Hello everyone,
Happy end of Contract Week (the week in which many of you got your new contracts, that is), happy last-Friday-with-students, happy long-weekend, happy pay-day! My goodness. Aren't we all just sooo happy?!
On the subject of contracts, please remember:
- You have 15 days from the day you received your contract to sign it and return it to HR. If you like, you may deliver it there yourself. However, there is a large envelope in the inbox in my office labeled "Marshall" and, if you put your signed, original contract in there, I will deliver it to HR for you on 03 June when I attend Admin Council.
- You also received a "Staff Conduct" form that needs to be signed and returned along with your teaching contract. Of note: as always, please refrain from "transporting persons for the purpose of... concubinage." Yeah. I had to look it up.
Report Cards
This is good news: The district requires that our report cards indicate the exact, appropriate number of days-of-attendance on the card
when it is placed in the student's cum-folder. However, we can send home report cards on the last day of school with slightly inaccurate attendance, as long as the inaccuracy is noted on the report card.
Therefore, as soon as special areas have their grading done (today at 3:00; thanks special areas!), you may begin transferring and reviewing your grading whenever you like.
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| Add a comment like this to every send-home report card. |
Likewise, once you've transferred all marks, you may print your report cards at your convenience at any point, starting today after 3:00, through the last day of school, provided you have included the following note in the comments section of each-and-every student's report card:
Days membership accurate as of [date report card printed]. Actual days membership through May 30, 2013, will be entered in student cum folder.
Please print an accurate report card for each student cum folder at some point after you take attendance on 30 May. The front office staff will print and deliver report cards for cum folders to you on Friday.
Heather will be sending an email today reviewing the steps to write/save comments to your report cards.
Magnet Monday
Our special class schedule will change very little for next year. Hope you're happy about that. I am. I feel very good about how well our schedule modifications this year were able to accomplish our objectives to: give you more uninterrupted prep time, both in collaboration with your teammates and individually; minimize disruption and fragmentation of instructional time during the school-week; minimize time lost to transfers between classes; and maximize instructional time in special classes.
One modification to our 2013-2014 schedule [
Week A] [
Week B], however, will be
Magnet Monday for our
third through fifth grade teachers and students. The vision for Magnet Monday is simple and fits well within the remix-concept of looking for opportunities to use our existing assets in new ways to enhance student achievement.
Magnet Monday will, for one hour each week (from 2:10-3:10), in 16-week blocks, allow many of our teachers to collaborate to create unique multi-grade instructional units or individually teach themes and concepts of personal interest, as well as bring in both new and existing magnet program vendors, consultants, and resident-experts to work with our students on a more regular but less-intrusive basis.
Magnet Monday will allow our third through fifth grade students to sign up for both teacher- and magnet vendor-taught electives based on their own interests, with the opportunity to switch or extend their learning opportunities during the subsequent 16-week session.
Magnet Monday will allow us to give students who have found a personal interest in dance or writing or music or another area to continue to work with our teachers, teacher-teams, and resident-experts for more than one semester, or even one year at a time, and perhaps for many years.
Magnet Monday is not a loss of instructional time, but rather, in continuing to enhance our ability to deliver unique learning opportunities to our students as a true magnet school, Magnet Monday is, instead, a chance for individual and collaborative teams of our teachers to reapply their expertise and areas of personal talent and interest in new ways to the established curriculum, and to broaden their opportunities to deliver this content to students in grades 3-5. Magnet Monday is, however, also not a prep-period; all teachers in grades 3-5 will be expected to be engaged in collaborative or individual instruction during the Magnet Monday hour each week.
Currently, the proposed offerings during
Magnet Monday are:
- Chess Club
- Lego League
- Choir
- Band
- Suzuki Violin
- Creative Writing (published authors)
- Drama Club
- Painting Club
- Dance
- Animation and Technology
- Photography
- Taiko Drumming and percussion
- Team Mastermind & Engineering
- Garden Club
But there is room for more! If you or your teammates have an area of expertise or interest, that you would like to add to our list of offerings, please
let Janelle Reasor know of your interest soon; she will be coming to your classroom to survey your students on Tuesday to determine where their top three interests lie in order to create ideally balanced
Magnet Monday classes.
Marshall 301 Day
One of the neat new ideas to come down recently from the administrative team at the district level is to allow us to use some of our 301 menu hours next year at the site/building level. In order to take advantage of this new opportunity to, once again,
remix our assets, several Marshall teachers have stepped up to provide a paid, voluntary professional development day for members of our teaching staff on
Tuesday , 06 August. Teachers may choose to attend and be paid for none (0 hours), one (2
hours), two (4 hours), or all three (6 hours) sessions. Each session
will be offered three times during the training day: Session One from
8:00-10:00; Session Two from 10:00-12:00; Session Three from 1:00-3:00.
Lunch will take place from 12:00-1:00.
The opportunities offered on 06 August will be:
- Accelerated Reader: setup and implementation strategies – taught by
Kristie Pagel
- Math problem solving strategies – taught by Page Ballard, Lizzy Kohl,
and Emily Fisher
- More Texcavation strategies – taught by Stef Perkins, Kelley Ingols, and
Candice Hadden
You will be invited in an email to sign up for these classes online via TPEC/True North Logic in the near future.
End Of The Year Celebration
Please remember to plan to attend our end of the year celebration on 30 May at Kelley Ingols house. An email with all the deets was sent by Melissa Bianco on 22 May.
All-school BBQ
A notice went home earlier in the week about the All-school BBQ on Tuesday. We've changed the lunch times to accommodate parents and crowds, but
your students will come in from the playground when the bells ring, at their usual times. Duty aides will be outside, ready to watch your kids when they're done eating. We've asked that students/parents bring blankets and sit on the field to eat together, but if it's especially windy, or if folks prefer to stay out of the sun, we will have some tables set up in the cafeteria, too. We'd like you to bring your classes down to get their lunches at the following times:
- K-1: 11:00
- 2-3: 11:30
- 4-5: 12:00
Calendar
- Monday, 27 May
- Tuesday, 28 May
- All School BBQ
- Kindergarten "graduation" practice
- Wednesday, 29 May
- Kindergarten "graduation" 9:00
- Thursday, 30 May
- Last Day Of School, early dismissal, 12:25
- Friday, 31 May
- Teacher workday, classroom checkout
Please acknowledge that you read this post.
We, likewise, have many things to look forward to next year. Among them:
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