Staff News and Updates

Parent Teacher Conferences-  We will host students and their parents on Monday October 21st form 3:30 to 5:00 and from 5:30 to 8:00.  Food will be provided for staff by some Lincoln parent and will be available after school.  I ask that all teacher officially invite by phone call 10 parents of students that you would like meet with during the evening.  These should be parents of students that maybe normally would not show up with a personal invite.  This process was very success last year in getting many parents here to learn about their students learning. Additional information about conferences:

• Open format- parents can see as many teacher as they choose
• Conferences should be kept to 10-15minutes
• Teachers should have sign-in sheets outside rooms (sign-in time specified)
• Chairs will be available for waiting parents

Goals Meeting- We will meet on Wednesday October 23rd at 7:15 for a special faculty meeting to plan for our school wide improvement goals.  At this meeting we will look at the goals for the school and talk about designing complex tasks for students based on our goals.  These goals will be the goals for the Math and Language Arts teachers for the school year.  All other content area teachers must also create goals for their evaluations and the goals should be tied closely with our school improvement goals.  Here are the Goals. Here is the form that is due by Nov. 1st uploaded to SFS.  FORM  It may also be found in SFS under forms.

Faculty Meeting Wednesday October 16th 7:15-  Triad teams should come prepared for one of their group members to present an upcoming lesson.  As we participate in the protocol with our triads we must continue to be collegial and challenge the thinking of our fellow teachers.  This is how we get better!  Teachers should be participating through a lens of abundant amounts of reading, writing, and discussing.  Are these accounted for in the lesson presented?  How might they be integrated?  Remember when visiting the lessons we should be looking at what students are doing and what we can predict they should know and be able to do as a result of what they are doing.  Task predicts performance and we must continue to challenge each other to design complex tasks that require students to reach the upper levels of blooms.  Lead Together, Learn Together.

Task Predicts Performance

Feedback Form

Autism and Behavior Workshops-  There will be two workshops that will target strategies for working with students with autism and behavior issues available for all staff to attend.  These workshops are optional but strongly suggested as we continue to improve our practice and become the best we can be.  Our school wide improvement goals target those students that might be having behavior issues therefore it would be beneficial to our success as a schools if we all hone our craft in working with such students.  These workshops are for all staff, aides, secretaries, custodians, and cafeteria workers.  Workshop dates:  November 5th 3:15-4:15 and November 11th 3:15-4:15.

Digital Portfolios- Just a reminder that the Language Arts department has had all students develop digital portfolios for all teachers to use.  These serve as a great ways to engage students in metacognition through writing and a way to display student work for all to see.  If you have not had students upload work to their portfolios try it and also have students think about their thinking via blogging on their portfolio.

Note:  I will make this a common weekly entry on the blog to share stuff.  Please refer to the blog frequently.