Thank you for your hard work and being a part of our MGE family, Alice Hahn!
Welcome back Allison Costa!
Box Top Contest - Heather Doocy, PTO President, left boxtop collection sheets and contest overviews in your boxes to send home with the kids Friday (today). She will be bringing in collection envelopes for the teachers on Monday with more details. Winning classes from each grade level will earn an extra recess or gym time (weather pending). Heather appreciates your support with this contest.
Fall Fundraiser - Fortunately for kids...and unfortunately for me...students reached the goal of 575 sold books and donations!! I will announce this at our assemblies on Friday and will be sporting a dress the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I cannot wait. ;-) ...anyone have something that might fit?
Books for BINGO - Books for BINGO is on Friday, November 12th. It will be held in the gym from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. The PTO still needs 3 more teachers to help call out numbers - please contact Carrie Foster (<--click to email) to volunteer only 15 minutes of your time for this great event.
Inform - The fall 2010 MAP assessment results have been imported into Inform. Both the overall RIT score and the goal/strand RIT scores (Inform refers to them as _concepts_) have been imported into Inform.
DIBELS - reminder from last week...We will not be getting or giving out DIBELS reports to parents - DIBELS does not have that report ready yet for the DIBELS Next version.
Progress Reports - At this time, the progress reports are not 'printer-friendly.' They print in a narrow column and are 6-7 pages long - definitely not something worth printing. We are going to recommend that you not "advertise" the printing option to parents, unless they request it. Teachers may want to pull up each students' progress report during the conference for the parent, teacher, and student to view together. The original plan was to not print any progress reports this year. Due to the PowerSchool printing glitch from the parent portal, we will print 2 progress reports for each student at the end of the school year. One copy will be placed in the cum and one copy will be sent home. District office will work on building the parent-friendly and professional-looking progress reports that we will print in May. Until then, progress reports are all electronic. We will communicate this in our newsletter this week.
But what if...the parent does not have internet access at home and wants a paper copy? The records in the office indicate we have a few parents without internet access. We believe teachers can do a "print screen" from the teacher's view of a child's progress report. You may do this for parents who do not have access to the report at home and who request it. The comments will not be included in this view so you can handwrite or type those for the parents if needed.
But what if...the parent wants to discuss the progress report, the changes to reporting and how it cannot be printed, etc. during our conference time? We hope the information already sent out and additional information I will send out at the end of next week help parents understand that conferences is a time for you, their child and the parents to talk about needed progress and/or the student's academic achievements. Lyndsay will be available during the Wednesday conference times and I will be available the Monday time so you can refer parents to us to answer questions about the online reports.
But what if...a custodial parent lives outside the metro area and wants access to the child's online progress report? First, we hope custodial parents will share their login information with each other, but if that is not the case, please refer the parent to Paula or I. They will have to mail a notarized copy of their driver's license and we will discuss this with them.
Visitor - Rob Wedebrand from Griswold CSD will be shadowing me on Friday and Monday as part of his practicum hours.
Dates to Note...
Monday
- PBIS Core Team (8am)
- Allison Costa returns
Tuesday
- K-2 PLC (8am)
- Elem PAC Mtg (4:30-6:00 pm)
Wednesday
- 3-5 PLC (8am)
Thursday
- District Lang Arts Mtg
Friday
- Progress reports are due (live @ 4pm)
- BINGO for Books @ MGE (6:30-8:00 pm)
Monday (Nov 15)
- Conference begin
- PTO Mtg @ MGE (7-8 pm)
Progress Reports - At this time, the progress reports are not 'printer-friendly.' They print in a narrow column and are 6-7 pages long - definitely not something worth printing. We are going to recommend that you not "advertise" the printing option to parents, unless they request it. Teachers may want to pull up each students' progress report during the conference for the parent, teacher, and student to view together. The original plan was to not print any progress reports this year. Due to the PowerSchool printing glitch from the parent portal, we will print 2 progress reports for each student at the end of the school year. One copy will be placed in the cum and one copy will be sent home. District office will work on building the parent-friendly and professional-looking progress reports that we will print in May. Until then, progress reports are all electronic. We will communicate this in our newsletter this week.
But what if...the parent does not have internet access at home and wants a paper copy? The records in the office indicate we have a few parents without internet access. We believe teachers can do a "print screen" from the teacher's view of a child's progress report. You may do this for parents who do not have access to the report at home and who request it. The comments will not be included in this view so you can handwrite or type those for the parents if needed.
But what if...the parent wants to discuss the progress report, the changes to reporting and how it cannot be printed, etc. during our conference time? We hope the information already sent out and additional information I will send out at the end of next week help parents understand that conferences is a time for you, their child and the parents to talk about needed progress and/or the student's academic achievements. Lyndsay will be available during the Wednesday conference times and I will be available the Monday time so you can refer parents to us to answer questions about the online reports.
But what if...a custodial parent lives outside the metro area and wants access to the child's online progress report? First, we hope custodial parents will share their login information with each other, but if that is not the case, please refer the parent to Paula or I. They will have to mail a notarized copy of their driver's license and we will discuss this with them.
Visitor - Rob Wedebrand from Griswold CSD will be shadowing me on Friday and Monday as part of his practicum hours.
Dates to Note...
Monday
- PBIS Core Team (8am)
- Allison Costa returns
Tuesday
- K-2 PLC (8am)
- Elem PAC Mtg (4:30-6:00 pm)
Wednesday
- 3-5 PLC (8am)
Thursday
- District Lang Arts Mtg
Friday
- Progress reports are due (live @ 4pm)
- BINGO for Books @ MGE (6:30-8:00 pm)
Monday (Nov 15)
- Conference begin
- PTO Mtg @ MGE (7-8 pm)
Final Thoughts for the Week
...where I keep talking/typing and you
don't necessarily have to continue listening/reading.
Throw Away Your Reading Logs - There is a great blog-post by Nancy Ehrlich on reading logs and the attempt to instill the love of reading in our students....and our own kids. I think about the differences between my own three boys and how it can be a fight with one to get him in a book and a fight with another to get him to put down the book (the kid who sits on and attempts to peak at his reading book during math class). What happened? Did we suddenly parent differently? Did I not read the right books to one son? How can I light that fire?? From my very short time on the other side of the educational desk - working on my 13th year - I have seen many kids get turned off of reading during school. As a whole, I think we are doing many things very well to get kids to enjoy reading, but I'm sure you all have your half-dozen or so that do not enjoy it. I don't have all (or many) of the answers, but Nancy has some great insight and thoughts...worth a read sometime this weekend. What has worked for you? Post a comment to share.
MID-WEEK EMAIL - SENT 11/3/10
Please help us welcome Cindy Bugg, Pamela Swanson, and Kelley Neumann to Maple Grove. We also are excited to announce that Nancy Anderson will move from the preschool room to the kindergarten room next door as our 4th kindergarten associate! They begin as our kindergarten classroom associates this morning and will be with us from 8:45 - 11:45 am each day. In addition to assisting kindergarten, they may be available to other grade levels for student interventions during kindergarten lunch & recess. More to come on that...
Conference reminder forms will be in your boxes this afternoon. If the 1/2 sheets do not come in Central Print this morning, I will go pick them up so you have them during work time today.
Recess clarification: Recess teachers/associates on duty should line kids up 1-2 minutes prior to the scheduled end of recess and send students in the building at the scheduled ending time. Classroom teachers may wait for students inside the doors. Since the teachers outside cannot see if teachers are present inside the doors - the expectation is for classroom teachers to be present at that time. If it becomes a concern, we will have teachers pick up their students outside. This is for the safety of our students.
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