January 22, 2021

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• A 5K teacher praised a student on her skill in retelling a story.  You could see her pride, even with the mask, as she shared her strengths with this skill.

• Teachers that worked so hard on report cards and comments for this first semester.  So many well-thought out questions, attention to detail, and strong feedback for students and families.  Your hard work was definitely noticed!

• A team of people came together to plan for a student that is really struggling right now.  Working with a strong team of compassionate adults makes me proud to be a Dodgeland staff member!

• There were many students that were happy to be back at school this week.  I checked in with many of them who were telling me how glad they are to be back at school.  I know it is because you all worked extra hard to have make a welcoming environment.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, January 25
• School Board meeting 6:30pm
• Tuesday, January 26
• Wednesday, January 27
• Workout Wednesday
• Staff meeting @ 3pm on BlueJeans 9203861003
• Thursday, January 28
• Friday, January 29

Nitty-Gritty

• Valentine's Day
• Valentine's Day is coming up.  If you are planning on students exchanging valentines this year, please plan ahead.  Since they will be coming from lots of different places, we want them to be COVID friendly when we give them to students.  This means that they should not include any baked items along with them and should be brought in to school in advance so that they can sit without being touched before handing them out to others.  All students should wash hands before handing out the valentines on 2/14.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

• Recess Update for cold weather Days
• Now that it is January, it is typical for us to end up with indoor recess because of cold weather.  The standard for indoor recess is a temperature less than 0 degrees or a windchill of less than 0.  In order to be systematic about communicating any changes to recess, we are going to follow this plan.  
• Recess decisions will be made by 9:15 for 4K/5K recess and by 11:45am for the afternoon recesses (grades 1-5).  Staff will be notified through email or Marie on the intercom.  
• Chris V/Stephanie S/Jenny will check temp for the 4K/5K recess and communicate with Marie.  
• Alicia Hahn will check temp for the grades 1-5 recesses and communicate with Marie.
• Click Here to see the coverage for indoor recess. Indoor recess takes place within your classrooms and a staff member will come to supervise them. (The chart is on the supervision tab on the schedules spreadsheet.)
• Indoor recess could be brain break activities, Go Noodle movement breaks, board games, indoor playworks games, etc.

• Communication to Families from Lynnae
• On Thursday, 1/21, Nurse Lynnae Shaw sent a digital letter and visual to parents through school messenger.  To read this important note about when to keep students home, click here.

• Blended Learning Expectations
• As a reminder, the second semester comes with some revised expectations and procedures designed to help our students be successful and develop strong studying habits.  Click here to read the handout again.  One of the important parts of this document is the expectations related to work completion (in addition to the attendance pieces).  In order for us to be consistent, please let me know about any students that are failing to meet these expectations.
• 

PD Spotlight

This week when Sue sent out the link to the article about the Mathematic Practices, I thought, "Man, I wish I had read this years before now."  It was so much easier to imagine how students use these math practices and ways I could have been putting them into practice.  The other thing that the article reminded me was of our conversation last week during our Bridges math discussion.  We agreed that we wanted to have students participating more in discussions related to math.  If you were like me, you may have wondered ways to do this, especially as one of the practices is related to making sound arguments and critiquing others' reasoning.  I found the this resource to be especially helpful if I were to be working on ways to add more student talk in math.  What do you think?

Friday Funny

Dr. Thompson shared this with me.  I know there has got to be more than just me that would love their own rest time during the day, right?  Let's hope this thought runs through a few 4 year olds minds today!  :-)