October 23, 2020

Honey-Do List- October/November

10/16/20      Bulletin board picture due

Buzzing Along- Important Upcoming Dates

I have given up trying to figure "First"days out ****@@@@@!!????😠

10/27   8:30            Office Hours: Lexia Data

11/3                        Election Day

11/3     8:30            Office Hours: STMath

11/4     4:00-6:00   Professional Learning Session 1

School Calendar

• The District has finally established a 20-21 school year calendar. 
• You can find the calendar here

Election Day

• No Matter what happens ith COVID numbers Tuesday 11/3 wil be a fully remote learning day. 

Building Being Open

• The building will be open on Monday 1/26 from 9-4
• The building will be open from 9-3 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays starting 10/27 and moving forward throughout the entire period of fully remote learning

Teachers and Families

• Teachers may work from the building during these three days
• Teachers may invite families to the school during these days for material replenishment, book exchanges, technology help, running records, 1:1 student assessment as long as all social distancing protocols are followed including the wearing of masks.

Special Education Testing

• Any special education testing can be completed during these days. 
• Evaluations must be pre-arranged and scheduled. 
• You must provide me a copy of your schedule on the Friday before the week that the testing will occur so that I can share it with central office. 

MAP Testing

• I understand that we having testing fatigue. The platform, the internet etc. have all been incredibly frustrating

• The District has made the following adjustments to the assessment timeline:
• MAP testing window extended through October 30 to allow for schools to assess all students.  (It was previously set to end 10/23)
• BPS Interim 3 is an OPTIONAL assessment to be given in May
• Current assessment windows for Interims 1 & 2 moved back to allow for teaching and learning time between the MAP and Interim windows.  Schools may always opt to give the interims during the original window, if they have scheduled for the existing assessment calendar.

Supports for Remote Testing:

• MAP Remote Assessment Resources
• Common Challenges and Fixes for MAP Growth
• Assessment Hotline:  (617) 635-8066

In-Person Testing

• I am willing to conduct 1:1 in-person testing at the school building on Wednesdays and Thursdays. 
• This will be ideal for those students whom internet or lack of computer skills have made testing difficult or impossible. 
• Please reach out to the families in your classroom who would benefit from this and schedule a time that works for them.  
• Given that it would be completed 1:1 in a relatively empty but clean school building the risk to students and families is minimal.

Technology

Slow Applications

• We may have uncovered the root of the issue with the applications that you are all using so well.
• Monday night Google released a software update that caused a "huge" download onto student machines. 
• This could have resulted in the speed and connectivity issues that we were seeing
• Please ask families to reboot their child's Chromebooks. 
• If the issues persist please provide me with some additional information such as time of day, specific applications and any error messages that were received

Parent Videos

• I know that there are a few families that are having a really hard time accessing applications.
• Watching this video series, each video is approximately 3 minutes long, in order may be helpful for families:

REMOTE LEARNING FAMILY SUPPORTS

English | Español

GETTING STARTED WITH CHROMEBOOK

English | Español

LAUNCHING CLEVER

English | Español | عربى | Kabuverdianu | 中文 | Français | Kreyòl | Português | Afsoomaali | tiếng Việt

ENGAGING WITH SEESAW

English | Español

ZOOM 101

English | Español

Additional Parent Facing Resources

• Clever: Clever, or the BPS Digital Backpack, is a “portal” where you can access many online learning apps used by the district or your student’s school or classroom teachers. Your student's Clever portal will have apps in all major content areas. Go to www.bostonpublicschools.org/backpack and log in using your BPS Gmail and password. 
• Review How to Access Clever at Home or watch an interactive Clever Login Tutorial.  
• Google Classroom: Google Classroom is an online classroom where students can access resources and assignments shared by their teachers. Go to classroom.google.com and sign in with your BPS Gmail and password.
• Review How to Access Google Classroom from Home, a website with videos in English, Español, Portugués, and Français.

Chromebooks

There is not really an update this week

Resources

• The "dosage" (how much time students spend on activities) for Lexia and ST Math are critical for the pograms to be successful in helping to move student progress.
• Each of these is a research based platform that has proven that they are successfuul if students are spending the time that they need to.

Lexia

• Core5 automatically provides weekly recommended usage targets between 20 and 60 minutes that
• update monthly, which adjust based on a student’s likelihood of reaching benchmark in the
• program.
• The week of 10/12 only 45% of our students met their usage requirements. 
• Please sign on to MyLexia, in Clever, at least 1x per week to monitor your students' progress through the program, current skills that they are struggling with, grade level that they are working at, and progress towards usage targets. 
• I believe that by leveraging this program mindfully and intentionally we can accelerate our students' reading progress. 
• Lexia should be a daily part of your students' asynchronous work. 
• Every student should be using the program
• Shout out to grade 2 who had all but one of their students sign on last week. WooHoo
• During my office hours on Tuesday, I will be demonstrating what reports are available to you in Lexia. 

ST Math

These are the weekly targets that show typically what it takes for students to address all of the standards within a grade level over one school year.

• K0/K1                    40 minutes and 30 puzzles
• K2 & 1st grade    110 minutes and 80 puzzles
• Grades 2 &3        120 minutes and 90 puzzles
• Seeing Details About Students' Usage

During office hours next Tuesday (11/3) I will be reviewing the FAQ Doc and reports in ST Math

Professional Development

Pre-Work for 11/4 PD

• We will spend our first PD session on 11/4 getting to know the origin of the Equity Framework and using it broadly as lens to examine and plan for our current teaching
• In preparation, please read chapters 1 & 2 of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad.  This should take about 45 minutes.
• If you are crunched for time, focus on:
• bottom half of p. 22
• pp. 32-35
• pp. 43-61

Thank-yous

• Sam, Zoraida, Nee for banging out the At-Home Learning Kits as Quickly as Possible
• Keri for optimally using outdoor learning spaces and letting me listen to the sounds of K2 students learning.
• Sarah for taking the lead on Cultivating Genius and letting me be a thought partner in the work
• Stephanie for being willing to take a risk in front of the team and start an important conversation about how we can mix things up to make it better for kids
• Rose for suggesting the flexibility in schedules for material distribution to families
• Sam for thinking up ideas to keep families connected to the community and provide support