TO-KNOW

1. I will be at District Office all day on Thursday for a monthly principals’ meeting. Jill Wolfe from Delshire will be covering for me.
2. A reminder that our September faculty meeting is this Tuesday, beginning promptly at 3:20 in the Library. All staff are invited as Green Township Police Chief Bart West will be here to lead us through a theoretical safety drill.
3. Did you know that the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation Department offers free in-school science programs? Their website has a list of available sessions and a link to sign up. They also offer teacher grants of up to $250 for projects with a conservation focus.

TO-DO

1. A friendly reminder that Professional Growth Plans should be completed in eTPES by the end of the week. Please remember that your goals should be relevant to YOU, specific, and to the point. Ideally, this is just about putting in writing whatever the “thing” is that you’ve already been doing a lot of thinking about and working on. Please keep in mind, too, that it is entirely fine if your goal statements, evidence indicators, and areas for professional growth are each just a sentence long. This is the presentation that I shared during our staff meeting last year that walks you through the process step by step and offers some model statements. If you would like to work on it together or feel like you need more time, just let me know.
2. With AIMSWeb fall benchmarking complete, we have our first set of Tier 3 meetings set for this Wednesday and Friday. Andrea has sent out calendar invites to each level (or will be sending them soon). There are just a couple of things to do before we meet (listed below). If your grade level would like more time, just let me or Andrea know! We are happy to adjust the meeting date. Thank you! I’m looking forward to these conversations about our students!
   1. Preparing for Tier 3 Meetings: Please take time as a team before the meeting to review the AIMSWeb data and discuss possible interventions. As a reminder, if you have other students that you believe the AIMS data is missing, please bring any data that supports their need for intervention to the meeting as well. If you are confident in your intervention plans, please feel free to enter them into your “Class of” spreadsheet (available in the Springmyer Intervention Records folder). Also, as you work in the “Class of” spreadsheet, please add new or missing students and delete withdrawn students. If you’d like to discuss your plan more before proceeding, that is fine too!

TO-READ

Starting the Conversation about Academic Goal Setting

I found this article about setting academic goals with students very practical and relevant to the reading goal setting we are doing with students this year. Research has shown the great power of setting academic goals with students yet we know from experience how difficult it can be for students to figure out how to set their own goals and monitor their progress toward them. I thought you may find this article offered some helpful ideas if you are considering ways to integrate student goal-setting within your classrooms.