Week Ahead: Sept. 22

Thank you all for your great work on the MS writing assessment.  Your deliberation and analysis will certainly help us as we determine our next steps forward.  It was also great to see so many of you at the Happy Hour as well.

Monday, Sept. 22
Day 2 EFGH
1:30-3 Admin Team Mtg

Tuesday, Sept. 23
Day 3 BCDA
10:30-11:30 HOS, MS Principal Mtg
11-12:15 New Parent Meeting
4:00 Swim Meet

Wednesday, Sept. 24
Day 4 FGHE
9:30-11 New Parent Meetings
11-11:30 SRT Mtg
1:30-2:15 New Parent Meetings
3:15-4:30 Divisional Mtg (MPR for 1st half with HS)

Thursday, Sept. 25
Day 5 CDAB
8-9:15 New Parent Meetings
9:30-11 Admin Mtg
9:40-10:30  New Parent Meetings
Basketball – A Teams away at BIS

Friday, Sept. 26
Day 6 GHEF
*HL Schedule:  GHE-Lunch; F 12:55-2:15 , DEAR/HL 2:20-3:00

7:30 Birthday Breakfast (Sponsored by Team 8)

International Week Update:
Thanks to the great work of our International Week group (Andy Coffey, Rebecca Jardin, and Hsiao-Ling Chung) and their colleagues in ES, HS, and the PTA, we are well on our way to a plan for International Week (Oct. 19-23).  The big parts include:

• Advisory groups being paired with ES classes to read stories written by MS students (stories being written in English Language Arts class and practiced in Advisory)
• All School International Pot Luck on Tuesday night (before HS Drama Production)
• All School International Dress Day and Parade on Thursday AM

As additional details become available, we will be sharing them here.

End of 1st Quarter, Oct. 10:
Just 4 quick weeks away and we are done with 1st Quarter.  That brings us to the first official grade report.  The focus for quarter grades reports has traditionally been comments related to a students academic progress (with only an inclusion of behavior if instrumentally related to academic progress).  It is recommended that you type your comments in Word (or Pages) and then cut/paste into PowerSchool.  This will help you minimize errors as PS doesn’t have great spelling/grammar assistance.  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.

Cool Instruction/Assessment Tip of the Week:
Leading discussion can be one of the most surprisingly difficult instructional techniques.  Check out this Critical Thinking chart that includes sentence stems.  Planning out questions ahead of time can be an excellent strategy for taking those discussions to the next level.  Use them yourself and with your students.