ISY Elementary School Faculty Blog

Check In

Mike Simpson

September 10, 2021

It has been another unsettling week. Thank you for providing a sense of safety and stability for our children and their families. Keep checking in on yourselves and those around you.

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!

ES COLLABORATIVE AGENDA

Please add any questions, items that come to mind to this ES Collaborative Agenda. The idea is that once we have a few things to discuss that can’t be addressed by email, we will meet.

Maintaining our Community

We are looking for interested people to be a part of a committee which will brainstorm ways for us to keep connected as a faculty now that we are spread across the world. Please email me if you are interested.

Student Review Meetings

Goal: To reflect on student progress as a team and seek strategies to support and challenge students.  Focus is on Tier 1 and Tier 2 students.

Meetings will take place approximately every 6 weeks according to this SRM Schedule.  Homeroom teachers will asked to complete a checklist prior to the meeting to identify students they wish to prioritize.  Specialists are encouraged to complete the checklist for concerns they see within their classrooms.  All team members should review the notes before and after the meetings to identify areas in which they may have been assigned a task.

Recording Student Reading Levels

Please use this Elementary Reading Levels 2021-2022 to record the reading levels of your students. It is easiest to use the Reading A-Z assessment tool so use that and record that level – no need to convert it into any different scales. We will reorganize our ISY benchmark reading levels to fit this tool to help you with reporting.

If you are using the DRAs that we have used in the past that is ok too – just put (DRA) next to the number so this is clear. We will record a level for every student in September, January and May. If you do assessments between these times, there are also columns for you to record the levels.

From our TIFs

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. 

Friday Emails + Offline Learning

We will send out our Grade Level Friday Emails next week.

You will find the email templates in the folders below. Please update these emails in blue by 12pm Thursday MMT.

In these folders you will also find the Offline Learning Activity templates that will be converted to a PDF to be emailed out every Friday. If you need to update these offline learningactivities, please do so by 12pm Thursday MMT.

ES Assemblies

There will be an assembly this Wednesday.

These assemblies will be an informal and fun way to keep everyone connected this quarter. 

Assemblies will follow a Story + Student Share + Game format every week. Thank you for signing you and your students up for these activities on this Assembly Sign Up Schedule. There are still a couple of game slots free if you have any ideas.

Quarter 1 Interdisciplinary Units

Previous Elementary School Posts

Elementary School Faculty Blog – February 19, 2021

Elementary School Faculty Blog – February 19, 2021

Feb 19, 2021 |

To my Myanmar colleagues, on behalf of all my international colleagues, thank you for the support that you continue to give us as we work together for our students in these most challenging of times. We want you to know that we support you and can adapt the way that we work to allow you to deal with whatever you need to deal with outside of school.