Week of April 14th, 2014
• Schedule of Events for the Week
April 14 (M)
1:00, Fire Drill- Risk manager, Ryan Massey will observe.
2:00-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)April 15 (T)
3:00-4:00, PBIS Meeting (Room 13)April 16 (W)
3:00-4:00, CLIC Meeting- STEM night preparations and instructional focus
April 17 (H)
6:00-8:00, Awbrey Park Art Show
Christina, Claire, and Barb out at the Taking It Up Conference
April 18 (F)
Regular Day (and it’s Friday!)Christina, Claire, and Barb out at the Taking It Up Conference
Hi Everyone,
I hope you all were able to get outside this weekend to enjoy the sunny weather! It’s about time that spring weather got here!
Some items of note this week:
• Music assembly and Pride Awards, Friday, April 25th at 1:00 – We will be presenting PRIDE awards at the next music assembly in the gym on Friday. Classroom teachers should pick 2-3 kids you think have been an excellent example of PRIDE. Blank certificates will be on the counter in the staff lounge.
• OAKS Items and schedule reminder –
Read Aloud- Some have requested to have your system enabled for the read aloud option in OAKS. Kerri Sage has now set up for that purpose for all 3,4,5 teachers at Awbrey Park. Students still have to hold down the control button and click the mouse on the item they want read to them.
COW availability: In general, COW availability is limited during the OAKS testing weeks. Plan accordingly.
OAKS Schedule:
Science occurred last week and went fairly well after a few kinks were worked out.
• Earth Day, April 22nd – Not this week, but next week is Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22. Teach your students how to care about their world — and how they can make it better! — throughout the year with these resources and downloads from Scholastic, TeacherVision.com, ScienceLinks.com, EducationWorld.com and Edutopia.
• 2014 Public Works Day, Thursday, May 15 – Online registration for teachers who want to take their classes to Public Works Day on Thursday, May 15th is now open. See their website for details on this fun field trip.
• TEDxSomerville – Dan Rothstein: Did Socrates Get it Wrong? –
Where did you learn to ask questions? Did you know the skill of asking questions is not used, shared and definitely not taught very well? Even worse, educators are given little training and often indirectly discouraged from spending time on teaching the skill. There’s good news with a deceptively simple solution to the problem. Its called the Question Formulation Technique™ and you have a chance to learn and experience it! Related to this video is a free questioning resources site, RightQuestions.org and also a helpful two page guide of sample questions from RBTeach.com.
• Where are all the people of color in children’s books?
Christopher Meyers
Here is a New York Times article on representation of students of color in children’s literature. It is an excellent article and reiterates several points that Jane Waite made about analyzing children’s literature.
I’m starting to get used to five day weeks again, which I suppose is a good thing since we’ll be on a roll for the next five weeks. 45 kid days to go!
Joel