Our goal is to continue providing you with a set of vetted resources to support your work as a reflective practitioner. We hope you are enjoying your summer with your loved ones. Our MACS family is eager to welcome everyone back for the start of the 2020-2021 school year!

Utilize the following links, all found within our #MACSawesome website, to stay well-informed with our reopening plans and processes. We want to bring our kids back to school, where they can continue learning, while also keeping all students and staff as safe as possible.

We are excited to announce that Brittany Branch, Mount Airy High School teacher will now serve in a hybrid role for the district. She will continue serving students through the MAHS Science Department but will also now serve the district as our new, Digital Learning Coach!

Most recently, Brittany led a 4-day professional development with teachers from each of our schools. Our goal was to provide built-in capacity and support for digital teaching and learning, as well as remote learning resources to support both students and staff for the new school year. The team will be presenting a week-long event, offering 3 online PD sessions each day during the Week of August 3. Check out the next section to read more about this unique and innovative opportunity for your professional learning needs.

If you have questions or need support you may reach Brittany at bbranch@mtairy.k12.nc.us

We are in our 3rd week of MACS SEE at Jones Intermediate School and today is the last official day that children are with us for the summer. Our district offered 18 separate SEE events over a 3 week period within July. To kick off our work we engaged in two days of safety training and instructional planning as we prepared to welcome students onto campus. Through social distancing, we were able to bring our team together and complete the necessary steps for planning and safety.

We are highly appreciative of the 21st Century grant, which provides the funding required to continue serving our families with enrichment experiences. We are also appreciative of the teachers, Mount Airy High School students, and former students (college students) that led this highly valued and greatly needed work. Thank you to Jones Intermediate School for serving as our host campus this summer! Our students and families deserve the best we have to offer, even in the summer months. This also served MACS as a positive and proactive way to move forward with all in-person safety guidance within our schools. We are happy and proud to report that our SEE team ROCKED IT and our kids had a blast!

MAHS Student Workers helped to keep our students safe at all times but they also made them SMILE all week!

Our SEE staff included 7 MAHS students (Juniors or Seniors), 4 College Students (all MACS graduates) and 3 MACS teachers. A huge shout out to this whole team and Laurie Chilton for helping to lead this work daily at Jones!

Davis Publications understands during these times your teachers need quality visual arts products and we are offering free resources for teachers:

• Free K-12 lesson plans
• Free digital SchoolArts magazine
• Free webinars including topics like Adaptive Art, Using Contemporary Art in the Classroom, and more.
• Free professional development webinars including Therapeutic Art Approaches

Access the free resources HERE.

Did you know that summer serves as a great time for grant writing? You are now reflecting on what worked well, what did not work well and what kinds of resources could enhance the instruction and experiences you facilitate for our kids. Click here to check out this list of possible grants, many with upcoming deadlines in August and September. If you have any questions or need support completing a grant application just email Penny Willard at pwillard@mtairy.k12.nc.us and we will help you get it done!

Please see the document attached below from PTEC regarding their summer PD opportunities. Our membership in PTEC guarantees that we have a certain number of spots available for MACS employes to attend. We would love for you to take advantage of these opportunities if they will support your professional growth. Please do not attempt to register yourself through the PTEC website. Instead, please email your name and the sessions you would like to attend to Penny Willard and she will get you registered as long as slots are available for MACS.

Piedmont Triad Education Consortium (PTEC) is pleased to share information about a Social Studies professional development opportunity entitled The Age of Enterprise. This session is offered by one of our PTEC workshop presenters, Teaching American History (TAH), a project of Ashland University's Ashbook Center.

The flyer below provides a snapshot of the August 4 session.

To access the links in the flyer for additional information and to register, please DOWNLOAD the flyer here: Click here to open TheAgeofEnterprisePD.08.04.2020.pdf

During the 2020-2021 school year, UNCW MarineQuest is offering FREE Virtual Turtle Trash Collectors programs funded by the NOAA Marine Debris Program! This program educates youth about the impacts of marine debris and encourages behavior changes to reduce the generation of marine debris in the future.

During our hour-long virtual program students will:

• Virtually participate in a simulated sea turtle necropsy (animal dissection)
• Learn how trash can get to the ocean

• See how trash in the ocean can impact sea turtles
• AND learn how we can all help stop marine debris!

Students will also have a chance to become a Turtle Trash Collector and earn our digital turtle badges by collecting trash outside with the help of an adult. Families can do these cleanups together to help us save the ocean while social distancing. This badging program is open to anyone, and I have attached a flyer with instructions on how to sign up! We will also introduce our Citizen Science Project that your group can participate in at the end of our program (project guide attached).

