April 2022

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Coming soon to Arno…

April 4

School Resumes

April 7

Fire Drill

Staff Meeting 7:45

PTA Meeting 6:30

April 8

Data Meetings

April 11

MSTEP window opens

April 12

Ad Council

MSTEP 5th Grade SS

April 13

PBIS 8:00

April 14

MSTEP 5th Grade Science

SRCR 8:00

April 15

Good Friday- No School

April 17

HOPPY Easter!

Easter GIFs | Tenor

April 19

MSTEP 5th Grade ELA

5th Grade Parent Orientation APMS 6:00

April 20

Fire Drill

SIP 8:00

SRCM 8:00

April 21

SEL 8:00

April 26

MSTEP 5th Grade Math, 4th Grade Math, 3rd Grade ELA

April 29

PBIS Reward

 

The Pagan Origin Of Painted Easter Eggs

ARNO VISION

ARNO ELEMENTARY WILL PROVIDE A SYSTEM OF SUPPORT TO EMPOWER

AND INSPIRE STUDENTS TO BECOME COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

THAT STRIVE FOR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

 

Teamwork - Step by Step Guide for Effective Team Building - Potential.com

Committee Updates

PBIS

The PBIS team continues to fill out required paperwork, analyze current data, and plan for next year as well as purchases.

SRCR

The team is working with the staff on M-STEP work to prep up for the big test next month

SRCM

The math team created a take home calendar of math tasks to be completed at home. It’s optional if you wish to collect them for grades, incentives etc.  The hope is to provide additional time and engagement around math skills.

SEL

The team has recently sent out resources and information regarding Women’s History Month, as well as created a bulletin board in the main hall.

SIP

The team covered the survey results and discussed some of that information received.  We will talk about next steps with any actionable items from the results.

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The moment you have all been waiting for- Spring Break is here!

 

Data Diving

We had a great data session last week looking at all our at risk students and their current status with progress monitoring.  We will meet again in April just ahead of the MTSS meeting.  If you brought forth someone to consider for child study, their name will be brought up at that meeting.  We will also be looking at those who are receiving service, and whether or not it needs to continue.  Depending on staffing, I also hope to make a move with information to start inviting kids to summer school sometime in April.

 

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Check this Out…

 

 

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Watersheds Contest

As a Wayne County Green School award recipient, Arno Elementary School is one of just 25 Schools eligible to participate in this year’s Adopt a Storm Drain contest!

The Alliance of Downriver Watersheds Schools for Clean Water Adopt a Storm Drain Contest is an easy online contest where you encourage parents, school staff, and community members to pledge to adopt a storm drain near their home. When they take the pledge they assign that pledge to your school.

The schools that get the most pledges will win cash prizes up to $1,500 for class materials and educational projects!

Here are the contest details:

The Alliance for Downriver Watersheds (ADW) is proud to announce the 2nd annual Schools for Clean Water Contest! As a current, or recent, Green School located in the Downriver area, your school is eligible to participate and win!

What is the Schools for Clean Water Contest?

The Schools for Clean Water Contest is a friendly competition to reduce pollution in our local waterways. Like last year, we will focus on keeping yard waste and litter out of storm drains.

How does it work?

Participating schools urge parents, alumni, and faculty to visit www.SchoolsForCleanWater.org between April 4th and April 22nd (Earth Day) to complete a simple online pledge to do their part. When they submit the pledge form, they assign that pledge to your school. At the end of the contest, we tally up the totals and the schools with the most pledges win cash prizes.

Who can pledge?

Anyone 18 and older can take the pledge including, but not limited to: parents, alumni, student’s family members, teachers, school support staff, friends, neighbors, etc…

What do schools win?

Eight schools will win a share of the $5,000 in prize money. The money can be used to pay for educational projects and classroom materials.

  • First Place – $1,500

  • Second Place – $1,250

  • Third Place – $1,000

  • Wild Card – 5 x $250 (all schools with 50 or more pledges, will be entered into a random drawing for the five wild card prizes)

 

In 2021, winners used the prize money to help fund programs like an outdoor classroom, a reading garden for special education students, school gardens, and other green initiatives.

