Week Update: Oct. 27

Thank you so much for great Parent Teacher Conferences!  From my observations, the pace was steady but not stressful; there was good turn out and most brought their child with them.  Several of you have already sent me your conferences totals.  If you haven’t please do that Monday (divided into Thurs night; Friday before lunch; Friday after lunch).  Thank you for your excellent work!

This week is going to be a busy one as well.  We have HS Principal candidates on campus; MS SISAC Tournament on Tuesday; HL Celebration on Friday.  In addition, I will be departing on Wednesday for the EARCOS Leadership Conference (I return on Monday).  Here is the week ahead:

Monday, Oct 27
Day 5 CDAB
HS Principal Candidate Jacob Hendrickson on campus
1:30-3 Admin Team Meeting
3:15-4:30 MS Leadership Team

Tuesday, Oct. 28
Day 6 GHEF
HS Principal Candidate Garth Wyncoll (and Jacob Hendrickson) on campus
10:30-11:30 HOS and MS Principal mtg
11-7 SISAC Tournament
*please note that the girls’ team will be released at 11:45 for lunch (listed below)

Wednesday, Oct. 29
Day 7 DABC
MS Photo Day (see below for schedule)
8:30ish Molly departs for EARCOS Leadership Conf.
3:15-4:30 Unit Planning/Rubicon Atlas Mapping

Thursday, Oct. 30
Day 8 HEFG
10:30 Fire Drill – not announced to students (see Mark Sylte’s email)
1-1:30 EAL/LS mtg Gr 6 (remember to plan for Advisory coverage)

Friday, Oct. 31
Day 1 ABCD (HL at end)
7-8 Breakfast Club sponsored by Gr 6

Saturday, Nov. 1
Swim meet at BIS
GIN Field Trip to Orphan Impact, 8-12
PTA Halloween Event, 4-6 PM

SISAC Tournament Details
On Tuesday, we are hosting the SISAC tournament for MS basketball.  If you get a chance, please stop by the gym to cheer on our athletes.  If you do bring your class, remember that you are responsible for their supervision.

• GAME: in MS GYM – SISAC City Championships for U14 basketball boys and girls A teams. Games run from 11 am to 6 pm.
  • MS kids out of class for the tournament:
    • Grade 6 – Trey Doty, Jan Hoang, Min-Jae Jeong.
    • Grade 7 –  YaYa Yang, Lucie Pham, Kamille Thai, Brooklyn Wagner, Ariel Cobb, Min Seo Song, Franny Ventura.
    • Grade 8 – Phuc-Anh Phan, Katrin Kalaw, Seo Yeon Kim, Emily Cao, Alan Acuna, Long Le, Thao Liao, Chanho Moon, Andy Ngiang, Ka Roi Ngo, Andy Roh.
    • COACHES – Alison Leathwood, Steve Coffey
• SSIS Boys’ Schedule:  Game 1 at 11:00 v. TIS; Game 2 at 2:00 v. ISHCMC; Game 3 at 4:00 v. BIS; Game 4 at 6:00 v. ABC.
• SSIS Girls’ Schedule: Game 1 at 1:00 v. ABC ; Game 2 at 3:00 v. ISHCMC; Game 3 at 5:00 v. BIS

MS Photo Day
We will be taking all photos on Wednesday.  Mai Anh will be sending out the schedule on Monday.  We will be taking 2 photos of each kid – one for the yearbook/parent purchase and one for fun to use throughout the year.  I would like each faculty member take a fun photo as well.  We’ll be using a moustache theme 🙂  In general, the schedule is Grade 6 during D Block; Grade 7 during A Block; Grade 8 during B Block.

HL on Friday – Quarter 1 Celebration
On Friday, we will have HL at the end of the day.  Bonnie emailed Friday asking for celebration items.  We will be pulling this together in the next two days.  One focus of the celebration is growth – we’d like to recognize individual students who demonstrated significant growth (academic and/or personal) over the quarter.  Please email names to Bonnie.  This is the first of several celebrations scheduled for this year.  Please pass along all suggestions and feedback to Bonnie and Molly – this is our first go at this … we want to continue to improve as we go.

PTA Halloween Event
The PTA needs some help! The PTA Halloween Festival is Saturday, November 1 (4pm – 6pm); however, we need at least 10 groups of adults/teachers to host a Halloween tent for trick or treating. Information is listed in attached poster. 

Click below for more information/sign up:

Upcoming Cool Stuff
The MS Talent Show is coming soon – Nov. 11th.  Please encourage students to try out for the show.  We are hoping for a well rounded display of grades, types of talents, and males/females.  Another great opportunity for our students is the Wild Rhino campaign.  This awareness campaign has a middle and high school component.  For our students, it is a poetry competition with winners receiving a prize pack.  We’ll be sharing more information about this soon (hopefully on Friday during the HL time).

Cool Instruction/Assessment Tip of the Week
Building student engagement is essential.  Student choice, project based learning, and zombies?!  Heck yah!  Check out this article to see how these three things were combined.  This great (short) article includes reminders about what builds true engagement – as well as excellent ways to include zombies in your lesson plans.  Happy Halloween!