The Next 15 Days

Team,

I hope all had an opportunity to relax and recharge with family and friends as well as take some time for yourself.  As we return from break, be diligent with setting expectations for learning and behavior with students for the classroom and all common areas.  Remember, setting expectations is a daily, hourly, and every transition activity.  This is true of all students; do not expect older students to "know better."  Students do well when they have specific expectations and understand the boundaries in which they must operate.  Students also excel when they know what they are expected to learn.  Stay diligent with posting daily learning targets and success criteria to scaffold student learning.

MAP Assessment --- Our school-wide goal is to increase the number of students meeting the grade level benchmark on the MAP assessment by 10%, moving from 24% to 34% in both reading and math.  This happens through our purposeful planning and supporting students with engaging instruction that is challenging but attainable.   We will begin our MAP assessments Tuesday, December 4th -- please see the schedule on the Living Calendar and be sure that all Chromebooks are charged and ready to go for Tuesday.  Please take a few minutes to review class and individual MAP goals with students prior to the assessment.

Spelling Bee --  Ms. Allen (Jammeh on email) sent out information for classroom spelling bees.  Each homeroom teacher in grades four and five should host a classroom spelling bee and send the name of your class winners to Ms. Allen by Friday, December 6th.  The school-wide spelling bee will be held December 10th and from there our school representative will be chosen.  Last year, Jersey Hill was our representative.

Faculty Meeting -- This week, we will discuss classroom libraries and have some time to work on the set up in your classroom.  All libraries should be organized by genre and Ms. Flener will provide some strategies for having students assist with the sorting of materials and using the classroom library to support instruction.  We will also briefly discuss challenges to getting student artifacts in the digital backpack so we can improve our implementation. Backpack Artifacts -- We currently have 371 students and 196 students have at least one artifact in their digital backpack. 

Restorative Practices --   On December 11th, we will have Cheng Fisher from Behavior Support to visit our school and do 10 minute classroom observations to gauge our Restorative Practices implementation thus far.  They have provided a copy of the walkthrough and look fors so there are no surprises.  This is an implementation check and the email I received will be forwarded to you for your review.

Have a great week!