 

Kindergarten Round-Up 2020 - Eagle Country 99.3

Kindergarten Roundup

We are pleased to be bringing back the normal kindergarten round up this spring for all incoming kindergarteners. This year’s event will be on May 2 starting at 6:30 p.m. Parents will attend in the gym, all future Cougars will attend within the 3 different classrooms.  Remember that Kindergarten registration is now open at Riley.

 

MDE - M-STEP Summative

The M-STEP Window Opens

M-STEP kicks off on May 4 for 3rd, 4th and 5th grade for all students. Please see the schedule below for testing dates, and remember there will be some prep changes during this time period:

ALL testing starts at 9:15.  

April 12    5th Grade Social Studies

April 14    5th Grade Science

April 19    5th Grade ELA

April 26    3rd Grade ELA, 4th Grade Math, and 5th Grade Math

May  3       3rd Grade Math, 4th Grade ELA

2022 State Testing Dr. Michael Rice

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APPS Summer Camp Info

 

Summer Kids Camp 2022

 

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Limited Schools of Choice Program for 2022-23

The Allen Park Public School District has established a successful Schools of Choice Program for the past several years and the Board of Education has approved continuation of the program for the 2022-23 school year for Kindergarten through 8th Grade.  (Requests for specific elementary schools cannot be guaranteed)

Applications will be available, online only, between Monday, March 28, 2022 through Sunday, April 17, 2022 on our website, https://www.allenparkschools.com/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=971881&type=d&pREC_ID=1847418

Completed applications will be accepted beginning Monday, March 28 through Sunday, April 17.  Absolutely no late applications will be accepted.

A random draw selection will be held on Monday, April 18, 2022. The draw will determine numerical selection for acceptance of candidates.  Parents will be contacted with their students’ waitlist number, by email or phone call by April 20, 2022.

We ask that you help us by sharing this information with friends and/or family members who may be interested in having their children become a part of the Allen Park Public Schools Family.

For more information about the Schools of Choice Program, please see the attached FAQ’s, visit our website at www.allenparkschools.com.  You can also address questions to schoolofchoice@appublicschools.com or call (313) 827-1154.

SOC FAQ 22-23

 

 

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Teacher Tech Time

10 links you should click

🎧 Click here to listen to these updates! 🎧

  1. Embed charts from Google Forms – You can now embed the charts automatically generated by Forms into Docs, Slides, and Sites. These charts automatically update as new data is received.
  2. Schedule an assignment in multiple classes – FINALLY! This is a long awaited update to Google Classroom!
  3. Practice Sets for Google Classroom – you can sign up to beta test the latest feature for Google Classroom which is scheduled for release during the 2022-23 school year.
  4. ChromeOS Flex (beta) – Google opened up beta access to a new version of ChromeOS designed to run on old Mac and PC hardware.
  5. IT Admin Tip: custom admin roles – I recently used the Google Admin Console to create three custom roles to delegate simple Chromebook management tasks. Here’s what they look like.
  6. Google Forms phishing scam – The scammers are back, and this time they’re trying to trick us using Google Forms!
  7. Screen Pal (video where you type) – This is a cool new Chrome extension from Screen-Cast-O’Matic that lets you add a video recording in any text box. It’s like the video version of Mote!
  8. Grammar practice with Slides – I created this Google Slide template for a teacher who needed a new way to help students complete their grammar exercises.
  9. 30 ways to use Forms in the Classroom – Each year I update this list of ways educators are using Google Forms for assessments, feedback, grading, and other creative applications.
  10. April fools pranks – Here’s a list of some harmless tech pranks you can play on your students or administrators on April 1.

Five Ways to Create Online Drag-and-Drop Activities

Last week I wrote about TeacherMade’s new drag-and-drop online activity creation tool. It’s a nice tool for turning documents into online sorting and matching activities for your students. Of course, there are other ways to create online drag-and-drop activities for your students to complete. I’ve written about a handful of them over the last couple of years. Those are highlighted below.

