The mission of West Hills High School is to graduate critical thinkers and problem-solvers who contribute positively to society as productive, responsible citizens.
WHHS self-identified & WASC confirmed Goals
Monday: Collab Day schedule;
Tuesday: Regular Day
Wednesday: Regular Day
Thursday: Regular Day: Dept. Chair & Leadership Meeting: 2:00, E8
Friday: Regular Day:
Thank you all for your support of and participation in Great Kindness Week! Each day at lunch ASB students and Adviser Ardy Riego have been partnering with a variety of clubs and agencies to promote and support kindness. Spirit Dress Up days have been great.
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| Santee Firemen with "our" Fire Truck and students during Great Kindness Week. |
Thank you to everyone who participated in our first ever "Souper Bowl" during Great Kindness Week! Faculty and staff had fun tasting all of the soups, salads and desserts and enjoyed talking and sharing some time together. Folks are talking about having another gathering with a Salad Bar. We will let everyone know if this idea goes forward!
Our PACK PRAISE Program launched last week with students beginning to come up to see what PTSA had in store for them....Thank you to TEACHERS for rewarding students of all kinds for following our West Hills Way of Being Responsible, Respectful and Honorable and for encouraging and noticing improvements of all kinds, large and small!
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| Shania Webb enjoys her prize from the PTSA for her Pack PRAISE card! |
Literacy Team Update: Get Lit(eracy) launched for West Hills: Weeks 1-2 "guerrilla marketing" launched!
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| Hopefully you saw these where ever adults gathered Be on the lookout Feb. 11 for our second strategy! |
Exciting example from Science this week...
On January 21, our Literacy Team met to continue to look at our critical campus-wide efforts in continuous student improvement outcomes. Checking in on our literacy focus for this year and from our August PLC time as a teaching faculty, we discussed and looked at our 6 areas of focus for our students. Working with Lin Kuzmich, we looked at the best way ALL teachers could support our students and decided to focus on our WASC Goals around assessment, cross-curricular collaboration and common formative assessment practices. We also wanted to bring strategies TO TEACHERS in a variety of places and so we are launching our "guerrilla Get Lit(eracy)" movement. Simply put, every two weeks on Monday (beginning 1/27/2020), teachers will get sample assessment questions and strategies to practice / merge into their classroom practices. These assessment strategies and various types of questions are modeled after standardized testing assessment question types from both academic assessments (CAASPP, SAT, AP, ACT etc) and college and career industry standards type questions that we see and use in a variety of settings in the world of work (OSHA, ASVAB, Human Resources training, etc).
To launch week 1, check our our first sample and see if you can use this type of question, with your own content area, within the next two weeks with students of ALL grades. If you try it out, take a photo of your students using it, of the prompt itself, or other another way to help us SHOWCASE and SHARE with others for support and encouragement. Share the photo with Robin or John in Admin so we can get the word out and SHARE with others!
This same sample will be printed and placed in your mailbox and will be FOUND in many different areas on campus where teachers wander. Let's ACTIVELY APPLY these ideas with our students to better prepare them in a variety of ways to demonstrate learning!
Goals:
(a) Follow up on our common scoring for ELA Interim CAASPP
(b) Continue to make teachers aware that the CAASPP exam is a cross-content area exam--the content of the questions ARE art, science, history, music, health, comparative cultures and languages, etc.
(c) Give students and teachers active awareness and practice in a variety of assessment item types
(d) Model Webb's DOK levels of assessment and encourage teachers to actively apply same in their own assessment practices across all content areas
(e) Support speaking, reading, writing, listening, and numeracy skills for all students in all teaching areas.
Monday, February 10: President Lincoln's Birthday: No School
Friday, February 14: Minimum Day; First Progress Report
Monday, February 17: President's Day: No School
Wednesday, February 19: Freshman Showcase, 5:30 p.m. Please SHARE the flyer with anyone who might be interested in West Hills. Feel free to POST IT to Social Media. Our enrollment is low and we WELCOME any and all students and families interested in West Hills. Any and all staff are welcome to open their classrooms and be welcoming ambassadors this night!
Wednesday, February 19: Freshman Showcase, 5:30 p.m. Please SHARE the flyer with anyone who might be interested in West Hills. Feel free to POST IT to Social Media. Our enrollment is low and we WELCOME any and all students and families interested in West Hills. Any and all staff are welcome to open their classrooms and be welcoming ambassadors this night!
Wednesday, February 26: Airbands Talent Show in Theatre--it's not too late to join in! Contact Debra Heeb in World Language for any questions. All staff emails have gone out as well.
Thursday, March 5: Literacy Team working with Lin Kuzmich; 8:00-2:00 pm., Rm. E-8
Friday, March 6: PACK DAY (Parents at Class with Kids Day)--minimum day schedule
Friday, March 27: 12 Weeks Progress Grades Due (note to parents of any student with a "D" or below "Student may be in danger of failing")
March 30-April 10: Spring Break, no school
Connect with the library @WestHillsLIB: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Resource Snack Time: SBAC & CAASPP 101 (bit.ly/rst-sbac) - These curated resources came together thanks to collaboration from this week’s Literacy Committee meeting with Lin Kuzmich, Robin Ballarin, John Hoadley, Cece Boehme, Jen Romanowski, Jodi Kohler, Don Rutledge, Marilyn Cabral, and Suzanne Sannwald.
The resources are intended to help provide our staff with a shared vocabulary and set of reference documents, and they complement information shared by Robin regarding our campus-wide, cross-curriculum work toward WHHS literacy goals.
Thank you to Literacy Committee members for helping co-create, review, and revise these resources. Also, a special shout out to John Berray, another member of our Wolf Pack family, for reviewing information and sharing the helpful “BONUS” resource.
Freshman Showcase 2020
Wednesday, February 19 starting at 5:30 p.m.
Reminder: Here is our BEST CHANCE at ATTRACTING students
to our school! We want as many programs and people
on campus this night welcoming parents and prospective students!
Please JOIN US!!
Self Care...A staff member shared this FREE resource to help students (and adults) work through their emotions.
