ISY Elementary School Faculty Blog

Short Teaching Week

Mike Simpson

February 25, 2022

Without wanting to jinx anything, there are some positive signs that we will see more students moving from online to in-person classes next week. Let’s hope that this trend continues and we can settle into some more permanent routines.

Next week is a short teaching week with Friday being set aside for our Compassion Conference. It will be refreshing to be able to sit and be the student for a change. You can find information about the conference at the bottom of this blog. 

We all know we are doing our best…. even when we are not at our best!

Check in. How am I? What do I need? How are they? What do they need from me?

Ask for help and be helpful.

Be present and patient. Take time to fully understand others and allow time for others to understand you. Pausing, Paraphrasing and Posing Questions promotes our common understanding.

Share your ideas and be open to the ideas of others. Once shared, they become our ideas and anything could happen!

Quarter 3 Reports

Please click here for the Q3 Progress Report Organization & Timeline. This is exactly the same as what we did for Quarter 1 Progress Reports.

Below are some key dates to be aware of:

Friday, March 18: Report Subject Comments Due.

Friday, March 25: Homeroom Teachers: ISY Learner Attributes Comments Due.

Tuesday, March 29: All reports in Powerschool. Specialist Teachers – you will add 1 (or 2 max) sentence to your subject comment for each child. 

Friday, April 1: Reports go live on Powerschool.

Faculty Meeting with Dr.Hedger (online)

Before school on Monday, February 28

Dr. Hedger will introduce the great work of ISY student group, Diverse Identities Alliance (DIA), and how it will contribute to a wider conversations around LGBTQ+ topics.

Please accept the calendar invite.

Stationery

Thank for completing your international orders. 

Stationery has now been cleared from Room 107. Please now order any stationery you need as you would normally.

KEY COVID CONSIDERATIONS

  • All information regarding COVID cases should go through the clinic.  If a parent or students reports a case to you, please ask them to email the clinic and the clinic will follow up.
  • Everyone on campus (all students and teachers) must wear a mask at all times
  • Students are to wipe their desks with a disinfectant wipe when they leave the room (e.g. leaving a specialist class, on the way to lunch, end of the day)
  • Class doors and windows to be open while teaching with air conditioners turned on (unless air quality is an issue – you will be notified by email).
  • Everyone encouraged to wash hands at every opportunity.
Covid Update (from last Thursday’s email to faculty from Dr. Hedger)
You might have noticed from the Thursday Notices email that we are making some changes to our health and Safety Guidelines regarding Covid.  These are largely following the latest CDC guidelines updated in the last couple of weeks.
The key changes are the following.
  • If you come into close contact with a suspected case (i.e. a partner, your child or household member) we want you to stay home for at least 5 days, monitor for symptoms and test using the rapid test kits.  The only exception to this rule is if you have recovered from a case of Covid in the last 90 days yourself.  Then you can come to school but should  be monitoring for symptoms carefully.
  • If you test positive then you should be at home for a minimum of 5 days.  If after 5 days you have no symptoms and test negative you can return to school on Day 6.  
  • The maximum time away should be 10 days.  Sometimes you can still get a positive result after 10 days but the research tells us that people are not contagious at this point.
These are the main points for now but may change as the situation changes.  

SEMESTER 2 SCHEDULE

Here is the link to the ES Semester 2 Schedule which is also available on the Elementary School Faculty Pages.

Note: The schedule has no transition times between periods. Please make sure that students are ready to start their next class on time and start recess and lunch on time.

 

SUPERVISION SCHEDULE

Here is the Supervision Schedule that we will use for Semester 2.

This week:

10:00 – 10:20 Grade 2-5 Recess Locations

  • Front Steps End of Field / Front Steps Playground: Grades 4/5
  • SAS Building End of Field / A Building Playground: Grades 2/3

8:00 – 8:20 Before School Play Duty

Here is the Before School Play Duty Schedule that we will use for Semester 2.

