PSE Weekly Howl
Week of September 13th-WOLF WALK WEEK
Next Week is Wolf Wellness Week!
Fundraising Pledge Packets came home TODAY. Please be sure to check out the information and discuss with your child how they can secure pledges for our school. Donations are due no later than 9:00am Friday, September 17 to be eligible for top prizes. There will be lots of amazing prizes your child can win, so please read over the packet!
Wolf Walk School Wide Spirit Week - Encourage your students to have fun and participate next week with our ALL SCHOOL SPIRIT WEEK! They could even end up on Wolf TV displaying their school spirit!
Monday – Best Dressed Day-School Picture
Tuesday – PSE Class Color Shirt or any PSE Spirit Wear
- Class Colors:
K-Purple
1st-Red
2nd-Orange
3rd-Yellow
4th-Green - 5th-Blue
Wednesday - Crazy Hair Day/Hat Day
Thursday - Backwards Day
Friday - Mix n Match Day
Prairie Star Elementary Fall Portraits 2021
Prairie Star Elementary Fall Portraits 2021
Picture day: Monday, September 13, 2021
Passcode : 315259311
Justice Grove Picnic – 2021
Thank you so much for attending Justice Grove. It felt so great to be outside with all of you. An extra huge thank you to Christine Bowen for all of her work on this!!!!
Wolf Walk
Wolf Wellness Week (September 13-17)—Students engage in fun, health-related activities and exercises while raising money to help fund the enhancement of the playground and an all school reading program.
Fundraising Pledge Packets: Please note: All students will go home Friday, September 10, with their Wolf Walk Pledge Packets. Be sure to look for information on Friday and discuss with your child how they can secure pledges over the weekend and through next week! Donations are due no later than Friday, September 17 at 8:00am to be eligible for the top prizes.
Donations will be accepted online at
https://prairiestarpto.membershiptoolkit.com/fundraiser/1062 . You will be able to share this on social media and send emails to friends and family! If you would like to send a check for your donation, please ensure your student’s name is on it and send it in an envelope marked Wolf Walk. Thank you!
Wolf Walk (Tuesday, September 14): Every student will participate in the Wolf Walk, so please help encourage students to gather pledges and receive prizes. Students should wear their PSE shirts or class color, on this day
Because of the Rabbit
Each family should have received one copy of this book (our all school read) today (Friday). The copy is yours to keep. We are thankful for the BVEF grant that made this possible! There is a reading schedule enclosed with the book so that you can stay on track with both PSE and other schools across the nation reading the book. We will be doing daily trivia on WOLF TV based on the prior night’s reading and your child’s teacher may also have activities planned around the book. We love the feeling of community and conversation that happens when we are all reading the same book! Attached is a Family Fun Pack that will help you extend the fun and learning at home. Also, coming soon look for links to listen to PSE staff reading aloud for some of the chapters!
Questions? Ask Mrs. Hammes jshammes@bluevalleyk12.org
Thanks and Happy Reading!
PSE PTO
Please make sure your family has registered and updated your student's information on our PTO website https://prairiestarpto.membershiptoolkit.com/home. Here you will find our school directory, PTO calendar, volunteer opportunities, spirit wear information, yearbook order forms and lots more! In addition, join our PSE PTO Families private group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/PSEPTO. Thank you for your help!
PSE PTO Fundraiser Nights
September 22 - Chipotle
October 28 - Papa John's
December 8 - Panera
Important Dates:
SEPTEMBER
3-PTO Board Meeting- 9:00 am-date and time change
6-No School
7-Professional Learning Day-No school for students
9-Justice Grove Picnic
13-Picture Day
14-Wolf Walk-PSE specialist will help run
21/22-Book Fair
29/30-Parent-Teacher Conferences-
PSE Yearbook
Please don’t forget to order the 2021-2022 YEARBOOK! It’s an 80-page, hardcover book that makes a fantastic keepsake for your child to remember their time at Prairie Star! Ordering is easy and all online this year from the PTO Website!
https://prairiestarpto.membershiptoolkit.com/home
Pictures Needed: This year's book will include pictures submitted by both teachers and families because of our yearbook team's limited access to the building. We want to see your child and his/her friends so please continue to send us pictures! Currently, we are asking for pictures from Sneak-a-Peek and Back to School as well as requesting for any team sports, extra curricular activities and the Justice Grove Picnic that will be September 9. You can submit pictures using either of these two easy ways:
- Use the Balfour app called “Image Share” to download and upload pictures right from your phone. It’s called ImageShare Balfour, and our project this year is 127759.
- Email them to us at full size (you can do this right off your phone!) at prairiestaryearbook@gmail.com
If you have any questions please send to Sally Groesbeck and Abbie Moles at prairiestaryearbook@gmail.com!
Literacy Update:
How Do Students Achieve Quick Recall?
In 2016, David Kilpatrick, a professor of Psychology, defined orthographic mapping as, “The mental process we use to store words for immediate, effortless, retrieval. It requires phoneme proficiency and letter-sound proficiency, as well as the ability to unconsciously or consciously make connections between the oral sound in spoken words and the letters in written words.” While this seems awfully complex for a young student, Kilpatrick clearly illustrates that the act of learning to read is not simply a visual process. Knowledge of the sounds in the English language is essential too. The concept of orthographic mapping explains why some students are able to successfully spell words for a spelling test but spell the same words incorrectly a week later. Teaching and utilizing a heavily visual approach does not facilitate orthographic mapping, which leads to long-term memory storage and retrieval.
Enter Structured Literacy
Informed by the science of reading, structured literacy is an approach to teaching reading. As a result of the work of a State Task Force on Dyslexia, the recommendations from the group were approved as policies in Kansas in November 2019. One of these policies named structured literacy as the approach to teaching reading in Kansas. Structured literacy is defined as explicit, systematic teaching that focuses on phonological awareness, word recognition, phonics and decoding, spelling, semantics, and syntax at the word, sentence, and paragraph levels. This approach to teaching reading focuses on the sounds of the English language as well as symbols or written components of English. It is characterized by teaching that is systematic, explicit, and diagnostic. This means skills are taught from simple to more complex and teachers use data to inform their instruction.
Benefits of Structured Literacy for Students
When students are taught using a structured literacy approach, which Blue Valley is beginning to implement this year, all students benefit in many ways. First, structured literacy supports orthographic mapping. As discussed previously, orthographic mapping is the process our brain uses to recognize words that are stored in memory. Students will find learning engaging in structured literacy because of its multisensory approach. They will manipulate objects, learn hand signals and verbally name sounds or letters. As students master techniques such as finger stretching sounds in spoken words, identifying how to map phonemes (sounds) using colored chips, decode words using knowledge of syllables, and utilize knowledge of prefixes, suffixes, and roots to determine the meaning of words, they can share them at home. An example of a teacher using these techniques with second graders can be viewed here. Learning in a structured literacy approach is explicit. It is further supported through daily practice and review. This includes spelling and high-frequency words.
How is This Different from the Past?
Structured literacy differs from its predecessor, balanced literacy, in that it focuses on a student’s learning in each component of reading instead of the more globally focused reading level, for example, a C or L.. Structured literacy supports teachers in planning small group instruction that is more data-driven, individualized, and targeted to a student’s specific next steps and strengths. Our new instructional resources in grades K-5 support students and teachers in the shift to structured literacy. The resources include assessments that align well with our universal screening assessment of reading, Acadience, which is administered 3 times per year.