** There is an Announced Lockdown tomorrow at 9:15 am. Please review the procedure with your students. Remember to turn your key parallel to the floor and leave it in the door. Please check the halls for parents, substitutes and 'lost' students and bring them into your classroom before locking the door. Put your phone on silent. Do not open the door for any reason except when you hear Paul Slocombe announce the end of the lockdown.
***Please check the Master Meeting Schedule (in the sidebar) for information about this week's meetings.
****The MAP Coordinator, DTL, and ES Principal presented on MAP at the last ES PSA Meeting. Please view the livestream for more information on what was shared.
*****This Saturday, October 29th is a Professional Development Day. For more information please click on the schedule link.
Molly and Conway will switch music schedules from today (Monday, October 24) through until winter break. Music times remain the same but your students will now go to the other music room and take music with the other teacher. It will be most important to explain this to any classes who come to music on their own.
Assemblies are an essential part of our school experience helping to build community, showcase learning, and promote school spirit in an authentic and meaningful way. There is an assembly this Friday, October 28. The assembly is hosted by grade 5. Currently, no one has signed up to support this assembly except for the ES Office. Please consider sharing a short piece to support the grade five team. The presentation does not have to involve a whole class or grade level. Presentations can and should represent both core and encore classes. ASAs can also present as well. This is also a great time for teachers to share school-wide information. Presentations demonstrate learning. They are not polished performances. Students can share an excerpt from a piece of writing, talk about the many ways to solve a problem, sing a song, play an instrument, or talk about a piece of artwork.
Please help our fifth grade colleagues. Sign up here. I am sure they will support you when your turn comes as well. Grade 5 needs to complete the assembly schedule by Wednesday, so your timely sign up is appreciated. Thanks, in advance.
In an effort to support our learning resource students more effectively, your LRC team has created a Student Support Strategies document outlining basic strategies that can be utilized by all faculty and staff when working with these children. These strategies are currently in place in the core classroom and at home (where applicable). We are asking the encore teachers to also apply the strategies in their room. Please read through the strategies outlined and use them when these children are in your class. Them more consistency and support these students receive, the greater their growth and development will be in a shorter period of time. If you have questions, need clarification or use another strategy that works well with a specific student, please contact a member of the SST. This document is live and will be updated as students are identified and strategies are updated. Please do not share this document outside the elementary faculty and staff. The link is housed in the sidebar under Teaching and Learning.
Early Childhood, Lower Elementary, and Grade 3 LRC- Kathleen Ehrling
Upper Elementary (3,4, 5) LRC- Pablo Ramirez
Early Childhood, Lower Elementary, andUpper Elementary SEL- Shawn Edwards
Thank you, in advance, for your support!
AISB will celebrate Halloween this Friday, October 28th. Pumpkins will be delivered to your classrooms Tuesday, so you can carve and decorate them for Friday's festivities. All elementary students participating must be accompanied by a parent. The activities begin at 5:30 pm. The elementary school will be locked down with the exception of the MPR and Music Drama wing where supervision will be hosted. All students are expected to head home at 3:30 pm with a parent or on the bus unless they have signed up for Blazer Voices Supervision. Supervision sign up was due on Friday, October 14. We are no longer accepting forms.
If you receive forms this week, please contact parents directly and explain the service is full and they will need to pick up their child or send them on the bus at 3:30 pm.
- Please check this Halloween Supervision spreadsheet to find out who, from your grade level, is taking advantage of supervision (each grade has a separate sheet. Click on the individual sheets found at the bottom of the spreadsheet). ONLY those highlighted in green have signed up. All other students must head home at 3:30 pm. The Office will send an email to all families taking advantage of the service.
- Please email all your parents who are not taking advantage of the supervision and confirm how their child will be getting home at 3:30 pm on Friday. If you do not receive a confirmation response by Wednesday, please call the parents directly.
- Teachers and Assistants who volunteered their time to support our Blazer Voices (Thank you!), please head to the Music/ Drama wing for at 3:15 pm, if you are an encore teacher and do not have a class. If you are a core teacher or assistant please join us as your students have all been picked up.
