Here is the draft agenda for our Institute Day on 2/21. I will be updating it with links over the weekend. 

We are currently at a 78% student completion rate for the 5 Essentials Survey. We have approximately 200 students who have not yet completed the survey. I have arranged these students by grade level and advisory teacher. Please check this list for the grade level  of  your advisory (labeled on the tabs) and have any students listed for your section take the 5 Essentials survey during advisory on 2/27/23. We need to reach 95% in order for the 5 Essentials points to be added to our overall state rating score. 

Here is the February Family KJ Connection.  

The inaugural meeting of the KJ Wellness Team is Wednesday, February 22, at 8:00 am in The Gathering Place. If you would like to be part of the group designing a staff wellness plan, please let Elisa know. 

Per Joe Adelman, Director of Operations:

Any field trip scheduled during the school day and submitted to Transportation through Trip Tracker must have a return time to the school site no later than 1:30 pm  This is necessary so that our drivers can begin the pm routes on time.  If you currently have a scheduled field trip that returns after 1:30 pm, Transportation or I will be reaching out to look at altering the return time to fit within the 1:30 pm return required or find alternatives.  

Please remind your students that all students should be scanning on and off the bus daily.  This also applies to students going on field trips and athletes traveling to competitions. This is imperative for the safety of students.

At long last, the K Cart is launching this coming Friday, February 24th. You should be receiving an email soon from the BELT students with more details. Please be patient with them as they work to perfect the process. 

Upcoming Events:

March 14: 6th Grade providing lunch to celebrate Pi Day

We will also be doing something around the NCAA Men’s Tournament…details coming.

Thanks to all who joined us for a fun day of bowling last Saturday and who participated in the Super Bowl fundraiser.  Val Ambrose, Jenny Starkey, Jessie Lynch and Karen Dryer were the lucky winners.

This week I am including some ideas for Station Rotation. This could be done with curriculum, but the examples provided are more for a break in routine - perfect for a three-day week! =) The logistics: create space for five stations in your room with different activities. Put a timer with directions to switch every seven minutes or so. Here is an example I did with a Narrative Unit. It is up to you how to group your students. I try to have only one tech station and one teacher station. Some are high prep, some are low prep, so pick and choose!

Station 1: Mad Libs - free online printables 

Station 2: Word Work  - Tim Rasinski is a great resource with things like Morphology Monday and Word Ladder Wednesday. I've attached some President's Day examples if you are interested. Find him on twitter @TimRasinski1

Station 3: Puzzle - Pro Tip: Put this at a table in your room for a brain break after stations. Sitting with students at this station is a great way for me to get to know them in a whole different way!

Station 4: Sentence Patterns - Have sentences cut out with whatever you are currently working on for students to manipulate as a group. For example, we just completed incorporating transition words into our writing, so students placed appropriate transitions in the sentences for practice.

Station 5: Picture Writing - Print out interesting pictures, supply paper and pencils for students to create a story about what is happening in the picture. 

There are a ton of ideas! These are just a few. Have fun! 

Janel Sebeny

E-mail sent by Stacy Keiser on 1/30/23:

Hi Everyone,

It’ s that time again!

The cutoff for coursework for salary movement is February 22 and I will accept coursework up to 4:00 pm.  Any received after that date will be returned and can be resubmitted in September.  If you have enough credit hours to move on the salary schedule the increase will show on your March 15th check. 

Attached is the procedure for reporting coursework, please review it as it has examples of how to record your classes.  Please follow the example as close as possible.

It also lists the documentation that will be accepted for classes taken.

If you have any questions, please let me know .  I’ll be happy to help!!

Stacy Keiser, SHRM-CP

Human Resources/Legal

McLean County Unit District No. 5

(309) 557-4044

The KJHS PTO is hosting a Referendum Information Session on Tuesday, February 28th at 5:30 pm in the KJHS IMC. Dr Weikle will be presenting information to families regarding the referendum that is on the ballot in April. 

Per email from Dayna Brown on 12/6/22...

Have you ever considered writing a Beyond the Books Grant??? Now is your chance.

Beyond the Books Educational Foundation is now accepting applications for grants. 

Beyond the Books provides funding for innovative academic programs in Unit 5 and District 87.

GRANT TYPES AND FUNDING AMOUNTS …

• BEYOND THE BOX: One grant in an amount between $7500 and $10,000 will be awarded in this category for an exceptional proposal. The $7500 - $10,000 award is given by a private foundation to Beyond the Books Educational Foundation and BTBEF selects the winner.

