Mr. Browne's Precept
What you do every day matters more than what you do every once in a while. ~ Unknown
Honey- Do List
10/18/19 Project plan for completing two units
10/18/19 Team selection due to Jodi
10/22/19 Let Jodi know if you want to be on our historic research team
10/31/19 Action Plan Template for Unit Completion
11/1/19 Register for whole-school PD in TeachPoint
Shout Outs
A shout out to K2 for their work on their Blueprint for Learning. This is an example of how the work should plan out and fit together. I am linking it here with their permission. The following are points that make this a good example:
- The professional time for the entire month is planned and aligned to school goals.
- The tasks are aligned with the goals and outcomes of the sessions
- The plan makes good use of the coach when he is available and carries on the work when he is not
A shout out to Mr. Hampton who shifted to Mr. Ableson's room on Wednesday that those third-grade students would not have two subs. Thank you also to Ms. Frank for helping to make this possible.
A shout out to Guerlandy, Paula, and Stephanie yesterday. As a team, they worked with nurse Sam when Antenor hurt his mouth at recess. Stephanie gently rocked him as sobs shook his body. Paula accompanied Antenor and mom to Bowdoin street and worked with a friend that worked there to get them seen a little more quickly than what may have happened. These are everyday examples of how we go the extra mile for our students and families.
Project Plan for Units
You may recall that we set aside the 10 hours of less structured time to work on the schoolwide goal of completing our two units. Rather than set predetermined deadlines that may not naturally fit into the scope of your work we are taking a different approach. We are asking you to create a project plan for the work.
Our goal was to design this to be both helpful for you as you refocus on the work and for the leadership team to gather info from each grade level about what support, resources and feedback we can provide and how to best provide them throughout the process. We are asking that you complete this plan by 10/31/19.
GRASP
I wanted to reshare this Wiggins and McTighe resource with you as you begin to pick up your work on unit design. The acronym GRASP will be very helpful when you are designing high-quality, worthy performance assessment tasks for your unit. You do not have to rigidly stick to the sentence stems but they could serve as a guide as we begin to do this work.
Pick a Team
Staff members each participate on a team that helps to move the mission and vision of Lee Academy Pilot School forward. Each team will meet for 10 hours. There are plenty of teams to choose from and lots of work to be done. This year we are establishing the following teams:
Health and Wellness- Team Captain Samantha Betti
"You can't educate a child who isn't healthy and you can't keep a child healthy who isn't educated." - Jocelyn Elders, MD.
Health and education are inextricably linked. The Health & Wellness Team will focus on creating a safe and healthy learning environment for our students by developing and implementing a Wellness Action Plan that is meaningful for our students and school. Our first meeting will be held on Tuesday 10/22 at 8am.
Literacy Leadership- Team Captain Sarah Little
The goal of the Literacy Leadership Team is twofold. The first is to maintain an effective and coherent literacy program that supports our students' literate lives. The second is to ensure teacher voice in the development and constant improvement of our literacy program. For the 19-20 school year, the LLT will (finally!) be finalizing the LAPS Handbook and working to synthesize and codify the work at different grade levels on writing about reading so that we have a way to house and access all of the exemplar tasks, student work, and criteria for success. Finally, we will be also talking a bit about how we can improve the home-school connection when it comes to building our students' literate lives.
We will meet approximately once a month with our first meeting on Friday, October 25th from 8:15 - 9:05. From there we will either keep that meeting time or decide on a better day/time that works for everyone.
SST- Team Captain Alyce Collins
The Lee Academy Student Support Team consists of a variety of school-based specialists and teachers and is facilitated by the Special Education Coordinator. It is a problem solving process that helps identify roadblocks to student success, whether they be emotional, academic, or behavioral in nature. We provide systematic assistance by connecting them to appropriate interventions and supports and will refer students for special education evaluations when necessary.
Behavior Action Team- Team Captain Jen Mederios-Crabbe
The goal of the Behavioral Support Team (formerly the PBIS team) is to utilize school-wide data and best practices to help students develop emotional awareness and positive coping skills. We will focus on Tier 1 and 2 supports and intervention strategies. The Behavioral Support Team meets the last Monday of each month from 8-9am.
