Johnson Memo: Friday Focus - January 16th, 2015

Great Things I Noticed this Week:

Great collegial conversations in the Lucy Calkins book study, not only about what you're reading/learning together, but also on discussing implementation and helping one another problem solve as things don't go as smoothly as written in the book!
Students reviewing their Reading/Math goals from the beginning of the year and reviewing what types of things will help them while they are taking their MAP test (reading the whole passage, looking for evidence, eliminating wrong answers, showing their math work, etc) before they went to the computer lab for testing. What was more exciting was hearing students with comments after like, "I beat my goal already!" With these conversations in the classroom and 1:1 with students, you are giving them the ownership and motivation to do their very best!
Students creating non-fiction books (in Keynote) after learning about non-fiction text features and researching to become an expert on their topic.
Students organizing their research in social studies into the popplet app:

Events Next Week:
Tuesday - Grade Level PLC meetings
Wednesday - I will be out of the building for the WASB convention with Dr. Thompson and school board members.
Friday - Early Dismissal for report/planning, support staff meeting with me at 12:35
Monday, Jan 26 - Grades due by 7:30am
Thursday, Jan 29 - Report Cards distributed (along with Pride assembly invitations)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:

Reminders for report cards...as always, there should be no major surprises for parents. If you've got a student with sliding grades, please call home to discuss. In Powerschool--no blank grades or *. Instead use P (pass) or else Mark will have to hunt you down to fix it for the errors it runs on his end ;)
For Grade Level PLC meetings next week:

Please bring iPads in 3-5th grade (to look at the Badger practice test)
All grades be prepared to bring: an example of a struggling reader that you would like to ask colleagues for suggestions on moving forward (bring any evidence you have for the student as well, such as running records, conferring records, etc) and an example of a reading strategy lesson/conferring session that has already shown progress for a student (or several).

As you finish up your mid-year F&P Benchmark scoring, please add your students' updated levels to the google spreadsheet we used at the beginning of the year (check your "shared with me" or "incoming" file in google drive to find this). Let me know if you need help with this.
I think I'm all caught up on reviewing Alt Comp form activity submissions. If you did not get a response in mylearningplan from me, please let me know. Remember, that the way to let me know if it's ready for me to review it that you have to either add a comment or "save and notify" for it to email me.

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