• STANDARD: Grants awarded in this category are limited to requests for $801 to $5000. • MINI: Grants awarded in this category are limited to $800 or less.

• You may submit applications with the same proposal in both the Standard and Beyond the Box categories. If you choose to do so, you must use the same title for both applications and within the Beyond the Box application, clearly explain how the extra money would be used. Only one of the two applications may receive an award.

Please note,  the maximum size for Mini Grants has doubled from $400 to $800. The Beyond the Books bylaws require that approximately 15% of the total annual allocation be used to fund Mini Grants. Historically, this has resulted in a much higher percentage of Mini Grants being funded than Standard Grants.

Please find more information, rubrics, and details on how to apply at CLICK HERE.  Here is a link to grant specifics.

The application deadline is 6 pm, March 6. We strongly recommend not waiting until the last minute.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE... THERE ARE SOME CHANGES THIS YEAR

Last year’s rubric had 8 questions. This year there are only 7. 

Notable features of the two versions:

• Question 1 is the same.

• Questions 2-3 from last year have been replaced by a new question 2 this year. Also, where questions 2 and 3 were each worth 5 points last year, this year question 2 is worth 10 points. They did collapse the two old ones into the new one because the content is importantly different.

• Because they have one less question, question 4 from last year is question 3 this year. While the questions are the same, the value of this question has been reduced from 5pts to 3pts.  

Get in those applications, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Dayna Brown 

We will be having a spring PBIS assembly on on the early release day of Friday, April 7th during 7th & 8th hours. This will be a staff vs students assembly. If you are interested in participating, please complete the Staff Spring Assembly Participation Form by Friday, February 17th. 

IAR testing will be on March 16, 17, & 20. Seventh and eighth grade teams should be aware that testing should not go past 7th hour on March 16th as the 7th and 8th grade choirs will be heading out to the Unit 5 all district choir event after 7th hour. Please note that there will be no advisory due to IAR testing on 3/20/23. 

When writing referrals, please be sure that time on the referral is the time the incident happened and not the default time of when you wrote the referral. Accuracy in time of incident is important as it helps us track when students are having issues during the school day. This then allows us to implement interventions that have a better chance of supporting these students. 

Hearing things about ChatGPT? Here is an excellent resource created for educators by educators explaining this Open AI resource.

Check out the February Instructional Tech Update. Here are the highlights:

• Unit 5 started a podcast series called Inside Unit #5 for our community to listen to which is linked.  This is hosted by our very own teachers in Unit 5.  

• IC Updates:  There have been lots of questions about score copier, so it is included.

• Black History Month is the whole month of February, so there are lots of instructional resources for this month you can use. 

• Canva - Canva's premium is available to all teachers and students in education.  All you have to do is register your education account.  The instructions are included, as well as an activity for you to create your own Canva banner for Google Classroom.  

• Phet Simulations have been around for a while, but they have been transitioning these to HTML 5 over the last several years.  Check this resource out there is lots to find here! 

There will be 3 different summer school options this year for middle school students: Extended School Year (ESY), regular summer school, and Freedom School. ESY is reserved for students with IEPs, summer school is for those students who struggles academically during the school year, and Freedom School focuses around literacy connected to African-American History and Civic Engagement. ESY will be hosted here at KJHS and summer school and Freedom School will be held at CJHS. Here are key dates & events surrounding the 2023 summer schools: 

• Postings for Summer School Administrators - week of 2/6

• Select Summer School Administrators -  week of 2/20

• Posting for teachers, supervisors, and administrative assistant - week of 3/13

• Set-up interviews for internal and external applicants - week of 4/3

• Create and send out letters to parents of recommended students inviting them to the summer program - week of 4/10

• Send a final list of summer school students with appropriate data to the First Student - April 28th

Janel Sebeny!

Janel has received the Award of Meritorious Service from the ISBE "Those Who Excel" award program. Janel will be recognized at the Those Who Excel and Teacher of the Year Award banquet in April. Congratulations Janel on this state wide recognition of all you do for KJHS!

Students are not allowed to leave the cafeteria during the lunch hour unless they have a pass from a staff member. If you want a student to come to your room during the lunch hour, please give them a pass to show to lunchroom supervisors. 

Here is the Q3 PBIS Celebrations information that was sent out last week. Sixth grade will have their Q3 PBIS celebration on 3/23 and 7th and 8th grade will have their Q3 PBIS Celebration on 3/24.