Building Reminders

Staff,

Here are some reminders of upcoming building events to keep in mind while we approach the end of the year. Those of you who will meet with me for a summative evaluation in the next couple weeks, please review last week's blog for the reflection questions.

• End of the Day Monday, May 22nd:  Submit End of Interval SLO Review
• Tuesday, May 23rd:  Grade Level Roll Through with ITS (Raider Portal) and Learning Services
• Wednesday, May 24th:  K-3 Track and Field Day and Fun Run at 2:50pm
• Thursday, May 25th: 4th Grade Track and Field Day
• Friday, May 26th:  5th Grade Track and Field Day
• Tuesday, May 30th: Last Staff Meeting and Summer Book Checkout Starts in the Media Center
• Thursday, June 1st: Dolf out at Interviews
• Friday, June 2nd: 1st Grade at Como Zoo and at 2:15: 5th Grade Farewell
• Monday, June 5th: 4th Grade at Fort Snelling
• Tuesday, June 6th: 5th Grade at Eau Claire Waterpark, 2nd Grade MN Zoo and All School Picnic
• Thursday, June 8th (Last Day of School): 9:10am All School Meeting, 10:30am Yearbooks and 2:45pm Kickball

Highlights from this Year

At our staff meeting on Tuesday, we will begin by taking some time to reflect on classroom, grade level, department and building highlights from the year. Be thinking about the things that you're proud of and be ready to share at your staff meeting tables. I'll be using the reflections we generate as part of my report to the board in June. This is the second year all schools and District departments have reported highlights during the "state of the schools" portion of the June board meeting.

A couple of reminders, instructional reading levels are due in Skyward by the end of the day on Friday, May 19th and SLOs are due to be submitted at the end of the day on Monday, May 22nd. If you have all your data before the 19th, and you have your SLO completed, feel free to submit it before the May 22nd date. Again summative meetings will begin on May 23rd (maybe earlier if there are early SLOs submitted), and I will have Sue schedule the meetings. I will submit summative evaluations to teachers at least one day prior to our meetings for your review first. The following are the objectives I am hoping for in our summative conferences with continuing staff:

• Sum up your thoughts and perspectives on the last two-three years.
• My thoughts about overall strengths during the past three years.
• Your thoughts or feedback regarding process, feedback received.
• Talk about strategies and goals for moving forward.

I'd also like teachers who have a summative evaluation to think about this question coming into these meetings:  

As you look back over the last couple of years, how do you think things went?  What went well?  What didn’t go as planned?

Late Start Focus

Staff,

This Thursday is our last late start of the year. You will have a menu of items to complete during this time. First, please complete your fourth form within professional goal setting, called the professional practice goal review.  Here is the district SLO support sheet to help you fill out this document and the other SLO form I will reference later below:  Professional Goal Setting Plan. Once you've reflected on your evidence of progress toward this goal, please submit to me on Thursday. Next, classroom teachers feel free to work on your pink and blue sheets for class placement day, if you haven't already. 5th grade teachers you can also complete the electronic form you need to submit to the middle school.

After this, staff can begin work on the third mylearningplan form within professional goal setting:  SLO end of interval review. I know you won't have your student data to enter the % of students meeting the goal into the first box (summarize the end-of interval status of your goal), but you can reflect on the process/actions you used this year with your students. You also can begin to draft your reflections for the final two boxes:  environmental/contextual implications and your lessons learned this year while going through the 16-17 SLO process. Remember to save any work you completed on this form, and here's a screen shot of it. Finally, any time remaining can be used on third trimester essential learning work or lesson planning for the month of May. There will not be a meeting to start this late start so you can begin work immediately when you arrive to school. However remember on Monday, we have a building forum beginning at 8:05am in the media center.

Proposed Fountas and Pinnell Communication Sheet

Teachers:

At the staff meeting on Tuesday, Amanda McCarthy will be rolling out a proposed new Fountas and Pinnell Communication Form to be used during the Formal Assessment window to communicate reading behaviors to next year's teacher. This form has been updated to give more specific information than the previous quarter sheet. As a school, you'll be coming to a consensus regarding whether you'll shift to the new form this spring or use the quarter sheet you've typically used to communicate reading information to next year's teachers based off the spring Fountas and Pinnell Assessment. Below is an example of the form. Please look over the form and be ready to ask questions of Amanda on Tuesday. Reminder:  5th grade teachers do not need to fill out this form for the middle school. The information you provide electronically for the middle school is sufficient. 

Late Start Agenda

Staff,

At our late start on Thursday a contintental breakfast will be provided in the media center.  Here are the agenda items to be covered:   

• Technology Tips from Collegues
• Teacher Salary Structure Update
• 16-17 SMARTgoal Revisit
• Third Trimester Essential Learning Work:  PLC Products

The next assessment window is a formal one running from May 1st-May 19th. Please ignore placing updated instructional reading levels in Skyward on April 14th. This date is listed on your grade level specific assessment calendars and should have been deleted.

Third Trimester Essential Learning

Staff:

With the Forward Exam one week away for third and fourth grade students, here's a reminder of items to do for test prep this week at the intermediate grades.

Test- Taking Strategies- whole class (March 27-31)    

• Test Preparation PPT  (10 min.)
• Grit/ Growth Mindset- Video on Grit

Forward Exam Platform (March 27- 31)

• Whole Class- Student Tutorials (25- 30 min.)
• Individuals- Practice tests for students- all content areas Firefox, Chrome Browsers (30 min.)