Leadership Team- Team Captain Jodi Fortuna (Commitment greater than 10 hours)
This team develops the structures and procedures to assist teacher teams in being their most efficient. They act as the advisory board to the school leader. The complete readings that apply to the work outside of school time. The Leadership Team meets the 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month from 8-10.
Math Leadership Team- Team Captain Brian LoBue
What are the Standards for Mathematical Practice? Why are they important? How can we engage our students in mathematical habits of mind?
Through professional text, videos of teachers and students in action, analyzing tasks, and LASW, the math team will work to answer these questions and deepen our understanding of the Standards for Mathematical Practice. This work supports our students in developing a mathematical mindset, seeing math in the world around them and becoming more effective problem solvers.
Our first meeting will be Wednesday, October 30’th at 3:45. If you’re interested in joining the team and there are other valuable topics you’d like to explore, such as identifying meaningful data points used to inform instruction, we can collaboratively create a scope and sequence that is helpful for all team members.
Please email me with your first and second choice of a team by 12:00pm on October 18th
Safety Drills
At our October 29th Huddle, we will be doing a tabletop exercise to share plans for shelter in place and active shooter drills. As always please plan on arriving on time this will be important time.
Professional Development
We have another whole-school professional development this week on Wednesday. We heard your feedback and are approaching the work from a different angle. We will be working from a consultancy/problem of practice approach.
Grades 1,2,3 please bring an ELA lesson that you have either taught or will be teaching in the next 1-2 weeks. Preferably this will be a writing about reading lesson so that it fits seamlessly with our other work. Think about your students and the barriers that they will face in the completion of the task. The inclusion specialists will help you think about ways to break the barriers for your students. Keri, Sarah, Jen, and Kathryn will be working with your group as a way to bring all the pieces together.
K0/K1 and K2 Teachers please bring a math unit/lesson that you are working with some time in the next couple of weeks. Think about your students and the barriers that they may face in the lesson. The inclusion specialists with then consult with you and your teams about ways to break these barriers in relation to the lesson. Brian, Paula, Sam, and Alyce will be working with your group to help bring it all together.
From 4:00-5:00 1 teacher will present their dilemma regarding the lesson and meeting the needs of all learners. The group will follow the consultancy protocol to provide suggestions and resources to support the work. Then from 5:00-5:50 teachers will use the insight gained from the consultancy and the resource of your peers to work on the lessons that you have brought to the session. From 5:50 to 6:00 teachers will create the all-in for inclusion survey from the BTU.
For the K0, K1, K2 group Stephanie will be presenting for the consultancy.
For the 1,2, 3 group Marc will be presenting for the consultancy.
The theory of action is that if we apply the UDL skills and resources in a real-time practical setting with facilitation and coaching, some meaningful professional learning will occur. Though we are narrowing the scope to our current work, many of the ideas, strategies, and tools could be generalized to other areas. If you could let me know your thoughts about what you are presenting and some of the barriers by Tuesday, October 15th that would be great. The reason behind the ask is to give the inclusion facilitators a heads up on how to best support you in the work.
Co-Educators will not need to attend this PD. We will ask you to attend the WSPD on 11/20 to learn about the WIDA Can-Do Descriptors.
View from the District
The district is all in with the new TeachPoint platform. All school and district PD will now be managed through TeachPoint. Using your TeachPoint login in and going to the mortarboard you can register for all district and school PD offerings. You must register for these so that your PDPs for recertification are managed and received by you.
I will have our whole school PD set up by 10/18.
BIMAS
The Lee Academy is a part of BPS' Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model, It is a comprehensive model that integrates tiered supports and services within a school according to student needs. The Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment System (BIMAS-2) is a key component of this tiered system. It is a 34 question rating scale that measures the social, emotional, and behavioral functioning of our students. The data collected will provide valuable information regarding the implementation of tier 1 and 2 interventions. The BIMAS is completed in the fall and again in the spring. Our fall BIMAS will take place during the weeks of October 21 and October 28. Data collected will be reviewed at our Behavior Action Team. For students that are of concern, teachers will work directly with Jen to develop progress monitoring strategies so that we can see anticipated growth in the Spring.
