February 11, 2021 RCSD Educator Blog

 

Report Card and Conference Week Update

Reviewing Trimester 1 Grades (applies to both Elementary and Middle School)

Please note, if a student was not in your Trimester 1 class, you will not be able to review any report card information within the “Information” tab in Otus.  You can find previous report card information in the following two places. 

1) You can look in the school report card folder shared with you in Trimester 1.

2) You can look in the Parent Portal through PowerSchool.  You can watch this video on how to check the Portal Overview as an admin. *This video is for internal use only, please do not share with public.

 

Middle School Information
Because grades are entered after the Trimester ends, students that either change classes at the Trimester or are in Wheel Classes will see both 2nd and 3rd Trimester classes in Otus.  The reason why is that is the only way teachers can still have access to enter grades that first week of 3rd Trimester.

Elementary Report Card Reminders

• A reminder when you assign the rubrics to please put the date of 2/19/21

• Participation Scores for science, social studies, and PE are now comments, not rubrics (this is different from the 1st Trimester)

• You do not need to enter the comment 3 times just 1 time. You can add it in your "homeroom" class or under where you put comments for ABC Standard comments. Do not put the comment in Science, Social Studies, and PE, just put the comment once. Please add one of the following comments:

• Your child participated in Science and Social Studies.  Physical Education lessons were provided for students to complete at home.

Or

• Your child did NOT participate in Science and Social Studies. Physical Education lessons were provided for students to complete at home.

• Rubric Report Card Guide- This guide shows you how to enter comments for the report card, and how to assign the report card rubrics and grade the rubrics.

• RCSD Report Card Comment Bank- Optional Comment Bank teachers can use to copy and paste comments into Otus.

• If you have questions please reach out to the following people

• Megan Spears- OR, Spanger, Fiddy, Junction, Thomas Jefferson, Champions K-2

• Brandon Blom- Sargeant, Diamond Creek, Crestmont, TK, Champions 3-5

• Jennie Ruvalcalba- Kaseberg, Woodbridge, Blue Oaks, Stoneridge

• Julie Murdaugh- Cirby, Brown, Riego Creek, Gates

Elementary Conference Week Guidelines

Here are some important guidelines we must adhere to for Elementary Conferences.  A reminder Kindergarten does not need to include additional minutes, grades 1-3 need to be assigned 45 minutes daily and grades 4 and 5 need to be assigned 55 mins of independent work to ensure the full amount of time mandated in SB98.  

You do not need to verify that the minutes have been completed, just that you have assigned the work to students.

You do need to link the work in Otus in case the auditors ask to see what was assigned.  You can assign a lesson with a tile for the entire week or one for each day, link the work in Classboard or on the Bookshelf, whatever is easiest for you.  

To link work, one idea is to put all work on a google slide and share that link in your Otus Classboard.  You are more than welcome to email families as well, but once again for state auditing purposes it needs to be somewhere in Otus as well.  You must include the number of minutes of each assigned activity, for example, Independent Reading (30 minutes). Best practice is to let students know in class the expectations around independent work.

Here is a template you can use.  Slide 1 and 2 are blank templates, slide 3 has an example schedule. If you would like to use the template go to file and then make a copy. This is just an example, please adjust the assignments to what works best for you and your students.  If you have any questions please ask your principal. 

________________________________________________________________________

Technology Update

Sharing Outside of RCSD Kids 

In order to protect the privacy and safety of our students, the RCSD Kids domain is configured as a "Whitelisted Domains”. Meaning, files owned by users in RCSD Kids can be shared with Google accounts in compatible whitelisted domains. This applies to files in all shared drives as well.

Our staff domain (RCSDK8) has been whitelisted as a trusted domain since the District adopted Google in 2010.

As a reminder, because our students' domain (RCSD Kids) and staff domain (RCSDK8) reside in two separate Google workspaces, student’s will not be able to share links outside of the RCSD Kids domain with staff, and student’s DO NOT have the ability to share work publicly (or have the option “Anyone with the Link Can View”) from their Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, or videos from Screencastify with anyone outside the RCSD Kids domain. 

When asking students to share their work outside of Otus, please remind students to share the file(s) directly with the teacher by clicking the Share button, and either typing the email address of the teacher or typing the teachers first and last name and selecting the appropriate @rcsdk8.org email address for the teacher (as shown below):

 

Otus Sharing 
We have identified an issue when students share work from their Drive, Docs, Sheets, and/or Slides to an assignment in Otus, that the file(s) are being shared with all teachers assigned to the student, and not limiting the sharing to only the teacher(s) associated with the course that created the assignment.

Otus is actively investigating this issue and is hopeful to have it resolved as soon as possible. 

In the interim, please feel free to create a filter in Gmail to send those messages to Trash if they do not apply. If you like, you can also disable email notification for shared files from your Drive settings by unchecking “Get all updates about Google Drive items via email” (as shown below):

________________________________________________________________________

Additional Information

K-5 Discovery Education Users-NASA Persevere Landing:

Your students can get a first-hand look at the Red Planet when NASA Persevere touches down on 2/18! Join the Countdown to Mars Livestream to experience the landing. 

Head over to ground control for more resources and to register >bit.ly/3rJzPPg

COVID Testing Schedule

Please click this link for the Surveillance COVID-19 Testing schedule. Testing is available at each school site twice a month. Staff may only attend testing at their work site unless specific permission is given by the COVID Response Team. Please see the site administrator or supervisor for permission to attend a different site for testing. The QR code for registration is included at the bottom of the schedule for staff to register for testing.