October 7, 2022

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Staff members asking great questions of the MyView literacy coach.  I love how you are thinking and advocating for your students.

• Staff working together to help out when students are struggling with their own SEL skills.  It always seems better when you have colleagues and others to lean on when these situations become stressful.

• The para-educator meeting was full of really great questions and idea sharing to help us all understand issues and be on the same page. Thank you for your professionalism.

• Michelle went through all of the fundraiser packets and organized the orders to be sent in amongst about a million other things that she did this week.  Thank you so much Michelle!

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, October 10
• Jenny in meeting from 8:15-9:15am
• Bus Duty: Donovan, Lucht, Palen

• Tuesday, October 11
• Jenny in a meeting from 8:30-10am
• Social Media Posts due to Josh - Bingen, Chambers
• 1st Gr SEL meeting 12:05-12:55pm
• Parent Teacher Conferences 4-7:30pm
• Book Fair 4-7:30pm

• Wednesday, October 12
• Workout Wednesday
• 4th Grade Academic Data Meeting 12:35-1:25pm
• Jenny leaving for a conference at 9:45am

• Thursday, October 13
• Jenny gone all day

• Friday, October 14
• FFA Petting Zoo (9am-2pm)
• Picture Retake Day (on stage)
• SLO/PPG forms due for EP
• Jenny gone all day

Nitty-Gritty

• FFA Petting Zoo
• Here is a message from Carley Nehls from Dodgeland FFA.
• The FFA is excited to once again host the Annual Petting Zoo on Friday, October 14. The members are working hard to develop their educational stations that your classes can rotate through. Please sign-up for a time slot on this Google Sheet. Attached is a letter that you can share with your families regarding the event.

• Parent Teacher Conferences
• Please let me know if there are any conferences that you would like me to sit in on.  In addition, I will have some food set up after school for you to snack on both nights before, in between or after your conferences.  This is just a little something to show you how much I appreciate all the hard work you are putting in to prepare for these important conferences with your families.

• Passwords
• Did you change your password yet?  Some of us may have had passwords that expired this week, if it didn't, it will soon.  Brad sent out an email with directions for us last week.  In case you need some reminders of how to make a password that matches the Dodgeland Password Policy requirement, it is below. Click HERE to see the video on how to create a strong password.
• Must be 10 characters long
• Must have a symbol
• Must have a number
• Must have a Capital Letter
• Password expires every 370 days
• Cannot contain words or phrases such as Dodgeland, Trojans, Juneau, password, teacher and other common dictionary words
• Search for Brad's email from last week and this week that describes the process of how to change your password.  The subject line was Password Portal/Change Network Password.

• Substitute Teacher folders
• Below are the details that Christina emailed out this week.  Please keep these in mind as you create your lesson plans in the folders when you need to be out.
• Add your daily sub plans and emergency sub plans to the Google Shared Drive titled "Substitute Teacher Plans". Emergency plans will most likely stay the same throughout the year unless you end up using them. Daily sub plans are for the plans for your scheduled absences. 
• Title your daily sub documents with the dates you will be absent. (Example: 10-10-2022)
• Create your plans in Google Docs. You can add hyperlinks to websites and resources that can be accessed easily for substitute teachers with one click.
• Substitutes will be able to look at your seating charts through PowerSchool, so be sure to keep them up to date.
• Check out more information on the staff resource page here. 

PD Spotlight

Below is a summary of the virtual meeting with our MyView literacy coach.  She will be visiting in person on Tuesday, October 25.  She will be coming to observe classrooms during literacy for as many as she can and then meeting with grade levels/individuals to answer any questions and provide guidelines as you continue the pilot for those involved.

• If you would like to see a detailed scope and sequence, you can find this in the Savvas Realize learning system.  You would need to go to the browse resources section, find the gettting started link.  From there choose the grade level and then scope and sequence.  This will give you a pdf of the entire year.  From there you can see what skills spiral and particular routines that repeat throughout each unit.  (For example, you will see genres spiraling throughout the units and also from grade to grade.)

• Not every skill is expected to be at mastery during the year.  For example, the 5K curriculum has about 90 high frequency words that are intended to provide exposure and emphasize and teach the difference between decodable and non-decodable words.  Plus, many of these words are then repeated in 1st grade where they do become mastered words.

• Independent reading by students does not need to tie to that week's genre.  The important part is that they are reading during independent reading.  You could encourage students to read from a number of different genres throughout the year though, but be careful not to make it mandated that they read from each genre which could cause more harm than good in reading enjoyment as well.

• Pacing - 
• The goal is to finish 4 units by the end of the year.  When planning for the lessons, set aside the time that you need for certain sections and then plan the other parts around that.  For example, if you want to have small group instruction going set those 30 minutes into the schedule first.  Then put the other lesson parts around that time period.  One day's lesson may take 2 days and that is ok.  Looking ahead, will you be finished, or close to finished by November 11?

• Spelling - It is not necessary to give weekly spelling tests to put in the gradebook, but you certainly can.  The word study section is one of the weakest areas for our students currently, so some of your students (or many of your students) may need to have a shortened list to work on or a list from a previous grade.  Work with your team to determine what would be best for students in your class.

• Student page:  "Just because there is a student page, it doesn't mean that the kids have to fill it out.  It could be done as a discussion, or a whiteboard lesson, etc."  I wrote this down verbatim from Allison because I thought it might be something you need to hear again down the line.

• The writing from Weeks 1-5 is meant to build from one week to the next with a published piece at the end of that week.  This was a point of confusion with myself and many others.

• Finally, Week 6 is the project and the writing project there is separate from the writing from weeks 1-5.  This was done by design.

• Clever - In order to get in to the MyView online portal for anyone that is not in yet, please login through the Clever app on your ipad and go to the District tab.  OR Go to Clever.com and log in using Google and go to the District tab.  Some have shared that they are going in with the demo site yet, but this should work for us all.  Please enter a helpdesk ticket if you are unable to get in through Clever.

Friday Funny

In honor of the book fair that is next week, here's the Friday Funny for this week.  This is exactly how I felt when I was a kid and the book fairs came to school too!