Dave, Elliot, and I were so excited to visit morning meetings this week. I was also able to get into a few specialist classes and will continue to stop by more next week. We heard from so many of you how energizing it was to work with students in small groups and 1:1 this week. They are our “Why.”
Our back to school events are the highlights of the upcoming week. Let us know if you need any support with hosting your event.
Upcoming Week at a Glance:
Back to School Zoom Thoughts
Things to consider:
Making the chat only visible to the host so questions can be filtered. This idea won’t work if you plan to make your presentation interactive in any way.
Disabling the waiting room for this event - parents may be coming and going and this alleviates the need for the host to monitor the waiting room during the presentation.
Asking parents to remain on mute. The host has the ability to mute anyone who unmutes themselves (feel free to use this feature as background noise can be very distracting.
Spreading out the tech roles on the team - one person screen shares and the host monitors the chat.
Playing music as parents enter is calming and alleviates the awkwardness of everyone staring at each other waiting for the presentation to begin.
Student Engagement - Specialists Checking In on Students
When specialists notice that a student isn’t engaging in work for a couple of weeks, we have asked the specialists to contact the homeroom teacher to check in about the student before contacting the parents.
Notes from the Faculty Meeting
As your your team reflects on the new daily plan/virtual classroom from the student’s perspective, here are some questions to consider:
Is everything in one place? Do the students go to one spot to find everything without having to go between email, Seesaw, and a slidedeck? Basically, what’s your main method of communication?
Do students have access to the weekly planner?
Do parents need to access something for their child or can students access everything they need?
How many clicks did it take to get to a task?
Is everything linked and are the links working? Link it all and check the links!
How many apps and docs are students toggling between in one day?
Are the directions crystal clear? If students don’t have to post anything, is that explicitly stated?
Are there due dates?
Is the slide visually appealing and easy to read?
Is there a clear, simple, written checklist students can use to let them know what to do each day and to keep track of what they completed?
Feel free to revise and edit your daily plan template as needed to ensure students can concentrate on the content and tasks and not on the navigation of the workflow.
Tech Integration from Priya
Raz Kids
This tutorial will show you how to assign students reading assignments. This is a mandatory skill you all need to know. Click this link here to learn more. If you need one on one training please feel free to schedule a time with Priya Venugopal.
More tips and tricks about Seesaw
As you start creating content on Seesaw it is important that you start creating folders. This will help the students label their work and it will help you when student-led conferences come. Use folders for organization
From the Counselors
Morning Meeting/RC Corner
Our second full week of classes is complete and classes continue to build community and set forth class routines and procedures. As an ES, we are being intentional with clear instructions to students including expectations around muting, participation and sharing! Hopefully, everyone had a chance to read some of the Responsive Classroom released first 10 days of school resource. If not, here is the place to find it - RC Covid 19 Released Resources
Next up - Sharing!
In the days ahead, think around how to introduce sharing as a procedure. How can students sign up to share something from their daily lives? How will you model questions and comments? Please reach out if you have wonderings around this process.
RC Videos - If you have an itch to watch some RC videos around introducing goals or rules creation, here is the place to find 2 videos with examples from lower and upper elementary school - RC Videos.
Coaching Corner
Co-Planning and Anecdotal Notes
As we develop new ways to collaborate and gather student data, co-teaching teams are creating ways to plan and gather information. This example shows how you might use Google Sheets in various ways. Have you created a helpful tool? Please share! We’d love to add it to the Coaching Corner. Reach out to Mary Kelly to chat more.
Conferring Tips and Ideas
Are you looking for new conferring tips and strategies? Would you like to see conferring in action? Jennifer Serravallo's new book Reading Conferences K-8 is full of fresh and exciting ways to leverage the power of conferring to engage our young readers and writers. Although we are not on campus to access this resource, you are able to add this resource to your Heinemann account. Simply use the code CEREADCON to register this new resource. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Alex.
Teacher Appreciation Day (Friday, September 4)
As we continue to celebrate cherished traditions despite being apart, we’re pleased to announce a virtual celebration of Teacher Appreciation Day on Friday, September 4, 7:45 a.m. Stay tuned for Zoom details as we honor this tradition with the Board.
But what is Teacher Appreciation Day without that amazing breakfast spread? On September 4, faculty, teaching assistants and staff in Chennai will receive a scrumptious breakfast delivery from our partners at ITC between 6:45–7:45 a.m. And while we regret being unable to extend the same gastronomic gesture to our out-of-India faculty, we have a special delivery planned for you too!
Watch this space for more details closer to September 4!
Enjoy your weekend!
Lynn, Dave, and Elliot
