March 17, 2017

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Happy St. Patricks Day! Only 2 more school days and we start 4th quarter. Just a reminder grades will be due at 8:30 am on the 23rd. Also, please make sure you have the updated PASS Plan form for all PASS Plan meetings. The updated form can be found on our PD website. 

 Thank you for those who have been scheduling the PASS Plan meetings. We have seen a little influx in the number of parents not wanting to come to the meetings. Please still have the meeting, with the parent not wanting to come this gives you a little bit of insight on what type of support the student may have at home. These are the students we should be concentrating on to form positive relationships with the school as they are most likely not getting a positive perspective of school at home. You may want to call home on these students when they are caught up or did something good. To date, I have had 39 PASS Plans turned into me for 120 classes.

 With the Spring activity season getting started, this would be an excellent time to remind students if they are going to be gone for a school activity, he/she is expected to find out what he/she is going to miss and have it ready to go the next day in class. 

 You will have 3rd quarter and 4th quarter mid term reflections in your mailboxes. Please save the 3rd quarter reflection for advisory on March 27th. There will be a Junior Class meeting on March 20 to go over local assessments. I will email out the schedule later today so everyone has it. On April 3, we are going to have an assembly during advisory to recognize our winter activities and honors they have received. Student Council will be leading this recognition assembly.

 I want to remind you to please take the time to fill out the survey I forwarded on March 8. If we get enough teachers to fill it out we get the survey results. It does give us good information that we can use with different groups to show how the TLC program is going in Le Mars.

 Just a FYI, I won't be able to approve any more leaves for April 6, 7, and 11.

 We are currently advertising for the English and Social Studies openings. The closing date is March 29. 

 Have a great weekend!

Staff News


Staff as Learners

Doug Martin will be taking another group of students to Houston for the NASA Space Settlement Competition March 23-27.

Students as Leaders

Congrats to the following students for being selected to perform at the IE All-State Festival: Cole Berkenpas - After Dinner, Alex Pick - Storytelling, Kajsa Hallberg - Original Oratory, Joey De Boer - Spontaneous, Megan Connor - Solo Musical Theater, Max Hardyk - Prose, Madelyn Johnson - After Dinner, Caden Washburn - Radio News, and Mika Wilhus - After Dinner. The following were selected as non-performing: Caden Washburn - Improv, Megan Connor - Acting, and Cole Berkenpas - Storytelling.

Assistant Principal's News

Reminder that the LCHS Student Council will be hosting our annual blood drive on Monday, March 27th from 9:00 - 2:30 in the front entrance of the new gym.  If you are interested in donating, please sign up in the office.  Student Council members will be helping out during the day instead of going to study hall, so please allow them to be present if possible.

Keep up the good work and don't forget to make your positive phone calls to home about your students.  Help parents celebrate the little things as they occur in your classroom!

Little Reminder about Common Formative Assessments:


What are common formative assessments?

The are not standardized tests, but rather teacher-created, teacher owned assessments that are collaboratively scored and that provide immediate feedback to the students and teachers.  They are assessments for learning administered to all students in grade level or course several times during a unit of study, semester, or year.  The items on the assessment are collaboratively designed by participating teachers and the results are analyzed in data teams in order to differentiate instruction.

Why should you collaborate?

If all students are expected to demonstrate the same knowledge and skills, regardless of the teacher to which they are assigned, it only makes sense that teachers must work together in a collaborative effort to assess student learning.

Common Formative Assessments help to answer four questions:

1. What is it we expect students to learn?
2. How will we know when they have learned it?
3. How will we respond when they don't?
4. How will we respond when they do?

Librarian's Corner


Instructional Coaches' Tid Bits

PicMonkey recently introduced a pair of brief tutorials to quickly create some stunning visual effects using your pictures and whatever quotes you would like on top of them. Click on the following links to see examples and learn how to do them yourselves: One, Two. They also released a tutorial about font pairing to increase the appearance of your work.

 Snapchat is something that is very popular with our students. Why not leverage that popularity to your advantage?

 As of Thursday, Google Team Drives are officially activated in our district. If you would like to see how to set one up and some benefits and features of Team Drive, please click here for a 5.5 minute video.

 This link is to a teacher created video resumes unit. Some universities and employers require candidates to send video resumes. Why not try to help our students make their video resumes stand out?

 I know in the past I have shared several omnibox tips and tricks. Here is a short blog by Steve Wick (not THAT Steve Wick) that shows/ reminds you of approximately 10 of them.

 This is an interesting article describing a not so distant world without WI-FI due to unlimited data plans and how that could affect you and some of the places you jump on WI-FI now.

Success Center Update

Articles Worth Reading

6 Strategies for Differentiated Instruction in Project-Based Learning
9 Steps to a Future-Ready Education

Upcoming Events

Saturday, March 18
- Show Choir @ Hinton

Monday, March 20
- TBD - Girl/Boy Track @ The University of South Dakota

Tuesday, March 21
- End of Third Quarter

Saturday, March 25
- State Solo/Small Ensembles Contest
- Noon - Boy/Girl Track @ SDSU

Monday, March 27
- 8:00 am IE Speech All-State Festival
- 6:30 pm NHS Induction

Thursday, March 30
- 5:00 pm Boy/Girl Track @ Unity Christian

Friday, March 31
- National History Day District Contest
- Blood Drive @ LCHS

Tuesday, April 4
- 4:00 pm Boy Tennis vs. Sioux City East
- 4:30 pm Girl Track vs. Cherokee, OABCIG and SBL
- 4:30 pm Boy Track @ MOC

Thursday, April 6
- Sine Nomine Honor Band @ MS Auditorium
- Orchestra Festival @ UNI
- 9:30 am Robotics @ Des Moines
- 4:00 pm Boy Golf vs. Western Christian
- 4:00 pm Girl Tennis vs. Cherokee
- 4:00 pm Boy Tennis @ Cherokee
- 5:00 pm Boy Track @ Cherokee

Friday, April 7
- Music Booster Auction
- 4:30 pm Boy Golf @ Hinton
- 5:00 pm Music Booster Pancake Supper
- 5:00 pm Girl Track @ Cherokee

Be Extraordinary!
Mark

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