Weekly Update: May 13 – 17

I had an opportunity this week to experience an amazing sense of community across our divisions.  I felt this as a proud principal, but also as a grade 5 parent.  Grade 5 hosted a space conference this week.  There was a keynote speech from our very own Brian Mellon and then other conference sessions that students attended throughout the day.  Brian, Mike Williams, and Evan shared their expertise and passion about space related topics with our grade 5 students.  They took time from their day to support their colleagues and our kids in another division.  These types of collaborations make me so proud as a principal.  As a parent, my son Jack came home beaming with excitement of what he had learned from ES, MS and our very own HS faculty.  I literally could not shut him up at the dinner table.  His passions about space exploration were ignited and I am so grateful to be a parent in this community.  I know this is one of many examples of this collaboration.  Our next opportunity is our MS/HS Block Party on May 14.  Come out and support our colleagues and students.

Have a great weekend!

Jacob

Friday, May 10
Day 10- FGHE
AM Exam: IB Biology
AM Exam: AP United States History

Monday, May 13
Day 1- ABCD
Advisory Day
AM Exam: AP Biology
PM Exam: IB Maths

Tuesday, May 14
Day 2- EFGH
AM Exam: AP Calculus AB & BC
AM Exam: IB Maths
PM Exam: IB Mandarin B & ab initio
MS/HS Art Party, 3:15-5pm (HS Gym & Auditorium)

Wednesday, May 15
Day 3- BCDA
Early Release Schedule
AM Exam: AP Language & Composition
AM Exam: IB Mandarin B & ab initio
AM Exam: IB Math HL Paper 3
PM Exam: IB Economics
PM Exam: AP Macro Economics
Full Faculty Meeting, 1:15-4:30 (Auditorium)

Thursday, May 16
Day 4- FGHE
Advisory Day
AM Exam: IB Economics
AM Exam: AP World History
PM Exam: AP Statistics
PM Exam: English A
SSIS Film Festival, 5:30-7:30 (HS 3rd/4th Floors)

Friday, May 17
Day 5- CDAB
Sunshine Breakfast hosted by the Sunshine Committee, 7:30-8 (HS Faculty Room)
AM Exam: English A
AM Exam: Mirco Economics
PM Exam: IB Physics

On the Horizon

• Last Day for AP/IB Courses Students, May 17
• HS Principal Recruiter on Campus, Meet with HS Faculty, May 23 (3:15)
• May 24th Group 4 Project 11th grade students will not be in classes
• Send Final Exams to the Copy Center by May 20
• Printed Final Exams Due (with cover page) to Huyen, May 24 by 3pm
• Prom, May 25
• No HS Faculty Meeting (report card/comment) time, May 29
• Final exams S2 begin, May 31
• Graduation, June 1 at 4pm

Staff Action Needed

• Review end of year tech process
• Complete “predictive grades” for all IBDP Y1 Students (here are the directions)
• Begin your comments for grade 9-11 students (IBDP Y1 see special format below)
• Review Master Schedule for 2019-20
• Review the end of year information sheet for Seniors
• Read the IB/AP and Matrix sections of the Dragon’s Lair
• Nominate a colleague for great work via Kudos

Master Schedule– The master schedule has been mostly finalized and share with heads of department.  Here it is.  As a department, you should review room assignments (to ensure equity of sharing of rooms).  The blocks are locked into place and cannot change.  We have close to 100 singletons (class that is only offered for one block) and it amazing that we have put together a schedule that gets most students their schedules.  Special thanks to David Perkin and Nghi who supported our work in regards to this with PowerSchool.

Report Card Comments and Peer Review– The end of semester is almost upon us.  It is important to start and finalize your comments before final exams start.  You should set an internal deadline for yourself as May 24.  Your attention will focus on marking exams, projects and presentations at the very end of the year.  Most of the comments that you write before May 24 will have enough information for the family.  If you have a student that failed final exam, project or presentation all you would need to do was to add a sentence to the already written comment explaining this.  You do NOT need to write S2 comments for grade 12 students unless they dropped more than one letter grade from Q3.

Each teacher needs to share the draft of their S2 comments with a peer for review by May 31.  Most teachers share their comments via Google Doc with someone in their department.  Peer editing should include looking for grammatical errors, spelling, correct student names, and adherence to the HS comment writing format.  We have created a quick guide about comment writing that is more useable than the previous documents.

Grade 11/IBDP Y1 Predictive Grades & Comments– At the end of grade 11, students in IBDP courses receive a predictive grade 1-7 from each teacher.  Here are the directions to input the 1-7 mark.  The comments you make should provide context to the 1-7 grade you provide them.  Here is the format.  You can create a common 1-2 sentence comment for all of your students.  This comment will let the families know what has been covered this year and what will come in Y2.  An example of this is written in PINK below.  Then add 1-2 sentences specific to the individual student and their progress toward and IB mark they might receive at the end of Y2.  In the end, you are providing a brief context to the predictive score you will be adding to PowerSchool for Y1.  You can see an example of this written in the BLUE text.

Here’s an example- Lang & Lit students have done preliminary work on Parts 1 and 2 of the course and have completed Part 4. The predictive score reflects marks in those areas; next year’s score will change to reflect further assessment on Parts 1 and 2, in addition to the entirety of their Part 3 study. [Name] has completed assessments on Parts 1 and 2 that range from 4-6 on the 7 point IB scoring scale, has earned a 5 in [his/her] Part 3 study. Please discuss with your student what these scores mean and the percentages each is weighted; this information has been shared with [him/her].

MS/HS Art Party–  Come out and support your colleagues (Nomer, Nathan and Rebecca) and our students with the MS/HS Arty party.  Faculty bands will also be performing.  It is an expectation for HS faculty to attend this event that starts at 3:15 in the HS Gym and Auditorium.  It will be a great time.  We look forward in seeing you there.

Group 4 Project-  This is an interdisciplinary activity for all science students in grade 11. It is a collaborative venture where the emphasis is on interdisciplinary cooperation rather than the product of the project. Students will work in assigned teams to analyze a common topic. This year’s topic is photography.