Weekly News & Notes

Greetings!

There will be no newsletter next week in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Some information that you may find helpful for the week ahead:

• The Homecoming Dance is Tuesday night from 7-10. Admission is $10, but students can get a discount if they bring socks or a nonperishable.
  
• On Wednesday, our schedule will be a Day 1 schedule, with students meeting in A, B and C block classes before being called to the gym, by grade and by the PA system. Please resist temptation to send students around the building - typically, Wednesday is one of the hardest days of the year to teach - students are not focused and would rather be out and about, telling you that they have some task that "absolutely needs to get done before the break." It is likely the best day to try an enrichment activity, wrap up something so you can start fresh after the long weekend, or have a seminar or discussion on a key point. While not a throwaway day, please do what you can with those classes!
• In addition, in the coming weeks, there will be a couple of days when I will not be here. During that time, if there is a student-related issue, I would ask you to be patient with its processing. For students that seem to be demonstrating a pattern or for an issue that requires immediate attention, send me an email (I will be checking) and I can ask Doug or Dot to follow up more immediately - as I will not be in the building, I won't see any notes or slips that come my way until I am back.

One of our students!

This Friday very own Hannah Tight was selected to sing at the the MIAA Sportsmanship and Leadership conference in Franklin, performing in front of more than 1000 people! Technical difficulties precluded me from uploading the video, but I'll work on getting that here at some point!

PLC Time

There has been some question asked about PLC time and what staff could be doing. In the next couple of weeks, some ideas for PLC time could be:

- Looking at first quarter grades; analysis of first quarter student performance
- Developing common assessments (thinking of the mid-year)
- What are some cross-curricular skills that start to emerge as we get into the year?
- For teachers who teach similar content but different levels, how can some of the great lessons be adapted for different levels (meaning made more rigorous for Honors or scaffolded differently for Standard)?

Study Hall Attendance

For some folks that are having a hard time getting attendance taken in study hall when in the cafeteria, some suggestions:

1. Position someone at the door and check off names as you see students.
2. Have all students get there and call them up by teacher to take attendance. All students received new schedules last week, so they should know who is their teacher.
3. Announce that no students are to ask for a pass anywhere until attendance is complete.
4. Keep one person positioned by the door to take care of the traffic in and/or out.

If you have a system that works, please don't change it!

Scheduling

In the next couple of weeks, we will release a timeline to the staff regarding scheduling for 2014-15, including the expectation for course recommendations and a time frame for the students to be selecting classes. We also will be working with Shanley and Aubrie to determine what some of the new courses will be for next year and what revisions will take place within the Program of Studies, which is targeted to be approved at the January 2 School Committee meeting.

Holiday Giving Project

If you have not RSVP'd to indicate your willingness to help out, let Mike or Sharon Guilfoil know. Last year, we sent more than 500 gifts from Medway to a shelter in Brockton, providing more than 100 families a holiday. We hope to load a bus this year! Students from SADD will also be asking you to participate, so let me know ASAP - the Giving Project is set to start on December 3 and run until December 17.

Some Great stuff in classes!

Here are some photos of some projects from Ms. Pereira's chemistry classes - where on another day this week, students were engaged in a lab testing actual yield of a product compared to theoretical yield through a double replacement reaction, while other students were teaching each other equations at the board. Awesome stuff!

In Ms. Oleksy's Sociology class, as part of a current events discussion, one student was teaching the class about an incident that occurred this week in Somalia, before the class moved into a creative writing assignment based on their studies of the 1960s.

Speaking of the 1960s, Ms. Rodgers' history classes were talking to people alive in 1963 to capture their oral histories from the day President Kennedy was assassinated.


Weekly Resources are posted here. There is a great interview with Grant Wiggins on Backwards Design. A piece from The Atlantic details why great teachers don't always want to be principals, and if you scroll down a bit, there is a terrific resource on "27 simple ways to check for understanding." I also added a video from Tennessee in which a student crafts a brilliant argument against Common Core. Happy reading!


Finally, Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year, and as the notes will not be posted next week, I hope you all enjoy a pleasant weekend with family, friends, or both, and know that we are thankful for the work you do on a daily basis for our students.