Monday Memo - Week of January 16th

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*A recently retired teacher (from another district) was a guest teacher in our building for the first time this week and shared with me how wonderful it was. She said our students are amazing and that the whole building just feels like a great place to be!
*Students using mini "retell ropes" during their read-to-self choice after a whole class mini-lesson on how to use this tool to retell a story (versus telling everything they remember about it, or not enough information).
*5th Grade band students were working hard to improve their songs to "beat" the SMARTMusic program they use.  As they play, the music notes on the SMARTBoard turn green if played correctly and red if not and then gives a percentage at the end.  They could also hear their recorded song and then each time they wanted to play again to beat the previous percentage.  What a great use of technology!

Events This Week:
Monday - Jump Rope for Heart Kick-Off Assembly
Wednesday - DART Meetings in Horicon (2nd Grade AM/ 3rd grade PM)
                   3:05 K-12 Staff Meeting in Media Center for Tech Updates (it shouldn't be a full half hour, although 4/5th grade teachers will need to stay a bit longer than K-3 staff)
                   - I will be gone at a Title 1 Workshop this day (along with Sue, Patty, Joyce, and Jenny)
Friday - SIT Day (we will have a couple of rotating guest teachers to relieve classroom teachers for SIT meetings throughout the day.)
            Staff Social Lunch

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*If you still have your combined meeting list from the start of the year, I had scheduled our next elementary staff learning meeting for this Wednesday, but after DART had been scheduled for the same day I rescheduled this meeting for NEXT Wednesday on the google calendar (and just forgot to tell you all!).  As you see from the events above, we do have a tech update meeting this Wednesday and will still have our meeting next Wednesday. I apologize for any confusion.
*As you meet in your grade level PLC's I encourage you to start out your meetings sharing a celebration of something that went well or share an idea with your team.  We have so much to learn from each other! 

Tech Tips:

I've had a few people ask me, "what does web 2.0 mean?"  I'm not sure of the exact definition, but to me, it's any online tool that allows you to communicate with others, contribute, etc.  This weekend on my professional blog, I posted my list of Web 2.0 tools that I use on a regular basis.  If you're interested, you can check it out HERE.