Supervisors of SPED, GPS, ELL Paras/Classroom Aides, please share the following with them.
On February 20, all USD 489 paraeducators/aides will take part in an inservice at Hays High in the Lecture Hall. Inservice will run from 8 AM to 3 PM. Lunch will be on their own from 11-12.
They will be learning about strategies to help students improve their literacy skills.
read&write technology student of the month for January 2023
Issac Pfannenstiel is the Read&Write Technology Student of the month for January. Read&Write is an app or extension that provides text-to-speech, speech-to-text, vocabulary support builders, highlighting of important information, screen masking and many more tools that provide students with options to enhance their learning opportunities. Issac uses the speech-to-text, word prediction and text-to-speech features to aide him with his reading and writing tasks.
If you would like to look at an overview of how Read&Write works for IPAD see the link below.
Traveling for PD Activities? Make Sure You Read This First!
ALL Staff Must Submit Any and All Absences in Skyward!
Our business office ran an audit of the first nine weeks of school and found the following:
- 48 Professional Meeting Absences were not entered into Skyward
- 50 Sick Leave (illness, personal, funeral) absences were not entered into Skyward
All leave tracking and balances are maintained in Skyward and, therefore ALL leave must be requested in Skyward. This includes allocated leaves (sick leave, personal leave etc.) uncharged leaves (professional development, student activity, etc.), as well as special leaves (Family Serious Illness, Jury Duty, etc.). Linked here is a document outlining the process for requesting ANY type of leave.
HIGH ALTITUDE BALLOON WORKSHOP/FHSU 2023
This is a great workshop for teachers to attend. They will receive a stipend for attending and also for travel and lodging. Click here for more information.
State Assessments
Students will be assessed in the spring with a summative assessment for ELA, Math, and Science. History Government Social Studies will administer a Classroom-Based Assessment. See this 2022-23 Kansas Assessment Program Overview for specific grade levels and testing windows.
Building Test Coordinators (BTC) have been trained and will now schedule time to train their building staff. The state continues to encourage educators to use the interim assessments available to them, and as a district, you are encouraged to use the interim mini tests as formative assessments targeting the specific standards that will prepare the students for the greatest achievement on the state assessments.
Again, the interim options are tools to aid you in instruction and monitoring student progress and understanding of the standards. It’s been found that classrooms whose teachers used the interims with instruction performed better on the summative assessments compared to those who didn’t. Additional information can be found in the Interim Guide.
If you or your PLC would like assistance in reviewing the interim tests and/or with anything having to do with assessments, please email Shanna, sdinkel@usd489.com, to schedule a time to meet.
WCKSEC Autism Team
Libraries You May Want to "Check Out"
Curriculum Library: Contact - Gabriela Schmidt
SeeSaw - New Messenger Feature
Link to Seesaw’s info about the new messaging feature (including short videos).
The "one app" piece still requires you to sign out as a "teacher" and sign in as a "student" to see things in the class Marie and Allison made (on cell phone or iPad). But the rest of that part about the updated app is still correct.
