Friday Focus - March 1

Image from Stars and Rainbows

Great Things I Noticed This Week:

*Great discussion and ideas on writing shared in grade level meetings. The google doc is HERE. We have great things going on across our grades, however, a common theme is wanting to know what other grades are doing and having continuity across the grades. We've done this for reading and math, I'm thinking the time for discussion on writing will be coming up at our next staff meeting. 

*I was in very few classrooms this week, other than the ones I subbed in, but enjoyed the time with our students! I heard great excitement from students during their lunch conversations about Read Across America week and "when are we going to Stop, Drop and Read" again?  It is always great to see how excited our students are about reading and learning! 

A HUGE thank you to the Read Across America for planning this week and the Family Read-In Night.  The families that attended read a lot and had fun together as a Dodgeland family. I know I enjoyed just being a mom and reading with my boys. 

Events Next Week:

Monday: Dress Like Your Favorite Book Character Day

 Mentors/Probationary Teachers Meeting

Friday: I will be at CESA 6 in the afternoon

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:

*Please have hallway walls cleared by Monday, March 11 so student art work can be hung up for th art show. 

*If you love using Google Drive (used to be called Docs), but hated how it worked on the iPads, it now works wonderfully in the app "Google Drive."

*The Edhelper account has been renewed (thank you for the reminder Mrs. O'Toole!)

*Teacher Effectiveness Project Update: The admin team is constantly learning throughout this year (along with all of you). Recently, Dr. Thompson heard a great deal of research from Dr. Stronge. He emphasized that in the teacher selection of artifacts for the Documentation Log that it is more fundamental for you to choose artifacts for standards 2, 4 and 6 as those are often not observed by administrators in an observation. 

Blogs, Pins & Tweets...Oh My!

*Classroom Reading Strategies at Reading Rockets

*Evernote Skitch is another app (linked to your evernote account) that can be used to add things to photos. I've used it for fun, but not with students yet. Here's an example from a (kindergarten) classroom that someone tweeted out:

Image from Matt Gomez's blog

The teacher from this blog also tweeted out the following graphic that makes it easy to understand the basics of Evernote Skitch:

Image from AppsinEducation