To the mURSD CommunityPlease read the statement below from the Mendon-Upton Regional School District Leadership Team and School Committee on our national crisis. As a community we can unifty to denounce racism, affect change, and confront inequities. TO THE MURSD COMMUNITY MURSD HighlightsFrom Heather Formon, "Over the last dozen (yes, a dozen!) weeks, the chorus students of Miscoe have been discussing how to best share their talents during this virtual education experience. It was decided to share a slideshow of the joy that music provides in their lives, and to pair that with a recording of their singing. The students in grades 5-8 learned the entire excerpt remotely. I provided videos to guide their learning, but it was up to them to take the time to practice singing at home. The end result is a completely student driven project. I'm so proud of their efforts. Attached please find our video. It's short and sweet, and we hope it will bring a smile to your face." Anti-Racism ResourcesThe following are some more resources that have been shared by MURSD staff and other educators to support our work.
Summer readingAs a result of some of our district SEL assessments at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, our district SEL teams determined that one area for growth for our district is to provide resources and professional development in the area of cultural proficiency. We started some of that work this year with an administrator workshop in culturally proficient leadership, in our district ELA curriculum review (reviewing the diversity of our materials), as well as in a workshop introducing cultural proficiency at Memorial Elementary School, and we began some conversations at Miscoe Hill Middle School, but plans to expand that work this spring were put on hold because of the school closures. This will be one of the themes we continue into the 2020-2021 as an area of focused learning, beginning with some summer reading opportunities. The following are some of the summer reading choices. Please e-mail Maureen Cohen if you'd like to participate in the summer reading groups by specifying which books you'd like to participate with. June-July: White Fragility July-August: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain Stay Tuned: for additional summer reading opportunities related to remote learning. Cultural Proficiency Sub-CommitteeI have had many people reach out to me directly to either provide resources or wanting to help in future plans, resource development, and professional development in the issues of cultural proficiency, anti-racism, and equity in our schools. This subcommittee will be a subset of our district SEL committee work and is open to anyone who is interested. Please e-mail Maureen Cohen directly if you are interested in being on this subcommittee. Professional DevelopmentOnline STEM Teaching: Meeting the Needs of all Learners Need to enhance your online teaching skills to better meet the needs of all of your students? With this set of introductory and advanced workshops, you can do just that! There's even a PD specifically for administrators/coaches. More info STEM/STEAM Projects Looking for new STEM or STEAM project ideas to incorporate into your classroom? Look no further! Explore challenges aligned with grade-level standards and follow the steps of the engineering design process to solve them. Always an educator favorite! More info New! Project Based Learning Institute (for school teams) Immerse yourself in PBL! Work together with your educator team to dive deeper into the understanding of project-based learning. Let us guide you to plan real-world, high-quality PBL experiences for your students. More info Seeds of STEM: Research-based Preschool Curriculum Problem Panda has a LOT of problems! Step into the shoes of a preschool student and experience this hands-on approach to doing STEM with young children. Explore the Seeds of STEM curriculum binder and color images, and discuss with other educators how to implement this year-long curriculum in your classroom. More info Graduate credit extension options STEM Educator Certificate Course Earn a STEM Certificate from WPI! Join us on a journey to design a high-quality, integrated STEM Challenge that aligns with STEM standards of your choice. This course is great for in-school educators, out-of-school educators, and coaches of all grade levels. It’s one of a kind! More info Assessments Re-imagined Transform the way you look at assessment practices. Re-imagine and redesign your current assessments to meet critical elements of high quality, while collaborating with grade-level colleagues. Assessing will never be so clear! More info Entering School BuildingsThe following are the district guidelines for entering school buildings to retrieve belongings. Each of the building principals will create a Google form for teachers/staff re-entry and communicate the online sign-up to each school. For those who have wondered why we waited until June 8th, while some other districts had let teachers in their schools. This choice was intentional as we wanted to be vigilant in safeguarding our staff and to align our plans with the Governor's Phase 2 of reopening and corresponding decline in COVID-19 cases to bring teachers/staff back into the schools. This also corresponds with the return of all of our custodial staff to the buildings to clean and disinfect on a daily basis. Staff re-entry: June 8-12 Student/family retrieval of items: