What a great first (short) week of school! Thank you to everyone for introuducing the Code of Conduct with your classes for your classroom, hallways, bathrooms, etc. As I met with classes, the students all seemed very knowledgeable and excited. Do not abandon efforts to establish school-wide and class routines just yet...continue to go over classroom routines/procedures, because they are what will make or break your classroom management.A few things I noticed last week:
-You were all well prepared for Open House, which all of the parents/students appreciated.
- I can't believe how many brand new SMARTBoards I saw in use already.
-All of our students made it home safely (I think this is the first year of no phone calls for me on this issue)
-I've seen several staff members helping each other out--especially helping out with our 4K classrooms that are sharing Vicky as their aide this year.
-All of these tech issues we've encountered should not happen next year at this time (ok, I know that is a common source of negativity, but had to include it in here as a positive for next year!)
"Nuts and Bolts" Notes:
*Please send Marie your Open House turnout numbers if you haven't already done so. For attending Open House you will be allowed to leave 2 hours early from our January 23rd Report and Planning Day. :)
*As you get dismissal routines down, please do NOT dismiss from your room to go to lockers until 2:50. Things in the room can be packed up before then.
*Please do not open the district office door to let parents in--once we start doing so, they start to rely on going in/out that door which the insurance man would not like.
*I ordered positive postcards this year--they have our American Treasures logo on them. Sarah will be putting them in your mailboxes--enough for each class list in classroom teacher boxes and 5 in other certified staff boxes. I am asking that you use them up throughout the year to send home something positive on each of your students to build rapport and home-school connection. If you run out and want more just ask me.
*Classroom teachers-you will be finding student profile cards in your mailboxes. At the end of last year when we were creating class lists one teacher mentioned that it would have been nice to see the notes at the start of the year. I always liked to start the year with a "blank slate" or open mind on my students and didn't look at their cumulative information unless I had concerns. You can feel free to look at the notes or not. Please file them away somewhere safe so you can add to them at the end of the year. If you're afraid you will lose them, just give them back to me.
*This week's Professional Development Meeting will start out with individual professional goal setting and then we will move right into discussions on Launching Read to Self. What were your successes? What challenges/pitfalls have you encountered? Let's problem solve together. This obviously does not apply to all, so specials teachers you can leave after goal setting and use this time to meet and discuss how your classes have got up and running and make sure you are all on the same page with the specials "class of the week" contest again.
Ideas
*This Week's "Tip of the Week" from Gail and Joan relates shopping for a swimsuit to finding a good fit book--great analogy! There is also a list of ways to try to provide students with enough good fit books.
*Are you planning to talk about September 11th with your class this year? This fits in nicely with our American Treasures theme, since the Twin Towers were an American Treasure. Here are some sites I found with Lesson Plans:
http://www.northcantonschools.org/~elem/neverforget/neverforget.html
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/us-history/tragedy/6807.html
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/911/teachers/lesson_plans.htm
http://www.teachhub.com/september-11-teaching-resources
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