The Skipwith Communicator
Week of 1/19/15
Quote of the Week:
Next Week: Upcoming Events/Calendar: 1/12 -1/16
Weekly Highlights: Holiday, K-3 PALS testing, Faculty Mtg (SIGNAL BLUE), Workout Wednesdays, RTI mtg, PTA Science Fair and Kindergarten performance.
Google calendar:
January at a Glance:
Monthly Highlights:K-3 PALS window, RTI mtg, Access testing, Signal Blue training, PTA science fair & KG program, Student Holiday: Martin L King Day, End of marking period & Staff DV day, and Benchmark Testing.
BENCHMARK TESTING: The mid-year Benchmark Jan. 27 –Feb 13, 2015
ALL 3 COWs will be used for testing.
Benchmark/SOL review sites:
WEEK ONE / WEEK TWO / WEEK THREETues Jan. 27 – 3rdRdg part 1
Wed Jan. 28 – 3rdRdg Part 2 / Tues Feb 3 – 4th Reading
Wed Feb 4 – 5th Reading
Thurs Feb 5 – 3rd Math P 1
2nd Reading P1
Fri Feb 6 - 3rd Math P 2
2nd Reading P2 / Mon Feb 9 – 4th Math P 1
Tues Feb 10 – 4th Math P 2
Wed Feb 11 – 5th Math P 1
2nd Math P 1
Thurs Feb 12 – 5th Math P2
INTERACTIVE ACHIEVEMENT :To ensure Skipwith students are prepared for the Benchmarks and the IA program along with the computer tools Dr. Thomas and I are requiring that each class 3 -5 complete an Interactive Achievement assessment ON THE COMPUTER every week for the subjects reading and math.
1.Benchmark information – Explains who, what, when and why testing
2. Interactive Achievement & onTrac info - Directions for student login & teacher set up
TESTING GUIDELINES for ALL:
a. Signed 2014-2015 District Test Security Agreements (TSA) should have been completed via Talent Ed at the beginning of the school year. Please review the contents of this TSA with Examiners prior to testing. Beforeeach testing session, ensure that all examiners have appropriate materials for testing (i.e., scratch paper,rulers,calculators). All students are allowed scratchpaper.
b. HCPS personnel, including STCs, cannot keep any form of a printed/digital copy of the benchmarks aftertheadministration of the assessments. When not in use, the STC should keep the paper copies of thebenchmarkassessments in secure, locked storage.Paper-formatted tests need to becheckedout/in from the STC. Copies of the benchmark assessments cannot be sent hometoparents
d. Collect all scratch paper and other paper containing student responses used during testing.Properlydispose/shred of all other accompanying test supplies.Upon request, parents may review the benchmarks with the Principal’s designee in a schoolsetting. Teachers may review the benchmarks with their students beginning February 16, 2015
F. Reports will be available via Interactive Achievement. Second grade benchmarks are to be hand-scored at the school level. Second GradeSemester Elementary Item AnalysisSheets (available in the STC Elementary Benchmark 2014-2015 Folder on School Space) are provided to help guide future instruction.
ACCESS TESTING:
Dede and Nota will be here at Skipwith ALL day during the weeks of February 17 – February 27 to complete the ACCESS testing within the two week period.
Writing Assessment News:
Grade 4 HATS
- A writing prompt will be administered on March 10. Makeups will be given on March 11. The prompts will be handwritten by students to assess their writing independently of their typing skills. The prompts will be centrally scored during a scoring workshop, which will be March 31-April 1.
Grade 5 HATS
- A multiple choice test will be administered between March 16-20. The test will be administered through Interactive Achievement. Jessica Pong
LAMP Report:
LIBRARY: K & 1st grade classes will compare fiction & nonfiction texts. 2nd graders will continue to learn about fairytales & legends through Native American stories. Third graders will wrap up Ancient Greece & Rome exploration. Fourth and Fifth grade students will continue to work on research of solar system and US states.
ART: Please join me in welcoming my new student teacher, Ms. Christine Nowicku from Longwood University. She will be working with us for the next 7-8 weeks in the art room! I have heard wonderful things about her and I look forward to having her work with our students!
MUSIC: For the month of January, Kindergarten classes will continue to prepare for their performance for the Science Fair. All other grade levels will be doing (grade-level appropriate) activities to help teach dynamics (soft and loud), tempo (speed), the instrument families, and different ways that instruments can be used to create sound. One way is to help tell a story in a couple of books that we will be reading as a class.
PE:
We are very excited about this year's program and hope that you and all of your kids will love it, too. Once again, the training program will be a free, incentive-based, incremental mileage program.The goal is to have children run or walk 2-3 miles per week over a ten-week period on their way to completing a full marathon (26.2 miles).
