time

September 11 (W)
easyCBM Reading Fall Benchmarking Begins (9/11 – 9/13)
9:35-9:55, Allan Reading to Class

September 12 (H)
10:10-10:30, Allan Reading to Class
2:30-3:30, TLT Meeting (Room 6)

September 13 (F)
REGULAR DAY

Have a great first week of school everyone!

Allan

This entry was written by Allan, posted on September 7, 2013 at 9:39 pm, filed under Announcements, Caring for Kids, Technology, Video. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.