Staff Room Make-Over – thank you to Ashley and Steph for re-branding the staff room with a fun theme.
Master Schedule: Kudos to our Leadership team for hammering out the details for our final master schedule.
Some highlights:
- 60-minutes of common Storyline time at the end of the day for all grade levels.
- 15-minute (10-minute on Wednesday) Universal Morning Meeting time.
- 40-minute Music and PE on M, T, Th, F
- Time for transition for PE/Music.
- Common prep time for K and 1.
- Combined 4/5 & K recess allowing for PSIs to work with youngers without missing classtime. (We will use Field and Playground zones on alternating weeks to ensure the youngers have access to different play areas.)
- Lunch is back in the cafeteria (1 grade span at a time)
- Teacher rotation for supervision for the PM recess.
- Potential times for the 30-minute reading intervention are shown in bright green.
- Bells, bells, bells…There are a lot of bells, so we may want to consider eliminating the highlighted ones.
- PE minutes in the classroom – we will still need to identify 40-minutes of PE time each week led by the classroom teacher. More on this later.
There is still some fine-tuning (especially the Wednesday Schedule) to do but you can start to get a sense of how things are shaking out.
The meeting Schedule is approximately 95% complete. All afterschool meetings and SIWs are listed here and we will work really hard to keep this synced with the google calendar (please note there will be discrepancies every now and then if and when changes are made – please be kind when pointing out these mistakes).
New this year, we are directed to schedule a time for weekly staff meetings. These will be on Wednesdays from 1:15-1:45 prior to SIWs every Wednesday. We will cancel these as necessary but we were asked to put them as placeholders.
Still under construction:
- 2-hour delay schedule
- Music/PE calendar
- Transitions schedule
- Recess Zones for AM recess
- EA coverage for recess, cafeteria, classroom support
Culture of Care: Please bring your Classroom 180 book on Wednesday. Heidi will bring extras for those of you that are new to us! We will do a quick review to get the year started and then dive deeper into the final domains at our SIW on September 28th. Want to join our team?? We’d love to have you as we are down a few members. Thanks!
State Testing Results: Linked here are state testing results. There are grade-level tabs for each test as well as individual teacher tabs, so you might need to scroll those tabs over to see your individual sheet. Overall Highland students performed exceptionally well. We should have several students identified for TAG based on these scores, so as soon as we have the 97th %ile cut scores, we’ll update our list.
Class Lists: these are available for one last look before we close them before we move them into Synergy. The deadline for any potential moves or conversations about moving is Wednesday 8/24. Reach out if you need to talk it through. Thank you for your patience, please know we are attempting to honor everyone’s time differences in processing these appropriately.
Elementary iPad home use and insurance (From Skip) – In response to screen time concerns, home management issues, and Lexia and Dreambox overuse, we are asking that k-5 teachers not send iPads home on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean they can never go home. There will be times when projects need to be worked on or students need an iPad due to an extended absence. This will be the exception, not the rule. When they are sent home we ask that teachers notify parents well ahead of time, describe the purpose for them coming home, and remind everyone of proper iPad use. There might be some parents who want the iPad sent home regularly. These requests should be granted. Parents should coordinate with their classroom teachers on how this happens.
Because we will not be regularly sending iPads home we will not be offering insurance to our elementary families. We predict that this new approach will vastly decrease damage rates. In the event an iPad is damaged, the district will be covering the cost. We will be monitoring this new approach and evaluating its effectiveness and success at the end of the year.
Start-Up Schedule: Please note the changes compared to the earlier version.
- Monday 8/29
- New Teacher Orientation
- Tuesday 8/30
- District-Wide Literacy Training or Work/Flex day if you completed training already
- Wednesday 8/31
- Breakfast will be provided.
- Virtual District Kick Off 8:00-10:00
- 10:00-12:00 Building Inservice
- Thursday 9/1 (Since we are staying late for the ICS, please feel free to slide your hours and come in a little later.)
- 10:00-12:30 Building Inservice
- 10:00-11:00 Nurse’s Training
- 11:00-12:30 Storyline Team Training
- 12:30-1:00 Lunch w/ PTO (Lunch is provided)
- Ice Cream Social 3:00-5:00
- 10:00-12:30 Building Inservice
- Friday 9/2
- Work Day – Classrooms
- Monday 9/5
- Labor Day
- Tuesday 9/6
- Work Day – Classrooms / Flex day
- Wednesday 9/7
- First Day of School
- Full Day – No SIW