Google Drawings
I’ve created drag-and-drop activities for geography lessons by using Google Drawings. To do that I put a map in Google Drawings then created a bank of labels that students drag onto the map. I share the activity in Google Classroom with the “make a copy for each student” option so that students aren’t affecting each others’ work. Watch this video to see the whole process.Google Jamboard
A couple of years ago a reader named Chuck asked me for suggestions on how to create a virtual philosophical chairs activity. My suggestion was to try using Google Jamboard. The idea is to have students move their avatars around the Jamboard to indicate their positions on a given discussion topic. Here’s a video explanation of how the activity works.Wizer.Me
Wizer.me is a tool that I’ve used periodically over the last half-dozen years. In Wizer you can create online worksheet activities that include drag-and-drop activities. This tutorial is a little bit dated now, but it gives you an idea of what’s possible in Wizer.TinyTap
I recently wrote a lengthy post about using TinyTap to create online puzzle games for students. Those puzzles are all solved through the use of drag-and-drop. Watch this video to learn more.TeacherMade
TeacherMade’s latest feature lets you create drag-and-drop activities based on your existing PDFs and Word docs. Read my full post about it here or watch the tutorial video as embedded below.

How to Make Your Own Wordle-style Game

I’ve yet to play Wordle and by the time I do the fad will probably be over. That said, I know a lot of people enjoy the game and are looking for ways to bring it into their classrooms. If that describes you, this blog post is for you.

Flippity.net offers more than two dozen templates for creating all kinds of online activities including a Wordle-style game called WordMaster. You can see a live demo of a WordMaster game right here. The template for creating the game is available here and is very easy to use. All you need to do is enter a list of five-letter words and Flippity will handle the rest. Your game will be assigned its own URL that you can share with your students via Google Classroom, via QR code, via email, or any other means that you typically use to share resources with your students.

In the following short video I demonstrate how to create a Wordle-style game with Flippity’s WordMaster template.

41 Hilarious School Memes That Perfectly Capture that Back to School Mood | Teen Vogue

 

March 2022

Coming soon to Arno…

March 1

Roller Kingdom Reading Challenge - Roller Kingdom

March is Reading Month Begins!

Steve @RESA

March 2

Dr. Suess’s Birthday

Dr. Seuss's Birthday - Seussville

March 3

PTA Meeting 6:30

March 4

School wide Bingo on zoom

Report Card Window Opens

March 7

Mobile Dentist in gym

PBIS District meeting 1:30

March 8

Teacher Data Meetings

March 9

PBIS 8:00

March 10

STAFF Meeting 7:45

Spring Pictures

Spring Pictures-Rescheduled - Park Avenue Elementary School

March 11

End of 2nd Trimester

March 16

Tornado Drill 10:00

SIP 8:00

March 17

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

Animated St Patricks Day Images GIFs | Tenor

Report Card window closes

SRCR 8:00

SEL 8:00

District Safety Committee 9:30

March 18

No School- Teacher PD

Report Cards Released

March 21

World Down Syndrome Day- Rock your socks!

March 23

Bingo for Books 6:00

SRCM 8:00

March 24

PBIS Reward March Madness

March 26-April 3

SPRING BREAK!

Open all week for Spring Break! – Boys and Girls Clubs of Wichita Falls

Cloverleaf Stock Illustrations – 3,052 Cloverleaf Stock Illustrations, Vectors & Clipart - Dreamstime

ARNO VISION

ARNO ELEMENTARY WILL PROVIDE A SYSTEM OF SUPPORT TO EMPOWER

AND INSPIRE STUDENTS TO BECOME COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

THAT STRIVE FOR ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

 

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TITLE I/SIP SURVEYS

It is that time of year… we are in need of your opinion of how things are going at Arno for school improvement planning.  Please take a moment and complete this year’s survey which has been revised by the SIP team.  Student survey information for grades 3-5 will be given by Carrie Solak during this same time.  The survey will stay open until March 9

Staff:

https://forms.gle/G7HsCzqAUVkLNhM8A

 

Rock your socks: It's World Down Syndrome Day | WTGS

World Down syndrome Day is March 21- Rock your Socks!

