Week Update: September 29

Super excited about another great week with our students!  Hope you are too!

Monday, Sept. 29
Day 7 DABC
1:30-3 Admin Mtg
1:40-2 New Student Parent Mtgs
3:15-4:30  MS Leadership Team Mtg

Tuesday, Sept. 30
Day 8 HEFG
10:30-11:30  HOS/MS Principal Mtg
3:30-4:45 GAME U14 Bball A vs ABC @ SSIS

Wednesday, Oct. 1
Day 1 ABCD
3:15-4:30  Learning Plan Work

Thursday, Oct. 2
Day 2 EFGH
8:15-9:15 MS Principal’s Coffee
9:30-11:00  Admin Mtg
3-5ish GAME U14 Bball A vs ISHCMC @ ISHCMC and Bball B BOYS vs AAVN @ ISHCMC

Friday, Oct. 3
Day 3 BCDA
*No HL today
4-7 MS Dance

Saturday, Oct. 4
Happy Birthday Zach Post!
1-4  HS- NHS Laps for Love

Upcoming Quarter Grades and PT Conferences:
2 weeks away!  We have updated the grade configuration to reflect quarters (long story, but they weren’t set up that way for semester classes).  This should not have affected your grade book … except if you use weighted categories (not just categories … weighted categories).  If you do use weighted categories, please see Robert to ensure that your grade book is still correctly set up.  The reason for the switch is that comments are to be placed in the Quarter 1 comment “bucket.”  Last year, you put comments in the Semester 1 bucket at the quarter … so this is a change.

Awesome tech tool to assist with comments: Teacher Report Assistant
Used by Mark Crowell and a few others last year.  From my perspective, an excellent tool that helps create personalized comments focused on student learning.

Features Include:

• ultra quick combining of statements.
• ready made statements available on the web (by subject and level).
• select and combine comments with a single click.
• ability to edit reports individually for students.
• full control over final report content.
• ability to work with lists of students from Excel or Word.

Repeat Content from Last Week:
Here are a few key guidelines about comments for the MS:

• You must use their official name.  You can add nicknames if you like, but you must use their PowerSchool name.
• Comments are to focus on academic progress (not behavior).
• By reading the comment, the parent should be able to better understand the Quarter grade in PS.
• Build in enough time for you to be able to review the comments you’ve written for errors prior to the official “posting” to PS.

Dates for Quarter Comment Entry:
Comments should be entered by Thursday, Oct. 9th.  This will allow us to print out your comments for review.  Corrections should be made by 3:30 on Friday, Oct. 10th.

Learning Plan, Wednesday 3:15-4:30:
This week is the first of the 5 Wednesdays set aside for work on Learning Plans.  Your actual written Learning Plans are to be posted by Oct. 10.  We are still working on the location for the posting, but it will be a Google shared folder – so you’ll just be able to shuffle your plan around to get it turned in.  For this week, you decide how you want to use the time – you can meet with a group if you belong to one … you can complete your Learning Plan written document … you can start the work … only requirement is to be productive related to your learning goals.

International Week Potluck:
The first PTA International Potluck will be held Tuesday, Oct. 21 from 5-7 pm.  Sign up HERE if you are interested in attending.

Cool Instruction/Assessment Tip of the Week:
Sometimes it’s the simple things.  Have you thought about the physical space of your classroom lately? Researchers have.  Here a bit about what they have to say …  click HERE to read the whole article.

District leaders wanted to examine how to truly effect change in the district, and they decided part of that change had to come from physical learning spaces and how students are–or aren’t–encouraged to collaborate.

District leaders outlined three basic “must-haves” for classroom design:

• Furniture must be mobile and flexible
• Each collaborative area must have a display
• Each collaborative area must have a writeable surface