November 7, 2025

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Shout out to Stacey who took the EP survey and reworded the statements to fit for 1st graders so they understand the question better!  She is willing to share if anyone else would like a copy for the future!

• Welcome Back to Mrs. Huso!  I talked to a couple of her students today who were glad to see her and told me, "Mrs. Huso really missed us at school and is excited to be here!"

• Shout out to Ms. Duhr who is doing so great with our youngest learners.  I watched her do a lesson with one of her nonverbal students helping him complete a painting activity and teach him to communicate when he wanted "more" or "all done."  Way to go Lexi!

• Shout out to Miss Brittany who is advocating for students in the classroom and helping to figure out how to get their needs met that are way beyond just the academics of the classroom. Thank you Brittany for seeing this need and being so caring and respectful in how to help them.

• Mrs. Gunderson has been busy, busy, busy the last few weeks.  I have sat in on a number of SIT meetings, evaluation meetings, re-evals in the last couple of months. She is always prepared, a great listener/collaborator and I also leave feeling positive about the outcome and sure of the next steps.  Thank you so much for your leadership Ashley!

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Saturday, November 8
• Happy Birthday Kerri!

• Monday, November 10
• Morning Duty
• Playground/Blacktop: Bingen, CaineB, Zastrow
• 3K/4K Playground: Vertz, Donovan (meet buses please)
• Breakfast: Miller, Wagner
• Lunch Duty:
• 12:00 - Donovan
• 12:30 - Huso
• 1:00 - Bingen
• Afternoon Duty:
• Playground: Huso, Lucht
• Circle Drive: Duhr
• Lunch Detentions for the week: Stampfl, Zastrow
• Fundraiser Pickup starts after school at 3:05 in the commons - If you are available, please help for a little bit after school.

• Tuesday, November 11
• Veteran's Assembly in HS gym starting at 9:30-10:30
• Recess times changed (updated on 11/10/25)
• 8:45-9:00 - 4K/5K/1st, 
• 9:00-9:15 - 2nd/3rd, 
• 10:30-10:45 - 4th/5th (as soon as the assembly ends)
• Social Media posts due to Jenny: Huso, Westphal, Neis

• Wednesday, November 12
• Workout Wednesday
• Staff Meeting (Note this date!) @ 3:15 in the IMC

• Thursday, November 13
• Happy Birthday Todd!
• Jenny at Cesa, returning around 1:00ish

• Friday, November 14
• Happy Birthday Betsy!

Nitty-Gritty

• Veterans' Assembly
• The annual Dodgeland Veteran's Assembly is planned for Tuesday, November 11 starting at 9:30 for students in grades 4K-12th grade. (Our 3K students will not attend, but will get to go next year!)  It is tentatively planned to take approximately an hour.  The recess times have changed slightly, so be sure to check that above. If you have duty, please mindful that you know the time to be outside.  Also, please dress professionally as we have many guests in our building that day.

• Help Desk Tickets
• This is a friendly reminder to be sure that you are using the Helpdesk Ticket system to communicate needs you have with technology or with safety/security needs.  This is especially important as we look towards next month when Brad will be on paternity leave.  You can find this in the staff resource page, at the top of your laptop in the IT Support App, or on your iPad.

• Newly Enrolled Students
• When new students enroll into the district during the school year, there is a process that needs to be followed in order for them to become active students in PowerSchool.  In order for the Tech Dept to set up an iPad for the student, they must be active students in PowerSchool. This means that when a new student starts in our building, their iPad will be ready for them no earlier than Day 2 of their attendance.  It may take another 24 hours for accounts to sync on the iPads. (i-Ready, ST Math, etc.) Please keep this in mind if you get a new student this school year.

• AIMSWeb Plus
• Whew, just in time.  (insert eye roll). Math is now up and running on AimsWeb for all grades.  Please refer to the assessment planning doc HERE for the How-to videos and the specific subtests for each grade.  The assessment for grades 5K-1st is 1:1 interview style.  For grades 2-5, the assessment is through their iPad on TestNav and can be done as a group. You will need approximately 10 min. to complete both assessments in the room. (They are timed tests; one is a 3min test and the other is a 4 min test.)

• Dodge County Land and Water Conservation Poster Contest
• If you are interested, they are participating in the 2026 Poster concert. The theme is "Soil. Where it all Begins."  Click HERE to read the letter from the department and click HERE for the details for the poster itself.  Feel free to introduce your students to this if it fits with your lessons.

