February 4, 2022
Happy Friday, I hope everyone has had a great week.
I wanted to start getting some dates out there so you are able to plan for the rest of the school year. The Seniors last day of class will be on May 13. They will have semester test on May 16 and 17. Graduation practice will be on May 18. Kyle and I will be meeting with Seniors on Monday during advisory to go over this with them. For all the other grades, the semester tests will be on May 24 and 25.
We will be giving ISASP during the week of April 25. The writing test will be on April 27 and the block days will be on April 28 and 29. The reading, math, and science test will be given in the the English, math and sophomore science class. The writing test was changed to only one writing prompt, so the time recommendation changed from 120 minutes to 75 minutes. So that means I'll be coming up with a new schedule for the writing test. There are a few other changes you need to be aware of with the ISASP. The reading test is now an adaptive test. It will be in 3 stages, students may not skip questions, but may change answers before completing the stage. The math test had no changes. Changes to the science test include that it is adaptive; it in 2 stages and students may not skip questions, but may change a response before completing the stage.
In April we also need to administer the Conditions of Learning survey. This survey figures into our score in the Iowa Performance Profile. An interesting tidbit for you is that any 1 negative response by a student for an area, marks the entire area as negative. This link will take you to our performance profile and the conditions of learning part of it. You will see we are well below the state average in this category. https://www.iaschoolperformance.gov/ECP/StateDistrictSchool/SchoolDetails?DetailType=ConditionsForLearning&k=12569&y=2021 This is one area that we need to address and see why students are answering the way they are. This is a better breakdown of student responses: Conditions of Learning.
Looking ahead, on Monday during advisory, the Juniors will be meeting in the competition gym to discuss prom and Seniors will be in the Little Theater with Kyle and myself. On Wednesday, we have a 2 hour early out for our district in-service time. During the in-service time you are expected to be working on your essential learnings, pacing guides, or unit planning. I will be attending a workshop on Thursday afternoon so I will be out of the building.
Have a great weekend!
Assistant Principal's Happenings
I know several teachers have asked for help with some individual students in recent weeks. Please keep asking for assistance as that gives me a chance to make connections with students as we work out the issues they are having in class. Right now, I do not have a ton on my calendar for the next two weeks so if there are some classes you would like me to sit in on, please let me know!
In advisory Monday, please make sure everyone discusses grades with students. I have met with all seniors yesterday who are failing a class and took several opens. The reason I did not with most is because they were missing a summative assessment. Right now we have more students than I realized are behind due to the recent Covid outbreak. 20 out of the 30 Seniors were in that shape were because they had been out for a week and were behind on making up tests or projects. Right now we have just under a third of our students failing a class at Midterm. I do believe the biggest reason for this is due to the absences we have experienced recently, but we need to make sure you are communicating with the students and parents to come up with plans to make up that work.
Going along with the Conditions of Learning Survey, one of our lowest scores was students that felt like they had a connection with teachers at school. I do want to make this a priority for the rest of this semester. We have many students that simply come to school besides the fact that they have to do it. Please spend some time over the next weeks working on connections with students so they know why you do what you do everyday. A lot of students do not realize how much you really care until you actually tell them that.
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