Friday Focus - February 16, 2018

Great Things I Noticed this Week:
*After 4th graders individually presented their research report to the class, students were highly engaged in asking follow-up questions. They came up with great questions to find out more.
*After 5th graders dug in to different pieces of non-fiction text, the teacher acknowledged the reality that many of the students in class did not enjoy reading non-fiction, however, it was because as the text becomes higher level, the structure of the article and vocabulary becomes more difficult. It was emphasized that the better students become at identifying the structure of non-fiction, the better they will become at reading it and likely enjoy it more.
*3rd graders digging deep into the characters of their books, sharing evidence to back up their statement of why they thought their character was brave (or kind, or confident...)
*I sat in on several conferences...while I recognize most of tonight's conferences were students that there are academic concerns for, I sat in on many that started out identifying the student's strengths.

Events Next Week:
Monday - Professional Development Day
Tuesday - hat day $1 for AHA
Wednesday - MidQuarter reports to be sent home (if not already shared at PT conferences)


"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:

• You've heard from Dr. Thompson previously about the work that is coming out of the Greater Watertown Health Foundation to support school initiatives. One of the committees in their Every Child Thrives campaign is focusing on attendance to impact student learning that and I'm very excited about what this will bring for our district next year to support our work. Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Nehls and I are on this committee and are currently working on possible goals and incentives for improving student attendance next year and would like to gain classroom teacher input. If you have some ideas or want to be a part of this discussion, please let me know. We will be scheduling a meeting in early March to gain input. 
• When logging minors/majors in Educlimber, please make sure to specify the date/time.  When you enter an incident, it automatically makes it be the date/time you are entering this. We want to have accurate information, so we can look at trends to see if there are any patterns in when behaviors happen.  

Blogs, Tweets & Pins....Oh My!!!

*Teacher-Student Relationships: A Little Thing with a Big Impact - the link will take you to Greg Wolcott's website, but if you scroll down you'll find his recent article in the ASCD journal. I look forward to our continued learning together on Monday!