Next week:
- Wednesday 2/17
- 2:00-3:30 QPR Training
- SLGGs due to Brian
- Thursday 2/18
- Leadership 2:45-3:30 – room 13
Safety Team; Next meet is Friday 3/5 at 2:45; Safety Team Notes – Please input any safety concerns or questions on this document for the team to consider.
April Conferences: Reminder → April 14 and 15. Conferences are Webex.
SEL Menus We have 10 SEL menus for you to choose from!
What to do about calm corners? Have no fear, I have a great resource for creating individual “Calm Boxes”. Please reach out to me if you have a student who could benefit from something like this. I also have it in digital form if that something you would be interested in.
Also, if you are ever looking for an example of how to incorporate SEL into your classroom, I am happy to help. I am even able to teach a sample “mini” lesson.
Highland Piper Newscast will begin next week! We will record our first one on Tuesday morning and then I will push it out by the afternoon. It will be a work in progress but should be fun!
Support Staff – As our comfort level increases there is a natural movement of our support staff toward our classrooms and working with students. All support staff will be using a yellow sheet to record their contact tracing information when they work with students. It is imperative that we are utilizing our support staff for the most essential needs. If you have a positive case turn up in your classroom, it’s inevitable that we will quarantine the entire class. If we are asking support staff to work in multiple rooms with students we are creating a situation where all those rooms will be quarantined due to one case.
Quarantine Mental Preparation – The chances of us needing to quarantine either as an individual or as a class are still significant. It’s important to spend some time preparing for that event. A few other schools are already going through this process and the rest of us have an opportunity to learn from the experience. Some key points for you all to consider;
- Plan for CDL. Use previous plan or modify?
- Communicate CDL plan with families asap.
- Rob & Scott – plan for addressing a missing class or classes due to quarantine.
- Plan for getting materials home. Since you will be at home, you will likely need to do this through me, Shawna and Ashley. Shawna already picked up 300 paper sacks to be ready.
- Go Bags for Students – provide a list of everything that needs to be in this bag and we can work on the distribution from school. (ipads, homework folder, etc.)
- Go Bags for Teachers (list) – materials you might need at home should be stored in a place where we can grab them and bring them to you. (laptop, doc cam, TEs, etc.)
- Emergency sub plans – create a plan that can be used any day
- Team up – work as a team to create these plans.
- Don’t stress – we will work through it and it does not need to be perfect.
EBISS Follow Up:
Data we will examine:
- Lexia Usage – 70% or better
- Lexia Progress % in grade level material – looking for growth, more blue and less gray
- Classroom Data – varies by grade level
- Dreambox Usage – at least 5 lesson per week
- Dreambox % On Track from Predictive Insights Report
- Classroom Data – varies by grade level
- FYI Slips
- Attendance
Clarity on what is changing:
- No more dibels – Lexia is the primary data point and it also serves for instruction and potentially intervention.
- No more easyCBM – Dreambox is the primary data point and it also serves for instruction and potentially intervention.
- Classroom data – a second data set is required from your grade levels prior to moving a student into any intensive interventions outside your classroom or with another staff member.
- Increased emphasis on the analysis of core* instruction and classroom intervention-
- Are we subjecting students to the appropriate expectations and standards? High standards are important as long as we don’t artificially create “intervention” students who are within their typical range for their age. A student should not be excluded from their peers simply because they do not have the same background knowledge, privilege or home support systems.
- What are the interventions you are using in the classroom to address the need and what does the progress look like?
- Is the need for intervention for any particular student/group a result of their own brain/behavior or is it a result of the instruction being provided?
- Data-based decisions – The decision to move a student into a more intensive intervention must be supported by both Lexia/Dreambox data and Classroom data. (Placing students in reading groups because they were in last year is not a data-based decision.)
- Reduction of pull-out reading groups; in the time of COVID these would create the potential for our staff to become superspreaders and the capacity of our building does not support this practice.
*I understand our “core” is different from the core at other schools. With our blends and use of novels, we are not referring to Wonders or Everyday Math only. For us the term core needs to be defined as the essential teaching we do for each grade level and it should be consistent across the classes. It’s also important to recognize that Storyline plays a crucial role in our core instruction, however, it’s really challenging to put it into the multi-tiered support system context (I have to thank Cameron for this insight!).
Next steps:
- Continue your great work with your students.
- Work on fitting the Lexia and Dreambox pieces in your daily/weekly routines.
- If the lexia skill builders can be worked into your lesson design, then put them in, but if it’s not working then leave these out for now.
- Looking for resources to help teach reading? Ask Heidi E. She is a wealth of knowledge and/or revisit her email about what she has to offer.
- Work with your GL team to determine classroom data to be considered for decision making.
- We need this to be something that allows for comparison across your classes. How can we display the data and sort to see patterns?
- The data should be measurements of age and grade-level appropriate standards.
- Your grade level rep should meet with me to figure out how to organize and display this data for our meetings. I can help with this work if you let me.
- In March, we will look at the combination of Lexia/Dreambox data and classroom data to determine changes to entire class instruction to meet the needs of all students.
- In May, we will look at the data again to determine if and what more individualized, intensive interventions might need to be implemented for students still failing to meet progress (IPS).
Other considerations;
- Attention and anxiety versus reading ability – this is something we need to learn more about. When attention or anxiety concerns are interfering with reading ability – we should provide interventions for attention or anxiety before assuming it’s a problem with reading ability. Using reading intervention to address attention or anxiety issues can be more damaging than helpful.
- Priorities – when you are feeling pressed for time, it’s usually because everything is becoming a number 1 priority in your mind. Pull back on your pace. Build in some time to play with your students and don’t feel like you need to “get back on track” compared to previous years – we are on a completely different track (and it is a different vehicle altogether) right now and that’s OK.
From Kerry Morton, Math Coach – We have a wonderful opportunity! Teachers Development Group is hosting their Leadership Seminar virtually this year! TLC is able to pay the registration for one participant from each elementary building! Email your principal by Friday 2/19 if you are interested in this opportunity.
- The theme of the seminar this year is: Lessons Learned from an Extraordinary Year: Insights about How to Enact More Equitable & Inclusive Prek-12 Mathematics Teaching & Professional Learning. You can find a list of speakers and additional information here.
- Dates and times:
- Wednesday, March 10th 9:00-12:15 (no substitutes available)
- Thursday, March 11th 3:00-6:15
- Saturday, March 13th 9:00-12:15
- Participants will be asked to share their learning during a staff meeting at their building and hopefully present an idea during the Innovation Seminar in August.
- Participants will also have the opportunity to register for 1 graduate credit from OSU by completing reflections and a final project based on their learning. More information will be shared at a later time.