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@D114Stanton
@D114Lotus
@FLGSD114
#District114proud
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A BIG thank you to Cindy Carlino for staying late to ensure my students were properly placed into AIMSWeb for progress monitoring! I really appreciate your help!
-From Greer Lally
To David Roat and Colleen Hitzler for spending Saturday with 20 students in Dekalb at the NIU STEMFest.
To Liz Andersen and Beth Rendon for coordinating our annual food drive with the Student Council.
-Both from Jeff Sefcik
Kudos to Matt, Natalie, Lynn, Cari, and Sarah for going above and beyond to be “all hands on deck” to address my classroom needs. Your support has been incredible. Thank you for teaching me through this process! To the amazing office ladies and my K team- I am grateful & humbled to work with you!
-From Tiffany Mihovilovich
Kudos to Beth Rendon for being on top of things and reaching out about getting a family some financial assistance so our student can be on medication consistently.
-From Keli Swiercek
Thank you to Kim and Natalie helping me with a student that had an allergic reaction and we couldn't get a hold of a parent.
-From Colleen Richardson
A HUGE shout out to the 2nd and 3rd-grade teams for providing enrichment opportunities for some of our very bright kiddos! We are so thankful to work with people who ALWAYS go above and beyond!
-From Erica Barraza
Thank you to Kim VanHoorelbeke for volunteering her time to put on an awesome fire safety presentation for both Preschool classes! This was a perfect way for the kiddos to demonstrate all they have learned during our My Community: Public Safety Unit.
-From Michelle Magness and Tegan Maybrun
To our Wellness Team (Melissa, Chris and Kim) for thinking outside the box on ideas to better serve our students that fall outside the healthy fit zone!!!
-From Jeff Sefcik
Kudos to Jamie Smeigh for sorting and stapling Stanton's Q1 report cards, PARCC & MAP scores so they were ready for conferences.
-From Michele Burgess
To Cari Miller and Christina Martorano for your leadership related to the Zones of Regulation, and for sharing resources with parents at conferences. This is an amazing program--one I've seen make HUGE differences for students (big and small). I'm so hoping that we can embrace Michelle Garcia Winners work as a system to help ALL students learn to regulate. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
-From Heather
Thank you Matt Peters for everything you have done the last 2 weeks! You took out more time in your schedule then you even have. We really appreciate it!!!
And
Georgette- thanks for always taking care of our kids! You are so generous and thankful!
-Both from Erica Bender and Chris Brown
When you have a kudo to share for someone, please just email me and I'll include it here! The goal is to create system celebrations--so your input is truly welcome!
News from the Business Office
Insurance
Based on all reports, we have worked through the kinks of the insurance change. If you have any issues whatsoever, please let me know so I can monitor and follow up.
Please know that, moving forward, we will be using all online sign ups for annual open enrollment. This will be done with the providers there to assist you and field questions along the way. Additionally, this will help reduce data entry errors that arise from paper forms. We'll allow time for this during our opening days and support everyone along the way!
New Face :)
As indicated previously, Becky Allard will be starting with us this week. She and Diane Spakowski (short term book keeper) will spend time in transition on Tuesday, and then Becky will help ensure that all our financial systems are working accurately and efficiently, making "critical friend" suggestions for improvement. Becky has 30+ years of experience managing school business offices, and was formerly the president of IASBO (the Illinois Association of School Business Officers). Her expertise regarding processes, Skyward, staffing, and all things financial will help me shore up how things work and lead to increased efficiency and accuracy. Becky will work with us 2 1/2-3 days per week until I can develop, in partnership with her, a long term and more permanent plan that 's financially sound and allows us to better implement business office processes. Please share a warm welcome with Becky, and let me know if you have any questions.
Commitments
As we developed at the October 6 Institute Day with Bob Eaker, please find, below, the initial "take" on our district commitments. Bob took all our comments and created an initial draft. Then, the administrative team reviewed and made some tweaks. Next, we reviewed the list at last Wednesday's EAFL meeting, where some key improvements were made. Now it's your turn! Take a look, and please suggest any changes you'd suggest!
Shared Commitments
Fox Lake District 114
In
order to fulfill Fox Lake’s vision to create a district in which all student
thrive physically, socially, emotionally and academically, and a district that
adults find their efforts professionally rewarding and fulfilling,
·
We will work collaboratively to create a culture
of continuous improvement in which decisions are research-based through collective
inquiry into best practices, and data-driven.
·
We will create a district, school, and classroom
environment that is pleasant, productive, and gives sharp focus on the learning
of each student, skill by skill, name
by name.
·
We will develop a district-wide collaborative
culture in which everyone will be a
positive, contributing member of a
collaborative team.
·
We will collaboratively identify the essential
skills and knowledge for every grade, subject, course, and unit of instruction
and collaboratively develop units of instruction in order to teach to the
agreed upon curriculum.
·
We will monitor the learning of each student,
skill by skill, on a frequent and timely basis through the use of
collaboratively developed, common formative and summative assessments that are
aligned in both content and format with state assessments and other high-stakes
summative assessments required of students.
·
We will engage collaboratively in analyzing the
results of our common formative assessments—student by student, skill by
skill--in order to provide students with appropriate additional time, support
and extension of learning, and to analyze the effectiveness of their
instructional practices.
·
We will create equitable learning experiences for
all our students, regardless of the teacher to whom they are assigned.
