March 6, 2020

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• 5th grade students sounded so great at this week's Band-O-Rama.  It was fun to listen to their excitement for the concert on Monday night.
• Staff members collaborated to provide needed services for students in crisis.
• Jr. Coaches modeling for younger students how to walk in the hallway.
• First grade students are adding with some BIG numbers this week!
• Fifth graders are very excited to choose and start their Fantasy Book Club unit for reading.
• A third grade student finished his first Harry Potter book in a single day!  A new generation of book fans is growing at Dodgeland!

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, March 9
• Mentors/Mentee Meeting in the IMC at 3:15pm
• Jenny is in an online training for Powerschool from 9-3:15.
• Tuesday, March 10
• Day 2 of online training for Powerschool for Jenny from 9-4pm
• Wednesday, March 11
• 5K Grade Level Data meeting at 12:10
• Staff meeting in the IMC at 3:10
• Thursday, March 12
• Dress for Success Day
• Friday, March 13
• Coach Jena from Playworks visits recess.

Nitty-Gritty

• Gum
• I know that many students rely on gum to help with concentration/focus or for calming strategies.  I believe that it can be especially helpful for many students.  However, I need your help.  Can you please reinforce the expectation of placing gum in garbage cans?  We have a couple of young students that are finding it on the floor in other places like the playground or in the bathroom.  It becomes a distraction and irresistible for them.  Thank you in advance for your support.

• PLTW
• Now that it is March, it is time to check in on your plans for PLTW.  Do you have the units/modules scheduled in your plans for the rest of the year?  Do you need to sign out the PLTW Lab in the elementary?  
• In addition, there is a training for staff members (some from here and some from an outside district) in the PLTW lab on March 17 from 8-3pm.  This may affect any PLTW plans for some classrooms so I wanted to make sure you knew ahead of time.

• Mystery Science
• I am receiving emails about our free trial for Mystery Science for this year.  Have you used this with your students?  If you have used it this year at all, please give me feedback through email to tell me how you used it, what the strengths of it was, and your hope for it for future school years.

• Science Materials in the Lounge
• There are many, many science materials currently stored in the staff lounge.  A small group of teachers would like to organize the lounge and particularly the science materials.  If you would like to help with this process by looking through and organizing the supplies, please contact Mandy.

• Summer School Opportunity for students
• The Greater Watertown Community Health Foundation is sponsoring a new program that will be utilized in our summer school programming for remediation and preventing summer slide for students going into 1-2 (and some 3) grades.  The program is called Bellxcel. Mitch Wedel and Rose Fobes will be working with students in this morning course called Scholars on the Move.  The program provides a curriculum for SEL, Math and ELA.  This course will replace the Jumpstart to 1st and 2nd grade courses and will be by teacher recommendation only.  In the coming weeks, more information will be shared to help teachers determine students to recommend for this program.  We have a strict limit of 24 students total. 

PD Spotlight

This week the PD spotlight is centered on this book that I have been reading.  There was a study that was discussed in the book that almost 80% of parents agreed with the statement "it's more important that my children are kind to others" than "academically successful." However, when children were surveyed about what their children's top priority was for them, 44% of children said they wanted them to be happy, 33% said it was doing well in school and 23% said it was to be kind.  The hypothesis from the authors and researchers that they were citing is that kindness must be taught.  I think about all the work that we are doing at Dodgeland surrounding SEL and focusing on kindness.  It will be a long process, but I believe that we are on the right track.  It is important that we continue to expect students to be kind, model how to do this in the classroom and create habits where we practice affirmations and kindness to others with our coaching.  If you would like to borrow this book, please let me know.  It has some very practical pieces that I found useful as well.

Friday Funny

This made me laugh because at this point in my life, I just wait until the whole season is done so I can watch them when I want to.  (Or how about using the commercial break to go to the bathroom and rushing so much because you didn't want to miss anything!  My children have no idea the stress of watching TV back in the day!). Lol