September 9, 2011

Progress Report Rubrics - Before September 14th's PD, become familiar with the Progress Report Rubrics presented during September 6th ELA PD. Record questions or clarifications your team has - those can be emailed to Leslie and the ELA team members (Pals, Jones, Beavers).

DIBELS & Benchmarking - is in full swing next week!  To help with communication, please keep everyone (especially Paula) informed of your testing locations.  Also, please help our many substitutes next week by...

- making them feel welcome in the hallways and office!

- having comprehensive and detailed lesson plans ready to go!

- prepping your students if needed!!

Next Staff Meeting is set for Friday, September 23, 8:00 am. The Community Education director, Jeff Longman, will introduce himself and our staff will take some time to discuss Instructional Rounds as we will be hosting it in October this year. If a team would like to volunteer for breakfast treats and another team for the team builder, I would appreciate it. There will also be a rep here from Mind Streams Education here that day from 11am-1pm to meet with any interested staff about their educational opportunities. They will be in the lounge and information about them is located on the lounge bulletin board.


Concept PLC Opportunties begin next week! RTI and Project Based Learning PLC teams will meet on Monday. If you're interested in joining the team and checking it out, please show up or contact one of the facilitators listed below. A reminder that you can always contribute or follow their work by viewing their PLC log or using the following hashtags on Twitter (#mgerti, #mgepbl, #mgecoteach, #mgetech). I encourage everyone to share resources and ideas in this fashion OR to seek out resources from other educators across the nation and world via Twitter...and share your learning with your team(s).

Optional Meeting for those on the Evaluation Cycle - Don't quite understand the evaluation process?  I will meet with teachers after PD on Wednesday in the library to cover the basics of what to expect this year!  Please bring your Danielson book, Enhancing Professional Practice - A Framework for Teaching. New teachers to Waukee who cannot attend are strongly encouraged to find time to meet with Lyndsay or Doug before your formal observation week! Returning staff members on cycle are welcome to join us Monday too! 


Twitter 101: Round 2 - will take place soon. This would be for staff who missed our Tweet-Up this summer or for anyone wanting a refresher. I will get an email out on Friday or early next week to let you know when that will take place!! Until then, 


Laminator is broken again. We will let you know when it is resurrected or buried and replaced. We understand the inconvenience of not having it so when it is fixed or replaced there will likely be very specific directions so it does not continue to happen.


Promote Maple Grove - One great way to engage our parents and community members to be partners in a meaningful way (from Waukee's Theory of Action) is to have information posted in our newsletter and local newspaper(s).  If you have an upcoming event you'd like to highlight or want to share a neat learning activity your students have been involved in, please get those articles (with pictures if possible) to Paula by Tuesday afternoon.  We will include the information in our building newsletter and/or submit it for the "Every School - Every Thursday" article on the Des Moines Register.  If you're posted that type of information on your blog and would like to push it out to more people, just copy and paste the link/information in an email to Paula!!  


At-Bat Song Contest Begins This Month!The flash-from-the-past continues this week as two of the three At-Bat songs are pre-many-of-you. Stuck in the Middle release date almost coincides with my ownrelease date! ;-) I must admit that I attended my first Journey concert in the early 90's and saw them again 4 years ago. Wow. Not only had the band aged but so had the crowd. :-) Good luck matching this week! 

Don't Stop Believing - Journey	Stuck in the Middle - Steelers Wheel
Feeling Good - Michael Buble'	AT-BAT Group A includes: Bebout, T.Broich, Crannell, Grote, Hedrick, Kirby, R.Miller, Ochoa, Robinson, Sheldon, Steenhoek.   ANTI-PRIZE determined: team with the lowest score has to sing one of the songs chosen by the winning team at a spring staff meeting!! I love it.