Department Meeting Minutes 07-23-08

Time Started: 10:30 am
Time Ended: 11:00 am

In attendance: Rae, Weng, Darlene, Cha, Jen, Sharie, Amie, Ces, Michelle

Minutes taken by: Rae Ramos

1. The rotation of assignments for meeting minutes-taking was discussed. The rotation is as follows: N, NTA (Nursery Teacher Assistant), K1, K1A, K2, K2A, K2TA, G1, G1A, G2, G2A.

2. There has been a reshuffling of faculty. R. Ramos is now handling the Nursery classes, S. Amargo is with G1, D. Lopez is with K1A, and M. Arkoncel is handling G2A.

3. Due to the increased number of enrollees, the nursery level now has two classes: AM and PM. The K2 level has also experienced an increase in students with 17 students per class. We are currently looking for a teacher assistant for K2.

4. Please continue to take time to check out our blog (www.blogger.com; username: kfermin@cis.edu.ph; password: elemteachers). Please upload relevant articles and department meeting minutes.

5. Writing the Preschool Spotlight articles will be done by rotation. Send articles to Jen.

6. Lesson plans are checked every two weeks. Please keep them updated, preferably with a week's worth of lessons in advance.

7. Weekend homework for grades 1 and 2 must be kept to a minimum.

8. Decorate bulletin boards in the classroom. Keep in mind that the red one is designated as the notice board. Designate display boards as well.

9. Check carefully what is checked out from the library so no confusion will arise at the end of the year.

10. Students are not allowed to wear make-up and nail polish in school.

11. Inform parents of additional supplies needed for class activities at least 3 days in advance (a week is ideal).

12. Check each level's supplies list. Make sure all students submit their supplies.

13. Be conscientious about printing, especially colored printing since it is more costly.

14. The school is currently in Stage 1 of its implementation of the Understanding By Design (UBD) curriculum model where lesson planning begins with the identification of desired skills to be developed and activities are planned thereafter.

15. Informal observations take place in the 1st and 3rd quarters. If the observed teacher is doing well, no feedback is given. Formal observations, on the other hand, take place in the 2nd and 4th quarters and feedback is pertinent.

*Nothing follows.*

End of the School Year 2007 - 2008

We've made it! :) Allow me to post the class pictures for you to remember your students for this school year!

Enjoy,
Tatin

Grade 1 with Ms. Rae Ramos

Grade 1A with Mrs. Amie Jose

Grade 2 with Mrs. Ces Chavez

Grade 2Awith Ms. Darlene Lopez / Mrs. Cons Mago

Nursery class with Mrs. Weng Amarga

Kinder 1 with Ms. Jessica Aspillaga

Kinder 1A with Ms. Sharie Amargo

Kinder 2 with Ms. Jennina Villano

Kinder 2A with Ms. Charisse Cruz

Minutes of the Meeting (February 8, 2008)

Minutes of The Meeting
( February 8, 2008)
AGENDA
1. Valentines’ Box
-Review on Ms. Lynn’s email regarding the mechanics of the Valentine box.
- Homeroom teachers can ask paint and paint brush from the school aids. Make sure things are returned when borrowed
- The Valentine box must be labeled with grade, teacher and list of students.
-Send out letters to parents regarding this activity and informing them that their
child is required to bring sweets, candies, or anything they wish to share on
this Love Day. All these things must be placed in their assigned box located at the lobby before going to the classroom. Teachers will get their box before the day ends.
2. Accreditation
- Homeroom Teachers must explain the Mission Statement and School wide Learning Goals to the students during their homeroom.
- Inform the students about the Accreditation and its purpose and what is expected of them if we have visitors.
- Classroom set –up must be accessible for the Accreditors.
- Lesson plan must be printed from the grade quick.
- Classroom (House Keeping) if there is a need of new decoration approach Ms. Tatin.
-Teach students to clean their desk.
3. Field trip
- The nursery must be going to Mactan Airport.
-We are also informed that last day of the filed trip in on April.
- Grade two Teachers need to discuss with Ms. Tatin about their filed trip.

Online Reading Games

Hello, fellow teachers!

