12-11-2015

Melissa and Mark put on a great concert last night.  The students sounded amazing and the holiday spirit came shining through in their performances.

As a follow up to our coding hour this week.

I would like to welcome Sherry Anderson to the Benjamin Family.  She is going to be our new Spanish teacher and is here today to shadow Jessica.  She comes to us after teaching HS Spanish for over 10 years in the Naperville and Willowbrook area.  Please make sure you say hello.

Also, Julie Seeman will be taking over for Lauren Giacalone when she has her baby.  Julie has been a parent, teaching assistant and sub in the district and has completed multiple leaves at Evergreen.  I am happy to have someone of her quality teaching our 5th grade students.

Finally, as Megan Swiertz finishes her last day of student teaching, I am happy to report that she will be taking over as a teacher assistant when Cindy Frantzen retires.  I look forward to seeing how these teachers will bring their talents to our district.

As education and technology continue to move into the future together Open Educational Resources will be an important factor.  This will allow teachers to find and adapt/remix available curriculum resources as an alternative or in addition to their textbooks.  Please check out this introduction:
http://www.edutopia.org/open-educational-resources-guide

PTA will be selling gift cards at the Holiday Bizarre today at Evergreen,  They will also be placing an order if you need any for the holiday season that aren't in their stock.  The order will go in today and will be delivered on December 18th,

I appreciate grade level teams making time for me to come in and talk about our PARCC data.  After break we will look at the data one more time at our staff learning meeting and then we will be working with Greg and Ellen to make sure that from a planning and technology side we are ready to take the test again in May.

Thanks to the science department for meeting with me yesterday after school, we found many strengths and opportunities for future growth.

Thanks to Jessica E for the work she has been doing with the WordMasters, newspaper club, enrichment and reading support among other things.  We appreciate all of the many hats that you wear.

Seven Strategies of Highly Skilled Readers
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teaching-students-skills-expert-readers-tricia-hilliard?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

I am looking forward to the health speaker coming in today to talk to our 6th grade students.


"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste." ~Henry Ford