Week of March 5th

UAI Staff News

Volume V

Issue 25

March 5th, 2018

[School Days 111-115]
[34 Days Remaining in MP5]      [63 Days Remaining in HS School Year]      [73 Days Remaining in MS School Year]

Announcements

Lady Eagles Face Off against John Jay.  For our final game at our campus this season, the Lady Eagles face the John Jay Jayhawks one more time.  If you recall, the only game we lost this season was to John Jay, and we defeated them the last time we played, resulting in our first place divisional finish.  Now, only John Jay stands between the Adams Campus Lady Eagles and the citywide semi-finals.  It's exciting times for our young athletes. Come out and support them in our gym on Monday, 05MAR18 at 5PM.  

Black History Month Winterfest. Last Wednesday, Ms. Vanessa and the fabulous staff of Girls Inc. put together an amazing show with our young women.  From dancing to yoga to basketball to entrepreneurship - all of our after-school programs got their chance to shine, and they were brilliant.  Check out some of their videos:  Girl's Anthem & Girls' News Network (GNN)

Christina Choi.  Christina co-teaches English and Social Studies with our Middle School teachers, Kristina, Marsha, and Natalie.  One of Christina's many strengths and talents is her ability to plan for and target students for specific supports.  For example, during independent work time, in place of randomly circulating to check on students, Christina targets her most struggling students and plans accordingly.  During my observation of her practice last week, I was particularly impressed with an on-the-spot reading intervention that Christina did with a student.  Together they read the primary source document and Christina used questions around genre and understanding the author's purpose to help the student build comprehension and understanding.  If you're looking for ways to build reading support into your lesson, check out Christina this week!

Rebecca Candela.  Those of you who are working with our current class of seniors truly understand the complexities of senioritis. Now that the application process is complete and the acceptances are rolling in, our seniors (like so many in the city), are operating under the mistaken belief that they can now check out.  Rebecca is using high-interest topics coupled with accountability (meaningful use of student work) to keep students engaged.  It isn't always easy, and they do present challenges often!  In class the other day, Rebecca taught her AP English students how to improve the quality and complexity of their arguments through using student discourse to scaffold thinking and writing strategies to manipulate and improve their writing.  If you're working on ways to improve student analysis and argument writing in your class, reach out to Rebecca!

To Do This Week

Monday PD.  This is the first Monday of the month.  In place of PLOPs for the rest of the year, we'll be giving time over to teams to have grade team meetings (I forgot this when I wrote last week's blog).  In correction, we'll be continuing our work on planning an instruction next week.  This week, we'll be giving the time to grade teams to analyze student behavior and academic data.  In addition, we'll be submitting to teams the completion of the SLC schedule for review.  Here's the agenda

• 2:50PM - All teams report to the following rooms
• Middle School Teams:  6th - Room 309   and   7th & 8th - Room 303
• High School Teams: 9th/12th, rm 405;  10th/12th, rm 509;  11th/12th, rm B57 
• Teachers who teach multiple grades should go to the teams of their choice

• 3:00-3:45 Behavior Data Dive
• Using the Data Protocol examine the grade data provided to by our Dean Team
  (Admin team members will facilitate)
• The goal of this data dive is to examine the impact of the Social Norms Reset at the start of February and to reflect on practices and commit to next steps.
• 3:45-4:10 SLCs Appointment Completion and Attendance 
• Grade teams will review the percent of grade who have been scheduled for SLCs.  For those advisors having struggles completing their schedule, the team will collaboratively problem solve to support.  The goal is to have 100% scheduled by the end of the day on Tuesday 06MAR18.
• Grade team advisors will receive individual student attendance data by advisory so each advisor can review attendance with families and set attendance goals with advisees for the Spring term. The goal is to have all students with 90% or better attendance for the remainder of the year.  That is, from now through June, we want students to be in school and on time at least 90% of the time.

Tuesday Family Outreach.  Here are the hot topics for this week's family outreach time

• Complete scheduling for your SLCs.  If you could not reach parents on your own last week, this week you need to pull the student and have her call home with you.
• UAI Spring Family Dinner. If you forgot, please make sure you invite families to our UAI Spring Family Dinner on Tuesday, 13MAR18 at 5:30PM.
• SLC Appointment and Family Dinner RSVP.  Both the SLC Appointment sheet and the Dinner RSVP list can be found by CLICKING HERE.

Per Session Opportunities

• UAI Spring Family Dinner.  We're looking for teachers from each grade team to join us for the Spring Family Dinner.  Please respond directly to Kiri by the end of the day on Wednesday, 07MAR18. 
• Middle School ELA Test Prep.  We will be running after-school test prep for middle school students.  For now, we are focusing on ELA (math prep will begin after the April break).  Please respond to Kiri for approval and next steps.