September 7, 2012

.       Happy Cy-Hawk Team Spirt Day!         .

Please welcome Shari Duncan on Friday! She will be our last recess associate (Jason Lawry has been filling in until now). We are excited to add her to our team.

Fall Assessment - As you complete benchmarking, please add the information to your grade level Google.doc. MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) will begin later this month for our 3rd-5th graders and that data also needs to be entered on the form. Please have your students information entered by Friday, September 21.

Professional Development is next Wednesday (Sept 12). Staff will be getting hands-on time and sharing around our EDM online resources. Related arts staff will be with like-subject colleagues from across the district. Locations of your meeting are on the Google.doc I forwarded from Michelle H. If you cannot access the document, please request access to it from Michelle.

As we begin completing walk-through observations, please note that you should receive an email copy of the walk-through that same day (within 30 minutes). Please review the feedback and comments, but you do not need to respond. I always welcome staff emailing or stopping in to discuss one of the reflective questions or comments, but it is not required. The emailed copy is your "official" copy as you/I do not need a hard copy. I will have at least two additional people joining me this year from time to time as they are working on their admin degree. If you do not want another observer, please let me know now so I can avoid your room on their visit days.

Our first Owl's Nest Day will be on Monday, Sept 17, and it will be located in room 415 (across from Koenigs and Lentell). Teachers are always welcome to provide positive rewards and activities for students within your room but I would encourage you to also sign up on the calendar Nicole emailed about this week. Kids LOVE eating or hanging out with RA staff, former teachers and "older" teachers (i.e. "my older sister's teacher). 

Odds-n-Ends worth sharing from our district admin meeting today...

• Watch some of our high school athletic events LIVE online! Including this Friday's home game at http://www.highschoolcube.com/schools/WaukeeHS  
• Additional wellness dates is Oct 19. Please sign up if you are interested. We had over 250 employees sign up the first round!
• There are A LOT of IT requests right now so please have patience! They are working long hours and working diligently!
• Phishing: DO NOT reply to any request for information unless it is from a specific IT employee. This creates 10's of 1000s of emails from your account and really, really slows down our email system.
• Human Resource Director interviews will be later this month.

Final Thoughts for the Week

Normally, it is where I keep typing/talking and you

don't necessarily have to keep reading/listening...but this week

I'd like you (teachers & associates) to keep reading! 

As we wrap up our fall benchmarking assessment period, it is a great time to think about the purpose and importance of the time our students are engaged in independent reading during the school day. A couple of our teams over the past two years have spent time reading and discussing a great book, What Really Matters for Struggling Readings, by Richard Allington. He can state it much better than I can so I wanted to provide a few of his thoughts as you begin to set up your students' book boxes/bags and/or start having conversations with students about what "type" of reading really increases their progress toward becoming proficient readers!

Allington highlights the importance of accuracy through multiple studies and mentions "that quality of word recognition in first grade (i.e., being able to recognize words) is more important than quantity of exposure to words" and through studying multiple intervention programs he concluded that "reading achievement of students...appeared to be explained primarily by one aspect...reading text at a high level of accuracy, between 98% and 100%" (p.69). 

So please be cognizant of what your students are reading - especially our struggling readers - as the research clearly indicates it is the amount of high-succes reading activity that delivers the gains we need to see in order to help EACH child be successful. 

...on that note, I would also LOVE to host a coffee, evening or electronic book club during the school year for any staff members interested in reading, discussing and working through Allington's book, What Really Matters for Struggling Readings. Please email me or stop in if you're interested!