WDSD 2022 Flyer

 

Allen Park PTA/PTSA Council Craft and Vendor Show | Allen Park High School | March 12, 2022

Spring Fever

Top News Stickers for Android & iOS | Gfycat

Committee Review

SRCR

Edmentum before school groups going

-Good attendance

After school tutoring groups going

-Lots of positive feedback from students

-Will be adding reading opportunities for students to come read to Young fives

NWEA award ceremony a success

-Seems to motivate students

-Should always do one grade at a time (better attention and control)

-4th and 5th grade have had their extra recess

-3rd grade extra recess to be completed in the future

-ten top students had their movie reward

Vocabulary tests are going

-Necklaces are started

SBA practices will start soon

Edmentum contest going

-Second grade won this month – they decided on a PJ day as the reward

-Discussed Edmentum teacher reports and controls

-competition working well as motivation

PBIS

  1. Data
    1. RESA powerpoint
    2. missed rewards
  1. Budget
  2. February Reward
    1. Organizer: Emilie Talamonti
    2. Date: Friday, March 4, 2022
    3. Reward: School Wide Bingo (via Zoom with Steve)
    4. Missed Flips: 5 or less; non-earners only miss 20 min.; all students can wear PJs
    5. whole class suckers
  1. Monthly Rewards
    1. March: March Madness, Lisa Smalley
      1. Grade levels meet with Sandy
      2. Missed reward students go to different classroom for that time
    2. April: Clubs, Katie Jensen
  1. Smencils
    1. December sales: $801
    2. March sales
      1. Break it into upper and lower
    3. Need to purchase more
  1. District Meeting Update
    1. Tier 2/3 numbers
      1. special education not included
  1. Planning Date for Katie & Lisa – Feb. 28, 2022 
    1. approved
  1. PTA Proposal
    1. Cougar Store 
      1. books (Follett money)
      2. jump ropes/balls
      3. art kits
      4. mini STEM
      5. mini instruments
    2. mobile kiosk/mobile food cart
      1. Cougar Store
      2. Smencils
  1. FOLLOW UP!
    1. CONTACT office for purchase of:
      1. Smencils
      2. dum dums
    2. Data of cultural switching
      1. Research diversity inclusion presenters/materials
    3. Monthly Themes
      1. Not only ethnicity based but incorporated
  1. FUTURE
    1. Check for Zumba needs to be done ahead of time
      1. Added to monthly to do calendar

SRCM

The math team is currently looking at implementing a monthly home calendar that students would complete and bring back, possibly for an incentive.  More info to follow.  This would need to become part of our SIP plan

SIP

Looked at activities and goals that will need to be added/adjusted to the main district MICIP plan

SEL

In addition to March is Reading Month, the SEL team is going to be putting together resources to share for Women’s History Month which also takes place in the month of March. This includes:
– Women’s History Month bulletin
– Daily spotlight featuring influential women on morning announcements
– A book display featuring influential women available for check out in the library (checking with Colleen on this)

How much data is required for forecasting? – Anamind Advanced Analytical Planning

Data Questions

Thank you all for some very productive data discussions this month, hopefully you are finding Educlimber as a useful tool when you need to reference data or progress monitoring information.  Now that we have had discussions on our new data- how will you know if the desired learning is occurring as a result of your instruction and intervention.  What will that look like in 3 weeks? 6 weeks? 8 weeks?

 

Big smile emoticon Stock Vector Image by ©natalipopova #38360779

Mobile Dentist is Coming March 7

If you have families that would still like to register, please click on the link: https://www.myschooldentist.com/AEAPMI

Mobile Dentists COVID FAQs for Schools

 

Spring Pictures-Rescheduled - Park Avenue Elementary School

Spring Pictures are here!

Picture Day for Arno Elementary is scheduled for Thursday, March 10, 2022 and this Picture Day event’s Order Code is 67356XF

 

 

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FamilyLiteracyBingoNightFlyer-1 (5)

 

 

March is Reading Month Activities

Travel the World with Books!
One Book, One School

Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures!

Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures #1: The Mount Rushmore Calamity: Brown, Jeff, Pamintuan, Macky: 9780061429903: Amazon.com: Books

This year to celebrate March is Reading Month, our entire
school will be participating in One Book, One School by
reading Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures: The Mount
Rushmore Calamity. Each student will be receiving a copy of
the book. Please pass books and parent flyers out on February
25. We are asking that you follow the pacing guide provided
and read this book aloud to your students throughout the
month of March. Due to COVID guidelines, safety, and
scheduling, March is Reading month will be a little scaled
down this year, but we know that reading will be emphasized
this month in each of your classrooms.
Pacing Guide

February 28-March 4: Chapters 1 & 2
March 7- 11: Chapters 3 & 4
March 14-18: Chapters 5 & 6
March 21-25: Chapter 7
Flat Stanley

Students will be receiving a blank copy of a Flat Stanley
for them to decorate and mail home if they so choose. In class
have students write about where they would like to send Flat
Stanley. We have provided a template for you to use in your
classroom if you want. Please hang your writing in the hallway
during the month of March.

