Gift

Dear Readers:

I am sure some of you have heard, but the Terril Middle School was the luckily winner of a smartboard from the Hy-Vee promotion. We participated in the event and were chosen. We would like to thank Hy-Vee and also all those involved in helping us receive the gift.

Happy Holidays

Dear Readers:

I hope all of you have a safe and happy holiday. During the remaining time here at the middle school students will be having their PBiS celebrations. The purpose of PBiS is to use a positive behavior support system to improve school climate and interaction between students, teachers, and community. I want to give a big thanks to the PBiS crew and especially Shayla Hunefeld and Becky Masters who brought the program back to the school system. Friday grades 6-8 will be bowling in the morning and activities in the afternoon. We will arrange time for those with missing work to complete during that afternoon time. Grades 3-5 will have movie watching in the morning and then have activities in the afternoon. It is hard to believe that the semester is ending this Friday and time has flown by.

I want to share a new google site called teachparentstech it is a neat site with some valuable information when you forget or need reminders on how to do something. It uses the google based site for the information.

Have a great Holiday Season.

Sincerely,

Chris

Staff Meeting

Dear Readers:

We had staff meetings this week with the elementary and middle school. We discussed several key areas. Curriculum, collaboration, Characteristics of Effective Instruction(part of the Iowa Core), and several other areas. Curriculum we are currently entering data into a program called curriculum manager which will help the school district align our curriculum with the Iowa Core. Collaboration we are going to have a Wednesday evening demonstration on technology, instruction, management, or what a teacher feels free to share. Characteristics of Effective instruction the staff read an article by Grant Michael discussing what student centered classrooms. Several other areas were the letter home about homework, moving the Polar Express PJ day to next Friday, moving the 5th period advisory to the end of the day, and also on December 15th Mr. Richards will provide goodies. I appreciate you taking time to read the blog and again I will keep it up to date as possible.

Sincerely,

Chris

My Apologizes

Dear Readers:

I apologize for my absenteeism from the blog posting. I for one always push for people to use technology and here I am not getting things accomplished. I will make a better effort from here on in posting articles and information I feel is relevant to student success. I will also share the information from meetings and try to keep the readers as up to date as possible. Again I apologize for not getting things done, but will do so from now on. I am going to provide a link to an article I found on Edutopia. The site focuses on different educational issues. The blog I am referencing is from Heather Wolpert-Gawron who is a contributor for Edutopia. The article is what makes a student successful in school.

Things to Come

Dear Readers:

This week is going to be an exciting week. Apple will begin server building on May 17 and we will have finals at the end of this week. It is hard to believe that the school year is coming to an end and that we will be saying good bye to a great bunch of seniors. I will truly miss the brilliance of the class. Graduation will start at 1. We have a little over ninety days to a start of a new school year.

Long Time

I apologize, but I have not posted anything to my blog in awhile. We have had a lot of exciting things occurring at the school. Graduation is right around the corner and the end of school year is fast approaching. We will be having graduation practice on Thursday at 10:30 and senior check out will be at 9:00. Reminder that grades 9-11 will have finals on 20-21. We will have job shadow on April 24, Community Service on April 25, and Final Day on May 26. On the computer front Apple will begin building the new server system on May 17 and I am right now at this time typing my blog on the new apple computers. So far I am blown away with what an Apple can do and still have not gotten into all the applications. Well have a great weekend and I will try and stay on top of this blog a little better.

Survey

Weather

I am excited to report that the 10th grade and 11th reading scores were above the state requirement. I appreciate effort from those students and hope it continues in the future. I made a deal with the students that anyone improving their score from last year would receive pizza which I am figuring out when to do. We are also experiencing a swing in the weather which is causing a swing in behaviors. I hope that it soons evens out. We are also receiving a lot of the Apple products which is exciting and scary at the same time. We are making plans at the school and will eventually reach out to the community for support and guidance. Have a great day.

Apple

I am excited to announce that we had our first conversation with Apple about moving forward with the purchases and PD. A reminder that we will be having a musical Friday night at Terril with Middle School Students. I can not think of anything else to really say right now.

Music Show

Last night was a fabulous musical and dance event. If you were unable to attend I believe Phil Schmitt taped the event. The singing, dancing, and band were tremendous. My hats off to those involved and thank you for the hard work.

Weather

Well March came in like a lamb, but seems to be changing into a lion. Today I am at Pokey for Project Lead the Way and continuing to discuss technology. It is very informative and things we will discuss in Monday meetings. The board will be looking at the final lease documents on Thursday so we will see what that brings. If the lease is signed we will be moving forward with setting up PD at the end of the year and ordering the teacher machines. Have a great day.

Sunshine

It has been a wonderful week so far. The weather has been great and we are getting our first good melt. The elementary students are enjoying the snowhills in the morning, but are on the blacktop in the afternoon due to a marsh forming at the base of the hills. High school students are getting tired because we are here a full week, can't blame them. We will be having school on April 5th to recapture a snow day. I hope all is well with you.

Thought

I thought we would get a full week, but Iowa winter winds are cruel. I will be traveling to get Melissa and Rhapsody tomorrow night so I hope the roads are good. We have finally finished ITED testing, but still have a few make ups. I also had some great thoughts from the last staff meeting that I will share tomorrow. I hope we can have a full week of school sometime in the near future.

Healthy Kids

Today was very interesting learning more about the Healthy Kids Act. The majority of the day was spent talking about the nutrition part. I do see a need to create a committee of Teachers, Parents, and Community members. We will have an opportunity to review the wellness policy and discuss the impact on fundraisers and other things we do. We will talk about this in further staff meetings and devise a small committee to start then have that committee grow. I think we will finally have a full day of school tomorrow.

This Week

It has been a hectic week. I had a conversation the other day and I can not remember the last time we had a full week of school with no late starts. We have one more day of ITED testing, but we will now wait until next week due to state wrestling. Next week is FFA week and we will have some activities. I hope next week brings good weather and a chance to have school on time and a full week of school.

Finally

We have finally made it back to school. The recent weather events have set back the ITED testing for grades 9-12. We will be testing as of know Thursday, Friday, and Tuesday. Basketball girls will be playing Thursday at Harris Lake Park, the boys team still has games with Bode and West Bend and will start sectional play the following week. The wrestling team has state dual qualification tonight with district at Souix Center Saturday. Have a great day.

GT Board

I would like to announce that the GT board made a motion and approved the motion to add 1 to 1 learning environment for next year. The motion will of course need to have attorney approval and the final approval from the board. I would like to thank everyone for their time and effort on this project. A lot of you need thanking and I do not mean to leave you out, but want to thank Mrs. Farnum and Mrs. Alesch for the time put into the video. This is a big step for the community and what lies ahead is going to be interesting.

Exciting Things

Today the teachers were instructed on using a wikispace for PD and the teachers have created blogs that can be found at the Graettinger Library Site. To locate the site use the gtschools.org home page and click on links. After clicking the links look for the library site. If you look on the left hand side towards the bottom you will see a link for blogs. By clicking the link you will be taken to the site where the teachers have active blogs running. I hope you enjoy this new experience that we are creating at Graettinger/Terril Community School District.

Attempt at Video

Dear Readers:

I have finally posted myself to YouTube. I am attempting to link the video here.

1-1

I am pleased announce the board will have a special session on Thursday February 4th to discuss the one to one idea. The board will have discussion and an action item on the agenda. I have contacted the local media and also Channel 4 news in Sioux City. I invite everyone to come to the basketball game and attend the board meeting at Graettinger Community School building. This is a step into the future and look forward to the discussion by the board.

I am very pleased with the comments to the six questions posted from yesterday. I would say we are off to a great start with the blogs and new ideas. I want to give everyone a chance to discuss the video we saw yesterday in Disruptive Innovation. I found the video very informative and made me think about how things have changed. The part that struck home the most was the atlas to the GPS system which we have with all the traveling. I use to make sure and have an atlas before I left town, now I check to make sure I have the TomTom.

Chris

Monday Jan. 18th

Dear Staff Members:

Instead of having you turn in a sheet of paper to me with your lesson for technology, you will respond with the lesson in my blog. The six questions are here-

1.) What are the lesson objectives?
2.) What will you teach with the technology?
3.) What are the students doing with the technology?
4.) How will this help students learn content at a deeper level?
5.) What did you learn today?
6.) Do you need more time to work on tech integration?