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Mr. Anderson's October Message |
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Dear Family and Friends Recently our superintendent, Dr. Chip Kimball announced his vision for the Lake Washington School District: Every Student Future Ready: Prepared for College, Prepared for the Global Workplace, Prepared for Personal Success. Living up to the challenge presented by Dr. Kimball’s vision to prepare each of our students for their future demands that each of us commit personally to doing our part. As in all schools, there are many ways for us to work toward student success. Some of these ways include supporting good attendance, ensuring the on-time arrival of each student, volunteering to support teachers and students, and making sure students are well rested for school each day. Each week, teachers work to support students during early release Wednesdays. The official name for these days is “LEAP Wednesday.” LEAP stands for “Learning Enhanced Academic Performance.” We believe that it is important that you have a good idea of what our teachers are doing on these days. Here are the four primary formats used to design our early release LEAP Wednesdays. CIP/Vision 2020 Days Designed to provide time for work connected to our Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) plans and Vision 2020. Each school is required by the state to have a CIP. Our CIP guides our work in the areas of Literacy, Mathematics, Science, School Climate, and Technology. Vision 2020 refers to our district-wide strategic planning process. Curriculum/Assessment/Instruction Days Designed to provide time for teachers to focus on curriculum, assessment, and instructional work. During much of this time, teachers work in grade level or content committees striving toward the overall improvement of instruction by working closely with the district’s curriculum, looking directly at student work and how we measure achievement, and exploring specific instructional strategies.
Professional Growth and Evaluation Days Designed to provide time for teachers to focus and work on their Professional Growth and Evaluation (PGE). Through the PGE process, teachers identify professional growth goals, work in teams to support each other in achieving the goals, and focus on improving student learning. Individual Planning and Preparation/Professional Responsibilities Days Designed to provide time for teachers to individually plan, prepare, and address other professional responsibilities. Our staff works collaboratively to determine how we will use our LEAP afternoons. Our teaching staff is divided into four Content Committees – Literacy, Mathematics and Science and Technology. During upcoming LEAP Wednesdays, each committee will review data related to their area of focus including WASL data, classroom assessments, and qualitative observations. With this data, each committee will summarize both our successes and challenges. From that point, we will be able to identify priorities/goals for growth and strategies to apply toward achieving our goals/priorities. Our committee structure at A.G. Bell provides opportunity for teaching staff to give our Leadership Team input into the planning and development of our LEAP Wednesdays. As the year unfolds, we look forward to diligently using our LEAP Days to best serve the needs of our students and teaching staff. Thank you for your ongoing support,
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Thank you! |
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