June 15-June 19 Summer Reading for StudentsDue to the current school closures, and the limited access at local libraries, we are making some shifts with our summer reading for our students PK-12. There will be no required books, instead we are shifting to students reading two choice books and we will be providing an array of suggested books for them, as we have in the past. All of the summer reading lists are being finalized and will be available by the end of this week, so they can be communicated electronically to parents and also will be available on our website. I have been working with department chairs, curriculum assistants and principals on the revisions of the lists based on teacher feedback. Thank you to those who have contributed ideas and updates to this process. Summer Reading Philosophy The philosophy of the Mendon-Upton Regional School District’s summer reading program is to continue to empower our learners to thrive in the summer months. We believe that reading is not just a school-based activity, but a lifelong activity and our mission is to foster life-long learners and readers. Therefore, we believe establishing a high quality summer reading program provides our learners an avenue to explore their interests, pursue their passions, and grow as individuals. Summer Reading Goals
Elementary UpdatesPK-4 Narrative Report Cards
The following guidance for PK-4 narrative report cards was shared out last week. We received a few questions, which are addressed below. FAQ on Narrative Report Cards 1. Do I have to write as much as in the exemplar that was shared? The exemplar is just to assist you in combining the different elements into a cohesive comment. It is an exemplar, rather than an expectation. It was not intended to indicate how long the comments need to be. This is the same exemplar that has been shared across a few other districts who are giving narrative report cards. We opened up the comments so you can add in more than 300 characters, which was what it was before to the maximum of 4000 characters. The exemplar provided was 1700 characters, which gives you a sense of length. Many grade levels are going to discuss the typical lengths so there is consistency of their comments across the grade. 2. Why were so many sentence frames provided for each narrative? We provided an average of five sentence frames for each section to provide sample choices and options. The expectations would that teachers would have different voices in their writing as they spoke about each student. The sentence frames were provided by one of our teachers who shared them as a resource to be included. They are designed to streamline the process and to assist you in framing your thoughts. 3. Why do we have to report out on learning as not all students have returned all assignments and some work was supported by parents and not fully representative of the student's skills. We are not looking for detailed descriptions to the standards as we have in the past, but to identify any areas of learning where students have shown growth and areas where additional practice will be helpful. Since we are not communicating out on the standards in full, parents will be looking to get a sense of how their child is doing academically, so this is our mechanism for any feedback we can provide. 4. We are concerned that the letter to parents breaks down the four categories of our comments and we are nervous that if we don't address it exactly as written, the parents may get upset. We put in the section into the parent letter to provide clarity to them so they know what to expect for the narrative comments, which are different than before. As a result of the concerns from teachers, we have removed that portion of the letter, but the expectation still remains that students will receive feedback that is personalized, focuses on engagement/participation, snapshots of learning/growth, and recommendations for summer work. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to your principals for further clarification. Thanks! STMath Exciting news to share! This week all teachers at Clough Elementary School and Memorial Elementary School received an invitation e-mail to log into the STMath program as a teacher. We uploaded all teachers/students into our CLEVER integration system, which is why you received an automatic notification. This description will explain what you received. Clough Elementary School received this invitation because they received a competitive $30,000+ grant for STMath implementation across all grade levels. Since the school closures, we have been able to access free access for all of our students because the state communicated out a new partnership with the One8 foundation to provide it free through the summer and into next year in response to remote learning. This access for Memorial is different from Clough's grant, but provides full access to all of our students throughout the summer. Our goal is to give all of our elementary students access to STMath as one of the continued learning opportunities to combat the COVID/Summer Slide. Teachers are welcome to log in, but do not have to do anything. Once the students receive the log-in information, they will be able to access the programming without assistance. As we receive more information, we will share it with all of you. STMath Resources for Teachers STMath Resources for Parents is a great site to introduce STMath.
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