January 2, 2017

By Allan 　

Happy New Year!

Well that was an unexpected way to start our winter break. The Chinn household never lost power or have any damage, so I can’t complain much, but we did lose a bunch of tree large limbs that are still piles next to my house and had a cherry tree split in half from the weight of all the ice.

I hope you all had a restful and rejuvenating winter break and didn’t have to deal with too many weather related issues during your vacation. 

Thirteen items of note for this week:

• Science PD, Tuesday, Jan. 3rd, 8:00-1:45 – All K-5 classroom teachers are required to attend, even if you don’t teach science this year. Grades K-2 will meet at Holt and grades 3-5 will meet here at Howard. See the linked science PD emails and updated agenda that were sent out to cert_all earlier.

SSD, Title 1, and PE/Music specialists have received direction from their supervisors regarding PD and expectations for this day. For all other staff, this is additional planning and prep time.

• Ice/Hazardous Weather Days & Rescheduled Events – With the three days of no-school due to hazardous weather, those days will be added onto the end of the school year, making Wednesday, June 21st the last day with students unless we have more snow or hazardous weather days. We also need to reschedule a few events we missed. Here are the updated dates:

• Roadrunner Tail Feather Reward, Friday, Jan. 9th – Same plan as before. If classes met their tail feather goal, teachers can hold their movie day reward this Friday at a time if that works for you, though your also welcome to hold it any day this week that works for you.

• Birthday Lunches, Friday, Jan. 9th – December Birthday Lunches with the Principal will be this Friday as well. Same plan as usual in the Community Room. Not linked here but attached in my email is a list of the December student birthdays.

• Monthly Book Winners – We also missed the November Monthly Book winners, so the new plan will be to do the November and December Book Winners on the same date, which is next week on Wednesday, Jan. 11th at 9:00. We’ll put out the book winner sheet out later this week for teachers to write down your December winners.

• Fire Drill Reschedule, Jan. 18th – Since we had three evacuations in November I’m not worrying about missing our December fire drill, but our January drill will be Wednesday, Jan. 18th at 8:20. Hopefully it’ll warm up some before then.

• SMART Notebook Training, Tuesday, Jan 10th – When Misty went around the last few week to make sure everyone’s interactive white board was working properly (let me know if you’re still having issues) she received quite a few requests for a SMART Notebook training – beginning and advanced. Kellyclare Gardner is going to offer an optional training for teachers here at Howard on Tuesday, January 10th at 2:30 to review how to use SMART Notebook software, which is far superior to the built-in Epson software. We don’t have a room for the training yet, so let me know if anyone would be willing to volunteer their space. 

• Annual Safety Inspection, Tuesday, Jan. 10th – Not this week, but next week will be Howard’s annual safety inspection that was originally supposed to happen last month. The inspection will be on Tuesday, January 10th at 9:00. Please check your areas for the most common safety violations:

• Unlabeled spray bottles.
• 3-foot pathway to your exit doors.
• Cord covers for all power cords in walk ways.
• Power strips plugged into another power strip.
• Use of any extension cords (long power strips are okay, just not extension cords)
• Items hanging from lights or the ceiling.

Let me or Crystal know if you have any questions on any of this.

• January PBIS Focus: Be Your Best – The January PBIS monthly focus is “Be Your Best.” The PBIS team created a PBIS/CFK cheat sheet that matches our monthly PBIS themes with corresponding Caring for Kids class meeting lessons, which is a nice way to tie the two activities together.

• Lost and Found Clean Out – Let students know that at the end of the week we’re going to donate anything left in the lost and found. We’ll send an email to families and also make announcements this week.

• Don’t Let in After School Groups – I know staff are just trying to be helpful, but don’t let any Kidsports or other outside user groups into the building after hours. We’ve had problems with coaches and players coming into the building before their scheduled times and then getting into things they shouldn’t.

• 2017 TaeKwonDo Demonstration Team Assembly – I think I’ve shared this before, but I received an email from a local TaeKwonDo group who’ve offered a free assembly. See the linked flyer for details, but they offer a motivational assembly for students with a traditional demonstration of TaeKwonDo. If I hear from enough teachers who’d like to attend this assembly, I’ll go ahead and schedule them to come.

• Translation Coordinator/Latino Family Liaison – Vanessa Vasquez has joined the instruction department as the district Translation Coordinator/Latino Family Liaison. She has spent many years working in 4J as a BEST Coordinator, a high school career coordinator and at Chavez Elementary as a bilingual office assistant. Vanessa will be coordinating all aspects of translation services throughout the district, but staff are still being encouraged to use the Language Link telephone translation service. See the linked Language Link Directions for how to access this service. They offer translation for over 240 languages and/or dialects. 

• Sign Up for School Closure Text-Message Alerts – There’s unbelievably more snow in the forecast, so if you’d like to receive text message alerts regarding school closers, send a text to 40404, saying “FOLLOW 4Jweather” (no quotes). To unsubscribe, send “UNFOLLOW 4Jweather” to 40404.

• Snow Days: Resources to Share With Students & Families – Winter 2017 is here and this Edutopia article has some engaging science, reading, and writing resources to share with families.

• Parent Early Learning Resources – ODE’s Early Learning Division is promoting a new website that started last month. The Brain Building Oregon website features 12 resources that are meant to serve as helpful examples for parents and caregivers who are preparing children for kindergarten. Brain building is important in early childhood because the first five years of life show the most significant rate of growth for the human brain. During these early years, the groundwork is being laid for skills in literacy, language, math, and more.

• 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:

January 3 (M)
Last Day of Winter Break

January 3 (T)
No School – Professional Development/Planning Day
School Choice Opens
8:00-1:45, Science PD (K-2 @Holt, 3-5 @Howard)

January 4 (W)
Classes Resume
No Wednesday Popcorn
2:30-5:00, Allan to Pay Grade Evaluation Committee Meeting (Ed Center)
4:00-5:00, Allan to North Region Principals’ Meeting (NEHS)

January 5 (H)
2:30, Allan to IEP Eligibility Meeting (Conference Room)

January 6 (F)
10:30-12:30, December Birthday Lunches with the Principal (Community Room)

January 9 (M)
2:30-3:30, Allan to IEP Meeting (Conference Room)

January 10 (T)
9:00, Annual Safety Inspection
2:30-3:30, Optional SMART Notebook Training w/Kellyclare Gardner (Location TBA)

January 11 (W)
Wacky Wednesday – Pajama Day
Wednesday Popcorn Resumes
9:00, November & December Book Winners (Conference Room)
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Rae’s Room, A101)
3:30, Allan meeting with Federal Programs Coordinator (Office)

January 12 (H)
8:30-2:00, Allan to ILT Meeting (Ed Center)

January 13 (F)
9:05, K-3 Assembly – Adventures of the Tartar Patrol

January 15 (M)
No School – Martin Luther King Jr. Day

See you all soon!

Allan

 

This entry was written by Allan, posted on December 31, 2016 at 10:37 pm, filed under Announcements, Articles, Caring for Kids, P.D., Science. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.