Using Choices to Prevent Power Struggles and Reporting Preparation

Staff

At our Tuesday staff meeting, first we will introduce the next Love and Logic classroom strategy: using choices to prevent power struggles. After this, the rest of the time is yours to prepare for filling out your report cards on Friday. Both Lisa Skoyen and Amy Wise will be in attendance to answer any of your standards based reporting questions.  Linked within your grade level folder, you'll find the ELA report card rubrics embedded into your table of contents document.

For those of you utilizing mindfulness activities in your classrooms, Edutopia published a wonderful article this fall on brain breaks and focused attention activities. Here's the article. I found it gave good examples of what type of activities help energize and calm students.

One last reminder, tomorrow is a Day 5 and set aside for your grade level teams to continue your collaboration around utilizing the Jan Richardson lesson plan format.

Thanksgiving with Mr. Rogers

As we near Thanksgiving, I thought these words from Mr. Rogers were timely. His message of supporting our neighbors and remembering the encouragers who have "helped you to love the good that grows in you" are as important today as it was when Mr. Rogers first gave this speech.

Some Reminders

Staff,

During your Day 5 common planning time on Tuesday, Chris Strop will be joining meetings to check in with classroom teachers regarding any behavioral support needs. A reminder that our staff meeting was shifted this week to Wednesday at 8:05am. The two agenda items will be Love and Logic: setting limits with enforceable statements and PLC time to collaborate around Jan Richardson guided reading lessons. Please bring any of your resources you'll need to plan guided reading to this meeting. 

Now for the bad news . . . it's anticipated that Skyward will not be ready for grade entry until the week of November 26. Because I am not sure what day it will be available that week, we have not yet set a timeline for when entry will need to be done or when progress reports will be expected to go home. I will update you as soon as we know.  I'm so sorry for this inconvenience!

BAS Roll Through, Love and Logic Strategies Review and Celebration Reports

Staff,

On Monday, during your common planning time, Amanda McCarthy and Kara will be reviewing with you the important updates within the new F+P Benchmark Assessment.

On Wednesday, November 14th Chris and I will be rolling out the next Love and Logic classroom strategy:  Setting Limits with Enforceable Statements. We will also quickly review the previous strategies listed below.

• Neutralizing Arguing:  broken record . . . I respect you too much to argue . . . Probably so . . .  I’ll listen when you voice is calm

• Teacher/Student Relationships (friendly eye contact, smiles and friendly touch) One sentence intervention:  I notice that . . . Will you stop doing that just for me?

• Delayed Consequences:  Oh, no this is sad. I’m going to have to do something about this. But not now . . . later . . . try not to worry about it. Then “plug holes” in your consequence

• Empathy:  says to a child: You are capable! Because we love you very much, we care about how you feel. But because we love you so much we will not rescue you from your problems or poor decisions. Deliver a strong dose of empathy, or sadness for the child, before you deliver the consequence.

Examples of empathic statements:
This is so sad. This is hard. Oh, this is never good. Bummer. Oh man.

Finally thanks again for all your hard work connecting with students and families through greetings, goodbyes and postcards home. It is now that time of year to fill out celebration reports for the great things you see your students doing. You should have copies of the Celebration Reports in your PBIS binders.

Jan Richardson Guided Reading Lesson Plan

At our early release this Friday, I will have a very brief staff meeting in the media center to review the collective commitments below. Please bring your Jan Richardson resource and sources of ELA student data (instructional reading levels, MAP data, anecdotal notes, letter/sound checklist, assessment summary, etc.) for planning a guided reading lesson. From now, until we meet again with Carolyn in January, here are some of the collective commitments, we'll need to agree upon at the Friday meeting.

Collective Commitments

• Provide letter tracing and small group instruction for Pre-A learners and guided reading for readers at the Emergent, Early, Transitional and Fluent levels. 

• Use our PLCs to plan guided reading and commit to using student data to drive the process. Below are the Jan Richardson resources to use to analyze student data. 

