Happening This Week April 11-15

Welcome Back,

Thank you again all for proving your resilience and creativity during this challenging year! We just had a week where we celebrated  academic success for Semester 1, and we had a number of students take part in a virtual MUN in Kuwait as they get ready for the International Virtual MUN in Australia!

We are nearing the end of Q 3. With the National Day Feb 25-28 the quarter is moving even more quickly. There is information below about planning for the end of the Quarter.

Below you will find:

Video introducing Gimkit by Mr. Luai

Important upcoming dates

Shout outs for MUN

Quarter 3 Grades update

An update on new TEAMS settings 

An update on Students at Risk

An Update on Class Visits

A link to the ‘Weekly Family Update’ that families receive each week

A link to the Sunday Morning Announcements that are emailed to students each Sunday morning

Gimkit Tutorial. 

Gimkit is a quiz and game interactive web page that is free (for 1 month). It is similar to Kahoot, but more flexible. It is a great tool to try out in the classroom. Thank you Mr. Luai for this tutorial!

Important Dates:

• Tuesday Meeting. Staff meeting 
• Feb 25-28 no School. National Day/Liberation Day
• March 1. All Assessment should be completed for Q3
• March 2-8 following up on work with students and communicating with parents
• Tues March 3 CCCC planning for Q4
• Sunday March 7 IBDP meeting
• March 8 grades are uploaded
• March 10 Quarter 3 finished, last day to update grades
• March 14 last day to change grades
• March 18 Parent-Teacher Conferences

Shout out to all those involved in MUN:

This past weekend, Feb 10-13, we had 35 MUN Delegates attending the Virtual PEARTL MUN and Al Bayan Bilingual School, Kuwait. Experienced students as well as first time students from grade 9-12 participated as delegates representing ACA.

Congratulations delegates! And congratulation Ms. Lorraine and all teachers involved!

Quarter 3 Grades

The teacher input date for Q3 Grades is March 8. Grades will be imported March 10, and March 14 will be the last day to change grades.

Please have all assessments done by March 1, so that the remaining days can be used to follow up with students and communicate with families. If you have enough assessment in for the quarter, then please do not rush to get get more assessment done the week before  March 1, we do not want a traffic jam of assessments. The focus this year is not on getting more assessments done or 'covering the curriculum'.  The focus is on getting students to complete work, pass class,  and communicating with families. Our goal is to have no one be surprised with report cards.

This is to your benefit as it will make for easy Parent teacher conferences on March 18 and it will make it easy for us as a school to stand firmly behind all grades.

Timeline for Q3 grades;

• March 2-8 following up on work with students and communicating with parents
• March 8 grades are uploaded
• March 10 Quarter 3 finished, last day to update grades
• March 14 last day to change grades

TEAMS set up

Teachers have done a great job of setting up teams to the new standards. We have had very little confusion from students 

Here is the link to the teams set up from last Tuesday's PD. Thank you for following up on this. You can use this Power Point as a reference if you need to update anything with your TEAMS.

So far it appears to be working well. Thank you Again!

Class Visits:

Dr. Lori and I are continuing with Class visits. For more information please click on the tab at the top of this landing page “Class Visits”. One of the goals of the class visit is to let teachers know they do not have to go it alone.  Please see the link at the top for an idea of what to expect with the classroom visits. The HOD's and HOY's are joining in on class visits. They are not visiting for supervision or evaluation, they are there to provide peer support and let teachers know that we are not going it alone this year.

Since HOY are not members of you class, if a HOY would like to visit they will contact you and ask that you add them to the class they want to visit.

Students at Risk:

We have the failure list for Semester 1. All Students in grade 9-12 will have to take online courses at the University of Nebraska to make up work. We are still working on a plan for 6-8.

Reminder, please to be in contact with students and parents who are failing or missing work. If you are having trouble contacting parents or are not hearing back, contact myself, Mr. Patrick for 9-12 and Dr. Lori for 6-8. CC Ms Abeer. We can set up a meeting.

At the end of Q1 there was a lot of confusion over grades and we were very flexible as it was a very unusual circumstance. At the end of Semester 2 we are standing confidently behind our grades. This is because of the work teachers did following up with students and families. Please continue doing this, and we will continue encouraging families to follow their children's grades on NEO and we can stand by grades that the students earned.

Weekly Family Update: 

We are also trying to keep families and students involved with the 'Weekly Family Update'. We are stressing the importance of students communicating with teachers and using office hours, and of parents seeing NEO and grades on NEO on a regular basis.

A reminder for communication.  Mr. Patrick is the contact for grade 9-12. Dr. Lori is the contact for 6-8.

Here is the Weekly Family Update That is sent to Parents at the start of each week. It is a nice little blog, check it out so you know the messaging we are giving parents.

 

Link to Sunday Morning Student Announcements:

 The Sunday Morning Student Announcements are being sent out each Sunday Morning. There is a focus on Students making use of office hours, and keeping their cameras on in class. Here is this Sunday's Announcement, Sunday Feb 14

Have a great week!