The Renaissance Bulletin

Dear Renaissance Families,

Welcome back to our returning families for another year at Renaissance, and a special welcome to all of our new families. I hope my message finds you all well, and the school year is off to a great start. I'm so excited to begin another year with you, and to share this year's first edition of The Renaissance Bulletin. This was designed last year for our families with the goal of providing an in-depth look at what's happening at our school and within our community. We want to keep you informed about all the great things happening both now and in the future. Our goal is to “open up” the school a bit more while sharing stories from the classrooms and throughout our school. There will be periodic updates from our Lower and Upper schools, Specialty, Student Services, and our Family Engagement Coordinator. I hope you find this information useful and informative.

As a former Renaissance parent, meeting and speaking to our families is one of my favorite parts of my job so please email or call me anytime at abuckmire@brcps.school or 617-357-0900 ext 1175 if you have questions or concerns.

My sincere thanks for all that you do each and every day to make our community such a special place.

Thank you,

Alexandra

Our K1-2 star students have been working diligently, with loads of joy, to adjust to their routines and school day. With our Positive Behavior Incentive work, all students can learn STAR STUDENT Tickets for being respectful, responsible and safe. Students individually earn these tickets and may come home with a sticker on their uniform shirt showing off their hard work! As students earn tickets, these tickets go towards a classroom and grade level bucket. Once that bucket is full the grade level will celebrate, you'll receive an email so that you can praise them at home as well.

This trimester, students in K1-2 are working through themed units of study beginning with COMMUNITY. In this unit, they read, write and discuss what it means to be a part of a community and what they can find in their community and different communities. In math, our students are exploring grade level standards through Number Corners (calendar math) and work places (math games). This year, students are also all participating in an exciting program called ST Math. This is a nonverbal game in which kids problem solve with a penguin named Jiji (ask your kids about this!) and help her on her math puzzle journey.

Students have participated in Fall benchmark assessments across K1-2. We use this data to inform our instruction and an intervention/enrichment time called What I Need (WIN) block. Reading and math teachers work with classroom teachers to provide support and small group instruction for students. Groups are determined based on the information we gathered from the beginning of year assessments and student progress will be monitored on a regular basis. The beginning of year data collected is incredibly helpful to ensure we are providing each student with instruction focused on what they need.

Please click here to read the assessment memo that went home to families earlier this month. We look forward to sharing more with you all soon about your child’s individual progress during WIN time and beyond.

• Benchmarking Assessments: All students throughout the months of September and October took benchmarking assessments to collect data on where each student is in regards to grade level skills. If you are interested in learning more about your child's current skill level, please reach out to your child's teacher.
• Helpful Guides to learn more about what is expected for your child at each grade level
• 3rd Grade (English)/ 3rd Grade (Spanish) / 3rd Grade (Portuguese)
• 4th Grade (English)/ 4th Grade (Spanish)/ 4th Grade (Portuguese)
• 5th Grade (English)/ 5th Grade (Spanish)/ 5th Grade (Portuguese)
• 6th Grade (English)/ 6th Grade (Spanish)/ 6th Grade (Portuguese)
• Hands On, Inquiry Based Learning: Across contents, students are engaging more with hands on, inquiry based learning that involves use of math manipulatives, collaborative group work, projects and culminating tasks that include showing off their skills and content knowledge.
• Writing Focus: There is a schoolwide focus on strengthening students writing abilities across the various writing genres, narrative, informational and argumentative. This includes analyzing a variety of authors in these genres, analyzing student exemplars and conferencing in writing with focus individualized goals both with a teacher and with peers. We look forward to showing off some of our writing pieces in the upcoming bulletin!

• Celebrating LatinX/Hispanic Heritage Month: Throughout September and October, we celebrated LatinX/Hispanic Heritage Month. Teachers utilized morning meeting to discuss people of the LatinX & Hispanic culture who have made an impact within their communities and history. Teachers also extended the celebration within grade level community meetings and through various texts that celebrate characters from LatinX/Hispanic backgrounds.
• 6th Grade Student Council: 6th Grade Students who were interested applied to be in various positions for our 6th grade student council. Those eager for the President and Vice President positions wrote and delivered speeches in front of our 5th and 6th grade scholars. We are incredibly proud of all that applied and the thoughtful speeches that were delivered sharing how they want to make positive changes for their community. The 6th grade students vote and below are the final members of the student council board

President: Abrianna Mota

Vice President: Cedrick Enoma

Secretary: Sloane Francis

Treasurer: Omaree Sabir

• SAVE THE DATE: Conferences will be held on Thursday, December 14th from 4:00-6:00 and Friday, December 15th from 12:00-3:00. More information to come from your child's teacher.
• Trimester 1 Report Cards will be available to families beginning on December 11th via the Powerschool Parent Portal

• Nov. 12 Veterans Day: No School
• Nov. 13-17 Kindness Week

• Nov. 17 Barn Dance Day
• Nov. 22-24 Thanksgiving Recess
• Dec. 1 Trimester 1 ends