On Board December 2018

Volume 2, Issue 48

McDuffie County School District

A Report of Board Action

Fifth grade QUEST students from R.L. Norris Elementary recently participated in the FIRST LEGO League Augusta Area Robotics Competition along with nineteen other teams from the region. The NES Brick Brainstormers, made up of two com-petitive teams — The STARRS and the Astro-Builders — built and programmed LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 Robots for the competition. The teams and their ro-bots were then challenged to perform tasks based on this year’s theme, Into Orbit!

This year, the teams were given challenges related to long-term space travel. The 3-part competition includes: Lego Core Values (team building), Robotics Missions (understanding block programming, critical thinking and problem solving), and The Project (identify a problem related to the theme and create a solution presented to judges in a creative format).

At the end of the 3-part competition, The STARRS brought home trophies for Core Values and for earn-ing the most points during the robot missions. The Astro-Builders brought home an Overall Champi-on trophy. The Brick Brainstormers team will advance to Super-Regional Competition at Athens Academy on January 12th, 2019!

The NES Brick Brain-stormers are coached by teacher Khrista Henry and engineers Chris McCord and John Kruckeberg from sponsor John Deere.

Help us congratulate these up-and-coming engineers and problem solvers!

Please note:

Do you know about an achievement we need to highlight? Do you have an event that you want to be sure makes it to the calendar page? Let us know! Email Julia Lambert at the BOE and we will include it in the next issue if space per-mits.

Don’t forget to submit your classroom videos to www.watchusmove.org for a chance to have your students show-cased on our site.

Inside this issue:

Hart-Moss & Hopkins 2

Bright Ideas Grants 2

McDuffie on the Move 3

Highlighting Achievement

6

Coming Events 7

Curriculum Updates 4-5

Announcements 7

First LEGO League wins First Place!

In December the BOE:

Heard updates from each department on current projects and initiatives

Approved a bid for new host servers for the system network

Approved fundraisers for THS and MES

Accepted carryover funds from federal Title V-B and IDEA grants

Recognized Jefferson Energy “Bright Ideas Grant” recipients and other notable student and faculty achievements from across the system

Page 2 On Board

Two Board Members Complete Term

Jefferson Energy Grants

This month marks the final board meeting for two of our BOE members. Board Chair Bea Hart-Moss and Board Member Bill Hopkins both finish their terms of office in December 2018. Dr. Rhodes honored them for their service at the December board meet-ing, presenting each of them with a commemorative plaque.

Be sure to thank them both for their hard work on behalf of McDuffie County students!

Congratulations to the 17 team members across all six schools who received Jefferson Energy “Bright Ideas Grant” awards recently! The grants received will help to fund special projects, including photography equipment and software; LEGO robotics equipment; additional equipment for music class; supplies for a Special Olympics competition and many others!

Thank you, team mem-bers, for working hard to find ways to innovate in your classrooms for the benefit of our students!

Page 3 On Board

McDuffie on the Move We are on the move this school year! We have been so excited to visit each school this month! On this page, you can see some of the photos taken of awesome teaching and learning in action. Thank you to each staff member who allowed us to showcase his/her work! We look forward to featuring more won-derful classrooms in coming editions. Remember to visit www.watchusmove.org to watch and share your videos.

As part of Mrs. Wyatt's Business & Technology class, students recent-ly created business plans for small businesses they would like to open. As part of the project, students were required to conduct mar-ket research, survey classmates, make price comparisons, and create a shopping list for raw materials. The class then purchased raw ma-terials, made the products, marketed them with flyers and posters, and finally set up their pop-up shop during fourth period on Dec. 12.

Customers were other THS students currently enrolled in CTAE courses, who earned “spending money” in the form of Bulldog Bucks from their teachers for being on time, present for class each day, par-ticipating in class discussions, generating new and improved ideas in class, demonstrating their oral and written communication skills, and working well with their peers. These were incorporated using the em-ployability standards in CTAE courses.

Congratulations to the businesses with the highest profit: 1st place, SHEER with a profit of $121 Bulldog Bucks; 2nd Place, Holiday Goods; and 3rd Place, Javier's Hot Chocolate

This month we visited the Mighty Max, where kindergartners were creating graphs, forming number sentences, and making reindeer in art class. Students have also used Thinking Maps to clas-sify shapes and to organize their writ-ing.

At their concert this month, THS choral students, under the direction of Pam McCorkle, and band pupils, conducted by Jessie Morlan and John Williams, enter-tained the audience with tra-ditional and new favorites! In addition to their improvi-sation skills, several stu-dents directed selections, showcasing the breadth of their mastery.

