September 6, 2024

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Thank you for letting me come in to your classrooms this week.  It was so great to see all of your students and visit for awhile.

• The interventionists are working together to work on plans for helping with iReady assessments, and also planning for the interventions for the year.

• Shout out to Rose who continues to be a big help for our families with enrollment, registration and transitioning to a new school or school year!  Thank you Rose!

• Teachers modeling, teaching and practicing how to use the sensory paths.  I am very proud of our students that are showing us that they can handle this and use it appropriately!  It's exciting to see what outcomes come from this.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, September 9
• Happy Birthday Roxanne!
• Fall Assessment Window opens (iReady, FastBridge, etc)
• Bus Duty: Zastrow, CaineB, Schulte, Donovan (3K/4K playground)
• Lunch Duty for the week:
• 12-12:25 - Vertz, Elefson
• 12:30-12:55 - Miller, Westphal
• 1:00-1:25pm - McKay, O'Toole
• Jenny in meeting from 8:30-10am
• New Teachers Meeting on PowerSchool Gradebook at 3:15-4pm

• Tuesday, September 10
• Social Media posts due to Jessica: Stampfl, Schuett
• Jenny in meeting from 8:15-8:45am
• Paraprofessional meeting from 3:15-3:45pm in IMC
• 5th/6th Gr Football game at Dodgeland @ 6pm

• Wednesday, September 11
• Workout Wednesday
• Staff Meeting 3:10-3:55pm in IMC

• Thursday, September 12
• Tornado Drill @ 8:30am (Do not share with students)

• Friday, September 13
• Locker numbers for each of your students due to Trisha or myself

Nitty-Gritty

• Goose Passes
• Happy Birthday Everyone!  Trisha is putting a Goose pass for everyone in your mailboxes on Friday morning for you to use when you need it as a birthday present from me!  :-)

• Cox Campus
• If you didn't get an email from Cox Campus to make an account, please let me know.  There is nothing that you need to do in the site.  There are a lot of courses in there, but we will work through the things you need to do as we go through the school year.  Do not stress about this.  It will be broken down into small manageable chunks and we will not finish the whole thing this year.  I just want to make sure that you all have your account because you will need it on our first Early Release coming up.

• Google Classroom and the Staff Resource Page
• Google Classroom is a great way for you to get information, links, etc to your students quickly without a lot of hassle and a million questions for how to log in and to keep them on track with the assignments.  Don't forget that there is a LOT of help on our Staff Resource Page including videos and how to documents.  The more comfortable you become the easier it will be!

• Fall Testing Window
• Starting Monday, 9/9/24, the Fall testing window officially opens.  K-2nd grade will be using FastBridge and 3-5th will be using iReady.  Students should access iReady or areading/amath in FastBridge through Class Link to take the assessments.  Please reach out to the special ed dept and interventionists for assistance with giving the assessment in small groups for those that need it.  The goal is to have very minimal number of retakes.  :-)

• XPD's
• It's that time of year when we start to put the XPD catalog together for staff.  Is anyone interested in leading a session this year for your colleagues.  Maybe you want to lead a book study?  It has been a few years, perhaps someone would like to do a session on Playworks in the classroom?  Do you have tips/tricks on a topic related to your instruction, planning or assessment?  Please let Jessica know if you have an idea for an XPD that you would like to lead this year!

• Sensory Path Reminder
• One quick observation from yesterday's fire drill.  When students are in the drills, please tell them that it is not safe to be using the sensory paths at that time.  If we practice it, it will become a habit!
• If students are carrying their iPads with them, they also should not be using the sensory path so that they do not drop, step on, etc their iPad.  (This may not be a common occurrence, but I wanted it to be on your radar.)
• Flu Clinic
• The flu clinic will be at school on September 24 from 2-4pm.  If you and anyone in your family (spouses, children aged 3 and up) are interested in participating, please make sure to let Laura Grossman know so that she can tell Walgreens.  They want to have enough of the flu shot on hand for us.  

• ClassLink and Student/Teacher Accounts
• Any website, app or software that you are using in your classrooms that has individual accounts MUST be through class link to protect our student's data.  This is anything where they log in including IXL, MyView, FastBridge, Happy Numbers, etc.  If your students are entering a login/password to a site outside of ClassLink, please stop and contact the tech department right away. Following this meeting, they will work on getting it set up.  It may take awhile, so it is important that you do this as soon as possible.

• Custodial/Maintenance Needs?
• As you we go through the school year, please use the link below to let the custodial staff know if you need help with anything from them. https://bit.ly/4g936Nm

Friday Funny

Last weekend, my sister sent our family this picture of her kids at a park they stopped off at on their way home from a road trip to Ohio.  My nephew, Johnny, LOVES baseball.  He plays on a traveling league and can tell you any stat you want about the Brewers.  He was pretending to be Christian Yelich as a two year old in his living room even!  So Why is this in the Friday Funny spot, because, they get to the park, run into kids he has never met before and they decide to play a pick-up game of baseball.  No equipment?  No problem, they found a stick to use as a bat and crumbled up a piece of aluminum foil from their picnic lunches to be the ball.  Then, they could "Play Ball!"  I love it!