10.29.20

Posted on by

Quote to consider:

‘Purpose in life is often revealed in the minutes, months, and years that challenge us most.’

~ Some Good News (Tony)

To Dos:

DIFFERENTIATION: It will take some time to set up Differentiation in Canvas. Please make sure your set aside time (during SIW, the hour before teaching or the afternoons after teaching) to do this work. Here is a link with an explanation of what differentiation is, and some ideas of what differentiation may look like in CDL.

ENGAGEMENT: Nole and I have been so impressed with what we are seeing when we pop into classes, chat with students and hear from families about what teachers are doing to engage students. If you feel you have a strategy for engagement that is working well, we want to know about it! Dean Richards is interested in working with teachers to make meaningful PD for colleagues across our district as a way to share the wisdom. Staff will be compensated for their time. If you are interested please email me (Wendy) and I will connect you with the team.

CANVAS EXPECTATIONS:

At this time all staff should have adjusted their Canvas Dashboard to support a consistent look in all of our courses. It is the expectation that all HDMS staff have a consistent format, making it more simple for students, families and support staff to navigate each teachers site and support students. If you are struggling with this, please connect with your Canvas Coach to make these adjustments.

Another expectation that supports consistency as a school is to ensure that you have arranged all the modules in your courses so that they’re arranged from newest to oldest. As the year progresses there’ll be an increasing large amount of items for kids to scroll through to find what they need. It’ll become confusing for student and parents if we don’t do it as a building. See Canvas Coach’s corner in Bits and Bobs for more details.

ADVISOR FAMILY OUTREACH: Click here for the updated attendance records sorted by advisory teacher. We are asking advisory teachers to check this list every two weeks and make contacts home via phone to students who are highlighted NPV for the two most recent weeks or are highlighted for having attendance rate below 80% overall for the month of October. Be sure to click on the October tab at the bottom to view CDL weeks three and four. Please update the notes as needed.

Below are two links to templates to use for our every other week communication with our families. Please copy the document, make adjustments to the blanks to make these templates ‘yours’ and send out to your Advisory families. Be sure to adjust the sharing settings to ‘anyone with the link’ can view.

English: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eOlDCD5wYcljuDiqH9ZiP3qE4Dl-9v0ZDGyG7fKzlkY/edit?usp=sharing

Spanish: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QPx5A3KQP3jCbi8uscmh0uM88QfnG-OtxTcbQLRcie4/edit?usp=sharing

Bits and Bobs:

WEDNESDAY ATTENDANCE: I wanted to let you know that we will be starting a new system for attendance on Wednesdays. Here are the details:

  • Wednesday will now consist of Advisory all day in Synergy.  This means for attendance purposes we only need to take attendance once for the entire day.
  • There are concerns regarding accountability for students on this day and ensuring we aren’t messaging that Wednesday is a day off.  Therefore, students will still need to have some responsibility to show they were attending school.
  • Students will continue to engage in content from all seven periods on Wednesdays.  However, it does NOT need to be new content and can be differentiated based on need.  It can even be a continuation of work from Mon/Tue.  Please ensure they are not working for longer than 20 minutes total (this includes watching videos) per class.
  • Students will be responsible for filling out a google form that states what they worked on for each period.  It could be anything that you set up.  This will be a universal form for the entire school.
  • The link to the form will be pushed out by me to every HDMS student in Canvas as a pop-up announcement AND Email on Wednesday.
  • A student will select their advisory teacher and then state what they did each period in their schedule.
  • You will have access to the data this form generates and it will be separated by advisory teacher.  You will be responsible for your 25ish advisory students’ attendance.  If they completed the form, they are present, if not, absent.  You DO NOT need to take attendance for every period on Wednesday, just for your advisory students. For teachers, this means that Wednesday attendance goes from approximately 180 to 25 students. ​
  • The overview of this process will be explained school wide in Advisory Monday and Tuesday. I will communicate with families. There will be a video that will be used in Advisory and sent out to families. It can also be used as a refresher if necessary. 

YOUTUBE UPDATE: You’ve likely tried to use YouTube videos as part of your teaching experience, only to have the video not work because it is blocked. Well, Chad Brewer in IT worked some magic, and there is now a workaround allowing teachers to (mindfully) approve videos. Here is a district blog post that describes how a student can view (by signing in to YouTube using their district email) that approved YouTube video.

Here is an updated message regarding “sick leave” for staff. It has been jointly crafted by BEA (Sarah) and HR (Jon) and hopefully provides some clarity around expectations/process regarding sick leave during remote teaching.

CANVAS COACH’S CORNER:

  • Arrange Your Modules Newest to Oldest – Drag and drop your modules to rearrange them from newest at the top to oldest at the bottom. This will save student from having to scroll through an increasing number of modules to find what they need. See this video to help.
  • Message Groups of Students by Select Criteria – You are able to message groups of students about specific assignments or about their overall grade/missing/late assignment status. For example you could email all you’re a and B grade students congratulating them for doing a good job. You set the criteria and Canvas selects students that fit that criteria so you can email them all with one click! See this video for instructions.
  • Display Total Grades at Front of Gradebook – Tired of having to scroll to the end (the right) of your gradebook to see a student’s total and/or letter grade? Click the three dots at the top of the total column and click ‘move to front’. This will rearrange your assignments if you haven’t previous set a sort order. To put it back click ‘view’>’arrange by’ then choose how you want your grades arranged.

Reminder: Canvas Coach’s Office Hours hosted by Ingrid and Martin from 1:30 to 2:30pm on Wednesday in Ingrid’s WebEx room.

Reminders:

In place of whole group staff meetings and in an effort to honor staff’s time, Nole and I are continuing to meet with department teams every other week. Our agenda for these meetings is as follows:

  • Celebrations
  • Follow up on the ‘To Dos’ from the most recent two blog posts
  • Clarification of any other items on the blog
  • Needs/concerns/supports

We continue to hold twice weekly admin office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:00-8:30am in Wendy’s WebEx Room. This is a great time to connect, get questions answered and to share celebrations; ongoing notes from admin office hours can be found here.

HDMS Highlights:

LIPI for our Life Skills students continues to be a success; seeing students’ smiling eyes above their mask each day warms the soul!! Many thanks to the LS staff, Nurse Megan, Tim and crew, and the Safety Team for their efforts in making this happen for our students.