Week of September 10th
Hello Awbrey Park Staff,
The last week was a very exciting week for me. It was fantastic to see all of the student faces and the hope in their eyes. Thank you staff for making this week such a positive and hopeful experience for our students. Your enthusiasm, patience, and hard work paid off.
Calendar:
PBIS Meets from 3-4 Tuesday, September 11th
TLT Meets from 3:40-4 Wednesday, September 12th
Licensed Staff Meeting is 3-4 Tuesday, September 18th.
Hot Diggity Dog Event is 6-6:30 in classrooms. Dinner and Bingo follow at 6:30-8:00. Remember this is a meet and greet
There are several topics for the week and a few reminders.
- Some Details about Collaborative Teams: A few teachers have asked me what is expected during the collaborative time. Some examples of collaborative practice are lesson studies, instructional networks, data teaming, action research, and team teaching. If you would like some guidance on the types of collaboration the district is expecting teachers to participate in during our PE/Music time, see the attached overview sheet. For September and October, go ahead and use this time as you choose. I consider it long needed prep time. In November, I could provide a protocol or activity for teams each month, or two, teams could develop their own plan for how to use this time for collaboration. If teams are interested in developing their own plan, one excellent resource for activities besides the ones described in the overview sheet is the National School Reform Faculty website, which has many high quality protocols. Most of the protocols on the NSRF website are designed for larger groups, but would be easily adaptable for smaller teams. More to come on this topic!
- Teacher Leaders wanted!!: Please take a look at the attached to take advantage of this great opportunity. Don’t want to rush you but, this great offer requires quick action on your part, Dr. Saphier will be back on September 20, 2012 ready to engage a teacher leader at Awbrey Park. That’s you! Here is the document sent by the district on Friday.
- Bus Safety Required Training: All students in School District 4J are to receive instruction on bus safety during the first half of the school year (before Winter Break). The intent of the rule is to reach the occasional riders who find themselves on a bus because of a field trip, activity trip, etc… There are videos available on Learn360 and also this on this 4J webpage, which will meet the training requirement if you show them to your class. Another option is to schedule a bus to come out during the school day and for a driver to give your class the training. I’m going to assume people are showing the videos unless you email me that you would like the driver led training. Let me know by Friday if the driver led training is your preference. After you have done your training with your students, please email me the date and method you used to instruct your class in bus safety.
- EEF Grants: I wanted to remind staff that EEF is now accepting grant applications. Schools can submit two $2,000 and two $500 grants, or they can combine grants to create one $5,000 grant. Grants are due to EEF October 15th. Last May Site Council approved the following applications.
The site council team recommended the following in order from highest to least priority.
- Math site license IXL ($2000)
- OBOB ($2000)
- Elective Program ($500)
- Artist in residence ($500)
Please let me know if you have would like to help me write one of these grants or add detail on them. I need to know more details soon to make them great (that get funded) proposals!
- After School Exit Plan: Some teachers have approached me about how best to divide bus riders from students being picked up. Parents and some children have been a little confused about pick up. I encourage you to devise a class or grade level plan to separate out these students and designate a pick up area for parents near the driveway pick up zone.
- PBIS Lessons: Just a reminder to go through your PBIS lessons. You can always use the WIKI for assistance if you can’t find a keynote or idea.
- Recess Safety Drill: Sometime early this week we will be running a safety clear drill at recess. This is to help us be ready to assist some of our most medically fragile students and also to be prepared for other emergencies. More details on the date and time to come in email. We will also be conducting our other safety drills soon.
- Common Core in Math:The common core is on everyone’s mind: Soon we will be going into more depth about this topic and how it will effect classrooms across the district. Some of you have spent a lot of time working on Math CC standards in the primary years. I have asked Chris Castillero, our new math curriculum coordinator from Instruction to lead some PD sessions through out the year. Our first session will be with him on October 5th. I thought I would share the following clip on Elementary Math CCS. It is a good visual of problem solving in action.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IPxt794-yU[/youtube]