• The WORST four letter word I know!
• Yep, you guessed it, MICE! These unwanted visitors have been around the building in a number of places in the past few weeks. Why wouldn't they want to be in our school, it is warm and dry, has lots of food options, and of course we are so FUN!
• Seriously, though, please help us to keep this problem from getting worse.
• Keep food in sealed containers.  Mice can get into drawers and cabinets and can eaily chew through bags. It is best  to not keep food in an easily accessible storage location.
• Make sure to clean up after yourselves. Don't leave lunch containers out and help our students make sure they are regularly taking snack containers home and food out of lockers.
• Mice love to find little places to nest so do your best to avoid clutter around your room so they don't burrow in and make themselves at home!
• If you see anything, please let maintenance (Virgil/James) or Patti/I know so that we can get someone to help with getting them out of the room!

💡 $20,000 Micro-Grant Opportunity!

The Smart Thinking Foundation, thanks to a donation from CESA 6, is offering $20,000 in micro-grants for 2026. Each Grant is up to $1000.

The grant empowers schools to drive student success through projects like:

• Updating web solutions.

• Utilizing school data analysis.

• Enhancing academic and career planning.

• District leadership coaching.

Think big about how a small grant can make a huge impact on your students and staff!

Apply Here

Recess Information

Playground Evacuation Protocol Update
To alleviate some of the congestion when we need to evacuate the playground in a hurry, we have made the following change:

• Students playing on the turf, playground equipment or grass will enter DOOR (2nd/3rd grade doors).
• Students playing on the blacktop will enter DOOR (4th/5th grade doors).
• All students regardless of the door they enter should quietly walk back to their classrooms, sit at their desks, and wait for the next instructions.

We will be practicing this procedure again over the next few weeks unannounced. 

Please add any questions, concerns or feedback from our drill HERE. Thanks for everyone’s help and flexibility in learning this new procedure.

Behavior Specialist Information

2nd Quarter Incentive

This quarter we will be focusing on “Be Respectful”.  Here is the matrix to review.

Students can earn Poms for showing respectful behavior. Please record Poms your students receive on the “Schoolwide Be Respectful” button in Class DoJo. If you don’t have Poms, you can also just give a student a DoJo point for “Schoolwide Be Respectful”. Additional Poms are located by the mailboxes in the office if you want/need more Poms.

Zone of Regulation

Here is the presentation that I shared with your classes. Please review all or any of it with your class as necessary.

ML Information

It's already the 2nd quarter of school! This quarter's tips for ML learners and teachers will be about Encouraging Interaction & Deepening Comprehension.

Tip:

Use Sentence Starters. Provide sentence starters and sentence frames to help students participate in discussions and written work.

For example:

" I think _____________ because..." 

"In my opinion..."

TechKnow Tip

Recording mini-lessons or instructional videos offers significant research backed benefits for student learning! Check out these key reasons:

• Self-Paced Learning: Videos allow students to learn at their own speed. They can pause, rewind to review confusing concepts (the "muddiest points"), or re-watch entire lessons, which helps manage cognitive load and is especially useful for students who were absent.

• Improved Attention: Research shows student engagement drops significantly after just 6-10 minutes. Breaking lessons into shorter video segments aligns better with students' natural attention limits, helping them stay focused and retain more information.

• Flexible Review: A library of recorded lessons provides students with a way to review material at any time, which is a powerful tool for retrieval practice and exam preparation, unlike live lectures that can't be replayed.

• Clearer Content: The process of recording encourages teachers to organize their thoughts, prioritize core content, and deliver more coherent explanations, ultimately improving the clarity of the lesson.

So how do you get started? Utilize screen record (and Freeform to write) on your iPad or QuickTime on your laptop.

Click HERE to see how to screen record on your iPad!

Click HERE to see how to use QuickTime on your laptop!

Click HERE to read the entire Edutopia article!

Friday Funny

This week was full of moments where I asked myself, "Did that really just happen?"  And, I also believe that I need to check the moon phase when conferences come up for staff.  How on earth did I miss that it was a full moon and both Patti and Teresa were out of the building?!  At least then I would prepare for what is coming up! Anyone else feel like this teacher this week?  :-)