Page 4 Volume 2, Issue 48

Curriculum & Instruction Resources January 7 Professional Learning Day

On January 7, we’ll be joining together to dive deeply into the Georgia Standards of Excellence in all disciplines. In a col-laborative effort with CSRA RESA, we’ll deconstruct standards, identifying key academic and content vocabulary, defining the Depth of Knowledge of standards, writing questions and activities aligned with the standards, and vertically aligning our work from elementary through high school. Several resources are available within the SLDS Teacher Resource Link and GeorgiaStandards.Org to facilitate the process, which has been modeled by the school administrators.

K-12 Math: Frameworks have been updated with new 3-act tasks and formative assessment lessons, which have proven to be very successful in other districts. The math glossary has been posted in our district’s Curriculum Doc-uments in Google Drive since July and should be used as we instruct using the language of the standards.

K-12 Science: GaDOE continues to roll out lessons, data collection tools, pacing guides, and curriculum maps for courses.

K-12 Social Studies: GaDOE provides content videos and notes for teachers as well as primary source document sets to use in meeting the required literacy standards.

K-12 Physical Education: As a reminder, the PE standards are in full implementation in 2019-2020. This is the “look-see” year to develop curriculum and activities.

6-12 Science, History, and CTAE: These courses have required literacy standards that must be embedded in con-tent instruction.

We’ll also have activities for our paraprofessionals, counselors, and media specialists. We look forward to a productive day of planning.

GaDOE Summer Math Academies

The Georgia Department of Education will offer two-day grade span-specific math summer acade-mies this summer. One of the sites will be in

Richmond County (location and date TBA).

New GSE for CTAE General Automotive Technology Pathway

New Georgia Standards of Excellence for General Automotive Technology pathway are posted for public input. 

Georgia Milestones Resources

As a reminder, all End-of-Course and End-of-Grade courses should be utilizing the released re-sources from the Georgia Department of Education at least three days per week.

Assessment Guides (EOG) (EOC)

Study Guides (EOG) (EOC)

Item & Scoring Samplers (Constructed/Extended Written Response) (EOG) (EOC)

GKIDS 2.0

As announced earlier, the Georgia Kindergarten Inven-tory of Developing Skills (GKIDS) is undergoing revi-sion for implementation in 2019-2020. Training for teachers will take place in the coming months, and a draft of the new design, which will incorporate a pro-gressive, formative assessment approach which more closely supports skills needed for first grade success, can be found here.

Accelerated Reader Goal Setting

Best practices to support student growth when using Accelerated Reader involve setting individual goals and progress moni-toring through ongoing conferences with students. Two documents illustrating how to set differentiated goals for students using their STAR Reading grade equivalencies or Lexile levels, AR test scores, and average number of minutes read per day are located in the Google Drive 2018-19 Curriculum Documents folder >> System Reading, Writing, and Math Plans >> Ac-celerated Reader. This link to the AR Goal Setting Calculator might also be helpful: http://argoals.renlearn.com/

Page 5 Volume 2, Issue 48

New & Updated FREE Curriculum Resources Instructional Technology Resources

Last month we shared part of a list of instructional technology tools for the classroom, compiled by TMMS teacher Almeisha Jack-son. This month, we finish the list! For a full list of all the instructional technology resources, please contact Julia Lambert in the curriculum department at the BOE. Let’s be #onthemove with technology in our classrooms!

QuickVoice Recorder – Another free voice recording app for the iPhone or iPad that allows you to record classes, discussions, or other project audio files. You can sync your recordings to your computer easily for use in presentations.

Quizlet – Create flashcards, tests, quizzes, and study games that are engaging and accessible online and via a mobile device.

Random Name/Word Picker – This tool allows the teacher to input a class list and facilitates random name picking. You can also add a list of keywords and use the tool to have the class prompt a student to guess the word by providing definitions.

Seesaw – This tool helps teachers improve parent communication and makes formative assessment easy, while students can use the platform to document their learning.

ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard – Another whiteboard tool that students and teachers can use to check understanding.

SMART Response VE (for SMARTboards) – A cloud-based software that enables students to respond to planned and spontaneous questions and take quizzes using any of their favorite Internet-enabled devices, from anywhere.

Socrative – Exercises and games that engage students using smartphones, laptops, and tablets.

Tagul – This word cloud generator has an added feature that allows the user to make each word an active link to connect to a web-site you determine.

Tagxedo – A tag cloud generator that allows you to examine student consensus and facilitate dialogue.

TitanPad – This unique tool for collaborative work offers 8 colors to choose from so that each contributor may use a different color. You can easily imagine how group work, be it peer review or peer editing for starters, can be made interactive.

TodaysMeet – This online collaboration tool allows educators to create a “room” in which students can share ideas, answers, and thoughts to lectures and lessons. Educators can view student responses in real time for evidence of learning.