Check out the online reading games you can use in your classroom. :)

Online Reading Games for Young Readers
· Primary Games: Language Arts from PrimaryGames.com includes games with color words, contractions, ordinal numbers, see& spell activities, electronic stationary, ABC games, an electronic bookshelf, and more. Kids can also use the sidebar to access other activites focused around math, social studies or science topics.
· Literacy Center.net, sponsored by the Early Childhood Education Network, provides an interesting range of exercises to enhance beginning reading skills like letter identification and formation, spelling, shapes, color and keyboarding skills. The games require Flash 5 in order to play, which you can download from the site, and the interface works much like a piece of software so you almost forget that you're using the Internet.
· For those of you kindergarten teachers that focus your themes around the "Letter of the Week" or for teachers looking for great examples of alliteration for young readers and email opportunities for students, Animabets.com is a great site to visit. Friendly characters are associated with each letter of the alphabet and children can use the alphabet to access information about each character. "Each Animabets character has an email address and the authors encourage kids to send email to their favorite Animabets characters. Kids that send email can expect positive, uplifting and timely responses"; all while keeping a close eye on Internet safety. The Activities button links you to lots of fun games and the Learning button links kids to lots of interesting information about a variety of topics. This site is free of advertisments and, in my opinion, gives a preview of what may be coming in terms of more interactive, educational resources available online.
· Words and Pictures from BBC Education has lots of games and activities to enhance phonics skills. Long vowels are introduced through animated poems, you can practice spelling with "Drag 'n Spell" or listen for medial sounds coming from "Jim's Crankophone". The site also includes printable activity sheets for use in Literacy Circle activities. For emergent readers, the I Spy web site provides a motivational environment for locating pictures in traditional I Spy fashion or there's even a place

--from www.suite101.com

Rae :)

Liam's Rules in Pattern-Making

How to Make Patterns:

1. Use your brain.
2. Use your hands to make it.
3. Try to think of something with shapes.
4. Use a star in the middle like diamonds and green triangles.
5. Use your imagination.

Also remember that patterns repeat.

-Liam Sacal K2A

Joaquin's Rules in Playing Chess

How to Play Chess:

1. The same height cannot eat each other.
2. The tall ones can eat the small ones.
3. The small ones cannot eat the big ones.
4. The horse jump “L”. The others go straight.
5. The grown-ups stay at the back! ;P

by: Joaquin Streegan K2A

K2A's New Students

Mark Jenkins and Han Hyusik (Spencer)

If you see these new faces, they're from K2A. They just started school last week. Have a nice weekend! And a safe Sinulog 2008 to all of us. :)

-Charisse

Notes from Jan Millikan, Reggio Approach

One of our strengths has been to start out from a very clear, very open declaration of our ideas about the young child. It is a highly optimistic vision of the child: a child who possess many resources at birth, and with an extraordinary potential which has never ceased to amaze us; a child with the independent means to build up his own thought processes, ideas, questions and attempts at answers; with a high level of ability in conversing with adults, the ability to observe things and to reconstruct them in their entirety.



This is a gifted child, for whom we need a gifted teacher... a co-constructor of knowledge, values and understandings together with children; a cultured and curious person, which means an inveterate border crosser; and a researcher, with an enquiring and critical mind.



-Loris Malaguzzi

The Hundred Languages of Children

Since it's the 100th Day of School... ;)
I have here one of the greatest poems I've read about children.

The Hundred Languages
Loris Malaguzzi

THE CHILD
is made of one hundred.

The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred, always a hundred
ways of listening,
of marvelling, of loving,
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding,
a hundred worlds
to discover,
to invent,
to dream.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.

They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and Christmas.

They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine
forcing thought without a body
action without a mind.

They tell the child:
that work and play,
reality and fantasy,
science and imagination,
sky and earth,
reason and dream
are things that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child knows:
The Hundred is there.


I hope we are not stealing the hundred languages of our children :)
-charisse

Interesting Website

Hello Teachers!

Check out this site:
http://www.readwritethink.org/index.asp

You can get ideas that you can apply in your class.

Thanks,
Tatin

Coordinate with your specialist

Hi Lower elementary teachers!

Just a reminder especially for the first and second graders! Please coordinate with the specialist regarding projects and assignments. I've heard a lot of concerns from parents regarding these and i think as homeroom teachers we can help the specialist and our students.

