There is a lot in this update, so before you read any further please take this message to heart. It is OK to slow down and focus on one thing; you do not need to to do it all. Above all, you are obligated to take care of yourself first. You are more effective, efficient and happy with your work when you make yourself a priority.
Forefront vs. Synergy
Forefront will continue to be a work in progress. We are still waiting for the assessments to be loaded into the system and I am hopeful this will happen soon. If your team is not going to use the preloaded assessments then you are free (and encouraged) to enter your own assessments to get your data in the system. The 2/3 team has some really good examples of how this could work. We will continue to tweak the system to work for our needs, but it is not likely we will have it all ready for the first Core Effectiveness EBISS meeting but that’s OK; we’ll get there.
Synergy Gradebook is still the tool we need to use to produce report cards. The extent to which you use this tool for progress reports is an individual choice. Forefront is not meant to replace Synergy Gradebook.
Evaluation/Minis/SLGGs/Lions/Tigers and Bears, Oh my!
Congratulations to Becky Eriksson and Jennifer Fetrow for getting their SLGG forms completed and returned first! Please let me know when I can meet with either you individually or your team to get these completed.
I am using the master schedule to try and catch your math instruction. If for some reason you are not teaching math during the time on the master schedule please let me know when you are teaching math so I can time my classroom visits accordingly. As we get closer to the winter break, I will have to take whatever lesson I can get if I am not catching you during math lessons so that I can stay on schedule but I am trying really hard to catch the math.
Conferences
Thank you in advance for all the thought and preparation you put into preparing for these conferences. Please let me know if you would like me to join you with any conferences that you feel might be challenging or if you just want me to observe. These can count as one of the professional minis.
Hallway Behavior
Please try to meet your students during transitions to help mitigate hallway behavior as they transition from specialist, recess, etc. As students get further and further from their classroom their speed and volume is tending to pick up. Both Scott and Rob have classes arriving as the other is leaving so they cannot walk the students back to class.
Pledge of Allegiance
The link below will take you to our policy on the Pledge of Allegiance. During our Thriving Citizen Team Meeting we discussed bringing back the PA Pledge of Allegiance once a week to help us meet the policy requirement. We will do the pledge when we do our Tuesday announcements. It will be important to listen for the start of announcements and help get everyone in the building to be quiet and still whether or not they participate.
https://www.bend.k12.or.us/application/files/5014/5323/2910/INDB-AR.pdf
Academic Excellence Team Update
We met on Monday with Kerry Morton to discuss using Math Studios to address some our goals for this bucket. We scheduled the following dates to ensure we have them calendared but please know we can exchange dates if necessary. During your PLC on Tuesday one of your tasks will be to make some decisions relevant to these opportunities – I will provide more info on Monday but the dates are;
K/1 – Feb 1
2/3 – Feb 8th
4/5 – March 1st (am )
Math Anxiety
Like me, many of you are fans of Jo Boaler. The link below is a great article from Jo about math anxiety. Please take the time to read this article and reflect on practices that very likely are contributing to very real obstacles to learning math for some students.
Future Ready Team Update
Please see the link below for the criteria being used for this professional development opportunity.
Shoshone Visit Schedule – coming soon. I will be asking some of you to plan your storyline time at some different times of the day so that I can create 3 different “routes” for our visitors to follow. I will sketch out a schedule and add it here soon.
Brain Highways
Please see the link below shared by Amy Nary.
Scroll down to the video on proprioception and it will help shed some light on sensory seeking and better understanding why heavy work and grounding input is so important.
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