Important Information
Curriculum
We want to make sure you have the curriculum materials you need to get started. At this point we have ordered all curriculum and need to know if you are missing items. Please share here if you are missing items.
Educator Network Day
When: October 11th from 1:45-3:15
Where: School Sites
Topic: Reflecting and Refining Foundational Skills and Continuing to Refine and Plan for Life and Career Readiness using Wayfinder as our Tool
Facilitators: ICCL Teams
Admin/ICCL Teams will meet on October 3rd from 3:00-5:00 at Jewell Elementary
Other Information
Literacy Happenings
Exciting News from the Language Arts Curriculum Review Team
The Language Arts Curriculum Team met September 14th and reached strong consensus on moving forward with EL Education from Imagine Learning as our finalist for K-5 Language Arts Curriculum.
Why EL Education?
- Deep knowledge-building scope and sequence
- Eight week modular structure allows for students to go deep with each topic
- All writing and conversations are purposeful, focused, and anchored in the content students are learning
- Students own their own learning and develop the habits of successful citizens
The Language Arts Curriculum Review Team will move forward with field testing a module for the purpose of identifying professional learning needs and beginning to plan for implementation. During the field test the team will be collecting video, survey and interview data from classroom educators and students.
Background Information: In the Spring the team was field testing two curriculums: EL Education and Collaborative Classroom. The team reached strong consensus regarding the strength of EL Education as a knowledge building language arts curriculum and decided to not move forward with Collaborative Classroom.
Next steps:
10/2-12/11 Curriculum Review Team Field Test of EL
10/25-10/27-Each school will have an information table with resources to explore the curricular materials and provide feedback during conferences (community and staff feedback)
Math Happenings
Extended Date- Dreambox Launchpad for Kindergarten
The date to have Dreambox Launchpad assessments complete has been extended due to iPad roll out. The new date for Kindergarten is 11/3. Grades 1-5-should complete Launchpad assessment by 9/29.
Forefront has a help document that shows how teachers can use the new reporting suite to help inform instruction once they’ve got data from an assessment (linked here) and a short Getting Started for Teachers webinar that highlights features that might be newer to them (linked here).
Forefront Rosters – Please check your Forefront roster and make sure it looks correct. Alert your instructional coach, mentor, or Kerry Morton if there are still errors.
Life and Career Readiness
Greeting:
In this basic greeting, two students face each other, give a smile, and say “Good Morning, (classmate’s name).” As time progresses, have students pass a high five, or a high five and ankle shake, you could have a quick class handshake to pass around the circle.
Share Out: What is something you like to do in your free time?
Group Activity – Wayfinder:
Directions:
- Invite students to sit in a circle.
- Ask students to stay sitting down if they like cats and stand up if they prefer dogs. If they can’t decide that’s okay! Let them know they can squat halfway.
- Say, “Sit for ice cream; stand for pizza.”
- Continue with the following options or make up your own:
- Rice, pasta
- Chicken, french fries
- Soccer, baseball
- Dancing, singing
- Swimming, sledding
Talking Points:
- There were no wrong answers in that game, only preferences.
- If you like something that’s great. If you don’t like something that’s great too.
- We are going to learn so much about each other this year. Thanks for sharing a little bit about what you like with me today.
Partner Up:
K – 1 Have partner A tell partner B one thing they like to do after school. See if partner B can retell partner A what they said. After that partner B will get to share. As the year progresses, have partner B ask a question about what partner A said rather than just retelling what partner A said.
2 – 5: Two truths and a lie – have partner A tell partner B two truths and one lie and then partner B must guess the lie.
Wayfinder’s Transformative SEL Retreat is November 9th from 10:00 – 4:00. If you are interested, you can find more information here.
Technology in the Classroom
The Instructional Technology team has some great resources available for you to use in your classroom, including Sphero Bolts, Ozobots, Bee-Bots, and the newest addition – Sphero Indi. To learn more about each of these codeable robots, check out this blog post. You can visit the Instructional Technology blog for the request forms – just look in the right hand column under the “Bring Innovation to Your Classroom” heading.
Apple Classroom is an amazing management tool. Reach out to your instructional technology coaches if you would like help getting started!