February 21, 2025

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Monday's PD sessions on accommodation and accessibility was great learning for me.  I could tell that Jen and Christina and Brad put a lot of thought, energy and work into the presentations.  Thank you so much for this!!  I know that we talk about this a lot, but it is important to keep seeing the options so that we can use them when our students can benefit from the techniques.  Thank you for continuing to implement these things when students need it!

• Shout out to Stephanie Schuett for teaching our 4K students to successfully use the Think, Pair, Share strategy to talk about background knowledge about the sun.  It was so incredible watching even our youngest learners be so engaged and communicating with one another.  My favorite thing they "know" about the sun is that it has spikes!  :-)

• As you know, our 3K students main job is play and what a good job they do!  Plus, their teachers are modeling and prompting them to communicate with one another while playing, clean up after themselves, asking for help and even peers feeling good about helping their friends.  Shout out to Bethany and Chris for giving our littles such a great start to their education career!

• A week of indoor recess is a lot, but thank you to all of our paras and teachers that have kept that time period safe, fun and as conflict free as possible.  You're Amazing!

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, February 24
• Happy Birthday Heather Stange!
• Bus Duty: Klink, Caine-Arnes, Lucht, Wagner (3K/4K end - please meet the buses at the end of the sidewalk in the am's)
• Lunch Supervisors:
• 12:00 - Braunschweig
• 12:30 - Miller
• 1:00 - O'Toole
• Jenny in meeting from 8:30-10am
• School Board Meeting at 6:30pm

• Tuesday, February 25
• Social Media Posts due to Jessica - Wagner
• Lunch Detention Supervisors
• 12:00 - Stampfl
• 12:30 and 1:00 - Open

• Wednesday, February 26
• Workout Wednesday
• Staff Meeting 3:10-3:55pm in IMC

• Thursday, February 27
• Jenny in meeting from 11-1pm

• Friday, February 28

Nitty-Gritty

• Safety Drill Volunteers Needed
• Please see Brad's email from last Friday (2/14) looking for people that are interested and willing to be volunteers that are participating in the drill.  This is taking place during our spring break, April 14-17. If this is something you'd like to do, please let Brad know as soon as you are able.

• Christina's Tech Slides
• Click HERE to see Christina's slides from Monday's PD session.  Please refer to this if you need help on how to provide accommodations or accessibility techniques to your lessons or communication for your students.  It is very important for our students that we make accommodations for them so that they can do their best work.

• Sound Equipment in Gym
• Next week, the tech department will start to move the tech equipment into the elementary gym to be used during the HS Musical practice after school.  This means that students will need to be careful around the equipment during PE and during any indoor recess times.  Please help reiterate to students to stay away from this equipment.

• Sense of Urgency
• One week from today, we will be at the end of February already.  This means we have only 3 months left of school.  Please continue to plan your lessons and days with a sense of urgency.  I don't want to be an alarmist, but we have limited time left that we get to work on SEL skills, academic skills and enjoy them.  Thank you in advance for making good use of every minute we have with our students!

PD Spotlight

This week's letter is U and in just a few words, it says A LOT!  This is not only true for our students but our colleagues as well.  When we talk about others (kids, parents and colleagues) and make assumptions about events that may not be 100% accurate, we are adding to these emotional backpacks.  This does not help us feel better, work together as a team, or feel good about our jobs.  Being curious and asking questions and then listening with an open mind for the answers is a great way avoid adding to the emotional backpacks, maybe even lighten the load, but also to avoid misplaced judgments. None of us try to get in these situations, and it is easy to do, but please remember we all have our own stories that comes with our own baggage that affects us from time to time. Be Kind and Be Curious as often as possible.

TechKnow Tip

This week we all learned what an asset Canva can be with everything from document translating to the creation of posters, worksheets, or presentations. Once you are done creating, there are a variety of ways to share your work. The “Share” button in the top right of your screen gives you the initial options of downloading or even sharing directly to Google Classroom (pictured below). The Google Classroom option will show up for students as a view only Canva project. If you choose “Download”, you will have a choice of what type of file you would like and where to save it (pictured below). Google Drive is a great place to save it when sharing it with others. OneDrive is a great place to save if you are printing things. Please remember to take time to save it to the cloud (Google, OneDrive, iCloud Files) and NOT your desktop or downloads.

Friday Funny

This week one of our 4th graders was helping Ella create a video for our March Attendance initiative.  I wanted a student voice in the video and this student is in the den every day so I knew that I wouldn't have to take him out of class!  Plus, Miss Alexis and Miss Ella were willing to share him!  Watching this happen in my office though was hilarious!  Almost every sentence started with a sniffle.  He'd fumble some words and tell me there was a glitch or that the wifi went out causing an error!  And the whole time Miss Ella got to build up her skill of patience.  It was so enjoyable for me to watch! Listen to one of his bloopers here.