• Monday, May 29, 2023 - Memorial Day - All Schools and Offices Closed

• Thursday, June 8, 2023 - Last Day for Head Start and PreK Students

• Friday, June 9, 2023 - Two Hour Early Dismissal (Last Day for Students K-12)

• Monday-Wednesday, June 12-14, 2023 - Professional Days (No Students, Professional Responsibilities)

• Wednesday, June 14, 2023 - Last Day for 10-month Employees

Instructional Strategy Highlight - Blackout Poetry

A mentor reached out to me recently to share that a display in the hallway caught her attention. The display was student work from Tina Roach's 5th Grade Class at Mechanicsville Elementary. She sent me photos (below) of some of the samples, so I contacted Ms. Roach and asked her to share how she used this strategy in her classroom. Thank you for sharing!

She shared:

We did this activity after a quick review of figurative language. We reviewed all the different types of figurative language and discussed various forms of poetry earlier in the week.  After our week of review, I discussed the concept of blackout poetry with students and showed them a model of blackout poetry that I made and various online blackout poetry models that I found that would appeal to the 5th graders. These stayed up in the classroom for them to continually reference. After seeing the models, I  provided students with pages from old children's novels, they read the pages with the goal of creating a poem out of selected words from their book page. I asked students to find words that inspired or stood out to them and try to create a poem out of these words that made sense while blacking out the words they did not want in their poems with a Sharpie. While doing this, they also took the book genre and context of the passage into account to see what tone or mood they could create from what the book pages provided. There were not many parameters to the assignment other than the poem needed to be school appropriate and make sense when read. I encouraged the use of figurative language within their poems but did not require it as I mostly wanted the students to be creative and see what they could do when given so much freedom. 

Students responded well to this activity, they enjoyed the creative freedom and had a lot of fun. My students with a strong understanding of figurative language and prior exposure to poetry fared extremely well. Other students who struggled a little bit ended up creating new stories out of the selected words/phrases from their pages and blacking out the rest, which was also really interesting to see.

Topics for May Mentor Meetings

Content Supervisor Updates and Newsletters

Conditional Teachers Information - Higher Education Partner (MDLeads)

As teachers with conditional certification continue to take classes through our partners at Notre Dame University and the University of Maryland Global Campus, you may be nearing the end of your tuition reimbursement. If you are using the Maryland Leads funding, please use the direction on this SHEET to access these benefits. Your tuition reimbursement resets on July 1, 2023.

TPAS Rubrics and Forms

As you are preparing for your next observation, be sure to take a look at the TPAS documents available on the SMCPS Evaluation: Teacher Performance Assessment System site HERE. The TPAS rubrics begin on page 28 of THIS DOCUMENT. Your observers will use portions of this rubric in their feedback on your lesson.

Induction Program Participant Expectations

There have been some questions about the expectations of participants each year of their participation in the Induction Program. The basic expectations are listed below and the specifics from the negotiated agreement and the stipend/allocation can be found HERE.

First-Year Non-Tenured Teachers - Participate in August Orientation, monthly Induction Seminars along with participation in a Schoology discussion, and site-based mentoring.

Mid-Year Non-Tenured Teachers - In the first school year with SMCPS, participate in monthly seminars and site-based mentoring. In the second school year, participate in school-based mentoring and are invited to attend orientation and monthly Induction Seminars until the anniversary of their start date for compensation.

Second-Year Non-Tenured Teachers - Participate in site-based mentoring.

Third-Year Non-Tenured Teachers - Participate in site-based mentoring.

Mentors - Facilitate one-on-one and team mentor meetings and submit weekly logs.

Site-Based Mentoring - Includes weekly one-on-one meetings between mentors and mentees and monthly mentor team meetings. The average mentoring time is 40 minutes a week outside of the duty day. In addition, quarterly walkthrough experiences of approximately 15-20 minutes of targeted observation occur four times throughout the school year. The walkthroughs include pre/post meetings that occur during regularly scheduled mentor meetings.