Monday Morning Memo 9.27.20

Collaborative Planning

Thank you for getting through our first back to back collaborative planning sessions last week.  Everyone jumped in to help make these sessions smooth from special area teachers that swapped students to paraprofessionals that covered para PE and taught double computers and to office staff that jumped in to help with lunches where we were shorthanded.  DCE is such a great place to be.

With anything new there will be learning, struggling, and growth.  We know that making a mindset shift to collaborating this frequently with our peers and to diving deeper into standards can sometimes be uncomfortable. Change is tough.  To be honest... it makes me uncomfortable too! But as we have learned in teaching our students about grit and growth mindset this year... this uncomfortable feeling is what is needed because it is where the most amazing things begin to happen!  

When we think of lesson planning we often think back to what we have done in the past as teachers: getting as many lesson boxes filled in our plan book as possible in our brief planning periods that we have available.  This new collaborative planning model is pushing us to think a bit differently.  Last week many teams spent their entire time looking closely at one subject area or even domain area in their day.  Tough conversations were hashed out and a clearer common understanding of the grade level's expectations and direction in that particular area were starting to form.  Some grade levels examined their current data for phonics, read and reread their grade level standards, and cross referenced the available resources that they have available for covering these standards.  The result of this conversation was a decision on where students needed to start instructionally as a whole and the selection of the resource that would help them get there.  These types of conversations are already assisting our school in improving in a few ways:

    

    1. We are developing a common understanding of the standard.

    2. We are spending time discussing as a group topics that we would traditionally not make time for            without a data day.

    3. We are creating a more equal playing field across classrooms in a grade level.

    4. We will be establishing a clear expectation for the rigor level from classroom to classroom.

    5. We are examining the assessments to ensure that our instruction and resources are aligned. 

We are looking forward to jumping back in to our shorter sessions this week.  Teams have selected a target for what they hope to accomplish in this session.  This SLOW work now is going to lead us to being able to go FASTER in a few more weeks when we get into the day to day lesson planning.  We are building the foundation now for planning that will help us select resources and tasks for our students that will maximize their learning.  Hang in there... it will get easier... and we will be accomplishing more and more each session.

DEAL Day:

This week we will hold our first DEAL Day of the year.  Please reference the email from Sarah Baldwin about DEAL Day.  She has shared some suggestions with you of types of activities that you can complete with students at this time. Below is a copy of the schedule of how our specials schedule will be modified.  We will still come on the intercom to announce the start and conclusion of DEAL Day to help get our kiddos excited and review our expectations for their behavior during this special time.

Weekly Schedule:

Below is our schedule for the week.  It is hard to believe we are heading into the month of October!

Have a great week!  Please let us know if you have any questions or if you need anything!

-Keli and James

Monday Morning Memo 9.20.20

 Happy Monday...

Although things are not as normal as we hoped we are so very appreciative of all that you have done to make our students and their families feel welcome and comfortable at school the last few weeks.  The kids have been more resilient than we expected and you all have gone above and beyond to find creative ways to get your students interacting with each other and learning.  We will still have hurdles to overcome as we learned this week, but as a school family we can get through anything together.  We were informed last week that there was a possibility that schools would lose an allocation of a staff member to work at Charlotte Virtual School.  On Friday we were made aware of the confirmation of our loss of one of our first grade teachers, Jen Phillips.  We are extremely sad to lose Jen, but know that with her curriculum strengths and technology expertise she will be an amazing addition to the CVS staff and a huge benefit to students as they navigate this school year online.  Jen will be with us through this week and will then transition to CVS.  We will be sharing this information with the parents of her class on Tuesday after school, so please do not share this information with any students or parents at this time.  When you see Jen please wish her luck on her new adventure. We hope to have our paths cross again in the future so we can have her back on our staff!

Fire Drill and Safety Drill:

Thank you for your patience with the fire alarm on Friday.  After pulling the station for the drill we locked the station back up, but it did not silence the alarm as it was supposed to.  The district maintenance department answered our call and arrived quickly.  They have removed the pull station and will be back on Monday to do the needed repairs.  I appreciate your flexibility with your students as we adjusted to unplanned activities to avoid the noisy alarms in the buildings. 

Just a reminder, CCSO attends our safety/crisis drills and walks our campus to confirm that we are following protocols.  We did an awesome job, but did receive comments on our form that they observed some door windows not covered as well as some classes of students could be heard from the hallways.  Please review these procedures with your kiddos between now and our next drill.

Collaborative Planning:

This week we will try our very first session of back to back collaborative planning.  Our goal with this model is to provide you with additional uninterrupted planning time to work together as a team to dive deeper into instructional practices and to analyze student work so we can boost our tier one for our students, especially to make up for their lost instructional time due to COVID-19.  Just a reminder, specials times run differently on these days.  Also, if you are scheduled for back to back planning on Tuesday your classes will have two specials period that day (Tuesday and Friday's classes), but will not have any specials on Friday.  If you are scheduled for back to back planning on Fridays you will not have a specials class on Tuesday and will have two classes on Friday (Friday and then Tuesday's classes).  We would like you to take advantage of the time in your classroom with your students when you do not have specials as this time will be taken away from academics on the day that you have double specials.  Below is the specifics of the back to back planning schedule for you to review.  Program Planners will be facilitating the sessions to keep the team focused on their goals and Mrs. Brown, Mr. Vernon, and me will be attending to assist as needed.  We will need to use a few minutes of time this week to talk about the new Oral Language Communication window.

TUESDAYS:

Class will travel to their Tuesday special first and then specials teachers will switch students amongst themselves to switch students to their Friday specials class second.

          Fifth Grade Specials: 8:25 - 9:50 (switch class from 9:05-9:10)

          Fourth Grade Specials: 10:20-11:40 (switch class from 11:00-11:05)

          First Grade Specials: 1:10-2:35 (switch class from 1:50-1:55)  

          *The other grade levels will not have specials on this day.

FRIDAYS:

Class will travel to their Friday special first and then specials teachers will switch students amongst themselves to switch students to their Tuesday specials class second.

          Kindergarten Specials: 8:25 - 9:50 (switch class from 9:05-9:10)

          Third Grade Specials: 10:20-11:40 (switch class from 11:00-11:05)

          Second Grade Specials: 1:10-2:35 (switch class from 1:50-1:55)  

          *The other grade levels will not have specials on this day.

Weekly Schedule:

Below is our schedule for the week.  Mrs. Skavronek has organized an awesome drive through event for our families on Friday for "Dad's Take Your Child To School Day."  

We hope you have an awesome week!

-Keli and James