Children will be able to color (3-5 will keep their own logs/K-2 will color during PE) in the cobblestones along Monument Avenue as they accumulate miles and will be able to redeem their incentive coupons at the 5, 10, 15, and 20 mile marks. We are looking to kick off the week of January 19th. All participating children have the option to run the last mile of their "marathon" on Saturday, March 29th at the Virginia 529 Kids Run. (If children choose to run their last mile on race day, they will have to register for the event.) However, there is no obligation to participate in the Kids Run in order to complete this program.
This year, Kids Challenge participants will earn the following prizes for every five miles they run:
1. FREE bumper sticker at 5 miles
2. FREE frisbee at 10 miles
3. FREE sweatband at 15 miles
4. FREE water bottle at 20 miles
5. Kids Challenge finisher medal at 26 miles
Technology News:
*Please don’t throw out ink cartridges. Please bring them to the library for recycling. Thanks!
*Don’t forget to please sign out the COWs online.See the link below and when you get to the google pagelook at the bottom of the page to sign out COW 1 , COW2 or COW 3.
Reading News:
Kindergarten and first grade teachers – This is a great article on how students learn letters and research that supports how they should be taught.Jessica Pong
CREW MEMBER OF THE WEEK:
IT TAKES A VILLAGE - We had an outstanding safety audit. They were very impressed with everything and everyone. They were impressed with all of the staff and your dedication and awareness of safety for the adults and children in the building. They were impressed with the 5th graders they interviewed and the parents. We are all on the same page about safety. There were 15 sections of the audit. We scored OUTSTANDING on 14 of the sections and Above Average on one of the standards. (No I don’t know which standard that is yet but I will and we will fix whatever was wrong!!!) We do have recommendations. When we get the official list from the safety office we will have 30 days to address those recommendations. Thanks to everyone for all you did and for all you do each day for our kids.Kaye
SAFETY TEAM – A special thanks goes out to the entire safety team for their time and commitment to review safety concerns at our monthly meeting and to bring school wide concerns to the team. Each member is a critical part of our daily success with safety and we will continue to strive to get better. Thanks to the teachers, students, and individual safety members who had one on one interviews with the safety audit team.
The Skipwith Pledge to be Respectful, Responsible, and Safe – Thanks to Dr,Thomas for her daily leadership with helping to keep our entire school focused on these three very important parts of our school. As many of you know she leads by example and does her best each day to work with all of us to ensure we are all on the track to success. It is amazing to work beside her each day and I am in awe at times when I see her balance all the different balls that are thrown her way. She has shared these talents with me so many times within the year and a half I have been here but it was incredible to watch her prepare and ensure that we had everything in place for the safety audit. However, please be aware that many others assisted her in getting ready AKA office staff Margaret, Carrie and Todd. We truly worked as a team and pulled together to show what a star school we are.
Announcements/Celebrations: Please let me know if you have any family or individual celebrations you would like to share with us.
Congratualtion Ashley Williams for her Donors Choose project!
DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need. Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests, then donors can give any amount starting at $1 to the project that most inspires them. When a project reaches its funding goal, materials are shipped directly to the school.I have used a Promethean board and SMART board in the past and loved the impact on student engagement and the amount of great teaching resources available. Knowing budget concerns, I created a project in August hoping to have donors fund a Promethean board for my classroom. I was unbelievably surprised and excited a few weeks ago when my project was funded! I highly recommend Donors Choose to anyone looking for additional resources for your class, grade level, or our school.
Formative assessment idea:Rachael Gittings 2nd
We have been talking about hibernation, estimation, possessive nouns, and some other things in class and there is this awesome app/website called plicker. Each child is entered in (first name only) and they each have a QR card. On the board the website projects questions that I have typed up on the website. When they answer they hold the QR card up in the air and whichever way they're holding the cards it represents A,B,C, or D. Using the app on my phone, I scan the room and it picks up the codes and automatically sends it to a graph on the screen. It actually shows next to their name that it's been answered. You can show the students which answer is being chosen (anonymously) the most or least. It's a super fast formative assessment that allows you to see where your students are in the information you're teaching. Better yet it allows me to see how I am teaching! You can also go in and see which student answered which, but it's for my personal use only not whole group. I thought it was a really fun way for the kids to stay engaged (game feeling) and an easy way for me to assess. Rachael Gittings
SAFETY REMINDERS TO CONTINUE PRACTICING:
1.Take your crisis bags with you & keep personal belongings out of sight.
2.Keep ALL doors locked at all times and closed when not in the room.
3.Stop/Question ALL visitors, check for a visitor badge and be sure they have signed in at the office.
4.Bring your dismissal chart with you every day and ensure that you see/know where/how each child is dismissed.
5.When using the walkie-talkie state your name to the person you are calling.
6.Social Committee news: Soup & Salad Bar on January 16t was great. Thanks for sharing!
HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:Remember to “BRAKE” and wish these folks a happy birthday! 1/22 - Sloan Smith, 1/23 – Robert Winecoff