The Bengal Blog: 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.