People on duty this week:

  • Monday: May Khine
  • Tuesday: Ian
  • Wednesday: Isabel
  • Thursday: Charlie
  • Friday: NO STUDENTS

ZOOM LINKS (Semester 2)

Here is a link to the Zoom Links that we will use for Semester 2.

Semester 2 Teaching Teams

Here is the link to the ES Semester 2 Teaching Teams document which is also available on the Elementary School Faculty Pages.

When thinking about these teaching teams, we just need to bear in mind that we might all need to cover for or assist colleagues who are unable to work from school. 

On this document (at the top) you will see links to Grade Level (PK-KG, G1, G2/3, and G4/5) Organization Summaries – as things pop up, please add them to the bottom of the document so we can address them.

ADAPTIVE HYBRID PROGRAM FOR COVID SPIKE

Effective from Monday, February 14

Next week, first period will go back to the normal starting time of 8:40am. All homeroom teachers will be in-person with Hannah, Mike, and Beth running the online program with the support of teaching assistants.

—–

Why are we doing this? 

In light of current Covid cases (teachers and students), our current hybrid model is unsustainable in the short term. The online classes for PK-1, 2/3, and 4/5 were bigger than any in-person class this week. This may be the case for the next few  weeks. We need to be able to position teachers where we need them to meet the different and often unpredictable needs of each day and so we can keep the school open.

Click here for the full Adaptive Hybrid Program for COVID Spike

MAP Testing (February 28 – March 3)

It has been awhile! Grades 2/3 and 4/5 students will sit MAP tests from this Monday, February 28 to Thursday, March 3.

Here is the ES MAP Testing Schedule.

We can have make up test sessions for those students who do not finish (or are absent).  However, to avoid the need for scheduling too many make up tests, please let students keep testing into the next period if they are near finishing. Specialists, this might mean students are late or miss your classes during this period.

The students will sit the following tests:

  • Reading
  • Language Usage
  • Math

Here are the slides that we used to provide an Overview of MAP Testing in the Elementary School.

 

Interdisciplinary Units

Curriculum Maps and Scope and Sequences

Here is where you can find our Curriculum Maps These will be updated up to Quarter 2 using our Subject Blurbs from Semester 1 reports.

Here is where you can find our Q3 Scope and Sequence. 

To fill out this year’s Q3 Scope and Sequence, you might want to refer to the skills you focused on this time last year in this Q3 Scope and Sequence 2020-2021.

Please link your planning to the Scope and Sequence as you did for our Q2 Scope and Sequence. We want to give you some autonomy as to how you organize your planning and resources but your planning needs to be in an ISY Shared Drive. 

Please also check off the standards that you intend to cover in your subject in Quarter 3. Please make sure there is an ‘x’ in the second column of any standard you will cover in these Grade Level Standards Checklists.

 Reading Levels – January 2022

It is time to reassess our students’ reading levels. This is important data to be recorded on this Elementary Reading Levels (2021-2022) Spreadsheet. There are obvious challenges to doing this quickly online so please focus first on those students who you might require additional support in the second half of the year.

From our TIFs

Both Ian and Lindsey have new teaching responsibilities for Semester 2. This might mean one of the another are unavailable to immediately help with an issue. 

If you have a technology issue that is not urgent, email tifs@isyedu.org. 

If you have an urgent technology issue, the best thing to do is send a Google Hangout message to Lindsey, Ian, and Anshu. That way you have 3 chances that someone is available when you need them. 

– – – –

Here are a curated list of helpful links for students and families as we begin the year. These videos can be helpful as you share information with them. 

ISY Annual Compassion Conference

Friday, March 4

This will be organized under the umbrella of ISY’s Definition of Compassion: The will and understanding to respect and value the identity, culture, perspective, and experience of others in acting to make a positive difference to their lives.

This is the ISY Compassion Conference 2022 Google Site that we will use to organize ourselves and post information. We will confirm and communicate participant groups and rooms early next week.

We have decided to hold our own ISY teacher workshops for a separate event to be held later in the year. This event will be organized around our ISY Inclusive Practices.

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