11-15-2024

 You made it!   Once again, thanks for your effort to make these conferences meaningful for our Benjamin parents and students! 

Thanks to Margaret and Kim for selecting and ordering our food, making desserts and possibly being our drink fairies!  You guys always take care of us!  

Get Everyone to participate in the discussion with a Scientist Circle.  

Veterans Day Assembly was spectacular.  Thanks to April, Stephen, Morgan, Danielle and Angela for their hard work to make this a powerful and respectful ceremony.  

I'm looking forward to the Institute Day Tomorrow.  Lots of Learning for our tired brains!  Thanks to Julie for setting up the ELtraining. Thanks to Jana and Todd for preparing our deescalation training.  Make sure you are at Evergreen by 8:00am sharp! Charge those devices people!

When Students feel safe they are more likely to learn.

Just a reminder to keep plugging away at the online trainings when you have time.  

Thanks to Todd for all he does for our school.  You are our Phycologist!  

I would like to thank Joe for the hard work and effort that he is putting into getting the wrestling club going this year.  Moving the mats alone has been an adventure but there are a lot of unique kids that are finding a new activity that fits their needs and builds new friendships. 

How to get students to think about their own learning.

How to get students to think about their learning about their

I presented some Illinois School Report Card Data for our district at the last school board meeting. The presentation shows some good results in both proficiency and growth.  Thanks for your continuous hard work to help our students make academic gains.  I have attached a link to the short presentation below:

State Report Card Presentation

The basketball team is on a winning streak!   Thanks to coach Baker and Tylk along with coach Colburn for cheering them on. 

Don't forget that Monday is the change of the trimester. New kiddos in specials classes. Grades are due to Kim by Tuesday at 10am.  

Please remember to bring your IEIN number tomorrow so you can sign in properly. 

 Teachers after the Institute Day on Friday.  

"It's not the strongest or the most intelligent who survive, but those most adaptive to change. Over the past 10 years, the need for, and focus on, adaptability has accelerated." -- Kenneth I. Chenault

There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.

Robert Byrne

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Oscar Wilde

 

11-8-2024

 Sherry celebrated Day of the Dead with her spanish classes last Friday.  I love the partnership she has with parents and making them part of her celebrations while providing a helping hand. 

How fun is the baby/child picture contest student council is running!  Thanks to Colleen for putting this together and thanks to all of the staff that participated by turning in a childhood photo.  

Our Veterans Day Assembly is coming up on Monday.  April, Danielle, Stephen and Morgan have been working hard behind the scenes to prepare for an awesome assembly to honor our Benjamin Veterans.  Always one of my favorite assemblies.  

We concluded a second night of conferences Thursday evening.  Teaching all day, conferencing at night and coming back Friday morning to teach some more is definitely the hardest stretch of our three night conference commitment.  Thanks for putting in the time to have positive conversations with parents for the improvement of our students.  Special shoutout to Kim for working with parents each evening to get their schedules and to Kim and Margaret for putting together our menu for our delicious dinners.  

Thanks to Greg for working behind the scene to get certain data sources to our partner company Abre who will be helping to create a data dashboard for us.  Among other things this will help our ease of access to data making it easier to use for student improvement.  

13 formative assessments that inspire creativity.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/creative-formative-assessments?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Fall+24&utm_id=Fall24&utm_term=creative+formative&utm_content=feature

At the school board on Monday we will be honoring our school board members and all of the school and district secretaries for what they do for our schools/district.  Thank you!

I want to thank Michele D, Lauren, Nicole J., Jessica, and Danielle along with the rest of our 6th grade staff for working so hard to help gather curriculum and other tools, resources and strategies to help one of our  6th grade kiddos.  

On November 21st our 8th grade kids will be taking the Pre-ACT with our HS counselors and 8th grade staff.  Because of the new test and new HS staff, this date was put together quickly as the HS is behind schedule.  Mark will send out a schedule in the near future and we will notify parents of the importance of their child's attendance on this day.  

I have reached out to Principal Smith to find out what space they can provide for us on November 15th during the Institute Day. (during the 9:30-11am time)  

I appreciate everyone's continuing effort to recognize our students for positive actions and hard work with specific positive praise, student of the month recognition, fish slips and What is a Benjamin Student common language.  I was able to sit in on a couple student of the month conferences with students bubbling with joy as teachers heap praise on them.  I also love the 7th grade student shout outs posted on the 7th grade hall wall.  

