May 1, 2009

Happy May Day!

Fluency & Gates - Fluency testing will be on Monday and Tuesday for 4th grade and Tuesday and Thursday for 5th grade. 4th grade teachers should send out their Gates schedule to all Washington staff today.

Monday Assemblies - There will not be an assembly next Monday. To finish the year, I will do grade specific assemblies the last two Mondays: May 11th - 4th grade; and May 18th - 5th grade (both at 2:55 pm).

Media Center Program - Ann, Janelle, Jan, Darla and Jane have been meeting to discuss changes to help improve our K-12 media program. On May 11th, Ann Petersen would like to meet with the 4th and 5th grade staff to discuss your ideas as to how to improve media literacy for our students. The meeting will begin in our media center at 3:15 pm.

Earth Day Winners - Washington students brought in over 3000 recyclable items!! Mrs. Guinn's class will be taking the field trip during the afternoon of Monday, May 11th. I will be picking up the reusable bags for the 4th graders from Fareway today. Thanks to Jenni Horner, Gene and Rick for helping recycle all those items!!

CGI Training - AEA 13 will be having a year 1 Cognitive Guided Instruction (CGI) training in Council Bluffs, June 15-18. If you notify me before signing up, the district will pay for the training. Teachers can sign up on the AEA13 website, but there is a limit of 30 teachers so if you are interested we will want to get signed up soon.

PLC Update - Thank you for your participation in our curriculum PLC meetings. During the two meetings I was a part of on Wednesday, conversations were good and beneficial to those involved. The math team has settled on series to adopt: K-5 Saxon and 6-8 & Algebra, Algebra II and Geometry from Holt. The K-5 adoption will take place over two years with K-2 receiving materials and resources for this fall while 3-5 will receive resources and materials summer of 2010. The remaining PLC dates are for you PLC teams - I will need to meet with both teams together this week for 30 minutes to discuss a few items teams should consider/discuss as we end the school year.

PTO Carnival - As mentioned before, if you are available Next Friday night, I would hope you're in attendance and helping during the carnival. If not, please help out at IPS next Wednesday after PLC time.

Next Week's Changes - With Oregon Trail moving to Monday, 5th graders will be completing their MAP assessments on Tuesday and Wednesday and fluency Tuesday and Thursday.

Transition Day - May 19th is transition day. Your team may want to look at your schedule for that day. Make sure to note 3rd Grade parent orientation is also that evening.

Dates to Note - Click here to access the updated "Dates to Note."

Swine Flu Update:

Mark Pearson, WHO Radio farm director, is telling swine to

avoid humans in order to avoid actually getting the

swine flu from the humans.