Welcome to High School at Mt. Everest!

1. Welcome toHigh School at Mt. Everest! Orientation for New Students and Incoming9th Graders Monday, August 25, 2014 If you haven’t already, please sign in by the front door. Thanks!

2. Today’s Agenda • Welcome • Mr. Mike Rood (Principal) • College Preparation/Information • Mr. Roger Schlottman(College Preparation Coach, MEA parent) • Counseling Information, Naviance, PSAT/SAT/ACT • Mr. Ron Zappala(School Counselor) • School Work, Test and Turn-in Preparation, PE • Mr. Jim Greenwood (9th grade supervisor, math teacher) • Lunch • ASB Activities

3. Overview for Schoolwork + • Organizational Issues • Personal Traits to Build Up • School Website • Communicating with Teachers • Schoolwork: Daily and During a Month • Study Groups • Resources • Preparing for Exams • Turning in Monthly Work • PE • Some School Policies / Information

4. Organizational Issues • Home: • need a place where you can work with good focus (in other words, avoid distractions). • Supplies handy • Organize your books and papers • Folders. Use them! Don’t let papers pile up… • Put everything into an order that makes it easy to find what you need when you need it. • Completed work: Put it away carefully! • “What should you be doing this week so you can be ready for next week?”

5. Personal Traits to Build UpThese help in doing Independent Study! • Organization • Personal things (neat/easy to get to/things are available) • Organized academic thinking: make sense of academic material, organize it in your head or on paper as notes • Focus • Perseverance: stick-to-itness, even when it’s hard or takes a long time. • Monitoring self • Tired, losing focus…need a break • Understanding material, and need help… • How much to do so you can finish on time.

6. SCHOOL WEBSITE • http://sandi.net/mteverest • Lots of information! Get familiar with what’s on it, where it is. Highlights: • Teachers’ sites • Contact page with teachers’ phone numbers, email addresses • First page for current information • Activities, schedules, important links, parents’ pages, lots of information!

7. COMMUNICATING WITH TEACHERS (part 1) • Know their best way to communicate • (phone, email, in person…) • Teachers give out information in three main ways: • The monthly cover sheet • Their website • During study groups

8. COMMUNICATING WITH TEACHERS (part 2) • YOU need to contact teachers as needed. • Need help with an assignment. • Uncertain about something in the schedule. • Hearing a rumor from other students (check with the teacher—always!) • If you can’t come for a test…uh oh…contact the teacher BEFORE IT! (Know each teacher’s testing policies.)

9. SCHOOL WORK: Daily and During the Month • Planning the work: • split it evenly through the month. YOU split the work; most teachers don’t do it for you. • Make pacing/work guides for each course. • Make your own due-date list, so the work is not all crunched together at the end. • Use cover sheets (amount of work, special instructions). • Plan to finish work one week early, to focus on tests in last week (when reasonable/necessary)

10. STUDY GROUPS • Once a week. • Optional, BUT: • Only if a PARENT says it’s optional. • Students don’t decide this, only a parent does. • If on campus during a study group, must attend. • If a student isn’t being successful in a course (D or F grades) the school has the right to make the study group for that course MANDATORY. • Bring supplies as directed by teacher. • Please be on time if you come.

11. RESOURCES, part 1You need these available, or ready to go to when needed. • Textbook: know its organizational set-up, especially informational resources in the front or back, or at the end of sections/chapters/units. • Internet: (1) places the teacher tells you are important. (2) do searches yourself. Huge wealth of information.

12. WARNINGS ABOUT THE INTERNET • Avoid ads. • Carefully pick websites: • Be ready to just close a site if you get uncomfortable with the language or…anything you don’t like or you know your parents don’t approve. • Think about the reliability of the information. • Look at who is writing it (a teacher or professor or a well-known website is usually good). • Does the information itself make sense? If anything written in a website or discussed on a video contradicts your textbook or your teacher, it’s probably invalid and you should get away from it. (If you think something makes sense anyway, discuss it with your teacher…sometimes there are differences of opinion in some areas, especially history, literature, science, art….)

13. RESOURCES, part 2 • From Your Teacher • Weekly study group • Cover sheet • Teacher’s website (resources such as informational handouts, links…) • Individual help when you ask or come at scheduled times (find out your teachers’ availability). • From Other People • Parents/relatives • Friends (consider informal peer study groups outside of class). Just be careful that your work is your own work, even if working together for help.

14. PREPARING FOR EXAMS (page 1) • Find out from the teacher what to focus on… • Some teachers might be very specific. • Others might say the whole month’s material is fair game for a test. • If the teacher does any type or in-class review, go to it! • Review what you learned for the month (based on teacher’s test directions). • Learning it once does NOT mean you’ll remember it. • If you wrote up some notes, use them for review. Writing down important things now, while reviewing can be helpful, too. • If the teacher gives some type of review paper…use it!

15. PREPARING FOR EXAMS (page 2) • Practice…a lot. Practice until you know it so well you’re like an expert at it. “Over-study.” • Plan your time so you can have lots of review and practice time before a test. Most tests: start studying 3-4 days beforehand, 1-2 hours each day per test. • Consider making a small group with 1-2 friends, to quiz each other, make certain you’re studying the right things, help each other focus and cover everything.

16. TURNING IN MONTHLY WORK(part 1) • Attendance • Audit file • Attendance based on (1) amount of work, (2) on-time. • Procedures: • Do the work! Plan the month so you get it all done. • REMOVE an audit file page from each subject. • As directed by each content teacher. Which page? Copy/not. • Put correct heading! Four things all in the top right corner: Name, subject, date the work was actually done, name of the assignment. • That date must be during the official days of the month. VITAL!

17. TURNINGINMONTHLYWORK(part 2) • Procedures (continued): • Organize the work by cover sheet (in order, STAPLED). • Bring all packets (one for each course you’re assigned) to the supervising teacher • YOU MUST DO THIS BY THE END OF THE TURN-IN DAY! No attendance credit allowed for late turn-in. Emergencies must be discussed with principal; teachers do not have authority to allow/accept late work for attendance. • Supervising teacher(1) looks at all packets to determine work was done, then (2) takes the audit file pieces to be filed away for three years (in case of state audit). • Student takes the packets to the individual subject teachers’ classrooms.

18. PE • Supervising teacher is PE teacher, automatically. • Three assignments each month: • 200+ minutes of appropriate physical activity • Reflection Essay • Content Assignment (different by grade level) • Webpage with all the information, downloadable cover sheet, logs, worksheets. URL:http://www.sandi.net/Page/63029

19. SOME SCHOOL POLICIES/INFO • Lunch • District provided for free/reduced lunch program, or students may buy. • Bring own. • Leave campus IF PARENT GIVES PERMISSION. • Phones • District policy: Must be turned off during classes. • May be used around campus outside of classes. • Dress code • Academic honesty policy

20. SUMMARY • Communicate with your teachers. • Go to all your classes. • Plan enough time for your work (so you can do well on it, and so you can get it done on time). • Follow directions. These things will lead to your success this year!