Week 21

 

Good Morning Team!  Happy Monday!  How many of you had a "Super Bowl Weekend"?  I watched the game...was rooting for the Chiefs...and The Weekend.  My team lost...but I did enjoy the Poetry, the Music and most of the commercials.   Now...it's on to Valentine's Day.  Since all of you are my Valentines, I though I'd get mine in early. So, Happy Valentines Day! 

It's hard to believe, but two weeks from today we are back in the building. I want to urge you to start thinking about what your management and your instruction is going to look like as you transition to serving both in person and virtual students simultaneously.  This is going to be a paradigm shift for all of us and we need to start making preparation now, thinking about your expectations for behavior, rules and routines, and lesson planning. I plan to talk with you about this during our team meetings this week.

Here are the updates for the week. 

Special Education and Intervention:

M-Step Preparation Starts Now

Now is the time to intentionally incorporate practice M-Step items into your lesson plans. Your students need to be exposed to the type of questioning that they are likely to encounter. Utilize ALL of the resources available. You must also be very intentional in teaching test taking strategies. For example...

1. Highlight/ Underline the title.
2. Read the question carefully, then read it again.
3. How many answers did they ask for?
4. Use POE (Process of elimination) Eliminate the bad answers.
5. Examine every answer choice before choosing an answer.
6. PROVE IT in the story. (Find the textual evidence)
7. Work backwards (read the questions first before reading, if possible)
8. MOTIVATE, MOTIVATE, MOTIVATE

Below you will find a variety of resources that you can print to help your students prepare. 

• Sample Paper/Pencil Tests for all subjects: https://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-22709_70117-350086--,00.html
• Sample writing prompts for test questions. https://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-22709_70117-455340--,00.html
• Sample writing prompts and essay scores: https://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-22709_70117-456071--,00.html
• Another practice test for 5th grade science:  https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/2018_M-STEP_Annotated_Sample_Items_test_614886_7.pdf
• Your students should be familiar with this vocabulary to help prepare for the test. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/M-STEP_ELA-Construct-Relevant-Vocabulary_526868_7.pdf
• Here is the link to help your students become familiar with the online tools for M-Step. https://wbte.drcedirect.com/MI/portals/mi
• Our students struggle with editing and revising. Please use the following resource to build their skills. Incorporate one a day. Start with the beginning, then move on to intermediate, and even advanced for our older students. https://englishforeveryone.org/Topics/Paragraph-Correction.html

If you need additional test preparation resources, please let me know. 

News to Know

2/9      Tues:  Specials Team Meeting @ 8:00 am

2/10     Wed: Count Day, Sped Team Meeting @ 8:35 & Staff Meeting

2/11      Thur: Board Meeting at 6:00pm

2/12     Fri: 1/2 Day, Progress reports and NWEA Parent Letters (these are only from                  Homeroom teachers) go home, Red vs. Pink Day

2/15     Mon: NO SCHOOL

2/16     Tues: NO SCHOOL