Week Ahead: September 15

Family Fun Day was a huge success.  Thank you to all who come, helped, and had a Fun Day!  Love this pic of John Kruk 🙂

Happy Monday!  It’s going to be a great week:

Monday, Sept. 15
Day 6 GHEF
9:30  SRT
1:30-3 Admin Mtg
3:15-4:30  Leadership Team Mtg

Tuesday, Sept. 16
Day 7 DABC
10:30-11:30 HOS and MS Principal mtg
3:30 Boys A Team @ SSIS v. TIS

Wednesday, Sept. 17
Day 8 HEFG
3:15-4:30  Writing Extravaganza Continues

Thursday, Sept. 18
Day 1 ABCD Early Release Schedule
9:30-11  Admin Mtg
1:15-4:30 Writing Extravaganza

Friday, Sept. 19
8-3:30 Writing Extravaganza

Blogging!
Do you like the new format for the blog?  Going for modern and easy to use.  Keep the input flowing.  Changes so far based on faculty feedback:  add the day to the week calendar; add links to commonly used pages; add a subscription feature.

MAP Testing Almost Complete
We have just a few kids left to test.  We will attempt to do this in the least disruptive fashion.  Thank you so much for assisting students through this process.  If you do get questions about scores, we will be sending out official reports as soon as they are ready.  There will also be a parent information session.  One thing for all of us to keep in mind for the Language Arts and Reading tests, is that used the test aligned with the Common Core this Fall … but we didn’t use that version in the spring.  These two tests may not correlate, and students (and all of us) shouldn’t compare the two different scores.

New Parent Meetings
Bonnie and Mai Anh have been busy scheduling meetings with all our new parents.  For Grades 6 and 8, the schedule is pretty normal; but for Grade 7 (and those teachers on Team 7), we altered the timing a bit this year so that the teachers of the student are present at the meeting.  Another change we made was the number of conferences each teacher will attend.  With 33 new students, some of you would have had up to 22 conferences.  So we asked for your top ones; and have scheduled best we could.  We will need to provide some coverage for each other to make this happen.  Why is this a priority?  Transitioning students into our school successfully is one of the best ways to assure academic success (and student longevity).  Putting in the time now will pay off in the future.  For those that are new, this is not a traditional parent-teacher conference to talk about grades; it is a time to talk about the transition in general – how the child is settling in, friendships, activities, and overall academics (not specifics).

PD Days This Week
We will be continuing our work on the writing assessment this week.  We will spend Wednesday from 3:15-4:30; Thursday from 1:15-4:30; and Friday from 8-3:30 completing the scoring and doing the analysis (we will also spend a little bit of time working on Learning Plans – more on that later).  By the end, all 200 MS papers will have been assessed; the data analyzed; and goals for our division created.  I am proud of the work we have already done.  Joining together to understand our students’ writing needs is the first (and most basic) step toward improving their overall achievement.  Thank you to you all for embracing this goal.

Posting Assignment Due Dates in PowerSchool and Moodle
Just a quick reminder that major assignments and tests are to be posted into PowerSchool and Moodle 10 days ahead of the due date (or as soon as you set the date).  I am noticing that many big projects are coming due … but they aren’t visible on PS and Moodle.  Kids know the date; but they aren’t listed on their calendars.  It is a new habit; one that will take time to cement.  Let’s all help each other with reminders to post (especially if you hear kids talking about an upcoming project, test, etc.).  If you are struggling to figure out how to get things posted, Robert is ready and eager to help smooth out those details for you.

Cool Instructional/Assessment Tip of the Week
Thank you to Amy Flynn for sending me a link to this awesome article Dipsticks: Efficient Ways to Check for Understanding.  The article reminds us that student learning doubles when we use good formative assessment strategies.  The author even provides us with  53 Ways to Check for Understanding,  a great cheat sheet for formative assessments that you can use to gauge how students are doing.  Remember, formative is only formative if you use the information to plan for instruction.  As the author says, They’re especially effective when students are given tactical feedback, immediately followed by time to practice the skill.