Friday, August 10, 2018

Dear All,

A great start and we really sincerely appreciate all your help and flexibility this week. We cannot say this enough!!

There is a great deal of important information in the blog this week. Many elements to both the master and duty schedule have been tweaked, and we need for every ES faculty member to go through their assignments/class timings etc thoroughly before school on Monday. Please know that if you would like to come into school this weekend, the A/C will be working all day - both Saturday and Sunday.

Thank you’s (Anyone you’d like to thank?  Pass on a note to Keryn, Dave, & Calley for next week.)

• All specialist teachers for guiding our new families to their classrooms
• All homeroom, EAL and TAs for being ready in the homerooms so early!
• Linda & Vanessa for proactively meeting each classroom
• Amanda, Melissa and Amritha for reaching out to children already
• Alex and Elliot for the superb F&P session
• Everyone for feedback and suggestions for improvement to our systems as we get underway
• All EY5 and Grade 1 teachers and TAs who are sitting and eating with their classes - so important to build our lunchroom culture
• Kay for suggesting the entrance/exit doors to facilitate flow in the ES cafeteria
• Sarah, Finny and Vasanth for the music at today’s assembly
• Everyone for being out and about on extra duties this week while we settled all 440 ES children into the new school year - thank you!

Kath Murdoch - next Friday 17th (see agenda sent by Dan)

If you are attending Kath Murdoch, please make sure you have a lesson plan written for that day and that you have found coverage for your duties. Below is the list of individuals attending Kath Murdoch and who will be covering their classroom.

1	Scott Stier	Leontheen
2	Kristina Jenkins	Uma
3	Amy Sedestrom	Steffi
4	Julia Davis	Preetika
5	Barbara Wilson	Sweety
6	Fiona Babu	No sub
7	Tiffany Filter	Adithya
8	Elliot Fijman	Salome
9	Alex Ray	No sub
10	Janna Herring	Sai
11	Kay Clarke	Zahida
12	Bindu K	Gayathri
13	Jet Willette	No sub
14	Deepa Jacob	Angie
15	Valar	No sub
16	Preethi Isaac	SUB (Rani)
17	Fer Latore	Karen
18	Ula K	Padma
19	Dave Allen	No sub
20	Tara Gray	No sub
21	John Merletti	Shruthi
22	Mary Kelly Bello	No sub
23	Anita Horton	Clinton
24	Jane Fijman	Balaji
25	Marea Bouma	Seema
26	Usha Bushan	No sub
27	Calley Connelly	No sub
28	Vanessa Kim	No Sub

Duty Schedule

Please review the duty schedule as some changes were made to increase consistency across the week in terms of assigned areas and familiarity with grade levels.

• Grade 2 will now be eating with EY5 and Grade 1 from 12:20 - 12:40 p.m.
• From 12:40 p.m. onwards, those in the cafeteria with EY5-G2 children can begin dismissing students outside and also head outside with the children for the remaining 10 mins of duty until the new duty person arrives at 12:50pm.
• If there are any slower eaters, we suggest you group them into 1-2 tables and decide among you who will stay with these few children, and who will go outside
• For everyone on recess duty from 12:20 to 12:50 p.m. please make sure you stay in your assigned area until the next person takes over.
• Grades 3, 4, and 5 will stay out on lunch recess a little longer until 12:55 and p.m. then go to eat. Students will remain at lunch until they are dismissed around 1:15 p.m.

Master Schedule

Please everyone check class timings and transition timings.  There have been a few edits, especially to specialist lesson start times.  

**Please note for both schedules, this will not be set in stone until we have lived it fully for the next couple of weeks - keep sending suggestions for improvement our way!

From the Coaches Corner

We thought this was a good quick read that reiterates the connection between the workshop model and inquiry - relevant with the work being done around inquiry and next week's workshop with Kath Murdoch.

BreakoutEDU

BreakoutEDU is a fun way for students to work collaboratively to solve puzzles. Students are introduced to the challenge with a story. Then they begin solving clues that open locks to reveal the next clue. Finally, students solve the last clue and solve the challenge put forth in the story. BreakoutEDU also has a website with many of the games already planned. It is a great way to get students working together at the beginning of the year. Here is a link to the website for additional information.

We have kits and support to run these games in your classroom. If you are interested, send an email to me, Hilary.

Message from the Library Team

Please click here to see some important updates from the library team. This week, they are sharing info on how you can sign up to receive a free and wonderful PD resource (deadline August 15), the library's new book party (August 31), and general procedures for staff check-out and book requests this year.

Substitutes

Our pool of substitute teachers is limited this year, so we will continue to rely heavily on internal coverage. Regardless of who is covering your absence, please be sure to leave clear lesson plans. If you know anyone in the community who is eligible to work in India and has experience with elementary aged students, feel free to have them send their CV directly to Dave.

Staff Emergency Telephone Tree - booklets are in your cubbies, please collect. First telephone tree test is next Thursday, August 23rd, at 7:00pm. Please review this book ahead of this and know your responsibilities.

Safety on the Soccer Field, Stairs and Around Campus

Please remind any students you see around school wearing flip flops that these are only allowed for days they have swimming. We already had a few (minor) accidents on the stairs and soccer fields due to kids slipping out of these shoes. We asked parents in our Principals notes to day to ensure their children wear appropriate shoes. We also reminded them, as per our handbook, flip flop shoes are only for days when students have swimming.

Snapshot Conferences

Also known as ‘Listening In’ conferences - these are designed for you to get all of that vital information from parents about the students in your class. You are encouraged to send home a questionnaire to parents in advance to help them think about some of the information you may like to know.  You set the scene, and the parents do all the talking.  Some areas you may want to know include

• Favourite parts of school in previous years
• Hopes for the year
• Fears
• Special people, places
• Family circumstances
• Languages spoken at home
• Friendships and relationships

These are scheduled for anytime within the week of Monday 21st - Friday 25th August. There is no section meeting that week. Each homeroom teacher can use this schedule to invite parents in during your preferred time slots; this can be before or after school, during a prep block or even lunch. Please ensure you have enough time blocks offered for all your students, plus around 5-6  extra slots per class.

Example.  If you have 12 students, create 18-20 x 10 min slots throughout the week.
EAL teachers should please join with the HR teachers as much as possible, and if there is a child with special needs, HR teachers could also invite specialists to join where possible.

That’s it everyone!!  Don’t forget to start tweeting using #aiscelementary - can’t wait to see all those ideas and learning documented.

Have a well deserved, restful weekend!

Keryn, Dave and Calley