News/Timelines/Due Dates
Things are settling in and the
school year is going well. I don’t know
about you but I don’t remember summer!!
Thankfully you get a three day weekend this week! This job is not easy and I know that the demands
keep piling on! This is not a job that can be accomplished in eight hours a
day. It never has been. For
those of you have been here awhile, it is hard to remember how lucky we are to
have such a great school and staff and that we have kids who, for the most
part, come to school ready to learn.
Take a minute and talk to some of our new teachers who have come from
different settings. Perspective is
everything. In the next few weeks I will
be sharing with you the vision of the future of AMMS as outlined by our
strategic plan developed with our new governance council and leadership
team. It is a good plan that unfolds
over the next three years. I look
forward to sharing it with you at the next grade level meetings.
Club Yearbook News: About 2 weeks ago club sponsors received
a letter from the yearbook staff. If there are multiple club sponsors,
only one would have received this letter. Please check with your partner
to make sure someone received this information. If you have not returned
this letter to Dana Griffin, please do so ASAP. A HUGE thanks to those
early birds who turned it in right away!
The
club section is due at the end of November. We realize some of you do not
have many meeting times in the next 2 months. This section is a huge
undertaking for the staff to complete. Please help them out by completing
this information this week. Thanks!
A
Community tab has been added to engage community stakeholders.
PRIDE -– PRIDE
– This Friday, October 11th, we will have an advisement class for
all grade levels. Most of the lessons are part 2 and a
continuation from last week. There was
confusion about silent reading last Friday though if you read my blog you would
have known! If you are reading this,
please feel free to wear jeans on Tuesday, October 8.
The theme for the lessons this week will be a 2 part
series:
·
8th Grade students will be doing a 2nd
student choice lessons. A variety of topics will be offered for 8th
grade students. If you did not stop by the mailroom and pick up multiple
lessons last week, then please choose another lesson topic for this week.
The lessons are in the colored folders in the mailroom. The lessons
include topics such as “Top Ten Middle School Issues”, “Honesty”,
“Cyberbullying”, “Making Good Choices”, “Self-Advocacy”, and “Teasing and
Harrassment”.
·
7th Grade students will be learning
about their learning/characteristic styles. This is part 2 of the
lesson. There is a packet needed for every student to go along with this
week’s lesson. Those will be in your box. We reuse the copies
of the packet each year so please return the packets to your PRIDE committee
peers at the conclusion of the lesson.
·
6th Grade students will be learning
about the “Ins” and “Outs” of a Community. This is a continuation of last
week’s lesson. There is no new lesson to pick up.
TAG - Thursday
10/10 there will be another short TAG test that will involve a lot of students
in all 3 grade levels. Teachers will receive passes in their mailbox on
Tuesday to be handed out on Wednesday morning. Grade levels will also be
sent a list of students involved. Debra will be notified to take care of
attendance. 7th graders will test during 2nd
period. 6th and 8th graders will test during 5th
period. The test is short, 30 minutes, so students should not miss the
whole period. Your help reminding them will really help the teacher in
charge of testing, because it will be difficult for them to track students
down.
A Mighty Roar
You may not know but we have
a complicated system known as School Dude (can’t make that up) that is used for
reserving the building for things such as feeder teams that want to use the
gym. Carolyn Grimaldi has spent many
hours perfecting the process and assuring that she is the school dude
queen! Thanks Carolyn.
Eight grade Language Arts is
using information from TKES to truly reflect on their unit and make changes
that meet the needs of the students.
They invited me to discuss their concerns and share the changes they are
making.
Where is
Livingston?
Todd Shelnutt says “It is near
daily that my students inadvertently call me by their former sixth grade
science teacher’s name. I don’t take it as an insult, rather an honor since
they always apologize and say something like “he was my favorite
teacher”. It is my honor to pass Livingston on to Rob Tyo. Rob is
an enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and creative teacher who brings nothing but
life to his earth science class. Rob has displayed
his energy and sense of humor through the halls of AMMS for 8 wonderful years
and taught in the California school system for several years more.
Rob’s success as a teacher goes
well beyond flattering his students. Rob was recently named Master
teacher by the state of Georgia due to his adaptation of his classroom instruction to help improve students’
achievement and progress.
Rob is
the quintessential crazy energetic science teacher that we all remember from
our own childhood (likely due to the 12 pack of Pepsi he consumes each
day). He even dresses the look in his nutty professor lab coat.
This energy is what catches the attention of his 6th graders and
this energy is what allows them to better learn in his classroom.
Congratulations to Rob Tyo for earning Livingston.
Happy Birthday
Gayla Payne October 11
Kyleigh Slocum says “I would like to hand off Livingston the Lion to Robyn Magnussen. Robyn truly wants to help all students be successful and does so much “behind the scenes”work that benefits all learners. From organizing the STAR Reading & Math assessments to individually working with students, she shows in numerous ways that relevance, relationships and rigor works! Thank YOU for all that you do for our school!”
