Friday, August 3, 2018

Dear all,

Welcome Back! There really is something special about the first week of school, and this week was no exception.  With 9 fabulous ‘newbies’ joining our Elementary community this year, Dave, Calley, and I are genuinely excited to be working with each and every one of you.  We know that we will have a successful and fun year together - full of differentiation with our teaching and learning programs.  And a truck ton of fun too!

Thank you for welcoming all of our newbies; don’t they look spectacular here!

 

Weekly Notes

Our weekly notes will be sent out via this blog every week. We will aim to get these out to you Friday afternoon before the upcoming week. It is critical that you please take the time to read these as they contain important information items, reminders and sign ups that you don’t want to miss out on.

If any of you have items you would like included, please let us know by Friday a.m at the latest, and send the blurb or information via email.

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

• A big thank you everyone who has lead and prepared sessions for NFO; Hilary, Alex, Priya, Mary Kelly and Elliot
• Priya for getting us started with powerschool learning
• Dave and Calley for the hours of dedication to the duty schedule
• Alex and Jack for final tweaks to the ES master schedule
• Grade team leaders for coordinating a lot of logistics with your team and sharing vital pieces of communication
• Hazel, Padma & Cheryl for amazing behind the scenes organization
• Linda and Vanessa for the hours balancing and re-balancing the class lists
• Grade 2, 3 and 4 for the extra efforts unpacking this week into brand new classrooms
• Everyone’s fabulous participation at our section sessions this week

Space Changes this year

Tea / Coffee & Teacher Mail Cubbies are in the Principal’s Office - please bring your own coffee mugs.

Printers - the color printer on Level 2 can be accessed in the CIC (Room 2129).

Section Meeting

The upcoming Wednesday meeting schedule can be found here.  You will see that the first Wednesday, meeting on August 22 is for vertical departments; this is for ES Specialists only as Homeroom and EAL teachers will be involved with snapshot conferences.
Specialists, including EAL and LSS teachers, you are obviously already in a department. Homeroom teachers - are deciding within their team who will join LA, Math, Science and Social Studies.

TGIF

The wonderful tradition of these WILL continue this year - watch this space for more info & dates.

New Student Orientation: Wednesday, August 8th (EY5 - Grade 5 **EY3/4 on Thursday 9th)

All our new students from EY5 -Grade 5 will be attending NSO from 9:00am - 10:30am.
All Specialist teachers and counselors, please place yourselves near the entrances from 8:50am to guide new families to classrooms upon arrival.  Please personally escort a family, no matter which class/grade they are going to.  Once all new families are in classes, you can join your own class/grade again.  

Homeroom and EAL teachers and TAs please station yourselves in your class from 8:45 for any early birds.

ES Master Schedule 2018-19

Please remember that the schedule will not be 100% finalized until it has successfully run through five teaching days.

Duty Schedule

2018-2019 ES Duty Schedule

Given the changes to the master schedule, the duty schedule was significantly revamped to ensure that duties were equitable and consistent across all grade levels as well as ensuring the safety of students. Each teacher, coach, and specialist will have 60 minutes of duty time (e.g., two 30 minute, three 20 minute). TAs approximately have two to three duties per week. If you absolutely need to switch your duties, please arrange this directly with colleagues - and then you must inform Hazel of these changes.  If you are absent for school for a known reason (e.g PD or personal days) you must find cover for your own duties.

Class lists
Are being uploaded to powerschool and will all be listed there by Monday morning for you to access.

Yearbook Photos

Sign up Schedule

Individual and Classroom Yearbook photos are scheduled from Tuesday Aug 21st - Friday Aug 24th. Please sign up for a time for your class, the venue is the Madras Hall. Please inform parents in advance. There are time slots for absentees on Friday. There will be another session in January for students who are absent during this week and for those joining later in the year.  

End of Day Handover

We want to be tight about our end of day handover, being intentional to pass each child over to:

• a parent
• a sibling in 6th grade or older
• the ASA program
• the bus monitor
• the Japanese school teacher

TAs are asked to please accompany students to the gate; they will wait with the children until the driver has arrived.

Any children not picked up by 3:40 can be escorted to the ES Reception; Cheryl will contact the parent/driver. She also monitors students who are chronically late being picked up.  NO children are to remain unsupervised on campus. 

First Day of School

Please can all Grade 2-5 teachers, including specialists,  come to the pick-up area a few minutes prior to the 8:25 bell on Thursday and assist with students lining up in class lines.

Hazel and Padma will give you a sign with your name so that new students can identify you. Everyone please also wear the ID badges which was given to you during the AFO.

Personal Leave

Please be reminded that personal leave can be granted for up to 3 days, and can be used for

1. Required religious holidays
2. Immigration and customs department appointments
3. Personal business that cannot be scheduled after school hours
4. Legal court appointments
5. For other reasons at the Head of School’s discretion.

A reminder, if you need to leave campus for an emergent reason for up to 90 mins (prep block) you do not have to apply for ½ day leave, although you must inform Keryn and the office. This is very important in case of an emergency drill.  If you cannot find us in person, please ensure you send an email and cc Hazel/Padmapriya too.  This ‘permission’ should not be frequently asked for, and will not be granted more than 1-2 times in the year.  Anything longer than 90 mins needs to be applied for, and will count as ½ day leave.

Welcome Back Assembly: Friday, August 10th - 2:30 - 3:15pm

This coming Friday AFTERNOON in the theater. All students should be seated by 2:30 - no water bottles, coffee cups or food please. We will introduce new teachers and TAs, and ask new students to stand to be acknowledged.

Morning Attendance

Please enter your attendance into Power School no later than 8.45 am each morning.  Students arriving after 8:30 am in the morning will be issued a late pass at the gate.

Edmodo Expectations
Next Friday, August 10th, all teachers, Homeroom, EAL and specialists need to post a welcome message to the classes they teach.  This should include a class photo and the homeroom schedule with specialist classes clearly identified. 

Every time you make a future post - please organize your posts under one of the following headings:
* Action
* Important
* Update (weekly update, unit update, curricular update etc)
* Reminder
* Celebration

Homeroom Edmodo Expectations
* A weekly update; what has happened this week, main events, big learning ideas (include photos)
* Grade level posts (can be copied onto all class accounts) before each new curricular unit begins - this should be the same for each class.

Specialist Edmodo Expectations
* Post each time a new unit begins (copied onto all classes within grade level) with key information
* Monthly celebration update for each class; photos with a few sentences only personalized to that particular class

Finally, please add Elementary School Calendar to your google calendar: click on the link to add it to your list of Calendars.

Phew - thank you for staying with me to the end of this, we know there was a lot of information to digest.  As always, any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
Here’s to a great year together.

Warmly,
Keryn, Dave, & Calley