February 1, 2019

WAY TO GO!!!  To date (and yes, I am STILL testing and making up testing!) our students ALL showed growth on the Winter MAP TEST!!  WHOO HOO!

6th grade Math up 3.7/ 6th grade ELA up 2.6

7th grade Math up 3.9/ 7th grade ELA up 1

8th grade Math up 3.5/ 8th grade ELA up 3.6

WAY TO GO!!  AWESOME JOB GVMS!

I am going to step away from student engagement for a minute to reflect on our influence on our students.  Every day we are with our students to encourage them to create change, empower thought, challenge their minds, and help them to become the BEST and most successful people that they can be.  I am going to take a break from student engagement and simply focus on KINDNESS.    

It was just Great Kindness Challenge week and kindness is more critical now than ever.  We MUST model this to our students, to one another, to our families that we work with.  It can be hard.  It can be a challenge.  And, yet, it is a MUST.  Again, we spend most of our awake time with EACH OTHER.  Make it a kind time with one another.

How do we foster that in our students too?  Take a look at THIS EASY article for things to HELP you promote teaching kindness in our classrooms and yes, I am sending to parents too =).  

Let's chat for a sec....Let's focus on good first instruction!

Obviously, focusing on good (great, honestly, would be better!) instruction makes everything better- mastery by our students, engagement levels, grades, test scores, etc.  We have already discuss ways to deliver material AND another critical component is to check for understanding.  How do you KNOW that they know the material? Simply asking the class, "anyone have questions?" doesn't work.  Here are some ideas to check QUICKLY!!

• Whiteboards! And oldie but a goodie.  Super easy peasy to have them hold it up to share their answers with you.
• Sticky notes out the door!  Easy peasy quiz to gauge how they understand the standard you presented.
• Academic conversations take place and you monitor to either record or write down information.

Check out THIS article (it's a little long, but worth it!) for more ideas!

SUPER HERO SHOUT OUTS!

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• SUPER awesome shout out to our campus monitors and parent volunteers for always keeping our school safe and keeping kids out of trouble! ~Alex
• SUPER awesome shout out to Katherine for letting me borrow snap cubes! ~Sue
• SUPER awesome shout out to Heather, Peter, Megan and Karen for taking our kids to Stanford! ~KC
• SUPER awesome shout out to Angie for working so hard with our kids and parents all of which takes a lot of time! ~KC
• SUPER awesome shout out to Sandy, Dustin, Dave, and Kevin for always having my back and looking out for me!  Love you guys/gals! ~Carol
• SUPER awesome shout out to Heather T for taking my MAP testers that take FOREVER! ~Julie
• SUPER awesome shout out to my English Dept this week!  I love how willing everyone was to help each other out and knock out testing!  Special shout out to Heather T for rounding up all the ones who didn't finish! ~Aubry
• DITTO to above! ~KC
• SUPER awesome shout out to Sue for jumping in and helping out my kids in the library while they were waiting for me! ~Katherine
• SUPER awesome shout out to my Secret Pal!  I appreciate your thoughtfulness! ~Katherine