September 18, 2020

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Teachers are using SeeSaw with their classroom by instructing how it works during separate lessons that allowed an easier transition to students independently using it in class.

• Problem solving in teams to determine the best next steps for students struggling to transition to school.

• Students working hard on their own i-Ready assessments.

• If you haven't been outside lately, you should see the kids that are walking their bikes without any reminders at all!  :-)

• Staff keeping parents informed of positive events and challenges occurring at school.  The relationship between school and home is helping students with more positive days than negative.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

Monday, September 21

• School Board meeting

Tuesday, September 22

Wednesday, September 23

• Workout Wednesday 
• Elementary Staff meeting on BlueJeans 92038610003 @ 3pm

Thursday, September 24

Friday, September 25

Nitty-Gritty

• Preparing for the Unknown

• It is important that every staff member (and students) is taking their ipad and/or laptop home with them every night.  If we would have to go virtual, you would want to have your supplies nearby.  Likewise, one never knows if the next day you may need to be absent from school (for any reason), so having a contingency lesson plan ready might relieve stress for you if this were to happen to you.  Please leave these plans in a place that is easily accessible.  This includes a plan for your blended students and how you will communicate with them and how they will access the plan for their day.  (For example, do they look for announcements on Schoology? Dojo? SeeSaw? Email?  How do they know what to do for their schoolwork that day?).

• In addition, Kimi spent much of the day emailing and calling personally to the substitutes on our sub list.  Just like last year, the list is small and many times the positions will be filled from within.  This is what we do as a team.  As a system we want to continue to provide a safe place for our students that is centered on learning.  This means it is an "all hands on deck" situation.  We support each other and I have watched you all step in and help out in so many ways already this year.  This is one more way that we will get to support our colleagues.

• In addition, this might mean that there may be days where there is not enough coverage for a lunch period.  If a lunch period is unable to be covered, and you have to remain with your students during your own lunch period, this will be considered an extra duty that should be noted on your extra duty sheet that gets handed in during the month of December and June. Hopefully this will be a very rare occurrence.

• PowerTeacher Pro Updates

• Brad and I have been working together to get the grade books set up for the target based grading.  You may begin to see some changes in your grade books in the coming days that I want you to be aware of before they happen. The first change is that because we now have our ELA learning targets identified for each grade, we are putting them into a single course in the grade books and on the report card.  For many years, there has been a writing, spelling and reading course.  Because all of these areas are covered in the domains in our ELA target based work, they will be combined in the grade book.  In the coming days, you will see a new course called ELA Grade __.  This course will replace the old reading, spelling and writing course.  All of the evidence for the learning targets will be in one single course.  If you currently have assignments in the grade book, the course will be archived and still accessible to you, but you will have to copy and paste the assessment into the new course.

• Second, because Powerschool updates are synced with a number of other applications, you will see this reflected in these programs as well. (i-Ready, Schoology, SeeSaw, etc)

• The grading scale will be PRO, DEV, NSP.  (Proficient, Developing, Needs Support).

PD Spotlight

We have talked about the benefits of gratitude many, many times.  In fact, I use this with my daughter as often as I can to help her see past her typical teenager lens, that not everything stinks every single day.  So when I came across this very short video from one of my favorite authors, Daniel Pink, I knew I just had to share.  I wonder if it could even be something that we encourage with our students as well.  Just a thought.  I am grateful for a school team that is a joy to work with, the ability to find something to laugh about every day, and a son who will take the garbage out every Thursday night, even when it is 11pm!

What are you grateful for today?

Friday Funny

This was captured by my sister at a park in the Milwaukee area.  Even the Racing Sausages are wearing their face coverings, and they are taking on a new activity!  Who knows, maybe he was just hoping someone would give him an "under duck." lol