Welcome to the new school year! Thank you for your hard work preparing your classrooms and planning your lessons. You are an amazing team of educators. Have fun and enjoy your new class!

Morning Supervision Procedure:

Duty is from 7:40-7:57

One teacher to supervise tables other teacher supervises walking field/zumba

After 7:40, students may place backpacks on classlines

Student/Families may NEVER line up on lines before 7:57

Student may sit inside the cafeteria, sit at the tables outside the cafeteria, walk the field, do zumba, visit classrooms for tutoring ONLY with teacher permission

Fountas and Pinnell Assessment Data entered by August 31:

From the SBUSD Assessment Manual–using Fountas and Pinnell teachers will determine reading level of all students in order to support independent reading at their level. Using Illuminate, report Instructional Level (shows what students are working on) and Independent level, and collect information on accuracy, fluency, comprehension, and genre on Instructional Level. It is ideal to test to Hard in order to ensure students are not actually reading at a higher level. Use of the WORD LIST is not considered a level, and is used to determine a starting point for students without prior scores.

Fountas and Pinnell suggest to start with student choice of genre for each assessment session. Alternate fiction/non-fiction within the session. Next round, allow for student choice again and alternate.

Additional Notes:

A/B Leveled Books:  A/B books are written to teach concepts of print, one-to-one matching and a FEW high frequency  ONLY. When students have concepts of print and one-to-one correspondence, they should be moved into C level books.  A/B books are not intended to be decoded. Please refer to the Fountas and Pinnell Literacy Continuum for specific skills and strategies in each guided reading level.

Testing to Hard

• It is important to not stop testing once you’ve reached a student’s initial instructional level. It is possible a student might be a band of instructional levels. The purpose of testing to Hard is to diagnose the student’s instructional band and what the student IS able to do and what she is NOT YET able to do. Stopping at the first instructional level may hold students back. Digging deeper into the miscues and errors will help uncover where you can support students in small groups.

SBUSD Assessment Document 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SCoIHDelFn8zbGdqxp7kM2riywIF3eV9yrfeEsDJGcI/edit#

Building your Book Baggies/bins:

So many of you have been interested in seeing your Fountas and Pinnell level for your incoming students. Here are some instructions OR a (riveting) video to get into Illuminate to view those results. IMPORTANT NOTES: Make sure you pay close attention the instruction about Enrollment Date AND know that there will most likely be multiple pages. 

ST Math:

• Getting Started with ST Math– Accounts are ready to roll next week. Remember best practice for time on task:
  • K-1 ⇒ 60 minutes per week
  • 2-6 ⇒ 90 minutes per week
  • More than 20 minutes per session. For example:
    • 2- 45 minute sessions
    • 3- 30 minute sessions

Other Digital Content:

Wixie (TK-2 and ALL SDC)

Thrively– Students in 4^th through 8^th grade have access to Thrively, a fun way to get to know your students’ strengths. Accounts will be set up shortly. Here’s a Getting Started Guide

• NEW Digital CONTENT–
  • DreamBox Math– information and training will be forthcoming.
  • BrainPop– information coming soon

CyberSmarts Week:

• Please remember that the District-wide “CyberSmarts Week,” with its digital safety and digital literacy awareness focus for all students, is scheduled to be celebrated by all teachers in District schools and classrooms during the week of Aug 27 – Aug 31, 2018.
• Due to federal, State, and Governing Board policy requirements, public schools must now ensure that all students in all grade levels are provided with foundational instruction in cybersafety and appropriate online behavior on an annual basis. Parents & families will be notified that CyberSmarts Week will be observed in each of their children’s classrooms during the week of Aug 27 – Aug 31, 2018.
• Please take some time to review your grade level content at the posted CyberSmarts agenda website at http://tinyurl.com/becybersmart  for your classroom instructional planning.
  • Just click the tab for your grade level at the top of the CyberSmarts Week page; The 3 – 5 core “mini-lessons of the week” for each grade level are in folders at the bottom of each grade level tab.
  • A Teacher Agenda page is provided with some simple steps to prepare for CyberSmarts Week.
  • NOTE: While this grade level content is not prescriptive, we ask that you use it as a basic guideline for providing these key foundations in student cybersafety. For many of the lower grade levels, please be aware that there is some intentional repetition of the basic ideas between years to reinforce key concepts.
• Please check with your IMRT in the Library about any questions, concerns, or requests for assistance.
• Thank you for helping us keep all South Bay kids safe and ‘cybersmart!’