The Refrigerator
The fabulous Jasen Lambright, of Family Council fame, secured a donation of a 13 cu ft. fridge for our teachers' room. The donation comes courtesy of his landlord who will purchase the refrigerator and donate it to us. Hooray!
Little Things
Attendance
In order to create consistency for how tardies are entered into the system please post your classroom attendance between 9:45 every day. Students are marked tardy if they arrive at 9:35 or after.
Between 9:35 and 9:45 they will be sent to your classroom where you will mark them as tardy after 9:45 Tardy students should report to the office where they will be marked tardy.
Literacy Honeycomb- Sarah Little
RESOURCES!
This week I wanted to share some resources that will support us in our teaching and planning as we are getting into the groove with our guided reading groups.
The first is a re-share from last year. It is a document for having and recording post running record comprehension conversations. The running records that we do to help us progress monitor help us see how the students are thinking within the text. This document (linked here) helps us see how students are thinking beyond and about the text. It's a quick guide to a 1-2 minute conversation you can have with students after you read a text/take a running record so that you are able to get a whole picture of the reader beyond accuracy and fluency. Take a look and let me know if you have any questions!
The second resource is a crosswalk document that links the Common Core Standards to the Fountas and Pinnell Literacy Continuum goals. It's a helpful place to go when you're thinking about planning and if you want to see how the standards and the goals connect. It also uses the most recent (2017) version of the Continuum, so the language of the goals is much more similar to the language of the standards. Take a look and let me know if you want to know more!
Finally - a note about the book room. I am doing an inventory of all guided reading books and also working to type up book bin labels so that we know which books go in which bins. It would be super helpful if we continue to use the clothespin checkout system for now so that as I'm taking inventory, I can tell which books are checked out and which books are missing. The clothespins are right inside the door to your right as you walk into the literacy office. I'm working to think of a better checkout system, but for now it would really help us to get a sense of our whole guided reading library if I can know which books we have, which are checked out, and which are missing. That way we can figure out what is most essential to order. If you need more clothespins - let me know and please make an effort to take all of the books if you are checking that book out so that I don't accidentally pull out that title from our collection thinking we only have 1-2 of that title. Thank you so, so much for your help with this!
My Problem of Practice: Morning Announcements
I am feeling that morning announcements are too long and not accomplishing the goals that I would like to accomplish. After reflection, I realized that I never involved the team in the decisions or my reasons for them.
Sitting in the K0/K1 hallway I know that classes are still getting settled at 9:35 and probable can't hear the announcements
With the Buzzword, I wanted to enrich the vocabulary of our students with words that they may not hear every day. I was hoping to catch a "buzz" about the words in the school.
With Dr. Jodi's math, I wanted to get students excited about math and to apply their skills to new and unusual situations. I wanted to honor students who demonstrated strong mathematical thinking with the math star and posting their work.
With both of these activities, I wanted students to see themselves as scholars capable of using "fancy" words and solving difficult problems.
I have a few students that are really enthusiastic about the math stars but overall participation has been pretty low. The buzzwords I think are just falling flat.
For birthday crowns not everyone sends their students to the office so I am not sure how meaningful they are to us as a community.
With the music, I want to take children to the different parts of the world and expose them to music that may be very different from what they are used to.
All in all, I want to broaden our experiences as a school community both behaviorally through the LAPS Pledge but also as scholars and world citizens.
I am asking for your help:
- How long should morning announcements be?
- How can we use morning announcements to build a sense of community as scholars, citizens of our community and the world?
- What should we include?
Could you please email me your thoughts so that I can incorporate them into the morning routine.
Far-Fetched Idea
I am not so sure that it is far- fetched to consider renaming our school. I think it is time that we distinguish ourselves as the amazing community that we are. Of course, there is policy and procedure but I think we can rally ourselves and our community around a new name. I had yet another person go to the wrong Lee school just today.
My preference would be to choose a woman of color. Far too few of our schools are named after a woman and I want our students to attend a school where they can learn about a person who looked like them and had an impact on the world. Are there any amateur historians out there that can help find a suitable candidate? If you are interested in taking on this challenge let me know by October 22nd. I think it could be fun!
