Week Ahead: September 4
It’s a long weekend! I hope that you have plenty of time to relax and enjoy friends and family. I’m hoping to lounge by the pool, chill out in different coffee shops, and basically rest up for what I know are going to be a very busy 2 weeks of Head of School candidate visits. As a member of the Search Committee, I have many meetings with the candidates – so I apologize in advance if you have trouble finding me during these visits. Make sure you email or text me if you need anything – we will make sure things run as smoothly as possible even with all the excitement of the HOS candidates being here.
Another way we are trying to make sure things run smoothly is by making an adjustment to the counseling support. Colleen Hsu will be joining us on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays (all day) to provide additional counseling support. Chris Anderson will being working his regular part-time Library gig all 5 days and adding some extra time as needed on Tuesdays and Wednesday. Please make sure you express thanks to Chris for having managed a two part-time (which together makes way more than full time) jobs and his full time masters program for the past 6 weeks.
Here is what’s up next week:
Monday, Sept 4
No School – Vietnamese National Day
Happy Birthday Nguyen Do
Tuesday, Sept 5
Day 2, EFGH (DEAR)
Happy Birthday Mark Crowell
*HOS Candidate Visit: Katherine Brewer
10:00 Fire Drill
11-2ish Molly off campus picking up candidate
12:35-1 Gr 6 EAL/LS check in (lunch provided)
3:15-4:30 MS Leadership Team Mtg (Agenda)
Wednesday, Sept 6
Day 3, BCDA (DEAR)
*HOS Candidate Visit: Katherine Brewer
8-9:00 Curriculum Framework Advisory Committee Mtg
3:15-4:00 Divisional Mtg: Gr 7 EAL/LS Check In (Library)
4-5 HOS Candidate meeting with full faculty (MPR)
Thursday, Sept 7
Day 4, FGHE (Adv – HL)
Happy Birthday Erin Lu
*HOS Candidate Visit: Katherine Brewer
Friday, Sept 8
Day 5, CDAB (DEAR)
*HOS Candidate Visit: Katherine Brewer
12:35-1 Gr 8 EAL/LS check in (lunch provided)
Saturday, Sept 9
Happy Birthday Dawne Kaba
Critical Friends Group Training (on Sunday too)
Upcoming (on the radar)
- Sept 11-15 – HOS Candidate visitss
- Sept 16 – Family Fun Day (all faculty should make an appearance)
- Sept. 22 – MS Dance
- Sept. 27 – PD Day: Inquiry / PBL
- Sept. 29 – HOS Reception for MS Faculty, 4:30-6:30
Fire Drill on Tuesday: All teachers should review fire drill procedures with their students at the start of each block on Tuesday. As a reminder, here is what you should review with students:
- Students must line up at the door and depart when the teacher directs them too
- Students must walk out of the building in silence and stay in single file lines
- Review the exit route for your classroom
- Once on the field, students remain in a single file line and remain very quiet
- Students follow you back into the building (review this route as it may be different than the exit route)
As teachers here are some reminders for you:
- Grab your fire drill folder and bring it with you. Shut your classroom door when you depart
- Floor sweeps are done by David Rynne (4th floor); Molly Burger (3rd and 4th floor); Chris Anderson (2nd and 1st floor)
- Once on the field, line up by number and take attendance as quickly as possible; hold up with the red (missing someone) or green (all accounted for) color
- Wait for a verbal dismissal from either WaiMun, Molly or Hang before re-entering the building
- Spread out the re-entry routes as much as possible (you can use the back entrance by the elevator, the stairs through the gyms, the doors through the cafeteria). This helps alleviate the log jam at the main bldg A enterance in the atrium.
Quarter 1 and Grades: We are 3 weeks into the quarter … and only 5 weeks from the end of the Quarter. A quick check of grade books shows that most courses have grades posted. Per our grade guidelines we are striving for at least 1 mark entered into PowerSchool every 2 weeks. That means most all are meeting or exceeding that guide. Great job! Helping parents and students see their progress is important to building strong communication. Thank you for working hard to make this happen!
Common Instructional Strategy: Scaffolding is one way we help get our students to achieve at high levels. Imagine a ladder leading up to the objective we have set. How do we create rungs for our students that allow them to reach the objective as quickly and efficiently as possible? Check out the sentence stems and frames that are in our Common Instructional Strategy folder. Sentence stems/frames are a great way to help students understand how to create well constructed sentences that demonstrate their academic understandings. Once students gain practice using the stems/frames, they can be removed leaving the students with much stronger skills. Here is a link to one of the samples in the Sentence Stems folder: Academic Sentence Frames. (by the way, if someone has a digital version of the talk moves, could you add it … those are great too!)
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