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| NOAA's new gonna-be-a-nice-day weather icon |
Good golly the weather's been nice this week. Don't know about you, but it's my plan to spend as much time outside over the next couple days as I can soaking it all in. Hope you're able to do the same.
Could be breezy, though. NOAA has issued their first fire-weather watch of the season this weekend. That means it's officially spring.
Specials Schedule Revisions
Having heard from a few of you about the Specials Schedule that was delivered to your email inbox earlier this week, we've made a few changes to things. You may download the new schedule at your convenience.
Notable revisions are as follows:
- Third grade CT has been moved to Monday
- Fourth grade CT has been reorganized to include Fisher, Baker, and Fisk
- Fifth grade CT has been reorganized to include Grimmett, Arnold, and Bergs
- All classrooms (excepting 4/5 Bergs and 4/5 Fisher/Baker) will have an opportunity to choose their Fit Kids and Library times for 17-18
We will meet as a faculty next Thursday morning at 7:45 to hold a lottery, much as we do for morning duty at the start of the year, for the aforementioned Fit Kids and Library slots. My thanks to Ms. Grimmett for making this suggestion, it's a lot better than the free-for-all I was planning.
In order to carry this out effectively, before we meet on Thursday morning, you should have a conversation with your grade-level cohort team about who will fill the A, B, and C slots in the specials blocks on the proposed schedule.
Fire Marshall
In fact, we were the only school site in all of FUSD to pass.
The. Only. One.
My thanks to all y'all for remaining vigilant in your oversight of the fire safety preparedness of our school.
Standards Report Revisions
The elementary admin leadership team has been hard at work for the past several months reviewing your feedback and our overall district-wide experience implementing a new system of assessment and progress reporting this year. In general, I've been pleased with the outcomes of our first year of implementation and I feel that this is the consensus of the elementary leadership team as well.
The leadership team has made a few revisions to the Standards Report and you can download a sample of the new standards report card at your convenience.
The most impactful revision is mostly transparent, but nevertheless should allow us to significantly improvement in our ability to convey to parents an accurate assessment of their child's progress to-date toward mastery of the standards. For the coming school year, rather than apply Power Law to both the first and second grading periods, and then later to the third and fourth grading periods in isolation, progress reporting of scores on the standards report next year will chart our students' growth in ability longitudinally of over the course successive quarters during the entire school year. Effectively each quarterly report becomes a kind of year-to-date progress report, or, as the new wording in the Purpose statement puts it, "a snapshot of [the] students current progress toward mastery of the Arizona Academic Standards that have been taught to-date." I am pleased that this change has been made to how we will both track and report on student progress. Our goal has always been to move our students toward mastery of the standards by year's end, now we will be able to convey updates to our parents about this progress in a more accurate manner.
The most impactful revision is mostly transparent, but nevertheless should allow us to significantly improvement in our ability to convey to parents an accurate assessment of their child's progress to-date toward mastery of the standards. For the coming school year, rather than apply Power Law to both the first and second grading periods, and then later to the third and fourth grading periods in isolation, progress reporting of scores on the standards report next year will chart our students' growth in ability longitudinally of over the course successive quarters during the entire school year. Effectively each quarterly report becomes a kind of year-to-date progress report, or, as the new wording in the Purpose statement puts it, "a snapshot of [the] students current progress toward mastery of the Arizona Academic Standards that have been taught to-date." I am pleased that this change has been made to how we will both track and report on student progress. Our goal has always been to move our students toward mastery of the standards by year's end, now we will be able to convey updates to our parents about this progress in a more accurate manner.
Other notable revisions to the standards reports are as follows (click images to embiggen them):
NAU Art Museum
We have been invited by the good folks at NAU Art Museum to participate next school year in their newly reinstated Outreach Programs for Arizona public schools. Please have a look at the letter attached below and, perhaps, make a note to contact them soon to arrange for your class next year to make a trip over there if you feel it will be relevant to your curriculum.
Calendar
- Thursday 27 Apr
- Faculty Meeting in the Library, 7:45
- FHS Orchestra assembly in the Gym, 1:30
- SEI Family Appreciation Night, 5:00-7:00
- Friday 28 Apr
- Payday!
- Department Meeting, CANCELED
- Summer Reading program Kick-off assemblies in the Gym
- K-2 9:00
- 3-5 9:30
- Saturday 29 Apr
- Sights and Sounds at Flagstaff Mall, 10:00-4:00
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