Letter from the MC Principal
Hello MC families,
It was great to many of you at Meet the School Family Night back on the 3rd. I enjoy this event each year. We’ve been using this format for about 8 years now and during that time we’ve never had to move inside for heat and it’s never rained – ironically we had BOTH. As I walked around I saw lots of great conversations being had and connections being made. If you were not able to make it, or if you still have videos you want to see, you can still watch the videos that your kids’ teachers made about their classes. Another opportunity to catch up will be with our Grounds for Conversation: Coffee with Sanders and Showers from 8-8:30am on Friday, September 18th. Shout out to our Culture and Community Coordinator Mrs. Hinton for organizing this event. Come out and chat with us!
During Meet the School Family Night we made this flyer available with information about clubs. We also have a Dungeons and Dragons club, an Anime club, and a club for neurodivergent students (Minds of all Kinds) starting up. The new offerings that kids are starting are coming in fast and furious!
Supporting your Student Academically
In the first couple of weeks of school I’ve gotten a few questions about ways to know if your student has homework. Earlier this year every student was given an agenda that they could write their homework down in. Building the skill of writing down their homework in their agenda is an important development for students’ executive functioning. Encourage your student to write their assignments and summative dates in their agenda, and then encourage them to show you what they’ve written down to support growth in this executive functioning skill. This may be a work in progress for some students so please be patient with your student.
Sometimes parents ask about access to Google Classroom as a tool to keep track of what their students are doing. The best way to use Google Classroom as a tool is to sit down with your student, have them login, and then have them show you what they’re doing. Teachers use Google Classroom in different ways, but sitting down with your student and having them walk you through what they are submitting can be a way for you to get a better understanding of what work your student is turning in.
Toddle (Tracking Student Progress)
Toddle is a website that we use to report information about Units of study (i.e. if you are learning about fractions or about the Civil Rights Movement that would be your unit of study), what’s going on in class currently, homework completion, and student performance on assessments. This document explains how to find various pieces of information in Toddle. It has directions and screenshots to walk you through how to find things.
Once you login to Toddle (go to toddleapp.com and sign in with Google) you will get to a home page that looks like this. This document More details about what you can find in Toddle is below:
- Bi-Weekly Messages: Every two weeks your student’s teachers will post a message letting you know what they are doing in class. In these messages you may find information about upcoming assessments, when an assessment achievement level will be posted, questions to ask your student about what’s going on in class, etc.
- Homework Completion: Since we have an A/B schedule students see each of their teachers 5 times over the course of two weeks. In classes that assign homework consistently (e.g. Math, Individuals and Societies, Performing Arts, and Spanish), teachers will report on how many times your student did their homework over the course of two weeks. Based on this information you will be able to check in with your student if you see that they are, or are not, doing their homework.
- Formative Assessment Data: Formative assessments are check-ins that let us know how a student is doing as a class works their way through a unit. Teachers provide progress indicators for their formative assessments that let you know if a student is making Limited, Adequate, or Substantial progress as they work their way through the unit.
- Summative Assessments: Summative assessments are end of unit assessments (often performance tasks with a real-world focus) that students work on to demonstrate what they know at the end of a unit. Summatives are assessed on the 0-8 scale.
I encourage you to login to Toddle and take a look at the various information that is available about your student’s classes and pertaining to your student’s performance on assessments. This video walks you through ways to find and interpret some of this information. If you are having trouble logging in or if you have lost your password use the “forgot my password” function to help you login.
FYI MAP scores can be found on Toddle as well. After logging in, click on your student’s name in the top right of the screen (there will be a little down arrow next to your student’s name) and select “My Profile.” Once you click on that, click on the link that says “Student files” under your student’s name (top left of the “My Profile” page), and then you’ll see uploaded documents. The mobile interface is slightly different.
As you review student progress data in Toddle it’s very important that we are all promoting a growth mindset for our children. Reviewing grades and working on summatives can be a source of stress for students. As students are working through each semester please encourage them to take breaks and take time to do the things that help them calm and decompress.
Fixed Mindset: “In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort.” (Dweck, 2015)
Growth Mindset: “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” (Dweck, 2015)
Chasing grades and test scores increases stress levels for students. At school we emphasize growth in alignment with the work of Carol Dweck, and we encourage you to do the same. Promoting a growth mindset helps all students know that they can be successful. It helps students recognize that we all have strengths and areas of growth that may look different across subject areas and that’s okay. It’s important for students and families to have healthy mindsets around school work in order to help our children navigate challenges, build resiliency, and lower stress and anxiety. Our children are learning and growing everyday and it’s important that we are supporting them through the ups and downs while helping them build lifelong skills.
Our IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) Information sessions lead by our IB Coordinator Dale Scott are a great source of information. There will be an IB MYP session about Toddle on Thursday, September 24th at 6:30pm and a session about Community Project for 8th grade families on Thursday, October 8th at 6:30pm. Both sessions will be virtual and can be accessed via this link.
Full Lockdown Drill Friday 9/18
We are scheduled to conduct a Full Lockdown drill on Friday of this week. In order to help students stay safe we do various drills during the year (Fire, Severe Weather, Earthquake, Lockdown, etc.). We are required to do fire drills monthly, and we do each of the other drills twice apiece over the course of the year.
We talk a lot to our students about the work that we do to keep them safe. This includes the work that we do to build relationships with our students and to help them get connected with trusted adults. Part of us working to build a culture of safety in the building includes telling students that if they see something concerning they need to say something to an adult. We train students on how to use the Say Something anonymous reporting app and we have Officer Griffin, an armed APS Resource Officer, on staff. For our Lockdown drills I discuss the drill during Morning Meeting (I did so last Monday), we discuss school safety and allow students to process in a safe space during Advisory (we will do so on Thursday), and we conduct the drill in Advisory the next day (this Friday). Please check in with your students to see how they are doing. The concept of school shootings can cause anxiety for all of us. However, being prepared is necessary for us to stay safe, and both creating safe spaces and having the willingness to have difficult conversations, helps us to navigate the difficult challenges that life and our fast-changing world present for us.
As always, if you have any questions feel free to reach out.
Kind regards,
Mark
Mark Sanders
Mark Sanders began teaching at ANCS in 2011. Before coming to the school, Mr. Sanders worked in New York City. He spent three years teaching 7th and 8th grade mathematics at Middle School 50 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and two years at Harlem Village Academies teaching Geometry and Algebra 2/Trigonometry. He taught 8th grade Math/Science/Technology at ANCS for five years.
