ISY Elementary School Faculty Blog

Looking Back

Mike Simpson

May 20, 2022

As we come to the end of the school year, I am looking back on blog posts from the last two years. Here is some parent feedback from back in November 2020:

“First of all I want to express our deep appreciation to your flawless preparation to the most absurd situation the world is facing. Your solid delivery of your planned sessions and your relentless patience in this new teaching environment is impeccable. You all have shattered our expectations with the amount of effort you put on every day of the week. We are so grateful to your extraordinary execution and management and we are pleased to be part of ISY community.”

“I have a huge respect for you all. I am a teacher myself and I am amazed by the ideas, patience and effort you have /make every week.”

“(Child) loves his class and his school, like nothing I’ve seen before, that’s a credit to his teachers and school.”

“We thank you in sustaining our children’s education, morale, and academic curiosity through this most unprecedented moment in history, and appreciate all that you do.” 

“I want to take the opportunity to thank the whole team for the extraordinary work you are doing with the children during these challenging times – it is very impressive!”

“Thank you for continuing to research innovative ways to improve virtual learning with the many challenges while also balancing the core priorities.”

“The way ISY has been engaged with its students in this new norm is itself commendable. Even our younger son who will be turning 4 next August looks forward to attending school.”

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!

Withdrawing Students

If you hear from a family or child that they might not be returning to ISY next year, please let Nimmi know so she can follow up with the parents.

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 recess – lunch is now inside in the cafeteria.

It sounds like the rain has set in now. Here is a plan for Grades 1-5 to avoid confusion if it is raining during a recess. 

If it is raining at lunch recess:

  • Albert will be on the Covered Court to supervise students. There will be an overlap with Middle School lunch from 12:35 but we think there is enough room.
  • All Grade 1 students will play on the Covered Court.
  • Those Grade 2/3 & 4/5 students who would rather not play on the Covered Court will go to their classrooms and will be supervised by the other scheduled duty faculty members. 
  • Grade 2/3 & 4/5 Homeroom teachers, please tell your students to choose the Covered Court or the classroom and not to switch between the two.

If it is raining at morning recess:

Morning recess will be in classrooms. Scheduled duty faculty members will supervise students.

To avoid confusion on rainy days, an email from the Elementary Office will be sent to all Elementary Teachers and Assistants 5 minutes before a lunch/recess to confirm it will be indoors because it is wet. If there is no email, lunch/recess is outside as usual.

SUPERVISION SCHEDULE

Here is the Q4 Supervision Schedule that we will use for Quarter 4.

This week:

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

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

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

Semester 2 Reports

Here is a link to the Semester 2 Report Writing Instructions and Timeline.

Timeline:

By 12pm on Monday, May 23: Subject Blurbs to be completed.

By 12pm on Thursday, June 2: Individual Student Comments to be completed. Please share your Google Document directly with Mike as soon as you have completed your comments. For individual student comments, you take the blurb and adapt it to fit the student.

By 12pm on Monday, June 6: Individual Student Comments and Grades to be entered into Powerschool.

Reports go out on Wednesday, June 8

QUARTER 4 SCHEDULE

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

ZOOM LINKS (Semester 2)

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

ISY Learner Attributes

Thank you again for all you did to promote our ISY Learner Attributes during Spirit Week. Please keep the focus on these attributes as we finish out the school year. If you have any ideas on how to promote any of the attributes, please add them to this ISY Learner Attributes Activity Menu.

Q4 Interdisciplinary Units

Scope and Sequences

We now have confirmed Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions for our Quarter 4 units. Please refer to the Q4 Scope and Sequence and update it as necessary.

Specialist teachers, please strive to connect to the Enduring Understanding and/or Essential Questions.

Everyone, 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.

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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.

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