October 9, 2020

Honey-Do List- October

10/8/20        Special Education Learning Plans Completed

10/9/20        School Facing Schedules to be uploaded into Lee Academy 20-21 Folder

10/15/20      Goals entered into TeachPoint

10/16/20      Bulletin board picture due

Buzzing Along- Important Upcoming Dates

10/22/20.                     Hybrid B in-person learners K0-3 First Day

10/26/20.                     Hybrid A in-person learners K0-3 First Day

10/5-10/19                  Assessment window open for MAP Reading Fluency Screener (K2-2)

10/5-10/19                  Assessment window open for MAP Reading Growth (3)

Office Hours

Ellen Office Hours

• Ellen has offered to hold office hours if people think that they would be helpful. 
• She is assigned to our building on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 
• Please let her know if you think this would be helpful. 

Jodi Office Hours

• I have been sloppy about office hours because it has been such a hit or miss thing and I am not impeccable with a schedule. 
• What has worked well is if you give me a heads up that you will be joining. 
• If it is an urgent matter please text, call, or Facetime if for some reason I am not online. 

Family Communication

Talking Points App

• Please transition from using your personal cells to contact families to using TalkingPoints
• I have noticed greater two-way communication with our multilingual families since I have started using the app.
• I am partially convinced this is because of the better quality translations
• Using this app may also help to establish some boundaries with families and keep your phones from dinging and buzzing at 10pm 
• This will also help to protect you from any liability issues that might arise from using your personal cell.
• The district is providing it we should take advantage of it.

Tech Hotline

• I am not a good help desk support person. I lack both the patience and knowledge. Not a good combo. 
• If your parents need tech support for software and application issues that you cannot resolve quickly please have them call

OIIT Help Desk: 617-635-9200

  

Transportation Hotline

If parents are experiencing problems with transportation please have them call the transportation hotline:

Transportation Office: 617-635-9520

Do NOT provide parents with the help desk or principal hotline numbers that we have access to. 

Logging Communication

• The district is transitioning away from logging communication in Aspen. 
• Please familiarize yourself with this chart about what communication to log where. 
• Once we become familiar with Panorama you will really enjoy using it for the ease and simplicity of seeing everything in one place 

Protocol for Visiting the Nurse

If one of your students needs to visit the nurse please follow this protocol:

• Do NOT take your child directly to the nurse
• Call the office. Zoraida or I will call/walkie talkie Sam to make sure that she is free
• If it is a student exhibiting any of the COVID symptoms this provides Sam an opportunity to put on her nursing gear 
• Escort the student to the nurse's office for any first aid issues: bleeding bandaids etc. 
• Escort the student to the medical waiting area for any illness related issues
• If Sam is busy in the medical waiting area with a student. and you have a student that needs first aid. I will meet you in the Nurse's office to administer the band-aid, ice pack, etc. 

Shout out

• We all know that we have the BEST nurse in the district who will work tirelessly to keep our students and us safe. 
• I also need to shout out to the K2 team who has worked the system the way it is meant to because of their excellent communication we have the awareness of situations and Sam has been able to follow up to do her job.
• One student was not feeling well at school. Amelia Chase followed the above protocol. Sam dismissed him to his mom and he is currently in quarantine at home because the family chose not to have him tested. 
• Another student was not present in school. Stephanie Lividini followed up with mom who told her his symptoms. Stephanie reported to Sam who called mom and began the quarantine timeline because the family chose to not have him tested. 
• Sam has a calendar in her office of who started quarantine and when. 
• We are lucky that our community is a community. We work so well together to do what is right for kids and keep each other safe. 
• This is EXACTLY how it is supposed to work  

MAP Testing

• At our staff meeting, that was hijacked with politics, we were supposed to talk about MAP testing. 
• ODA has made a video for parents to assist in understanding the text-heavy documents that they wanted us to send home.
• Here is that video.
• Please use TalkingPoints to text the video to your parents prior to beginning the assessment. 
• I will also include this video in the parent facing blog "The Buzz" 
• Is there someone who would be interested in rerecording in Spanish?
• If you are interested in coming into the building on a Wednesday to administer the test to students who may have difficulty accessing from home. Please let Keri and me know.
• Ionic cleaning does not happen until 5:00 PM on Wednesdays and Fridays
• In an attempt to lighten the load for teachers I have been doing some behind the scenes work:

MAP Fluency

• Student passwords are set they are the same by grade level:
• K2:         1234
• Grade 1: 12345
• Grade 2: 123456
• Unfortunately, students will have to type in their email addresses as their user name
• Thank you Keri for being a pioneer and trying the assessment out with a few friends.
• One of the things we learned was that the adaptive reading test may not have been accessible for many of our K2 friends. 
• For this assessment window, we have assigned all students the Foundational Reading Skills assessment. 
• During the winter and spring windows, we may assign tests specific to where we know our students are at.  

MAP Growth

• I have set up testing sessions for each classroom. 
• They are named Frank_Growthreading and Abelson_GrowthReading
• When you are ready to actually test your class
• Log back into your MAP account
• Click Manage Test Sessions
• Click Show under the “Saved Test Sessions” bar,
• Select the test session you wish to use 
• Please use the proctor quick guide
• Section 2 of this PowerPoint could possibly be used with students the day of testing
• I am going to try and determine how to add the students' IEP accommodations into the platform over the weekend. 

At-Home Learning Kits

• The majority of the materials have arrived. 
• We will begin assembling these kits by grade level next week
• Student kits for our EL and SWD will have headphones included

Chromebook Update

The Current Situation

• We currently have 8 Chromebooks that are out for repair
• These students need loaner Chromebooks while they wait
• We have 2 new student registrations
• We need 13 Chromebooks for Paras
• We have 35 Chromebooks that have reached their end of life. 
• End of life means that the Chrome operating system will no longer update
• Some of the results we have seen for end of life machines are many of the machines will not accept Clever badges (tough with 3-7-year-olds)
• Some machines will not hold a charge

The Good News

• We will be receiving a delivery of 15 Chromebooks on Tuesday. 
• The Beethoven School provided us with 2 Chromebooks today for our new students
• This will allow us to provide loaners for those students who have computers out for repair
• We will also have some available for paras to use when they are in the building. 
• The reason I cannot distribute to paras for home use is if we have a student who needs one I need to have some in the building to provide them.
• We will also have a very limited number on hand for students whose computers can not handle the MAP testing. 
• I am confident that there will be a subset of the 35 older machines that will not be able to handle MAP testing

Something Fun

• Please give me a 2-1/2 by 3 1/2  photo of yourself for our Welcome bulletin board.
• When we finally have more students back I think it will be a fun visual