Class Creator Ready After Monday

Staff,

K-4th grade teachers, you should have received an email from Class Creator today. If you didn't, please check your spam for it. You'll need to use this email to log into the class placement program. I have uploaded your class information, and students are coded by numbers. Tomorrow I'm going to double check the numbers connected to your students, and then get the hard copy masters into your mailboxes, so you know which students go with with the numbers assigned within Class Creator.

Please take a common planning time, after Monday, to work on these surveys. I've also set aside the Day 5 on Tuesday, May 7th to complete any of the surveys you don't get done this week. As a reminder, I will be out Tuesday and Wednesday for Heather's surgery, maybe Thursday depending on how it goes. Shannon Sexe will be on call over this time for our building.

End of the Year Assessment Changes

North Hudson Staff:

At last week's SMARTgoal Team meeting, I reviewed some assessment changes for the end of the year. I wanted to share it with you all through my blog so you have easy access to this information too.

Here's a couple end of year assessments coming off of your plates:  

• No Spelling Workshop Post Test

• No end of year math assessment (just make sure you are entering all unit test info in Illuminate-if you have had a difficult time importing this data, here is a link to "how to support" Illuminate tutorials.

These two changes are already reflected on the K-5 Assessment Schedule. 

Teaching and Learning and building principals also collaborated to lessen the end of year formal BAS assessment load. 

• BAS-only need to complete formal BAS with students in intervention or DGR or students you have not done a formal with yet this year.  This will prepare us for a shift to supporting teachers doing a formal BAS with students in the fall of the year.  We will still have teachers put F&P instructional levels based on current running records/guided reading data in Skyward. We will continue to pass on end of the year information to the next year teachers-most likely a recent running record along with the transition form we have used in the past. 

Finally at our Wednesday staff meeting, we won't be ready to complete the student survey information to get ready for class placements. However I will be providing you all with the data you need to fill out the online surveys at a later date. At this staff meeting, we will have a resource packet with all the Love and Logic Classroom strategies we've learned about during the 18-19 school year. 

Calendar Items for This Week

Staff,

On Tuesday at 8:05am, I will be meeting with the SMART Team to receive feedback on the Jan Richardson implementation, the best JR comprehension strategies to focus on for the end of the year and planning time to align the May ELA curriculum guide with the MAP learning continuum. Also on Tuesday we will have our April fire drill at 3:45pm.

On Wednesday Dr. Nick will be here from 10-noon in the life skills classroom for staff who'd like to meet with him, and we will have our tornado watch starting at 1:00pm and our drill at 1:45pm. Please review your tornado drill locations.

On Friday K-2 classrooms will have high school athletes visiting in the morning to read to them, and we will have our final April drill in the morning. Please see the staff bulletin for more details regarding this drill. For teachers on cycle for evaluation, documentation logs are due to be submitted on April 19th.  

This week fourth grade and fifth grade students will be completing their Forward Testing.

Forward Begins

Staff,

Starting tomorrow, the Forward Exam begins with 4th grade testing this week, 4th and 5th testing during the second week and 3rd grade testing the third week. Please be flexible with Chris and Kelli over this testing period because they, along with me, will be assisting with proctoring the tests for small groups of students.

Tomorrow morning I will be emailing parents regarding volunteering for Kids' Carnival. As of today, 37% of the spots are still available. As in the past, I'd like you to try to volunteer for at least one of the big PTO fundraisers:  Kids' Carnival or the food booth at Pepper Fest.

On Wednesday, your Day 5 Common Planning Time will be set aside for you to plan for and problem solve around your Jan Richardson guided reading lesson plans. Amanda McCarthy is also touching base with teachers to schedule the second round of observations with feedback. She's cognizant of grade levels who are currently proctoring or preparing to proctor the Forward Exam though.