Michael's Memo 10/29/17

Michaels' Memo 10/29/17

Good evening, reviewing the data of our STAR Reports, we are moving in the right direction with our students. Administration is pleased with the consistency of instruction being shown throughout the campus. I want to really thank our support staff (coaches, testing coordinator, paras, and assistant principals) for providing data support, behavioral support, and coaching. We would like for all of the staff members to provide the names of students that they feel need the most support in the areas of behavior, emotional support, and conflict resolution skills. We are focusing on mentoring these students to assist in growing our student body.

Curriculum Focus
ELA:
Sticky Standards
K reviews literature standard RL.1.2 and introduces an informational standard RI.3.8 with weekly text. Building a foundation now with prompting and support for RI.3.8 is critical. Tasks and questions should help students identify the most important points the author is trying to make in informational text, and identify the reasons an author gives to support those points.

1st introduces RI.1.2. Learning targets include identifying the main topic of informational text, identifying key details, and retelling key details.

2nd-4th are reviewing standards so there should be evidence of increased student autonomy and depth of student responses. They also introduce standards never directly introduced in Reading Wonders. Some time should be devoted during the week to begin work with these standards.  As they apply, additional tasks can be used in future weeks with text or centers to develop learning targets.
·         2nd learning targets for RI.2.5: identify text features, identify their purpose to support understanding, and use text features to locate key facts or information.
·         3rd learning targets for RI.2.5: identify text features and search tools that assist in finding information, and use text features to locate information relevant to a given topic.
·         4th learning targets for RI.3.9: Identify the most important points from two texts on the same topic, categorize information, and integrate information from two texts to write or speak for a given purpose.
5th introduces RL.1.2 which includes identifying how characters respond to challenges, inferring a theme from text details, and summarizing literature by stating the theme and details that reveal it.

MATH:

  • Please don’t under utilize all of the great resources in the math elementary resource site in Moodle.
  • On the Moodle site for each grade there is an iStation  link that will provide the standards for small group instruction that should be teacher led for the standards. Great ideas to support teachers for small group instruction. Please share your teachers to assist in small group planning.
  • Several inquiries concerning third grade students recently promoted to fourth with good cause SAT 10. Joe and Kerri are reviewing some strategies/plans to bridge the 9 week math loss as those students transition. Stay tuned.
Shout Outs
Great work by the kindergarten grade level for having engaging, standards based lessons within the classroom. Special shout out to Mrs. Trueheart for the wonderful classroom management tool of 1,2,3,4 that had the students transition in complete science and multiply on task time for the students within the classroom. If any of the instructors are looking for a method of transitioning the students, I strongly suggest you speak with Mrs. Trueheart.
Special Shout out to all 7th grade instructors for leading the school in AR points. We really want to encourage all students to always have a reading book and to engage in the activity before and after school. Please look to incorporating the practice of having students read when they have completed their assignments, instead of sitting idle or packing up early. 

Behavior Update
Extremely important that we keep up with the JAC card marks online.
Please make sure if you feel that if an incident constitutes a referral, that you write it and contact the parent letting them know that the student received a referral (phone, e-mail, or text).
We cannot support the staff with your concerns if you do not make administration aware of the incidents. 
Please continue to monitor the students during class exchange and hold the students accountable for arriving on time.

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