LCHS Friday Focus

Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. Next week on Monday we will have a Sophomore and Senior class meeting. The Sophomores will go first in the little theater followed by the Seniors. Also on Monday we have our first night of parent-teacher conferences. I hope you have taken the time to personally invite the parents of students who are struggling. When I ran the midterm "F" list we had 116 students with one or more "F" grades. You should also be starting to look at PASS Plans for those who are showing a pattern. I do not want you to wait until 2nd quarter to get these going. We need to give the parent some time to try to do something or time for a plan to work.  Just a reminder to get new courses for next year into me soon. I will look them over and talk with you if I have any questions. Courses that get approved will be added to the course description booklet and to registration materials. I also want to take a moment to address the "Staph...

Happy Friday! Just a reminder, 1st quarter mid-term is today. Please make sure grades are updated over the weekend and progress reports will be sent home on Monday. This would be a good time to start arranging PASS plan meetings for students at risk. I would call and try to set up meetings during conferences on Oct. 2 and 5. Those will run from 5:00 to 8:30 pm. I believe I listed those times wrong in last week's Friday Focus.  The Junior class will be kicking off their annual fundraiser on Monday. They will be called out of class at 9:30 and will report to the competition gym. They will be back to class around 10:30. They are selling black or white "Yeti style" glass with a bulldog logo on them.  We do have our 2nd building meeting next week. You will continue to work on your curriculum as outlined in the district's pd plan.  Reminder to get me any potential new courses for next year. I will need to look at them before we put them in the course descript...

Happy Friday! Today is the marathon day. We will be dismissing classes at 11:42. Coronation will start in the competition gym at 1:00 pm with the parade following. Then at 7:00 pm the Bulldog football team will take on SBL. Following the game will be the annual homecoming dance. If you are looking for something to do after the game come and join us.  We do have our district in-service on Wednesday next week. All groups will meet in the library. Mrs. Permswaran and Mrs. Collins are going to go over the unit planning form that we will use at the secondary level. After their presentation, we will split out into our groups and CIA members will have examples for you to look at. This year shows us why we need to have these documents. With Mr. Jentz and Mr. Martin missing days due to health, the unit plan guides would have been helpful for the substitutes to plan the lessons. Sorry, Joel and Doug, but you became my poster boys for this. I do know each group is at a different point ...

Happy Friday! Homecoming is next week, I hope to see lots of you dressed up for the days.  I wish to give a big thank you to Jill Brown for her APL refresher she gave us on Wednesday. APL has lots of great practices that can easily be incorporated into the classroom. Sometimes, in our hurry to get through material, we forget to really check for student understanding or give students time to process what we want them to learn. We have to remember that students need time to take what we want them to learn and to attach it to previous learning in order to move it to their long term memory. I know, when I was in the classroom, I was guilty of this. Students would do well on a test because the information was in their short term memory, but when given questions on a test a month later they did not do as well.  With Homecoming next week, please continue to push the students. I know we will have interruption in classes, but please be flexible with the students. During advisory ...

Happy Friday! We made it through the first full week of school and Mr. Bork didn't get hurt at the assembly, great week! Enjoy your three day weekend. Thanks for getting this school year off to a great start. I know with the health issues of some of our friends, it has been a difficult start. Thanks to everyone who has gone above and beyond to help out. We have hired a long-term sub until Mr. Martin can return. Art Witten will be starting on Tuesday. He is a retired science teacher and lives around Galva. On Tuesday we will have class meetings during advisory. See Mr. Utesch's post below to see where each group is meeting. I will be with the Seniors as we will try to do their class picture and go over some other beginning of the year business for them. Homecoming will be coming fast, so the classes will need to organize quickly to get things done.  We do have our first extra-hour meeting on Wednesday, September 6 at 7:00 am in the library. Jill Brown will be doing an APL r...