Allan's Announcements

By Allan 　https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=3443

Hello Everyone,

Twenty one items of note this week:

• Stand-Up Staff Meeting, Monday 7:40 AM – I need to hold a stand-up staff meeting Monday at 7:40 in the Library. Please attend if you can.

• Cookie Dough Fundraiser Kick-Off Assembly, Wednesday at 9:20 – The kick-off assembly for our annual cookie dough fundraiser will be this Wednesday at 9:40 in the gym. This is one of our bigger fundraisers of the year. Lori will call classes down to the gym starting at 9:10. See the attached assembly map for details. And remember there is a good Caring for Kids Class Meeting lesson on assembly behavior you can use in conjunction when you review Howard’s PBIS assembly expectations with students.

Sept. 17 – packets sent home with students (hopefully in teachers boxes by the 15th)
Oct. 1 – orders due, students hand in packets to the teachers. Please put orders in the box labeled “Cookie Dough” in the mail room. Any orders prior to that can be put in the PTO box.
Oct. 14 – Cookie Dough Pickup date – Students

• PTO Meeting, Tuesday at 6:00 – The September PTO meeting will be this Tuesday, 6:00-7:00 PM in the library if any staff are able to attend. It’s a nice show of support for the PTO’s work if staff are able to volunteer their time to come to a meeting. Hope to see you there!

• Mr. Miller’s Kelly Middle School Student Helpers – Jason Miller over at Kelly Middle School would love to have his students come back this year and help. He said this year he has students who are all 8th grade W.E.B. leaders, who are very excited to work at Howard. They are available on Wednesdays from 10:05 to 10:45 and can start as soon as this week. If you’d like to have some middle school helpers/visitors/buddies/mentors come to your class, please email Jason at miller_j@4j.lane.edu

• Curriculum Night Potential Date Change? – It’s been pointed out that our Curriculum Night date conflicts with the UO vs. Arizona football game. Curriculum Night is scheduled to be over at 7:05 and the game starts at 7:30, so there’s no conflict for people watching it on TV and it might actually chase some families out of here quicker, but it would present a conflict for anyone planning to attend the game. Let me know by Tuesday if you think we should change the date to Wednesday, October 1st instead of Thursday, October 2nd . I’ll check in with families at the PTO meeting on Tuesday as well. If I don’t hear from many staff or parents one way or the other, I’ll stick with the current date. If we do change it, I’ll plan to move it to Wednesday. Your nerdy principal doesn’t follow sports too closely so I missed this one. See this clip from The IT Crowd for my feelings on watching sports (which I only do when my wife makes me).

• Fresh Fruit & Vegetables Program Starts Tuesday – The official word is that the Fresh Fruit and Veggies Program will start this Tuesday. Room 21 students will again be delivering snacks to classes each morning!

• SPLASH! Grant Program 2014-2015 – As in the past, the City of Eugene is providing SPLASH curriculum this school year along with grant funding for instruction in science. “SPLASH! K-8” is curriculum for grades kindergarten through 8th grade. “Salmon and the Ecosystem” continues the curriculum in grades 5-12 with an emphasis on salmon and its role in our area’s ecosystem, economy and culture. Attached is an overview of the program. All materials are free to teachers in Eugene. Participating schools can receive a grant of $1,250. If you would like to access these funds, please email a brief summary of how you plan to use the SPLASH curriculum/funds to Lori by the end of the week.

• 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. We’d just need to divide the project into segments and prioritize in such a way that the money awarded would still be useful if EEF was are unable to grant the total $5000. Grants are due to EEF by November 13th, but grants will actually need to be ready to be shared at Site Council on October 27th, where we will approve and rank order the grants we are submitting. So start thinking about grant ideas and please let me know if you are planning on submitting a grant to Site Council.

• Technology Skills Practice for Smarter Balanced (and practice test) – This may be a bit rudimentary for our students coming from a technology immersion program, but Vacaville School District in California has 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!

• Classroom Pinter Cartridges – As costs continue to rise for printer cartridges, printing to classroom printers is getting pretty expensive at $100 or more a pop. I’m going to continue to watch our budget and not making any changes now, but down the road I may need to look at having people print to the copy machines in each wing, which is certainly not convenient, but is significantly cheaper. Just a heads up on at this point.

• 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 TeacherVUE 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.

• Architects in Schools 14-15! – Free Presentations – This is offered every year for free to classrooms, but it may be especially interesting this year with our new school being built right behind us. Architects in Schools is a program which for over 40 years has matched professional architects and structural engineers with 3rd through 5th grade teachers (though I wonder if they’d be open to other grades if we asked) for a 6 week FREE classroom residency. The program is based on a curriculum guide that teachers and their partner design professional can incorporate into existing curriculum to meet Common Core Standards. The curriculum uses architectural concepts to help teach math, science, social studies, language arts and other disciplines, includes sustainable design concepts and can incorporate the engineering and design standards. Structural engineering and landscape architecture residencies are also a focus of the program. Participating teachers receive a free training that links the program to required education standards and they can receive graduate credit through PSU. Attached is this year’s program information. Applications can be completed online by Friday, October 3, 2014.

• 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.

• District Policy and Howard Handbook Acknowledgement Due 9/26 – Attached is the District Back-to-School Memo (website) and the Howard Staff Handbook, which all staff must review and then sign & return the acknowledgement forms (District form and Howard form) to Lori 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.

• Article on Engagement – This article explores the several factors to help teachers know they are actually increasing engagement amongst students in the their classroom. I really liked this because it does not sugar coat engagement. Many times, having fun or seeing students working are described as engagement. This article dispels much of that perspective.

• How 1 mobile device can transform the classroom – Teachers don’t need a suite of smartphones or a tablet for every student to make an impact with iPads and iPhones, asserts Christy Crawford, an elementary teacher in New York. In this blog post, she shares 10 ways teachers can transform lessons with a single device, such as students taking turns on a tablet to learn how to code.

• International Week of Peace – Former Howard teacher Priscilla Ing asked me to share this. Sunday, September 21, 2014 at 3 PM at Nobel Peace Laureate Park in Alton Baker Park will be the culminating event of the International Week of Peace activities in Lane County. Lura Pierce will portray Eleanor Roosevelt and her passion for the Declaration of Human Rights. Lambda, Gamma, and Alpha Sigma Chapters of Delta Kappa Gamma, as well as other community organizations are hosting this event. This event is appropriate for all ages. Questions? Please contact Priscilla at (541) 342-6984.

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

September 15 (M)
Workshop Groups Begin

September 16 (T)
Fresh Fruit & Vegetables Program Starts
8:15-11:30, Allan to CICO Training (Lane ESD)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 1)
6:00-7:00, PTO Meeting (Library)

September 17 (W)
9:20-9:40, Cookie Dough Fundraiser Assembly

September 18 (H)
Regular Day

September 19 (F)
7:30-9:00, Allan to 4JMAPS Meeting (Ed Center)
1:55, Beep, Beep Drawing (Send your buckets down!)

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

September 23 (T)
2:30-3:30, TLT Meeting (tentative)

September 24 (W)
11:00-12:30, PRIDE Awards at Lunch

September 25 (H)
12:30-2:30, Allan to Skillful Principal Being A Writer Training (Ed Center)
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Room 6)

September 26 (F)
11:00-12:30, Birthday Lunches with Mr. Chinn (Room 11)
1:55, Beep, Beep Drawing (Send your buckets down!)

Have a good week, everyone!

Allan