Welcome Back from Thanksgiving Break Post

I hope everyone had a great break!  Our family had a great time in Southern California going to Disneyland and spending time with family.

Girls having fun at California Adventure

Before School, At Recess and After School Duty

A reminder to please be out on your duty.  We had two incidences just in the last few school days where there were issues and no one was out on duty.  If for some reason you cannot make it out to where you are supposed to be, please switch duties with another teacher or let Diane know so I can cover if I am around.  As always it is about keeping our students safe.

Tech Docent Plans and Hour of Code Just a reminder to please fill out your tech docent plans for the upcoming week.  We will have tech docent all 3 weeks between the breaks.  We will be doing Hour of Code again the 2nd week and you do not have to do Tech Docent plans for that week, I will communicate with the Tech Docents to let them know.  This year the week for Hour of Code is December 7-13.  Last year I had you go with your students just so you could see what it looked like.  This year you do not have to do that if you do not want to.  If for some reason you were out last year or have never done it I encourage you to stay with your students just so you can see what block coding looks like.  There are many more games this year but I would recommend the following (and it is what I will be emailing the tech docents)

TK, K and 1: https://studio.code.org/s/course1

2nd Grade I will talk to you to discuss what we did last year and what worked best.
Grades 3-5
Students can choose either Star Wars or Minecraft
Star Wars: https://code.org/starwars (Have them choose the block coding)
Minecraft: https://code.org/mc

Patricia Polacco Visit  Thank you Kristen for your hard work on this.  Once again here is the schedule: Monday lunch with Patricia and catered lunch from Togo's.  Grades K-2 12:45-1:45.  2nd grade teachers let your students know they will not be going out to recess, they will just stay in the lunch room.  Students will eat outside that day if the weather is nice (and as of now it looks like it will be).  2nd grade teachers if you could please take them out to recess before lunch that would be great.  Tuesday, Grades 3-5, 1:45-2:45.

Ready for our Patricia Polacco visit!

A Look at the Week Ahead and other dates coming up over the next 3 weeks

11/30 Polacco visit (see above for more details)
12/1  Polacco visit
12/2
12/3 Staff Happy Hour at Monk's Cellar starting at 4pm
12/4  Lunch for students from Jog a Thon (we will get you a list of which staff members will need to be there)
12/5 Tommy A Shopping at Kohls, starts at 5:30am.  Breakfast after at 4 Sisters.  Here is the volunteer form and more info:
http://tommyafund.com/events/holiday-shopping-trip

12/7 Character Assembly Citizenship, Crazy Day.   GATE Testing grades 2-5 in Room 32, 2nd Grade 9:00-10:00, 3rd Grade 10:05-11:05 (I will take these students out to recess after so they will be back in your class closer to 11:15), 4th and 5th Grade 11:10-12:10.  We will get you a list of students who have signed up.
12/9 Staff Meeting 3:30-4:30
12/11 Staff Party at Dalen's.  Thank you Ally for organizing and Dalen for hosting!
12/17 Eich Dance and Choir coming to perform 2-2:30pm

Interesting Articles I Read

One nice thing about break is having time to read.  I read a lot of interesting articles but won't dump them all in here at once.  Also finally finished reading Wonder.  Thanks for the recommendation Dalen, glad all of our 5th grade students read it.

Why Some Kids Can't Spell and Why Spelling Tests Won't Help  At some point we can discuss this topic further as a staff
Nixing Recess: The Silly, Alarmingly Popular Way to Punish Kids (The Atlantic)
Crack the Code: Creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork abound when students are introduced to coding (Adam Welcome post in NAESP magazine)