Thanks for being Proactive! :)

Sincerely,
Tatin

WHAT DO KIDS THINK ABOUT GOD?

These questions were asked by elementary children and appeared in a newspaper article.
Dear God: Why isn’t Mrs. God’s name in the Bible? Weren’t you married to her when you wrote it?
Dear God: Why did you make people talk foreign languages? It would be easier if everybody could talk English like you and me.
Dear God: If you made the sun and the moon and the stars you must have had lots of equipment.
Dear God: Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones why don’t you just keep the ones you have now?
Dear God: How come you only have 10 rules and our school has millions?
Dear God: When you made the first man did he work as good as we do now?
Dear God: There were no clouds Saturday so I think I saw your feet. Did I really?
Dear God: I know there’s a God because I go to His house on Sunday and see all the cars parked there.
Dear God: Where does yesterday go? Do you have it?
Dear God: I’m afraid of things at night more than in the day. So if you could keep the sun on longer that would be a good thing.

from: http://graceland.gentle.org/bag/archive/what-do-kids-think-about-god/

posted by Sharie

highly verbal/ writing skills challenged batch...hehe

Hi, colleagues :)
As you all know, I teach the Kindergarten 1 class (4-5 yrs. old).
During the first quarter, I have noticed that most of the students in my class express their ideas more verbally rather than on print. When it is time for our journal writing (small groups), I still have to prompt them and give lots of encouragement to draw something about a certain story read to them earlier. Most of them would end up drawing just for the sake of it. However, they have loads of opinion about it during class discussion.
Here's my predicament, I am running out of ideas in coming up with activities for my class to express themselves more on print. Or am I being hasty about it? After all, there's still 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarter.
Please let me know your thoughts on this or any suggestions (activities/ strategies) that you can share. I will gladly appreciate it.
That's it for now! Happy Weekend!

jessica :)

I Am A Teacher

I Am A Teacher
John W. Schlatter

I am a Teacher.
I was born the first moment that a question leaped from the mouth of a child.
I have been many people in many places.
I am Socrates exciting the youth of Athens to discover new ideas through the use of questions.
I am Anne Sullivan tapping out the secrets of the universe into the outstretched hand of Helen Keller.
I am Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen revealing truth through countless stories.
I am Marva Collins fighting for every child's right to an education.
The names of those who have practiced my profession ring like a hall of fame for humanity...Booker T. Washington, Buddha, Confucius, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Buscaglia, Moses and Jesus.

I am also those whose names and faces have long been forgotten
but whose lessons and character will always be remembered in the accomplishments of their students.
I have wept for joy at the weddings of former students, laughed with
glee at the birth of their children and stood with head bowed in grief and confusion by graves dug too soon for bodies far too young.
Throughout the course of a day I have been called upon to be an
actor, friend, nurse and doctor, coach, finder of lost articles, money lender, taxi driver, psychologist, substitute parent, salesman, politician and a keeper of the faith.
Despite the maps, charts, formulas, verbs, stories and books, I have
really had nothing to teach, for my students really have only themselves to learn, and I know it takes the whole world to tell you who you are.

I am a paradox. I speak loudest when I listen the most. My greatest gifts are in what I am willing to appreciatively receive from my students.
Material wealth is not one of my goals, but I am a full-time treasure seeker in my quest for new opportunities for my students to use their talents and in my constant search for those talents that sometimes lie buried in self-defeat.
I am the most fortunate of all who labor.

A doctor is allowed to usher life into the world in one magic moment.
I am allowed to see that life is reborn each day with new questions, ideas and friendships.
An architect knows that if he builds with care, his structure may stand for centuries. A teacher knows that if he builds with love and truth, what he builds will last forever.
I am a warrior, daily doing battle against peer pressure, negativity, fear, conformity, prejudice, ignorance and apathy: But I have great allies: Intelligence, Curiosity, Parental Support, individuality, Creativity, Faith, Love and Laughter all rush to my banner with indomitable support.

And who do I have to thank for this wonderful life I am so fortunate to experience, but you the public, the parents. For you have done me the great honor to entrust to me your greatest contribution to eternity, your children.
And so I have a past that is rich in memories. I have a present that is challenging, adventurous and fun because I am allowed to spend my days with the future.

I am a teacher...and I thank God for it every day.