Congratulations to the KJHS IPA Student Recognition Award winners: Ella Drake and Aniyah Jones! These two outstanding students will be recognized at a breakfast at ISU on April 6th. 

Thank you to all of those who volunteered to participate in the Spring Assembly! We will be holding a meeting in Janel Sebeny's room on Tuesday, April 4 before school at 8 am to discuss details. See you then!

Beginning on April 3, office-issued lunch detentions will be served on the stage of the cafeteria. There will be a lunchroom supervisor there to sign students in and monitor behavior. Students will not be allowed to go to the RESET room during lunch. 

Due to the early release on 4/7, the K Cart will be running the morning of Thursday, April 6. 

Hello! 

As you are gearing up for Spring Break, I have two items for you to consider. 

If you are looking for something quick and engaging for students, try Betsy Potash's Spring Poetry Tiles. Perfect for April's Poetry Month or a brain break activity when students are done.  

If you are wanting to dive into some content over your break, consider reading this edutopia article regarding micro mentor texts featuring Penny Kittle. It has great tidbits to consider when sharing exemplars with students. 

Have a relaxing break, everyone! 

Janel Sebeny

Support the Unit 5 Educational Foundation by participating in the 2nd Annual Unit 5k presented by Commerce Bank. Choose to participate in the 5k or one mile walk/run. Sign up today and show your pride for Unit 5 schools!

Event Details:
Sunday, April 30 at Maxwell Park
One mile race begins at 2 pm
5k race begins at 2:30 pm

Race fees:
$10/participant
$20/participant with race t-shirt

T-shirt sizes are guaranteed to participants registered by April 13.

Sign up today! https://runsignup.com/Race/IL/Normal/Unit5k

Unit 5 is offering a Freedom School this summer, which focuses on academic growth centered on Black/African American History. Please recommend any students who could benefit from an engaging summer program centered on African American history and civic engagement via reading and STEAM activities. Click here for more information about the program and here to recommend students. 

Our final screening/testing week will be April 11 - 14, during which time all grade levels will do aMath, aReading, and writing screeners. In addition, 8th grade will be doing the Illinois Science Assessment. Here is the schoolwide planner for those teams that want to outline their plans prior to spring break. We will have makeup dates in the planner after the KJHS Assessment Team meets on March 21st. 

Following spring break, we will no longer be assigning in-school suspensions to be served on Wednesdays so Mr. Thompson can fulfill his Tier 2 mentoring responsibilities. If a situation arises where a student has to be taken out of circulation and cannot be sent home, an administrator will monitor them in the RESET room. 

The final PTO spirit wear sale for this school year is going on now through March 24th. Check out the available design and items at the KJHS spirit wear store. 

PTO is hosting a Gobena Coffee Fundraiser and a Barrel House Fundraiser (April 18th). Please check out the fliers for more information. 

The district has developed a Power/Internet Outage Response Plan, which we have posted to the KJHS Staff Dashboard under "District Information". Please review this plan for information regarding the role you play in navigating power and internet outages in the building. 

Please do not forget that your mandated trainings need to be completed by May 1, 2023. 

Due to IAR testing makeups, Intervention Cycle 4 will start on 4/3/23. 

Hello, we are team 8-2 and we have decided that we want to run a coffee shop on our Monday advisory mornings. We are doing this because we would like to potentially raise enough money for a team celebration.

We will complete various tasks like delivery,  being a financial advisor, advertising, communications, and the practice of being a barista. All of these jobs will benefit and allow us to learn basic life skills like, balancing a budget, communication, team work, problem solving, and leadership.

 All jobs differ from each other, a financial advisory helps them manage money to be able to buy things with an appropriate budget. If you're in advertising you will make different flyers to help promote the coffee shop and get more customers. Communication helps remind and tell people to buy coffee so that we can raise money for our team celebration. Barista’s will be the ones to make the coffee and serve customers different flavors of Dunkin coffee like caramel, cinnamon roll, vanilla, oat milk, and sugar. Delivery people will deliver the coffee to different customers throughout the building.

 To decide what job we wanted to do, we completed a survey to figure out how we would like to participate in this event. From the results of the quiz,we were put with the job that best fits us while taking in account which one we were most interested in.

 This coffee shop will launch on March 13th, and run until May 15th. Coffee will only be available to the teachers in the building, selling for $3. 

Team 8-2 communications, 

Caroline and Ella.

Here is the March KJ Family Connection.

Take a look at the March Instructional Tech Update.  In this month's issue, you will find the 2nd Episode of the Unit 5 Podcast, Grouping sections in IC, information on ChatGPT, Women's History Month Resources, Story starters with Emjoi's, and Virtual Libraries.  

Hello, 

As our schedules are going to be interrupted with IAR testing, student self-paced instructional models are a great way to keep students engaged with flexible scheduling. If you have not tried a Playlist inspired by Catlin Tucker, I encourage you to check it out. 

Here are a few I have tried: the 6 Word Memoir Playlist was a quick, creative way to give students an understanding of what a Playlist was and how it worked before we did a full unit (and honestly so I could get a feel for it). This Setting Playlist, was more in depth, while the Narrative Playlist was created after student feedback and teacher reflection. 

Reach out if you have any questions about my tasks. If this sounds like something you might want to try, Caitlin shares her insights in her blog. If you are interested in co-creating a Playlist for your instruction this spring, please reach out to me or Jenny Snyder.  

Thank you! Have a great weekend!

Sincerely, 

Janel Sebeny

Kingsley Junior High School

Team 7-2 Language Arts

Middle School LA District Chair

PBIS Tier 1 Coach

IRC Past President

Please welcome Mr. Ben Heberer and Mrs. Leah Megli to Team Kingsley! Mr. Heberer is joining Team 8-1 as the Math 8 teacher and Mrs. Megli is joining the Music Team as a chorus teacher. We will formally introduce them during our SIP time on 3/6/23. 

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.

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.

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.