Virtual program details:

We will use a password protected Zoom meeting for our virtual program, and you can connect with us from your classroom and/or students can connect from their homes via a computer, tablet, or smartphone. We have had great success with this model, even delivering a 2TC program to a teacher and students in Austria! For safety purposes, our staff will have their video on, but all participants will have video and audio off, so no students will appear on the screen. You can talk to your group first if you would like, and then we will take over and run the program. We will keep the program interactive using polling questions throughout, and students can type questions at any time in the chatbox. Please allow 1 hour for the program and questions. (If you are unable to use Zoom, we may be able to use a different virtual platform.)

Requesting a program:

To request a Virtual Turtle Trash Collectors program, please complete our program request form at https://uncwyouthprograms.wufoo.com/forms/2tc-virtual-school-program-request/ (Please note that this program was designed initially for 3rd to 5th-grade students, but that we can adapt the program for other age groups.)

If you would like to see what the program if like first, you can register to join us for an upcoming virtual program. Please visit our website here to find a date and time that works for your schedule.

For more information Download the attached flyers:

• 2TC Marine Debris Citizen Science Project.pdf
• 2TCFlyer.pdf

The K-12 Science Section is conducting the 2020 Science Summer Institute virtually. The series focus is to address gaps in instruction due to COVID-19 and consists of 4 recorded webinars each with a corresponding coaching session. Time is allotted in between coaching sessions to allow for districts and teams of teachers to work on classroom materials for the upcoming year.

Intended audiences include, but aren't limited to the following: District science leaders and specialists; Science teacher leaders (where district support is unavailable). CEUs will be awarded for those who attend.

Title and Description

Part 1: Deep Curriculum Mapping: Planning for Acceleration - This session will examine why Curriculum Mapping matters and how to maximize your mapping process.

Part 2: Communicating Clear Learning Targets - This session will focus on communicating clear learning targets with an emphasis on developing learning targets for the upcoming school year.

Part 3: Planning for Formative and Summative Assessment - This session will focus on providing district leaders with a rationale to refocus efforts of school improvement on using formative assessment to accelerate student learning.

Part 4: Mastery Learning and Standards Based Grading - This session will focus on mastery learning and standards-based grading with an emphasis on strategies teachers can employ to implement both for the upcoming school year.

The sessions will be pre-recorded and available after July 9 on the Science Summer Institutes page of the K-12 Science Google Site

Coaching Sessions - These coaching sessions are to support district leaders with reflections of each session as well as addressing concerns, needs, ideas and related resources.

July 27 (10:00am-12:00pm) Deep Curriculum Mapping

July 30 (10:00am-12:00pm) Communicating Clear Learning Targets

August 3 (10:00am-12:00pm) Planning for Formative and Summative Assessment

August 10 (10:00am - 12:00pm) Mastery Learning and Standards Based Grading

Through 2.5 million dollars in funding provided to the NC Department of Commerce for Plasma Games, Sci-Ops: Global Defense has been purchased for science teachers to help them engage their students in class or virtually in a fun and effective way using a gamification platform.

This digital resource has been purchased for science teachers to help them engage their students in class or virtually in a fun and effective way using a gamification platform.

These resources are available to all North Carolina middle school science teachers, and high school chemistry and physical science teachers. The resources cover middle school science, high school chemistry, and physical science standards.

Teachers MUST register for a 2 hour PD Session, by clicking the link in the Welcome Packet to obtain access. PD sessions start the first week of August. Therefore, teachers will need to register as soon as possible to secure their spot.

Sci-Ops: Global Defense is a National Science Foundation award-winning, 3D game-based learning platform that helps science teachers engage students. Sci-Ops comes with teacher support materials and a portal to track their student growth.

Don't forget to check out our resources, developed by our MACS colleagues and shared in our MACS repository. Each day we are also adding resources into our Schoology Group called- Professional Development, including the videos from our most recent, STEAM Institute. See the steps below for accessing

>Log into your Schoology Account

>Choose Groups at the top of the page and then select Professional Development- Teachers

>On the LEFT side of the page select Resources

>Select the pink folder at the top, MACS STEAM Institute (Recent and Historical)

>Select the yellow folder at the top, May 26-27, 2020 STEAM Institute

*In this folder you will have access to recordings from many of our #MACSawesome presentations.

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Please follow the steps below to access our Schoology folder designed especially for MACS Teachers preparing for the 2020-2021 school year.

>Log into your Schoology Account

>Choose Groups at the top of the page and then select Mount Airy City Schools

>On the LEFT side of the page select Resources

>Select the blue folder Curriculum

>Select the pink folder at the top, Remote Learning

Dr. Phillip Brown, Chief Academic and Human Resources Officer

Penny Willard, Director of Innovative Programming

Email: pwillard@mtairy.k12.nc.us
Website: mtairy.k12.nc.us
Location: 351 Riverside Drive, Mount Airy, NC, USA
Phone: 336-786-8355
Twitter: @WillardPenny