February 12

Celebrations!

• The Arts Team for such an intentional, thorough and powerful upcoming Artspleasure event centered around the theme of "Happy Dreamer"
• A captive Professional Development session on Friday with great sharing, collaboration and focus on learning for all students! 
• Ceil, Megan, Lauren, Glendia, Rhonda, Ellen, Mallory and Sherry are all registered to attend the DIG Conference in March to explore how urban agriculture, community gardens, and edible gardens in schools and child care settings grow a healthier Wake County. 
• Underwood staff members for attending Winter Carnival, it was shared with me many times during the Carnival, "how great it is to see teachers and staff members here". 

Communication 

Duties:   If you have a lunch duty, am/pm duty, secure a "Back-up Person" or "Permanent Sub" so that when you are out, the duty is covered simply by contacting the back-up person. This would eliminate scrambling at the last minute to find coverage, it would prevent the same person from always volunteering to cover, and it would ensure there is coverage in the cafeteria especially while teachers walk across the building to heat up their lunches.

Lunch Schedule: It was noticed that there has been some congestion around the transition to 4th grade and 3rd grade lunch. The lunch schedule has been slightly adjusted to relieve the congestion. Please let Mallory know if the adjustment does not work. The schedule has been updated in the 2017/ 2018 Schedules folder on Google Drive. The link is also here :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u5b4sZedCgADLBBpB9sRy9B_tTpcHhc_w6IQXn0fGuA/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you!

Eschools:  Please be sure to complete your evaluations in Eschools, so they are feeding into your transcript to renew your license!  

Case Managers:  The role of the Case Manager is to provide support in creating tier plans (individual and groups), bring instructional feedback to the ILT and seek answers for questions about resources and interventions.  Case Managers are:  Kindergarten-Ashley; 1st grade-Jen Page; 2nd grade-Mallory; 3rd grade-Melissa Raley; 4th grade-Alexandria; 5th grade-Travis

Substitutes:  This is a reminder to enter your subs into AESOP.  Cindy works to try to find coverage when a sub cancels or multiple people are out.  She calls all regular subs that have not already signed up for a job at Underwood.  Her last resort is to contact a teacher assistant to help with the day.  As much as we know this is not convenient, we have to have someone with students.  We appreciate the teamwork and understanding each of you show when Cindy is put into the hard position of pulling a teacher assistant.

4th Grade Performance Task:  4th grade students will be participating in a countywide performance task on March 27.  We do not have a ton of details, but as we get them we will keep you all posted. 

Communication Survey for parents: Underwood Leadership team would like to get some feedback about how best to community with our families. If you are willing, please fill out this four question survey to provide feedback as we continue to reflect on how best to communicate with our families about school events. Survey can be found at - Communication Survey. 

Love the Bus:  This week (February 12-16) is Love the Bus week.  We will be offering our bus drivers a few small trinkets of appreciation.  Buses will be called one at a time on Tuesday afternoon to complete cards for their bus driver.  We will celebrate the bus drivers more during teacher appreciation.  

Collaboration

Lunch and Learn --  Tanya will be hosting Lunch and Learn on a variety of technology tools during lunch times. For more information -- see Lunch and Learn flyer. She will also share at our Business meeting on Tuesday. 

Technology Request -- If you have a technology problem that you would like to be looked at complete the Tech Help request and if on-site staff is unable to fix then they would be submitted to district help desk.  If you are need of a equipment  be sure to complete Funds Request form . This would be for cords, bulbs, ink, batteries, etc.

EDCAMP Wake -- Our Carroll Magnet Middle School community is proud to host the biannual EdCamp Wake the morning of Saturday, March 24. I hope you will be able to attend this fantastic event which always provides ample learning, sharing and collaboration opportunities. Everything is free and the here is the link. We hope to see you in a few months! 

D.C. Trip --  Thank you to all of those who expressed an interest in the trip to D.C. We have quite a large group interested!  For those who responded please plan on attending a brief planning meeting on Friday February 23rd at 8:15 am.  Location to be announced. Very excited about this opportunity!

Critical Thinking 

Instructional Learning Teams (ILT) - We will be completing some walk throughs in 3-5 classrooms to gather knowledge of the district (national) tool. Christine will be emailing the people that we will plan to visit. The walkthrough tool helps us to identify practices in our classrooms that reflect the Shifts in the ELA common core curriculum. 
3 Shifts in ELA 

1.  Regular Practice with complex text. 
2. Reading, writing and speaking grounded by evidence from the text, both literal and informational. 
3. Building knowledge through content rich nonfiction 

Behaviors - be sure that you are documenting both minors and majors behaviors after they occur. This information is used to make decisions, used to see if there are patterns and are used to report incidents to admin as well as central office (student due process). 

Feedback -- If you have more feedback (things that have worked or things that could be better throughout the school year) you would like for us to consider, please feel free to email, discuss or fill out this form. https://goo.gl/forms/XNwhdAo6gU8lOfck1

Feedback responses -- See Link to feedback to see responses to the staff's questions and feedback. This will continued to be updated monthly. 

Creativity

Stop Action Notes --: Link (example) of Stop motion digital note taking can be created in about 10-15 minutes with the free Stop Motion iPad app! 

Student and Staff Awesomeness -- Check out what our team is doing in their classrooms -- via Twitter - @underwoodgtm -- #weareunderwood Keep up the great work! 

Happy Dreamer --: What kind of dreamer are you?  Lauren has a wonderful project that all staff and students will be able to participate in.  Objective-  Decorate your purple circle with the kind of dreamer you perceive yourself.  STAY TUNED FOR MORE ARTPLEASURE INFORMATION!

Calendar:

February 15th-CD Cohort; 7:45am

February 22nd-Spotlight on Students Breakfast; 8am

February 27th-Interims go home
March 2nd-Early Release; 1:15pm
March 3rd-Grounds Day
March 6th-Business Meeting; 7:45am
March 13th-SIP/Leadership Meeting; 7:45am
March 15th-CD Cohort; 7:45am
March 23rd-Foundation Gala at CAM; 7pm
March 27th-SIP/Leadership Meeting; 7:45am
March 27th-Artspleasure; 5-8pm
March 29-Q3 electives end

*Staff attended events listed here