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