The Cornelius Chronicle

September 4, 2015

Week One - Done!

Two National Holidays in the Same Week!

Happy Labor Day on Monday!  It feels odd to celebrate Labor Day after the school year has started!  The other national holiday this week is Irene’s birthday on Thursday, Sept. 10th! Don’t forget to spoil our school secretary!!!!

Tuesday - Wear your school uniform!

Since Tuesday is the first day of the week, don’t forget to wear your uniform!

PBiS Assembly

We will be moving our PBiS assembly from Friday 9/11 to Monday, 9/14 at 9:15 am due to the fact that half of our PBiS team will be at an ELD training on 9/11.

Library

We had many volunteers in the library today getting it into ship-shape for our students!  We will have more volunteers next week on Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday from 10 am - 2 pm.  Ruth Anne McCullough has taken this project on and we appreciate her so much!  She even had a News Times reporter come to the building today - so watch for an article in the News Times next Wednesday.  We are also looking for 2 parent volunteers per classroom to help with library check out and putting books back into the system on Tuesdays.  Please let Diego (our volunteer coordinator) know if you have parents who can volunteer during your library time.  

We will begin library classes on 9/15 (Tuesday).  This is not official prep time, but if teachers need to make a quick copy or take care of a personal need, you can step out of the library at that time.  Andrea (our library clerk) will be doing a read aloud or library lesson with your class and then doing library check out.  Kinders and 1st graders can check out 1 book per week.  2nd - 4th graders can check out two books per week.

Technology

Chelsea (EdTech Cadre) and Jorge (Tech Assistant) met today to come up with a technology schedule based on the tech survey that all certified staff completed.  Jorge spent the rest of the day organizing all of the technology for us!  We should have 4 Chromebook carts and 4 iPad carts.  Chelsea will be working on a schedule this weekend.  We hope to have technology in your students’ hands by Tuesday or Wednesday next week!

Interventions/ALD/Literacy

The specialists met today to discuss ALD/Literacy/Intervention schedules.  We have a great rough draft of a schedule.  For ELD/SLD, we are going to have a literacy-based program for grades K-2 and content-based for 3rd & 4th grades  - more to come on that!  We will start ALD the week of Sept. 21st.  We will have a meeting of all ALD teachers (which is all teachers except PE/Music) on 9/16 from 8-9 am during our CIT time.  I hope to have our ALD assignments out to all teachers by next week.  

We have switched the Master Schedule for Kinder to allow for a consistent literacy block...I will send this link to you.  I’m going to see if the IA schedule needs to be tweaked to accommodate this change.

We also ironed out the specialists’ schedule for interventions, literacy, and ALD and will get that out to you next week.  Interventions will start on Oct. 6th.

Curriculum Maps

Please have your curriculum maps - what you plan to teach when to me and specialists (including SPED teachers) by 9/21, so that we can try to incorporate what you are teaching in the classroom into interventions.  Thanks!

College Tee Shirt Fridays

What do you think about wearing college tee shirts/sweatshirts on Fridays to promote the idea of college to our students?  I saw some staff wearing their college gear today!  What a fun way to get our kids thinking about college early!

Staff Tee Shirts/Sweatshirts

I’m going to contact our tee shirt supplier and see if we can get special staff tee shirts made.  It would be fun to have a staff tee shirt or zip-up hoodie that we could wear - and would count as part of the school uniform!  Once I get that confirmed, I will put out order forms!

Reminders:

• On-line trainings must be completed by Oct. 1st (you will be given time to complete these during our late start on 9/9, but you can complete them whenever).  An email will be sent to you from Public Works with a link to the trainings/quizzes.  My recommendation is that you try to take the quiz first and watch the videos only if needed.  Most are pretty much common sense and no new info from previous years.  If you were to watch all of the videos, it would take you a couple of hours.  If you take the quizzes only, it should take no more than 30 minutes.
• Everyone needs to re-enroll for insurance this year online by Sept. 15th!

Bus Duty: 1st & 3rd grade teachers, and the “regulars”!

Calendar:

9/7 Labor Day - No School!

9/8 10:00 am Specialists Meeting (Melissa’s room)

9/9 8:00 am CIT Time - time to work on your on-line trainings

9/9 8:00 am PBiS Team Meeting - library

9/9 10:00 am 1st Day of School - Kinder and 1st day of late start!

9/9 12:30 - 4 pm Elementary Principals Meeting (Angella)

9/10 Irene’s Birthday!

9/10 8 am - 12 pm Admin Meeting (Angella)

9/11 7:30-3:30 ELD Training (Kathy, Chelsea, Daisy, Merry, Maroha)

Looking ahead:

9/14 9:15 -10:00 PBiS Assembly - in the gym - remember to dress as a book character!

9/15 Insurance must be selected to be enrolled this year!

10/6 5:30 pm Literacy/Title 1/MyOn Night