Teachers College Units Sequence:

See below for the Teacher’s College sequence for the 2018-19 school year!

Here is the sequence of units for Reading and Writing.

Classroom Libraries:

The new classroom library books have arrived! In your classroom, you will find the books (still in boxes), bins and a packing list. Unfortunately, the District team was not able to accomplish as much as they expected. You will need to remove the books from the boxes, place them in the provided blue plastic bins, affix a leveled label to the back of the book and label the bin (bin labels and leveled book labels located in the TCRWP Classroom Libraries Tools and Resources Kit which can be found in the cardboard box labeled “Resource Kit Enclosed”).

 

To support your efforts, we will take some time during our prep time together to work on your libraries and I will provide an optional four hours of out of contract time to you to support this work. You may come in now and get started or work before or after contract hours anytime through July 27^th. Time sheets must be submitted by Friday, July 27^th.

Additional information/recommendations:

• Find the TCRWP Classroom Libraries Tools and Resources Box (found in the box labeled “Resource Kit Enclosed”
• Find your Book Bin Label Cards packet and Book Level Labels packet (located in the TCRWP Classroom Libraries Tools and Resources Box)
• Register your Classroom Library Kit
• After you register your kit, you may print additional labels
• The books with the yellow/green label are the grade level shelves and the books with the pink stickers are the below grade level shelves

In order to ensure that we are SBUSD/ Williams Act compliant, we will need to make sure that our libraries meet a few key requirements:

• The new books must be placed in the provided bins.
• The new books should not be mixed in with your existing libraries.
• Students must have a book baggie/box which include some at grade level texts as well as texts at their reading level/band.

Reminders from the Office:

• 1^st day packets have been delivered to your classrooms, if you need extras or if you have extras please return to the office.  SEND HOME ON MONDAY
• Only two things to collect for the office – Emergency cards and Parent’s Right sheet, they are both paper clipped in each packet.
• Meal Application survey form will only be required for new students including all Kinders.
• Fire Drill (yellow) Disaster Accountability (pink) will be placed in your mailbox, please place them in the Emergency packet
• PTA packet going home separately and are not included in the 1^st day packet, we need your help to insert the flyers in the 1^st day packet.
• PTA is requesting that waivers be returned from all students. (this will allow them to participate in morning Zumba and other PTA sponsored activities) We encourage everyone to join PTA for only $15.00 as it helps support our school.

PAYROLL REMINDER:

• Please sign for your absence upon your return from you absence.
• When requesting a release day, please submit a P-30 7 days in advance.

Back to School Night:

Schedule

5:00-5:15 Chromebook Take Home Information Meeting (grades 4-6)

5:15 PTA Meeting

5:30 Principal Welcome

5:45 Classroom Session 1 (25 minutes)

6:15 (Classroom Session 2 (25 minutes)

District Writing Day:

The purpose of this assessment will be to inform teaching by analyzing authentic student writing in grade level and vertical site teams.  This is meant to be a 45 minute narrative on-demand writing piece. (Not a writing lesson!). This will also serve as the pre-assessment for Writing Workshop units. All students will respond to a common prompt in order to evaluate writing across a developmental continuum (Writing Pathways, Calkins). The assessment will be done by hand only using appropriate paper choice (district provided) and pen/pencil.  This leads to higher levels of equity, evidence of  student thinking, etc. Instructions and paper for K-2 will be provided. ·        District Writing Day- August 7 ·        District Writing Day-March 5 Prompts: ·        Kindergarten ·        First Grade ·        Second Grade ·        3rd- 8th Grade Reporting in Illuminate may or may not be required.

Due Dates:

July 27        Daily Schedule

July 27        ILT name

July 27        Teaching Expectations Grade Level Plan

Quote of the Week: