September 25, 2018

WCS and Team Curriculum Night

Thursday October @ 6:30 pm

• 6:30 PM- All parents begin in the Al Myer's Theater for information from the administration
• 7:00 PM- Head to Swift House to meet with facilitators in kiva.  We will touch upon curriculum, work completion, technology, communication, field trips and more.  We welcome your questions!  Whether you've had children in Swift for a decade or have just joined the team, we hope to share insights on the school year for all. 
• 7:45 PM- Swift FAP updates in the kiva

Google Classroom and Jumprope Updates

Google Classroom

Swift Facilitators post all assignments via Google Classroom, whether they include an attached document or not.  Math practice questions, literature reading assignments, science, social studies, writing, and core tasks all show up your child's Google Classroom calendar.  We also post in-class tasks which require online access.  Ms. Thompson uses the platform for band assignments as well.  The complete, interactive calendar can only be seen through the student or teacher login.  

However, we have invited parents and guardians to receive Google Classroom updates.  The invitation asks if you prefer daily or weekly updates.  Either way, these updates include a static snapshot and descriptions of your child's assignments.  This snapshot works best as a discussion tool.  Late assignments may show up on Classroom that have since been turned in.  Please refer to Fridays' Greensheet as the definitive list of complete work.

Screenshot of Google Classroom Calendar from students' view.  Gray indicates items from previous days.  

Jumprope

This week WCS pushed out an email titled: "Jumprope School Portal Info for Student Name."  The email holds your child's login information for the Jumprope website, our online standards-based grading platform.  The email reads:

"Williston Central School would like to invite you to use our online student information portal. The portal is a place to see how your student is progressing on course learning targets, both academic and work habits. When you enter the portal, you will see a detailed explanation of how to read your child's reports about learning. Please know that your student's teachers are working hard to help all students progress as far as possible in all of the targets; as it is still early in the year, it's natural that students may still be working towards the targets. If there are significant concerns, the teachers will reach out to you in another way."

There may be little data in Jumprope at this point. Many teachers use the platform solely for summative assessments at the end of the unit, not as a daily list of assignments turned in.  Over the course of the year we will add assessments addressing specific learning targerts; WCS will send summaries of learning with teacher comments as PDFs via email three times per year as well.

Snapshot of the student portal in Jumprope

Theater Unit Begins!

Swift House presents...

Romeo and Juliet
and
Treasure Island

Our annual team theater unit begins this week with auditions for speaking roles on Thursday and Friday.  Students first complete a survey stating which play they would like to participate and how they would like to be involved.

Theater Survey

Using the results from the survey and auditions, we assign all students a role in the shows, ranging from full-time acting to technical leadership roles, small acting roles to costume designing.  If students have a smaller part on stage they spend the first weeks of the unit reading the script as literature and performing their own "Reader's Theater" version. 

Please save the date for our evening performance, during the week of November 5th exact time and date TBA soon!

WCS Arrival Time/Procedures

From this week's School Bell... 

Buses begin arriving at approximately 7:55 am and students can go to their team space at that time. The earliest students may be dropped off is 7:30 am. This year, all 3-8 students will wait in the front lobby from 7:30-7:55 am. Students are expected to sit quietly if they arrive early. Bringing a book, headphones with music or homework are all appropriate activities to engage with while waiting.