·
We will be partners with our students’ families
in the education of our students.
·
We will, within the district, each school, each team,
and in every classroom develop plans to frequently
and genuinely recognize and celebrate improvement
of both students and adults—both individually and collectively.
FACILITIES UPDATES
Keep watching here for updates!
Keep watching here for updates!
Education Association of Fox Lake News and Updates
The executive board had a productive meeting with Heather on Wednesday. We appreciate the opportunity to work collaboratively to proactively address association concerns.
(Note from Heather---this was a GREAT MEETING!!! Thanks, team!)
The executive board will be meeting as a team this coming Wednesday to continue to ensure we are meeting the needs of our association. If you ever have any items or ideas you would like the executive board to explore, please be sure to pass them on to any member of the executive board.
A few members have expressed interest in having an EAFL hoodie. If we have enough interest we can place an order for hoodies. The design would be the same as our t-shirt design and the cost would be $20. Please let Melissa Williams know if you are interested in purchasing one so we can gauge if we have enough interest to place an order.
Upcoming IEA Events:
- IEA Professional Development Conference 12/1-12/2 in Springfield Click Here to Register
Melissa Williams, President
Maureen DeVoss, Vice President for Certified Staff
Chris Brown, Vice President for Non-Certified Staff
Katy Gardner, Treasurer
Betty Cwiak, Secretary
Barb Brown, Region Representative
Matt Shannon, Stanton School Representative
Tiffany Tardio, Lotus School Representative
17-18 Payroll Schedule--UPDATED 10/22/17
Blue Cross Blue Shield:
Guardian:
Questions for thought as you read...
How does this article align with Questions 1 and 2 of focus in a Professional Learning Community:
1. What do we expect all students to know and be able to do?
2. How will we know when students have learned?
How does this article align with the work of the 15 day instructional plan?
A Way of Crystalizing a Lesson Plan in One Sentence
In this Cult of Pedagogy article, Norman Eng describes how he wrestled with the
burden of writing full lesson plans every day, for every class, five days a week. “There’s no way to know what’ll happen Friday when so much changes on Monday,” he says. And who has time to write all those lesson plans in advance? After a while, he defaulted to jotting notes on what he wanted to teach each day of the week and amending his plans as needed.
But that was less than ideal. Eventually, he hit upon the idea of formulating lesson
plans on three things:
• The What – What do I want my students to know (or do) by the end of class? What is
the content knowledge or skill to be learned? – for example, evaluating the credibility of online sources.
• The How – What method, strategy, tool, or activity will ensure they reach the goal?
Often it will be a hands-on activity – for example, students will evaluate the credibility of
online sources by working in groups to triangulate and address critical questions such as, Does the author cite or provide links to research?
• The Why – So what? What is the ultimate purpose for learning this content or skill?
What’s in it for students? How will they benefit? Well, students need to be proficient at
evaluating the credibility of online sources so they can make better decisions down the road.
The WHY question also helps formulate a good lesson opening or hook – for example, With so much out there, how do you decide what information to trust online?
Eng likes to boil all this down to a one-sentence lesson plan: Students will be able to
evaluate the credibility of online sources by working in groups to address a critical question so
that they will be prepared to make better decisions as they explore the Internet. Here’s how this
would play out in the lesson’s details:
- Opening: Ask students about their experiences searching for information online.
- Mini-lesson: Ask them to think about better ways to find information and teach them
how to triangulate.
- Guided practice: Model your “think-aloud” process for triangulating information by
searching online for, Is climate change real?
- Activity: Students apply the same triangulating strategy to another topic – for example,
Do vaccines cause autism?
- Closing/assessment: Why is good judgment so important in the information age?
Eng addresses some likely questions about this super-short lesson planning format:
• What if I’m required to write and submit full lesson plans? The one-sentence
What/How/Why is the lesson objective. “Once established,” says Eng, “it’s fairly
straightforward to flesh out… Remember to bookend your lesson with the WHY.”
• Isn’t the one-sentence lesson plan really just a lesson objective? Ideally, lesson
objectives would include the What, How, and Why, but they often don’t.
The How and Why
push us to think from the students’ perspective and make it easier to plan the lesson opening, activities, and closing.
• What if I’m required to write lesson plans based on standards? “Then your WHAT is
already done,” says Eng. If there’s a Common Core or other standard for the lesson, turn it into a one-sentence lesson plan.
• What if I’m having trouble figuring out the WHY? Asking this question spurs us to
think about the underlying theme or Big Idea. For example, what’s at the heart of just-in- time operations management? Efficiency. What’s behind the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest?
Injustice. Why does oxidation matter? Certain foods go bad (a half-eaten apple turning brown)
and there are ways to avoid that. If you’re really stuck with the WHY, says Eng, just Google it.
“Introducing the One-Sentence Lesson Plan” by Norman Eng in Cult of Pedagogy, October 15,
2017, https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/one-sentence- lesson-plan/.
November 21--Board of Education Meeting at Lotus at 7:00 PM
Something awesome happened...
From Paula Kvacik---
Wanted to share....my son received a Letter of Commendation from his CO for bravery during deployment!
I asked Paula to make sure I could share this with you. Isn't this AWESOME???!!??
I hope you had a wonderful and that Halloween holds all treats and no tricks for you and your families!
Heather :)
