TO-KNOW

1. I will be at District Office on Thursday from about 9:45am until 11:30am. I will be available by phone and will return if needed.
2. A reminder that staff members are welcome to dress as a favorite book character on Monday to help support our Ready, Set, Read! theme!
3. Don’t worry about packing lunch after staying late for conferences on Tuesday night! On Wednesday, the office plus Brenda will be providing soups, bread, and desserts for lunch.
4. PTA has officially set the date for this year’s Carnival for Saturday, April 1. They would like to have students vote on the Carnival theme on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8. They will be getting you paper ballots to do this. Please plan to allow for a few minutes for students to vote.
5. Following up on my announcement encouraging students to go directly to class when arriving in the morning: The request came through some representatives on the advisory team whose teams had seen a recent increase in the number of students who were traveling the building to visit past teachers rather than getting to class. While we all love and appreciate the fact that they want to stay connected to past teachers, it had become a distraction to the learning that’s taking place between 8:00 and 8:30 and their own opportunity to get a head start on learning for the day. Thank you for your support with reminding students to go directly to class!

TO-DO

1. I am glad to offer additional support at parent-teacher conferences, if my presence would help to reinforce concerns about attendance, behavior, academic progress, or others. If you would like me to join you at a conference, please enter it into the correct time slot on this spreadsheet. If I am already scheduled to be somewhere else, just let me know and I’ll see if I can cover both.
2. Classroom teachers: a reminder that SDQ submissions are due by 8am on Wednesday, 11/9. This is the link for submitting surveys. I have cancelled our November faculty meeting to allow for additional time to complete surveys.
3. I have recently had two students in UC’s Educational Psychology program contact me to request help setting up a 10 hours of classroom observation in the next couple of weeks. They are both Oak Hills alumni and one has cousins currently at Springmyer (not sure who). If you would be willing to host these students, please let me know. I don’t think that you would need to do anything beyond welcome them to your classroom.

TO-READ

Powerful Lesson Planning

This latest issue of ASCD Express offers three articles from practitioners about strategies they use to make lesson planning more approachable, focused, and powerful.

I also want to mention that YOU have many great ideas that could be shared in future issues of ASCD Express. The publishers are always looking for submissions from practitioners. They seek articles that are practical and relatively brief (600 – 1,000 words). Their upcoming themes and due dates are listed on this page. Let me know if you are interested in writing something! I am on the Board of ASCD’s Ohio Affiliate and have been involved in the international organization in the past and have some great inroads to making sure it’s actually published. I would also be happy to be involved in the writing process, either by collaborating or offering editing help.