March 23, 2015

Great Things Noticed:

We are thrilled to have Gabriel Cheavers as our new 6th grade math teacher, he is replacing Amanda McPeek while she is out on maternity leave.  Please make sure to say hello and welcome him to our school.

In a social studies class, students gathered information in a bit of a different manner.  Instead of the students sitting at their seats to read, informational text was posted around the room.  Students then went to these different stations to look for answers to questions.  The students were highly engaged as they conducted their research.

In a language arts class students rotated to different stations throughout the week.  Each day the students had a different station to go to, with a different objective.  Instead of having the students rotate to 2-3 stations during a class period, sometimes students need to spend time diving deeper into a the subject material, and this format allowed the students to do so.  The teacher made sure to every student was able to receive small group instruction at some point during the week, while continually monitoring student progress.

In another language arts classroom the teacher redesigned the physical arrangement of the classroom to allow for better communication during a socratic circle.  After reading a whole-class novel the students gave answers to questions, listened to their classmates and used other student answers to help build new answers.  Students were really engaged and disappointed when the lesson was over because they wanted to the discussion to continue.

Nuts and Bolts:

This is the last week of PARCC make-ups for this section.

Currently grades 7/8 are scheduled to begin the next round of PARCC testing the week of April 27th, and grades 5/6 to begin the week of May 4th.   We are working to see if it is possible to have grades 5-8 test the same week.  If this is possible EVERYONE would take the test the week of May 10th, and the 8th grade would not have to leave open space.  This would also allow us more flexibility with scheduling for the afternoon the week the students take the PARCC.  We will know if this is possible next week.

Saturday March 28th, there is a FREE workshop at Columbia University for the Reading and Writing Workshop.  Last year there were so many amazing sessions, especially from experts on implementing the Workshop model into a middle school.  If you are thinking of attending click here to learn more, or contact Ginette, Celeste, or Meaghan, they attended last year.

To get high levels of student engagement, there often needs to be some form of student choice.  Figuring out what to allow as a choice though can be difficult sometimes.  This article: 7 Ways to Hack Your Classroom to Include More Student Choice offers some unique ideas.


Upcoming Events:

March 16-20 PARCC Make-ups

March 20 BIS Spotlight, periods 17 & 18

March 23 Faculty Meeting
March 27 BIS Spotlight 2:30

March 31 - April 2 Parent Conferences; Early Dismissal

March 31 Greg Fineburg from AXA in Faculty Room

April 3 – 10 Spring Break:  School Closed

April 13 Begin final SGO Assessments

April 17 End of 3rd MP -- School Play

April 18 School Play

April 29 BOE Meeting

April 30 Complete final SGO Assessments


Tech Tips:

The chrombook keyboard is a bit different from a regular keyboard. Click here to learn some of the shortcut features, like how to take a screenshot or how to add caps lock to the keyboard.