- Please send your pumpkins down to playground B following lunch recess. The PSA will use them to decorate tables for trick or treat. They will be offered to families at the end of the night, so do not put items on your pumpkins that you wish returned.
- Homeroom teachers will receive supervision wristbands (identified with the student name). Please place these on the student's wrist (after lunch) before sending them to Blazer Voices supervision.
- Please identify one member of your team to be responsible for escorting supervision students to the Music/Drama area for check in no earlier than 3:30 pm on Friday (we do not need to use the gymnasium).
- Please identify another 1 or 2 members of your team to escort all students taking the bus at 3:30 pm to the parking lot. Please have the remaining members wait with students being picked up by parents.
- Teachers and assistants should begin calling parents who have not picked up students at 3:45 pm (this should not be an issue if follow up was made earlier in the week). Please do not leave until all of your students have been picked up, put on the bus or checked into Blazer Voices supervision. Do not send any students to the office for parent follow up. Erika and Balazs will be working with the PSA and Tamas Krieg on Halloween lockdown and set up. Krista and Karen will be helping with Blazer Voice Supervision. We will not be able to assist you with these phone calls. Please enlist your colleagues for support.
- All faculty children need to head directly to their parent's rooms unless they have signed up for supervision. No AISB students should be wandering building A after 3:45 pm.
- All areas of building A not being used for the Halloween festivities will be locked down at 4:30 pm. You will not be able to get across the bridge to building B or into the MPR/ Gym area after this time. Please plan accordingly. Your security card should still work at the main door (to exit the building). We will confirm with Tamas and let you know if this is not the case. If you use this option after 4:30 pm. Please do not let anyone into the building.
Please review the schedules below. Note that the encore Faculty meeting is still scheduled for Tuesday. The core faculty meeting is scheduled for Thursday. All ASAs hosted by core teachers and assistants are either canceled or you have found a replacement to cover your activity and have confirmed this with Matt (or the other division Activity coordinators as needed). Please refer to Matt Kutni's email (sent on October 10th) to all faculty hosting ASAs on Thursday. Please follow up with Matt if you have further questions.
Please review Steve Leinwand's website, as well as the updated resources and organization of Erma Anderson's Livebinder (see sidebar- Teaching and Learning), in preparation for Steve Leinwand's visit on Oct. 26-29. Steve's strength lies in using these resources to create inquiry math lessons.
During his visit, he will be co-teaching math inquiry lessons, facilitating reflection sessions, and working with us to further develop our assessments. Here is the link to Steve's Final schedule. The schedule is live and has been updated, so do review and plan accordingly. This link also includes coverage. If you require coverage, please contact the person responsible to cover your class and share your lesson plans with them.
Steve will be with us October 26, 27, 28, and on the Professional Development Day on the 29th.
Instructional Leads recently received a copy of the resource Math In Practice. Each grade level has one copy. Please trial this resource and let you Math Curriculum Leads (Heather MacMichael and Ashley Christians know your thoughts). Based on feedback we will determine whether or not it is worthwhile to purchase the resource for each classroom when we place the overseas orders for 2017-2018. If your team is really excited about the resource, contact Krista directly. If the funding is available, we can look at purchasing further copies for use in the current year.
This Link will take you to the Facebook Page for the resource where you may find some helpful feedback on its use from fellow practitioners.
Why Memorization in Math can be Dangerous
The following article with recently published in Scientific American Mind. It is written by Jo Boaler and Pablo Zoido and focuses on the dangers of memorization approaches in maths. The authors analyzed data from 13 million students worldwide. Findings indicate that students who take a memorization approach are the lowest achieving students in the world.
The article also shares brain science showing that adults who were taught maths facts through 'blind memorization' did not learn as well as those taught math facts through learning number strategies. The article confirms what we already know and have been putting into practice these past two years; number sense and number flexibility are the most important building blocks for all higher levels of mathematics.
Jo Boaler also created a three-minute video on number sense, which I have linked to the Parent Update for our parents. Please feel free to share the video and article with your parents in your newsletters.