At our Tuesday staff meeting, we will return to our PLC revitalization discussing the following questions that the SMART Team had dialogue around at our last meeting. Day 6 on Wednesday is set aside for teams to decide on their third trimester essential learning, and common formative assessment, using our PLC Products document.

• What has gone well so far this year with the PLC revitalization? What progress have we made toward a successful implementation at our building?

• What has not gone well so far with our PLC rebooting? What unresolved issues are still getting in the way of our success?

• What strategies or suggestions do you have for us to overcome the challenges and to be more successful with our PLC revitalization?

Here's the link to the SMART Team responses regarding these three questions.

Forward Exam Proctoring

WI Forward Exam Preparation

For staff involved in proctoring the Forward Exam, here's some of the information you'll need to know, as well as some of the resources I mentioned at our staff meeting last Tuesday.

Proctors will be completing this Confidentialiy Agreement after the proctoring training at the staff meeting on Tuesday. 

Upcoming reminders regarding Forward Exam Preparation:

March 22nd-24th: Kelli will help 3rd-5th teachers verify classroom Chromebooks have the Forward Code

March 20-31

• 3rd-5th grade students complete the TDA electronic sample question. 5th grade teachers may also choose to give the sample question in early April.

Test- Taking Strategies- whole class (March 27-31)    

• Test Preparation PPT  (10 min.)
• Grit/ Growth Mindset- Video on Grit

Forward Exam Platform (March 27- 31)

• Whole Class- Student Tutorials (25- 30 min.)
• Individuals- Practice tests for students- all content areas Firefox, Chrome Browsers (30 min.)

Forward Exam Testing Schedule

Tuesday's Staff Meeting

Staff,

Welcome back from your well deserved spring break! Your Monday PLC time is set aside for teams to wrap up the second trimester essential learning. If you have additional action steps to record please do so here:  PLC Products.

At Tuesday's staff meeting we'll be digging into a new component from the reading portion of the Forward Exam this year called Test-Dependent Analysis. Here is an overview of this portion of the Forward Exam.

A TDA is a text-based analysis, based on a single passage or a multiple passage set that each student has read during the assessment. The passage or passage set will consist of either literary or informational text. In order to successfully answer a TDA, students must analyze and use information from the passage(s) in order to plan a comprehensive, holistic response. Students will then write their response including supporting evidence from the passage(s). Students will have up to 5,000 characters to formulate their response. Students' responses are scored using a rubric which takes into account both the composition and the conventions of the student’s writing. The TDA portion of the Forward Exam requires students to read the text and then respond in writing in one of several ways:  identifying and explaining a theme or central idea, using textual evidence to support the claim about what that theme or central idea is, and  analyzing the development of an event, character, central ideas, or theme, using textual evidence to support the explanation and analysis.

In teams on Tuesday, you'll be digging into and answering a sample item embedded in my presentation, put in an electronic format by Amanda McCarthy, with the purpose of preparing students for the Forward Exam. These same electronic formats will later be used as practice by 3rd-5th grade students. I have included the criteria for a proficient response, as well as the child friendly language our instructional coaches created.

Child Friendly Proficiency Language

• I answered all parts of the question
• My opinions and ideas are supported with evidence from the text.
• My ideas are logically grouped
• My response has a clear introduction, body, and conclusion (Beginning, Middle and End)  
• I used details, examples, quotes, and/or facts from the text
• I used multiple examples from the text to support the main ideas and key details
• I used transition words
• I used vocabulary from text

Here are the PDF resources with all the sample questions and student exemplars for 3th-4th and 5th grade: TDA Forward Exam 5-6 TDA Forward Exam 3-4

Spring Break Week.

Staff,

With all the students and staff that have been sick, I thought I'd give you these tips, for those of you trying to stay healthy leading up to spring break :).

One more remnder to connect with SMART Team members prior to our meeting on Tuesday to give them your feedback on the following questions regarding our PLC revitalization this year.

1. What has gone well so far this year with the PLC revitalization? What progress have we made toward a successful implementation at our building?

2. What has not gone well so far with our PLC rebooting? What unresolved issues are still getting in the way of our success?

3. What strategies or suggestions do you have for us to overcome the challenges and to be more successful with our PLC revitalization?

Finally, this Friday our early release is set aside for you to work on your report cards and update your instructional reading levels in Skward. Please review the staff bulletin for the timeline on report cards the week we return after spring break. Also at 10:30am on Friday we have our All School Read In happening in the gym. Husky Pals feel free to partner up for this activity if you'd like. Wishing you all a HEALTHY week before spring break.

Staffing and Staff Meeting

Staff,

A reminder that the staffing input form sent out by Andrea Voelker is to be filled out by 4:00pm on Monday. It is mandatory for classroom teachers whose grade levels are going down a section next year and highly recommended for all other classroom teachers to fill out. 

At our staff meeting on Tuesday, time will be allotted to review some of the upcoming Educator Effectiveness items. Here is a link to the month by month calendar in case you want to review prior to the meeting: Month by Month Guidelines. Kara and I are also going to share some of our new learning from the Wisconsin State Reading Association around running records and phonics instruction. 

Finally we are currently in the end of the second trimester assessment window. Here is the assessment calendar for your reference:  Assessment Calendar. You do have the option to use the formal F+P (BAS) assessment during this window for students who you need more information on to align your instruction. However remember the next window starting April 24th you'll formally assess all students, and to maintain validity and reliability to this assessment no more than three formal assessments (BAS) can be given a year per student.