ISY Elementary School Faculty Blog

Spirit Week & Olympiad

Mike Simpson

March 25, 2022

Olympiad is an ISY tradition that has been a part of ISY for 32 years . It is often referred to by staff and students as the Greatest Day of the school year. Students from various grades and friendship groups work in teams performing a variety of activities that are based on teamwork and collaboration.  This year’s Olympiad will be a whole school event with Elementary School, Middle School, and High School students working together. 

In addition to just being a fun day, the goal behind Olympiad is to develop our ISY school community where skills and attributes are valued and respected.  Having a strong school community is essential as it develops a sense of belonging, provides a way for all students to be included, and helps build and strengthen cross-grade relationships. In addition, it allows students to form friendships, increase social skills, foster collaboration, and a sense of responsibility towards others. 

 On April 8, 2022, students will join their homeroom class where they are placed in teams. Together the groups will form their teams and take on the day’s challenges. The teams will consist of a balance of ages, genders, and talents. Each group will have two captains who will help facilitate the day. Older students and younger students will work together throughout the day. 

Olympiad is the final day of Spirit Week (see below). Students will be dismissed at 11:45am on Friday, April 8. 

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!

AMENDED QUARTER 4 SCHEDULE

Here is the link to the ES Quarter 4 Schedule which is also available on the Elementary School Faculty Pages.

The schedule has been amended very slightly re: 4/5L PE on Wednesday and 4/5O Art on Friday. No other changes have been made.

SUPERVISION SCHEDULE

Here is the Q4 Supervision Schedule that we will use for Quarter 4 beginning this Monday, March 28.

We now have a security guard scheduled to supervise the Front Steps playground during recess. This gives us more support as students get used to playing together again. Teachers will be on duty on the field or the A Building Playground. Please tell your students that they can go to a security if they need anything. 

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

Update: Students are allowed on campus before 8am but before school duty will still begin at 8am.

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

People on duty this week:

  • Monday: Su Linn
  • Tuesday: Swe Zin
  • Wednesday: Brett
  • Thursday: Snow
  • Friday: Charlie

ZOOM LINKS (Semester 2)

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

Indoor Lunch/Recess

Poor Air Quality & Rainy Days

An air quality reading will be taken at 9:50am so you can be confident that an A Q sign in the window of the B Building at 9:55 means that the air quality is not good enough for outdoor recess. Hopefully this doesn’t happen very often. Rainy days will be more common soon so this will also require a plan for indoor lunch / recess.

Homeroom Teaching Teams – if you haven’t already, please reach out to Sandy with how you will plan for indoor lunch/reces so we can communicate to those people on duty.

ISY Annual Compassion Conference

Friday, March 4

Thank you for your participation in this conference. I hope you enjoyed it and took some ideas away from it.

This is the ISY Compassion Conference 2022 Google Site for your reference. I will post this to Faculty Pages next week for future reference.

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.

      Quarter 3 Reports & Conferences

      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. Please share them with Mike via Google Doc.

      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.

      Friday, April 29: Conferences (online)

      Q4 Interdisciplinary Units

      Scope and Sequences

      Here is where you can find our Q4 Scope and Sequence 2021-2022 Scope & Sequence. 

      To fill out this year’s Q4 Scope and Sequence, you might want to refer to the skills you focused on this time last year in this Q4 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 4. Please make sure there is an ‘x’ in the second column of any standard you will cover in these Grade Level Standards Checklists.

      Homeroom teachers – please finalize your Enduring Understanding and Essential Questions for this unit.

      Please enter your Enduring Understanding and Essential Questions into the Scope and Sequence Document by the end of the day on Friday, March 25.

      This will allow specialist teachers to connect to it from the beginning of the quarter.  

      Please strive to integrate our Mission and Vision, Attributes and the SDGs (which inevitably hit our strategic themes) into this last quarter.

      Consider how what was covered in our Compassion Conference might help us integrate Service and Action.

      Q3 Interdisciplinary Units

      Curriculum Maps and Scope and Sequences

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

      Here is where you can find ourQ3 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 thisQ3 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 theseGrade Level Standards Checklists.

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