Triventy – A free quiz game platform that allows teachers to create quizzes students take in real-time. These live quizzes provide teachers with real-time data on student understanding of classroom concepts. Students need individual devices to respond to quiz questions (compatible with mobile devices and laptops).

Verso – Described as a feedback tool, this app allows teachers to set up learning using a URL. Space is provided for directions. Stu-dents download the app and input their responses to the assignment. They can then post their comments and respond to the comments of others. The teacher can group responses and check engagement levels.

VoiceThread – Allows you to create and share conversations on documents, diagrams, videos, pictures, or almost anything. This facilitates collaborative student discussion and work.

Vocaroo – A free service that allows users to create audio recordings without the need for software. You can easily embed the re-cording into slide shows, presentations, or websites. Great for collaborative group work and presentations.

Voxer – Consider using this voice recording tool as a way to let students listen and self-assess their ideas and assignments. You can send recordings to parents so they can hear how their students are doing, let students chat about their work, or provide feedback to students.

Wordables – The Word Cloud Guessing Game. This app allows you to elicit evidence of learning or determine background knowledge about a topic. These word clouds are pictures composed of a cloud of smaller words that form a clue to the topic.

Wordle – Generates tag clouds from any entered text to help aggregate responses and facilitate discussion.

WordSalad – This app generates word clouds from the text you provide, and they can be exported and shared.

XMind – A mind-mapping software for use on computers and laptops.

Yacapaca! – Allows teachers to create and assign quizzes with ease. 

Highlighting Achievement

Page 6 Volume 2, Issue 48

Thank you to the TMMS Ensemble, under the direction of Gregory Morgan, for doing a great job with the program at the December 13th Rotary Club meeting! You represented us well!

Congratulations to the newest members of the Watson-Brown Foundation Junior Board of Trus-tees! There are now three members representing Thomson High School--Christian Cody, Gavin Findley, and Baylea Jones. The Watson-Brown Junior Board is comprised of local high school stu-dents, and their mission is historic preservation.

Thomson-McDuffie Middle School has been named a National Beta School of Distinction for increasing its membership by more than 10% over last year. The school received a banner to display honoring this achievement.

During School Psychology Awareness Week, school counse-lors from each McDuffie County school were asked to select one student who exemplified the "Unlock Potential" theme by engaging in behaviors such as speaking up, being imag-inative, exploring, connecting, sharing, encouraging and listening to others. We are pleased to recognize Lon'Tav-ious Howard, Te'Aurey Davis, Raven Ferrell, Tripp Brantley, Latif Bomba-Ire, Morgan Shifflet, and Ty-ler Gant for unlocking the potential in themselves and others.

The McDuffie County School System was one of only 20 in the state awarded a competitive Title IV-A stART Grant at the State Board of Education’s December 2018 meeting!

The proposal will enable the district to offer a fine arts summer camp for pupils in grades 4-5 at Dearing and Norris Ele-mentary schools as well as to support music, dramatic arts, and visual arts collaboration.

Announcements

In order to allow more space for student features, personnel updates will no longer appear in the newsletter. They are available for review on our eBoard site, Simbli, after every BOE meeting.

McDuffie County School System 716 N. Lee Street

Thomson, GA 30824

Phone: 706-986-000 Fax: 706-986-4001

www.mcduffie.k12.ga.us

Phone: 706-986-000 Fax: 706-986-4001

www.mcduffie.k12.ga.us

Here’s What’s Coming Up!

December 20-January 7 Christmas Holidays for students

January 2 Year-round staff return to work

January 7 Professional Learning Day

January 8 First day of 2nd Semester Begin 3rd nine weeks Report cards sent home

January 10 DES Spelling Bee

January 11 DES PAWS Rallies TMMS Bulldog Rally, 2 PM

January 14 GKIDS Mid-year Checkpoint GA Milestones EOC Mid-month Begins Lead Teacher Meeting, 2 PM

January 15 BOE Planning Session, 9 AM PBIS Coaches Meeting, 2 PM PowerQueen Meeting, 3:30 PM

January 16 ACCESS for ELL’s Begins THS Youth Leadership McDuffie

January 17 BOE Meeting, 6 PM MES Parent Conferences, 4 - 7 PM NES Parent Lunch & Learn THS All-state Chorus Final Auditions

January 18 TES SOAR Rallies THS All-state Chorus Final Auditions

https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/index.aspx?S=4112

Augusta University

Impacting Student Learning Conference

The Augusta University Impacting Student Learning Confer-ence will be held on Saturday, March 2, from 9:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. The conference is free for all McDuffie County teachers, staff, and high school Early Childhood Education pathway students. Use code FREEBOX at checkout when registering online to receive lunch at no cost.