SEL Concerns Ticket Please use this if you have concerns with a student’s lagging SEL skills and you would like to do some collaboration with us (Heidi T. and/or Brian) to problem solve. Thanks!
FYI Ticket Please use this if you have an incident or recurring incidents with a student. This helps us with follow through, communication and data. Thank you!!!!!
Staff Shout Outs are BACK! Please fill out when you see/hear about the great things our staff is doing.
How’s it going? – Thanks again for your participation with this.
Highland Culture of Care is looking for teachers and/or grade levels to sign up for assembly videos! You can do that here. Thank you!!!
Our character trait for October is FRIENDSHIP! Look for friendship books coming soon to the library shelf and Heidi will link resources soon to the assembly plan sheet.
Highland Newscast: The survey results came back with a strong preference for the prerecorded news cast. We will leave out the school song and save it for assemblies. The first newscast was recorded today (10/8) and will be ready for your viewing pleasure by Monday morning. Please let me know if you have any school news you would like to see in the newscast.
Halloween/Fall Festival – With Halloween on a Sunday, there might be some different ideas on what to do this year. Across the district the standard appears to be a class-by-class or grade level-team by grade level-team decision as for when and what you do (one school is going to skip it all-together). For the sake of sharing and communication, please use the following to provide some details; Halloween Plans.
Fall Conferences – As of 10/7 it was officially decided conferences will be virtual. I want to encourage you to use a google sign up sheet for allowing parents to sign up for their times as it gives the parents flexibility and it saves you time. From my own experience as a parent of 3, it never worked when the conferences were scheduled for us. If you need a template or help setting it up, Shawna or I can help you out. If you still feel the need to schedule siblings then I’ve set aside Thursday 10/14 after school as a time for that task.
3 foot reminder: Just a quick reminder that it’s important to design activities in your classroom within your seating arrangements that keep students 3 feet apart to the extent possible. If they need to close that distance for any reason then try to keep the activity under 15 minutes. If and when they do move closer while in the class, then please provide gentle reminders to maintain their space. One of the questions for contract tracing will be, “Were the kids 3 feet apart?”. The more easily we can answer with a “yes”, the less likely we will need to quarantine kids. You are doing a great job with this, so keep up the great work.
Monthly Essential Volunteers Update: – the COVID response team met today (Thursday) and because local COVID numbers are still high we will not lift our ban on visitors and volunteers.
Walking Field Trips – the COVID response team decided we would begin allowing walking field trips if the following conditions are met:
- The field trip should start and finish at the school and should be directly related to curriculum standards.
- Students must wear masks.
- Students must keep 3 ft apart to the extent possible.
- Management and instruction of students has to be done by school staff – no parent volunteers can be utilized.
- Notify parents of the walking field trip but be careful not to over advertise it. We don’t want parents “accidentally” showing up at the location. This would be subverting our current policy on visitors and volunteers.
House Bill 3294, The Menstrual Dignity Act – Over the summer, the Oregon Legislature passed and Gov. Kate Brown signed into law, House Bill 3294, The Menstrual Dignity Act. This law states that schools must provide free pads and tampons in restrooms. This is just a heads up that these will be installed soon, and the word on the street is that these become a hot topic of conversation for students.
Lexia Update – Here’s a snapshot of the entire school so far. The “at or above grade level material” group has grown by 5% in less than a month for the whole school population. You are doing a great job of integrating this into your literacy block – I know it’s not easy and it can be a moving target, but I hope you will see this data as encouraging.
Dreambox Update – It’s a little early for the data in dreambox but it’s already encouraging. Green shows percentage of students on track to proficiency for grade level, blue shows potentially on track. Orange shows students not on track (yet). Gray shows students with not enough data yet. Kindergarten is still all gray because it’s still early in the program for them. Kaelynn provided a quick video on how to assign selected content and I want to encourage you to take advantage of this feature to provide some direction for students. You might even be able to utilize this as a quick assessment of what you are teaching that week.
Meetings: The chart above shows the result of our meetings survey. Based on this input we will proceed with the current monthly staff meeting schedule. A few things to note;
- Protecting time was a primary reason for not adding more meetings.
- Community building was a primary reason for wanting more staff meeting time – the work we do during some of our school discretion SIWs can and will accomplish this goal.
- I will continue to run the “How’s it going?” survey on a weekly basis. As mentioned before, I will take a look each week and figure out the best way to address items as they arise either individually, via the update, or with a meeting.
TLC Update – Please read the update this week!! It contains important information regarding Educator Network Sessions (formerly know as SIWS). Oct. 7th Elementary Update
Follow up to Lexia Training – Debra asked me to share these links after our training;
Professional Learning Guide:
http://www.lexialearningresources.com/Core5/files/Core5-PLG-v4-Expanded.pdf
Help Center:
https://help.lexialearning.com/s/
Implementation Chart:
Goal Setting with Students:
*We did not go over this today, but it is a great resource to use with students.
Additional Information on Performance Predictors:
Reading Data Routines and Analysis:
Week Preview:
- Monday 10/11
- Tuesday 10/12
- 2:30-3:15 – Safety Team
- Wednesday 10/13
- SIW – 1:45- 3:15 – Educator Network Series – Day 1 – Please be sure to sign up in Performance Matters
- Thursday 10/14
- 2:30-3:15 – Conference planning meeting – Library
- Friday 10/15