Wear it Wednesdays

Celebrate March is Reading Month by dressing up each Wednesday to match the reading theme.

March 2: Pack your bags! Wear a shirt from you favorite location, vacation, or somewhere you want to go!

March 9: Pawsitively Wild About Reading! Wear animal print!
March 16: Team up for reading! Wear sports apparel.
March 23: We “read” all month! Wear red!

Unplugged Tuesdays

Turn off electronics… and turn on your imagination! Every Tuesday night in
March “unplug” and spend some quality time with your family!

March 1, 8, 15, 22

Final Week: Reading “Spirit” Week

To celebrate the end of March is Reading Month, we will be hosting a

Reading Spirit Week.

March 21: Be a Word! Wear a shirt or hat with words on it, or pin a word

and definition to your shirt.

March 22: Be a Book Character! Come to school dressed as your favorite

book character.

March 23: Wear Red because we “read” all month (Wear it Wednesday)
March 24: Michigan Day! Wear your favorite Michigan themed clothes.
March 25: Read and Relax! Bring in your favorite book and wear your comfiest pajamas.

DEAR

On Tuesdays and Thursdays each classroom will participate in D.E.A.R!
Someone will announce this over the PA. If you are on prep, participate in DEAR at your convenience.

Book Exchange

During the week of March 7-11 students will be participating in a book
exchange on their library day. Flyers have already gone home to parents with information about the Book Exchange.

Penny Wars

Save your spare change to bring to school on the following days: March
2, 7, 9, 14,& 16. Give your pennies to your class and your nickels, dimes,
and quarters to other classes. Pennies add to your classes total, but other
coins count against your total. The class with the highest total wins! All
proceeds will go to future March is Reading Month events!

Bingo for Books!

Bingo for Books is back! Watch for an email about when to send flyers
home for students to sign up for Bingo for Books. Bingo for Books will be
held March 23 in the Arno cafeteria. Dinner will not be provided this year,
but everyone will go home with a snack bag along with the books they
win! Please consider volunteering to help work this amazing event. Sara Bleau sent out a sign-up genius link via email.

Weekly Incentives

Each Friday, to celebrate please pass out the weekly incentives to your students. They will be in your mailbox on Thursday.

March 4: I can’t bear to be without books!! Gummy Bears

March 11: Smarties
March 25: Finger Flashlights

Tech Time

This is really cool…

Yellowstone Distance Learning Opportunities

A couple of weeks ago I shared some information about Denali’s Distance Learning Program for K-12 classrooms. This week I learned that Yellowstone National Park offers a similar program.

Yellowstone National Park’s distance learning program lets you schedule a twenty to forty minute virtual presentation with a Yellowstone Park ranger. Presentations can be scheduled for students to learn about geology of the park, the animals of the park, and the history of the park. Rangers are also available to talk about careers in the National Parks Service and more.

Yellowstone National Park is in the mountain time zone. If mountain time presents a scheduling challenge for you, there are also recordings of ranger’s presentations that are available right here on Yellowstone’s Distance Learning page. Handouts and worksheets to use with the virtual presentations are available here.

Here’s a video of a Yellowstone distance learning presentation about bears.

Read Aloud in Chrome

My usual recommendation for teachers and students who need webpages read aloud is to use Immersive Reader which is built into Microsoft Edge. But if Edge isn’t available to you then you might want to try the Read Aloud extension for Chrome. The Read Aloud extension does exactly what its name implies, it reads pages aloud.

The Read Aloud extension doesn’t offer nearly as many options as Immersive Reader in Edge offers, but there are a few customizations that you can make to it. You can adjust the speed at which pages are read, the size of the text as it’s displayed when being read aloud, and you can change the size of the text box that is displayed when a page is read aloud.

Watch this one-minute video to see how Read Aloud for Chrome works.

 

 

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