11-1-2024

 

Thanks to Colleen, Alex and student council for sponsoring both the spirit week (music in the Halls is always a Kim G favorite)  and the HR pumpkin decorating contest.  It was a close contest and everyone should be proud of their efforts.  Congrats to Cathy, Jim and Melissa for motivating their homerooms to win at all costs!  jk

Speaking of Halloween Fun.  I was thrilled with the amount of students that dressed up and that everyone followed the costume guidelines.  Staff would not be outdone and were definitely showing their Halloween Spirit.  What a fun day!

I was able to make it over to Evergreen for their Halloween parade and groundbreaking ceremony, the latter which was livestreamed to the staff and students in the gym.  There was a lot of work involved to make this happen including but not limited to securing participation from the fire department, police department, bus company, construction company, architects and school board members.   Dr. Woell, Dr. Filas, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Agres should be proud of their accomplishment.  Danielle, Angela and Vanessa also played vital roles in making all of the technology work. 

Parent teacher conferences are coming up on November 4th, 7th and 14th.  We will have the PTA dinner on the 4th and the office will provide dinner for the 7th and 14th. Details to follow.  Thanks for your preparation for these important nights of parent teacher communication and problem solving.

Station Rotation for ELA

Save the Date: November 11th is our Veterans Day Assembly.  April sent out details of the structure of the assembly earlier today.

4 ways to build student reflection into science lessons.

Science Reflection

I was able to do a lot of classroom pop-ins yesterday (I know, not exactly ideal on Halloween) and was able to see some great teaching and learning activities taking place.  Some escape rooms, music composer research, background research on a story the class was about to read, and math problem solving to name a few lessons I saw.  

Thanks to Margaret for doing a great job of organizing and putting together this months newsletter.  This is another avenue  of communication to inform our parents of what is going on in our school.  

Tryouts for Bye Bye Birdie were very successful this week.  Thanks to Stephen, Danielle and April for their hard work in making this run smoothly.  

Basketball got underway this week with home games on Tuesday and Friday.  Thanks to Dan, Matt, and Nicole for their coaching.  Bill and Marcia for taking care of the scoreboard and book and to our supervisors for making our home games run efficiently.  

Teen Advisory Board has some unbelievable participation this year.  Thanks to Michelle for guiding and supervising this group.  

The Fun Run results are in and the PTA raised an amazing amount of money!  (over $10,000)  I will try to keep this in mind when I have to be a human sundae later this year for some of the top fundraisers.  Thanks again to Jen V, Joe and Matt for doing the lionshare of the work on this project.  

I appreciate the extra help I received from Greg this week in trying to get a Savvas problem fixed by working with their customer support staff.  #patience

I appreciate Nicole C organizing the PST breakfast this week.  It was fun bonding with everyone over food, stories and some problem solving.  

"Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering." -- James Hillman

"I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare." -- Maya Angelou

"The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for." -- Joseph Campbell

 

10-25-24

The Fall Sports Awards were a great success on Wednesday night.  I appreciate the hard work put in by Matt, Joe, Megan, Bill and Dan all season to help the students grow in skill and in leadership abilities. 

The Pera Committee met on Tuesday to review language in our Professional Evaluation Document to make sure everything is accurate and up to date.  Thanks to Dr. Woell, Sherry, Mark and Kimpha for spending time on this.  

Students need time at the end of class to make sense of what they just learned. Here are 8 engaging closing activities to help with that.

The Science Resource Adoption Committee met on Wednesday for a presentation from HMH.  This was the third of five presentations.  I appreciate not only the time spent on meetings, but the time put into reviewing the resources (online and physical), filling out evaluations and communicating information back to peers.  This is a lot of work!  Thanks to committee members  Sherry M, Mercedes D, Stacey M, Kristen H, Julie Seeman, Melissa F, Josh K, Suzanne T, Amy H, Danielle D, and Angela A for all of their hard work.  

Thanks to Colleen and Alex for organizing the Student Council Pumpkin decorating contest.  I have seen excited students decorating their homeroom pumpkins during lunchtime.  I'm excited to see who will win.  

