November 10, 2014

By Allan 　

 

Hello Howard Staff,

Today is the day the School Board is set to approve the contractor to build our new school and give them the official notice to proceed. Should be exciting to see how fast they can get started!

Ten items of note this week:

• Science Teacher Leader Reps for Curriculum Pilot – Downtown is looking for one or two teacher reps from each elementary school for this year and next fall to help with the science curriculum adoption process, which involves piloting potential science curriculums that may be adopted and also serving as Science Teacher Leader Reps. Teachers who want to pilot will also participate in early PD regarding Next Germination Science Standards (NGSS). These teacher leaders will give voice to the elementary needs, both for curriculum materials, but also for continued support in implementation of a new science inquiry process. These science leaders will also be the link between professional development at the district level and supporting their building level colleagues with information and on-site professional development. See Kim Finch’s email and the attached science PD information for more details, but let me know by the end of the week if you’d be interested/willing to be one of the two reps.

• Being A Writer Teacher Leader Reps – The Developmental Studies Center Reps will be here in December to meet with Being a Writer (BAW) Teacher Leaders (a K-2 rep and a 3-5 rep) and principals, meeting by region, in December. The North Region meeting will be Thursday, December 11th, 8:00-3:00. Please see the attached document for details, but let me know by the end of the week if you are interested/ willing to be a K-2 or 3-5 BAW Teacher Leader.

• TAG Testing and Teacher Referrals – The school district has officially decided to no longer conduct 2nd grade blanket TAG testing. This means that all TAG referrals will now come from either parents, teacher or the student (or Smarter Balanced if they score at the 95%), so be sure to let me know if you have any students who you think should be tested for TAG.

• New COWs and Battery Replacement – Good news and bad news with this item. The good news is that downtown is purchasing Howard two new COWs instead of replacing all of our bad laptop batteries. The new COWs will replace COWs at the 4/5 level and those laptops will replace the laptops at K-1 that are either old or are waiting for replacement batteries. The new COWs will arrive this week, but the bad news is that K-1 will have to wait until 4/5 classes can transfer student data from the old laptops to the new laptops. Hopefully we can take care of this within the week.

• iPad Printing – If you ever want to print from a teacher or student iPad, David Nelson has set up the office and production room copiers to now wirelessly print. As long as you’re connected to the building wireless network, you should see these two printers on your list of available printers (other networked building printers will also show up, but you can’t print to those).

• Head Lice Alert! – We’ve had a number of students with lice lately, so just a reminder for staff to discourage students from touching heads, sharing combs, barrettes, brushes, hats, helmets or other clothing. There’s actually a BrainPop video on the topic if teachers would like to share it with students.

• Informal Observations This Week – My schedule is fairly open this week, so I’m planning to conduct a number of informal teacher observations this week.

• Teachers expand classrooms’ reach with Skype – Skype has made the shift from novelty to standard tool that is making inroads in classrooms worldwide as teachers seek to give students expanded access to guest speakers, experts and other cultures, according to writer Kate Messner. In this commentary, she writes about some of the ways teachers are using Skype in the classroom and shares resources to help educators make the most of the program.

• What role does praise play in self-esteem, achievement? – Proper praise from parents and educators can help students learn how to persevere and learn from errors, Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University in California, says in this interview. Such praise involves recognizing students for the process instead of placing too much praise on ability, talent or intelligence, she says.

• 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:

November 10 (M)
Reading and Math Progress Monitoring 4
School Board Contractor Approval and Notice to Proceed

November 11 (T)
Veterans Day – No School

November 12 (W)
Kindergarten Color Day – Purple
2:30-4:30, Allan to Facilities Meeting (Facilities)

November 13 (H)
SPEEDSTACKS Stack-Up Days at PE
2:30, OBOB Meeting

November 14 (F)
SPEEDSTACKS Stack-Up Days at PE
2:30, Baby Shower for Angela (Room 13)

November 17 (M)
1:30-1:40, Fire Drill
2:30-5:00, Allan to Elementary Principal’s Meeting (Ed Center)

November 18 (T)
2:30-3:30, Staff Meeting (Library?)
6:00-7:00, PTO Meeting (Library)

November 19 (W)
12:00-4:00, Allan and RBT Cohort 1 & 2 Teachers to Research for Better Teaching Training (Ed Center)

November 20 (H)
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Room 21)

November 21 (F)
Picture Retakes
7:30-9:00, Allan to 4JMAPS Meeting
10:55-12:30, November Birthday Lunches with the Principal

Have a great week, everyone, and enjoy the Tuesday holiday.

Allan

This entry was written by Allan, posted on November 8, 2014 at 9:10 pm, filed under Announcements, Articles, Literacy, P.D., Science, Technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.