Notes from GET Meeting on Monday, April 2, 2012

Present:  Josh, Annette, Susie, Kelly, Jeanie, Megan, Laura P., Connie, Lisa C., and Wendy B.

1.  Leadership:
Flex ideas for 2012-13?  (SIP committee will also be asked to give feedback/ideas)

• Loved having a lot of choices
• Set dates and try not to change – math meetings were an issue
• Keep the community, technology choices, staff sharing
• Mrs. Rezac or Mrs. Johnson lead a workshop guided reading strategies?
• Easy way to check how many hours accumulated – use Dr. B’s list and highlight
• Confusion about the Social Skills class and being docked for not attending – Dr. B will look into this with Dr. Jacobson.
• District list of required flex will be sent to teachers from District at the beginning of May –Dr. B. will ask Dr. Jacobson to make sure that everything should be on the list that is required.

NEWLY Revised:  Classroom Instruction That Works c.2012

• Norwood Park and Zeman principals and Dr. B. have talked about using CITW 2^nd edition as basis for professional development.  Grades/programs would pick a strategy with shown achievement effects and work with other schools’ teams on the same topics.  “Jigsaw” the information and the teams take the instruction back to their respective schools, giving examples from three schools.
• May have this as a required building flex to make sure it is a productive as possible.
• Look for your 1^st edition of CITW; topics presented include:
• Setting objective and providing feedback
• Reinforcing effort and providing recognition
• Cooperative learning
• Cures, questions, and advance organizers
• Nonlinguistic representations
• Summarizing and note taking
• Assigning homework and providing practice
• Identifying similarities and difference
• Generating and testing hypotheses

 
Summer BIST training = two days for basic, two days for brush up, two days for team (W.B. will get BIST dates from Dr. Scott).

• Ask your team if anyone is interested in the basic, brush up, or one day team BIST
• GET would meet at Randolph in the summer rather than at the BIST training to plan for 2012-13
• Dr. B will put out a Doodle Poll for GET team meeting for summer.
• ALSO FOR THIS SUMMER:  The first two days of the four day Adaptive Schools training.  Take the two summer days (June 21, 22) and then finish up with the two days of training September 27 & 28.

2.  Schoolwide:
BIST consultant days left this year:

• Not April 20^th – no make up
• We are going with May 9^th  (Debbie Capra as consultant– final 15 – be ready.)
  • 9:45             5^th
  • 10:40             4^th
  • 11:35             3^rd
  • 1:30             2^nd
  • 2:25             K
  • 3:20             1^st

BIST for 2012-2013:  Woods Grant pays half of $4600 for monthly consultant through the year.

• Can we request a consultant?  (It’d be great to have Marty!)
• Require ‘final 15’ sessions during consultation day
• After school sessions may be optional
• Come up with more effective use of consultant during the rest of the day—How to get teachers to sign up for observation of specific students or groups of students?

Reteaching/Practice Logs:  purpose, access

• This information is needed for data gathering for grants and reports on implementation.  We know teachers are teaching, practicing, and reteaching.  Need the verification for “integrity of implementation” reports.
• Which is more effective–  a hard copy page or the online report?
• Members asked for reminders:  link in Student Services Weekly notes, link in email reminder

Recess supervision all grades at all recesses:  teachers move around, interact with children, watch for hard to watch places, do not stand or sit and chat with other staff, go out onto the gravel/end of the sidewalk/basketball court, etc.
3.  Classroom:
Keep up positive feedback to students.
Treat these last weeks as if it’s the beginning of school– teaching/reteaching/practicing routines and procedures.  Tighten up expectations, and keep recognizing the students who are doing what they are supposed to do!
4.  Individuals:

Kudos to the third, fourth, and fifth grade teams for their ideas on restroom checking.  The state of the restrooms has improved greatly during the first week of students knowing adults were checking hourly for paper, vandalism, and grafitti.

5. Other: 

• Connie and Susie announced an emphasis of the final “Community Meeting” (Thursday, April 5 at Jasper’s on East O Street) was for staff to talk about what worked this year and what ideas there are for changes for next year.  This is not supposed to be a complaint session, but a way to generate ideas for improvement that GET can use this summer when planning.
• Standard comment for assemblies to remind audience of behavior / students can share with audience / put in programs at events so parents see the expectations.
• Dr. B. will draft a statement for GET members to edit/respond to.   See examples below, and feel free to edit and resubmit to GET.

“Randolph students have been working on showing their positive assembly behavior, and they invite you to follow these expectations when attending our concerts, assemblies, and other student activities:

Give your full attention to the performer/speaker.  That includes having your eyes on the performer, not talking, and not using electronic communication during the performance.”

“Randolph students show their respect for performers and speakers in the following ways:

sitting quietly, not talking or whispering to others,

keeping their eyes on the performance,

not using electronic communication, and

applauding the performers’ efforts at the end of each song/act/speech.

We invite you to model these positive audience behaviors to help the students learn what it looks like and sounds like to be an attentive audience member.”