1. Pre-A lesson:  Letter/Sound Checklist (306)
2. Emergent Lesson:  Assessment Summary (61)
3. Early Lesson:  Assessment Summary (114)
4. Transitional lesson:  Assessment Summary (168)
5. Fluent lesson:  Assessment Summary Assessment Summary (229)

• Engage students in meaningful literacy activities when not involved in guided reading. When these activities are writing based: think authentic writing yes, worksheets no.  
• Instructional coaching (four touch points) provided to each classroom teacher. Lesson planning meeting prior to teaching, observing the coach teach a lesson (or you teach and Amanda observes), coach observes you teach and a debriefing meeting with you and Amanda. 
• In each regular education classroom (K-5) at least one guided reading group should be done with fidelity, from now until January, following all of the Jan Richardson components. This builds the foundation for a guaranteed and viable guided reading curriculum.
• Support implementation through PD, the PLC process, coaching support and classroom walk-throughs. 

Love and Logic and ELA PLCS

Staff,

At Tuesday's staff meeting, the Love and Logic topic to be covered by Chris Strop is empathy. The remainder of the staff meeting is set aside for your teams to continue on with your ELA PLC work. Make sure you bring whatever items you need for your PLC.  If your team hasn't already, make sure you agree on when you are going to commonly assess your essential learning. This Thursday is your next Day 5, please use this time to also build on the work you'll complete on Tuesday.

Tuesday Staff Meeting

Staff,

This Tuesday at our staff meeting, Brian and Chris will assist us with two of the Love and Logic Classroom strategies. Please also bring your laptop to this meeting because you'll be taking a very brief survey to help get a baseline on our knowledge of trauma-informed care. This survey will help us, as well as the other elementary buildings, with our next steps to support our students who have experienced trauma. 

Before the meeting on Tuesday, I will be sending staff the link to the survey and the password. Please do not take the survey prior to the meeting, because I have some directions when starting it. Thanks!

Day 5 and Late Start This Week

Staff,

On Tuesday, during your Day 5 meetings, I'll review with you our SMARTgoals for the 18-19 school year, and how your SLOs can help support our overall building goals. Please bring to these Day 5 meetings your ELA curriculum guides because I will be giving you copies of your grade level MAP continums which we will be aligning to the ELA curriculum guides on Thursday.

On Thursday, we will have a staff meeting at 8:05am in the media center to get you ready for your SLO writing. If you have time prior to Thursday, please log into mylearningplan through class link and review your strengths and areas for growth within the standards/indicators from last year's professional goal setting plan found in your 17-18 evaluation folder.



 Later on Thursday, you'll be updating your reflections within the professional goal setting plan for 18-19. You'll also have time on this day to dig into the MAP continuum to align concepts and skills to your grade level's ELA priority standards. 

Won't You Be My Neighbor

Staff,

This past Friday, it was the 51st anniversary of Mr. Fred Rogers recording the first episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In honor of this day, Google shared the following Doodle on their search engine (see below). The Doodle, "aims to be a reminder of the nurturing, caring and whimsy that made the show feel like a television visit between Mister Rogers and his young viewers." I found it the perfect introduction to our movie night on Tuesday. Again we will start at 4:00 pm in Mrs. Filarsky's room.

On Monday, During your Day 5 common planning time, continue your ELA work using the four questions PLC document you started last week during our staff meeting. Again please focus on a ELA priority standard you want every child to meet.

At our Tuesday staff meeting, we'll check in to see how the first two Love and Logic Classroom strategies are going:  Greetings and Neutralizing Arguing. Chris will then introduce the next one:  Delayed Consequences. Here's the agenda for the staff meeting. Please also bring your EDM4 Manual so you can do some planning during the second half of the meeting.

PLC Staff Meeting

Staff,

At our staff meeting, we will start with some celebrations from the first week. Be thinking of anything you might want to share from the following categories: student learning, collaborating with colleagues or results of our work.

The Love and Logic Classroom strategy to be rolled out on Tuesday is neutralizing arguments. Our ELA PLC agenda item will be focused around digging into the ELA curriculum guide to understand how the priority standards are infused into these revised documents.  Teams can also work on deciding which priority standard they'll plan, teach and assess together. I have linked the District essential document google folder.  Within your grade level's folder, you'll find the table of contents, it includes a link to the deconstructed priority standards which are helpful for your planning too. Here's a link to the agenda for Tuesday. Hardcopies will be at your table.

On Wednesday, during your Day 2 curriculum common planning with Teaching and Learning, they will be going over report card changes now that we also have priority standards for ELA. These meetings will be held in our conference room.

Over the weekend, I came across this Edutopia article regarding greeting students at the door. It highlights the benefits for both students and teachers. I found it reinforcing of the greetings and goodbyes we've collectively committed to this year.