Soon I'll begin another week of the school year--what's the focus this week?
Division Practice, Review, and Assessment
We'll conclude the division unit with lots of practice, review, and an assessment this week. That's the mainstay of the week's math learning and teaching. I'll also prep for the start of next week's fraction unit exploration start.
Systemwide Assessment Catch-Up
Since some students were ill, we have to catch them up on systemwide assessments. I'll do that this week too.
Science Study
We'll likely begin our next rotations this Friday and continue to teach science. We'll spend some whole days working on science at the end of March and into April to catch up on all the teaching we have to and want to do in this area. Students look forward to science study.
Math Review
Our Friday PLC will be dedicated to a math review. I suspect we'll take a look at the division unit assessment scores as well as scores from other recent assessments to determine what we need to do to help every child achieve with regard to math study.
Progress Reports
We'll complete our progress reports this week and next for parent review. We don't give grades, but instead note students' progress in a long list of standards. We also provide an overview comment for families--the comments generally report students' strengths and a need or two.
Teamwork
We'll look at ways that we can better build teamwork during upcoming projects mainly in the science realm. We want to look for ways to embed formal and informal social-emotional learning into these teamwork endeavors.
Math Extra Help Sessions
Monday and Wednesday at 8am are extra help sessions for anyone interested. Thursday, Friday at 8am and Thursday at lunch are more targeted extra help sessions for specific students. This is one way to target support for students who may need more or different support in math.
It's one of the more routine weeks ahead, and a good week to keep the momentum of good teaching, learning, and collegiality going.