I appreciate Dr. Woell talking to our staff about coaching and then leading math and ELA discussions on capital project improvements during our early release on Wednesday.   

Speaking of Coaching if you haven't read the Instructional Coaching newsletter yet there is an excellent article/video on Rubrics that you should check out.  I appreciate the time and effort that Danielle, Angela and Allison put into each newsletter.  

Stephen, Danielle and April have been busy with the Musical Clinic, Crew Meeting and parent meeting in preparation for the musical tryouts.  I also enjoyed the promotional video they put together in the BB300 this week.  

Thanks to Margaret for keeping up with the eligibility reports each week.  Please make sure that you are contacting students and parents if the students in your class are on the ineligible list due to bad grades. 

The core skills of learning are a critical eye and an open mind. Critical thinking is refusing to accept ideas at face value. Don't believe information until it's verified. Openness is refusing to reject ideas at face value. Don't disbelieve information until it's falsified.

Thanks to April for organizing a successful fire drill this week, the kids did great and we also caught a few areas of improvement.  Tim is also on top of the alarm volume issue in the new 5th grade classrooms.  

I enjoyed getting into classrooms this week and saw some great learning activities from our staff.  Next week I will finish up my first round of formal observations.  Please make sure you are monitoring your growth goals and alternative plans to check for anticipated progress.  

I appreciate the combined efforts of Ally and Nicolett working with our students in the check-in check out system.  They have done a great job of working with our students and each other so that our students get more  organized and efficient with their assignments.  

"The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one’s day and every night to examine the results obtained." -- Alexis Carrel

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Benjamin Franklin

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.

W. C. Fields 

10-18-2024

 Outdoor Ed (as a short-timer) was a blast.  I enjoyed getting out there with the kids, seeing their excitement and talking with them about their favorite activity and hearing about "the best food ever"!  I want to thank the chaperones  Mark Bradbury, Coleen Morgan, Jim Allard, Jessica Erickson, Dan Baker, Jen Vidic, Joe Hauser, Michelle Davis and Bill Wadman for giving up time with their families to provide this opportunity for students.  

How do you help learners tackle a challenging text? In Denmark, a popular approach is role reading, where 3 students work together to help the whole group’s comprehension.

A huge shout out to our great Subs, Rich, Jill, Jennifer M, Jen R, Kelly C for getting us through this week.  Their dedication and expertise helped to support our school this week and it is much appreciated.  Special thanks to Lauren Dunne for subbing and covering the staybacks and Lynette and Angela for also providing specials support.  

Dr. Filas ran the district furniture committee on Wednesday in preparation for the second phase of our capital improvement plan.  He will make his way around to teams or subject area meetings to discuss an upcoming meeting with one of the room designers.  Sherry will also send a copy of the furniture committee feedback form to you so you can start thinking of items we will need your input on.  I will be around to answer questions.  

The dance/cheer and boys basketball teams are getting ready to start the winter sports season.  Thanks to coach Baker, Tylk and Colburn for setting the stage for our student athletes for a successful season with messages of sportsmanship and building up their teammates.  

The benefits of concept maps:

Concept Maps

Megan S worked diligently to get all of our students medical records before the exclusion deadline.  I appreciate her hard work towards this end.  

Coach Wolski started off our chess season with a pizza open house on Thursday Night. I appreciate his willingness to come in on the evenings and weekends to coach our kiddos.  

Establishing Classroom Routines for Productive Learning.

routines = Learning

I loved the Instructional coaches newsletter and their insight on how each classroom and teacher are different.  This allows the coaches to be flexible and differentiate in how they meet the needs of individual classrooms even when  teachers are working in the same grade or subject matter.  Give it a read if you haven't made the time yet.  

Just an FYI,,, First Student Bus Company will be rolling out a bus app that parents can download to track the bus routes of their children.  I have been very pleased with the level of service and communication we have had from our new bus company.

Just another thank you for the breakfast, gifts and kind words you provided me this week. I appreciate the dedication, collegiality, teamwork, and care that we always show each other that makes our school stay strong.  

"We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time." -- Brene Brown

"Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy." -- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Risk something or forever sit with your dreams." -- Herb Brooks