December 16, 2022

 FYI: Shortened Blog this week, hope to get back on track next week.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, December 19
• Wear Red/Green (or ugly sweater day) and don't forget to get your picture taken in the Green Screen Room!  Everyone that participates gets their name in a drawing for a gift card!
• Bus Duty: Bingen, Juech, Vertz
• School Board Mtg @ 6:30pm
• MS Winter concert @7pm

• Tuesday, December 20
• Social Media posts due: Palen, Jenkins, Schuett
• Santa's Workshop Imposter Day
• Jenny in Mtg from 8-9am
• SEL 4th gr Data meeting 12:35-1:25pm
• HS Winter concert @ 7pm

• Wednesday, December 21
• Wake Up & Go Wednesday (PJ Day)
• Academic 1st gr Data Meeting 12:05-12:55pm

• Thursday, December 22
• Christmas Character Day
• Jenny in mtg from 8:30-9:30am

• Friday, December 23
• Ugly Sweater Day

Nitty-Gritty

• Summer School Info
• It's time to start thinking about next summer already!  This year we will have two sessions to choose from for teaching.  You can choose to teach in both, or just one of the two sessions.  Please click HERE to indicate your interest.  This summer we will not have construction to work around, all areas of the building will be available for students and staff, AND we will hopefully not be quarantining for COVID either.  I am not even sure I remember what our typical summer school sessions looked like anymore.  :-)

• Please consider teaching as it is a fantastic way to connect with students in another way, teach subjects that are focused on student and your interests, and the opportunity to work with new things and other grade levels as well.  Our summer school session offers a lot of enrichment options as well remedial and credit recovery options for older students.  For our younger students, it is a fun way to practice routines before the school year starts and meet their upcoming classmates too!

• Bulletin Board
• Please help communicate with your students about pulling on the staples and thumbtacks on the big bulletin board outside the commons.  It may be happening when students are lining up there after lunch too, but if we all send the same message, it will help with the consistency for students as well.  Plus, Courtney works really hard on displaying their work and I would hate for this to be wrecked because students' are touching it.  Plus, students could get hurt if they continue to play with these items.  Thank you in advance for your help.

• Mental Health Grant Consultant
• On Monday, Jessica sent an email to introduce our new mental health grant consultant.  Her name is Nicole Mashock and she will be in the district most Tuesdays and the last Thursday of the month working on putting the mental health grant together for our districts.  You may see her in our SEL data meetings and she is available to help with individual teachers with students that are exhibiting specific behavioral concerns.  Watch for emails from her in the near future with more information.

• PLTW Planning
• We are just about halfway through the school year already.  It is very hard to believe.  I wanted to put a reminder out there to make sure that you have worked with your grade level to plan when you will be teaching your grade's PLTW modules.  The goal is to teach two modules by the end of the year.  It is an important part of our district-wide initiatives with the emphasis on STEAM and our community's values in this area.  If you have questions or concerns, please see me or Mrs. O'Toole to help with this.

• Mid-Year Assessments
• To plan for January, please know that the mid-year assessments for i-Ready and FastBridge will start on Monday, January 9 and will be open for the next 4 weeks.  Please coordinate with your colleagues about when you will be giving these assessments so that there are resources and adults available for students with accommodation plans.  Please see me if you need any additional help for this. 

• Winter Break
• While many of our students and us are looking forward to the holidays and for the long break, please be in-tune for any students that seem to be struggling more this week.  For some, the break provides a week where the routines are off, an unknown about where they are going each day, stress passed on from families that are under more stress, and anxiety about food.  If you notice anything like this, please reach out to the pupil service team or myself so that we can provide help. 

Tech Know Tip

Tis the season for a little fun! BreakoutEDU is an immersive learning game platform with both physical and digital puzzle elements to solve. A physical BreakoutEDU “room” can be time consuming to set up, so that’s where a digital BreakoutEDU “room” can come in handy. BreakoutEDU is provided to all classroom teachers through the IMC- that means you can use the pre-created materials from the site, you can create digital breakout “rooms” specific to your content, and you can create classes of students to view progress and statistics of any of the BreakoutEDU puzzles. Digital BreakoutEDU puzzles can be shared with students via link or QR code- what a fun thing to do as a soft-start/bell ringer, study hall, or end of the day fun. For those not already connected, you will receive an email to get started sometime today. Until then, check this one out as an example!

Friday Funny

I laughed at this for an unusually long time. :-)