Eagle News
Building Blocks of Success Week of May 23, 2016
District Goals
- Goal 1: All students will exhibit Satisfactory or above performance on State assessments. Students below Satisfactory performance will demonstrate more than one year of academic growth;
- Goal 2: Dallas ISD schools will be the primary choice for families in the district;
- Goal 3: The achievement gap by race, ethnicity and social economic status will be no greater than 10 percentage points on all academic measures;
- Goal 4: 95% of students will graduate. Of the graduates, 90% have qualifying scores for community college, college, military, or industry certification;
- Goal 5: 95% of entering kindergarten students are school-ready on a multidimensional assessment;
- Goal 6: All students will participate in at least one extracurricular or co-curricular activity each year.
Campus Action Plan
Key Actions
Allen Elementary will increase student achievement by providing purposeful instruction in Reading, Mathematics, Writing, and Science.
Improve the quality of instruction by increasing rigor and student engagement.
Allen Elementary will improve positive perception of school climate and culture by all stakeholders including students, staff, parents and community.
Campus Improvement Plan
Problem Statement 1: 47% of the "all students" category did not meet the state standard in writing.
Annual Goal: 76% of the "all students" category will meet state standard in writing in the 2016 STAAR.
Problem Statement 2: 67% of the African American students did not meet the state target in reading.
Annual Goal: 76% of the African American students will meet the state target in reading in 2016.
Problem Statement 3: Less than 5% of all students met 2 or more subject area tests at Final Level II in the 2015 STAAR assessment.
Annual Goal: 15% of all students will meet 2 or more subject area tests at Final Level II in the 2016 STAAR assessment.
Week at a Glance...
Magnificent Monday, May 23, 2016
Attendance is due by 9:00 am
Language Arts ACP 3-5
Ice Cream Social at 4:15
Terrific Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Attendance is due by 9:00 am
Social Studies ACP 3-5
Wonderful Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Attendance is due by 9:00 am
Science ACP 3/4 grade
Last day to input grades on Gradespeed
All subjects that do not have ACP must have an exam grade
Thrilling Thursday, May 26, 2016
Attendance is due by 9:00 am
Fabulous Friday, May 27, 2016
Attendance is due by 9:00 am
Son & Mother Dance
Notes:
Let's monitor our scholars and ensure that they bubble in all their answers correctly.
"Avoiding the Summer Slide in Reading and Writing." Edutopia. N.p., 10 June 2014. Web. 22 May 2016.
As an eighth-grade teacher, I constantly hear from high school teachers how "we" don't teach certain topics in middle school. The students, they claim, don't know how to write a thesis statement or don't know how to use proper grammar, and this is clearly because we don't teach it. News flash: We're not just twiddling our thumbs down here in 'tween-land. It's taught. Retaught. Revised. Reworked. All those gaps you might see as deficiencies in the middle school teaching are misguided. What you are seeing, however, is the curse of the summer slide.
Perhaps high school teachers don't realize that this summer slide can happen to the best of students in the shortest of time periods. That's why scheduling finals after winter break is a bad idea. Perhaps, however, there is greater slide between middle and high school because these young humans are constantly morphing in so many ways anyway. Their retention of material, despite our most innovative or rigorous of efforts, can be overshadowed by the changes that these kids are going through physically and chemically.
Regardless, I'm here to report that while some of it might be unavoidable, there are steps to at least help lessen the gap of knowledge leakage.
Some Language Arts Activities to Lessen "Summer Slide"
Below I've focused on some activities to help students continue to interact with words and reading throughout the summer.
#1. Introduce students to what's out there in the media. Research the based-on-books movies that are coming out during the summer months. Show trailers the last day of school (like when the kids from your first period are trapped in your classroom for three hours while promotion is going on elsewhere). Show these trailers and hand out a list of books that correspond to each. Challenge students to read the books before seeing the movies.
#2. Have students develop a way to recommend books before summer begins. Before the end of the year, have students look back over their book logs from the school year. Then, have them write a review (in other words, a form of literary analysis) for 10 of their choices. Have them develop icons that represent their opinions of the literature (thumbs up, stars, books, whatever). Post these reviews on a website that students can click through for recommendations all summer long.
#3. Develop a way for students to contribute the titles of what they are reading all summer long. If you know the students you might have the following year (as I do with my speech elective or my honors classes but not with my mainstream classes) set up a Google Drive document for kids to add to throughout the summer about what they've read. Create a Google Form that they fill out with each book, or they can directly enter them into a public spreadsheet.
#4. Model reading and discussing all summer long by sending out a newsletter or email blast with every book read or literature-based movie that you enjoyed. You can even share thoughts on ones you didn't enjoy. Design a newsletter via MailChimp and make your reports a monthly newsletter (two or three times over the course of the summer). You will find a good percentage of students respond in one way or the other, but even if they just open the newsletter, any interaction over the summer about the love of reading is a valuable interaction.
#5. Work with your local library to develop student-run volunteer programs. Create a program for your students to help run the sign-ups in your classroom so the public library doesn't have to do the legwork of registering volunteers. Provide peer helpers from your own pool of readers. I know my local library has middle schoolers come in during the summer as guides for the kids to learn how to use the library. 'Tweens also run the monthly crafts table. Create the outlet to continue being surrounded by books. So many students don't interact with books once the summer bell rings. Change their summer environment.
#6. Inform parents about their local Youth Writing Project. Much like a summer institute for teachers to hone their writing skills, the Youth Writing Project is a summer program with WP teachers at the helm to guide kids of all ages through innovative writing activities. It's writing camp! Check local college or university campuses for information on whether they are hosting a youth program this summer.
But is a Little "Slide" Really so Bad?
I think it's important to note here that while we would all clearly love to see kids retain every fact and skill ever taught from year to year, this is simply not a realistic expectation. Heck, I have to relearn the darn grading program every year as if I've never seen it before, and this sends our office manager into fits of eye rolling. Given that "slide happens" (perhaps that should be a bumper sticker), I'd like to make a case here for the necessity of a little slide and the need for summer break for those students.
For one thing, summer is important to get a different kind of education. It's the time for soccer camps, theater camps, debate camps, cooking camps. It's the time for building forts made out of branches between the hours of nine and three, for meeting other kids down the block, for reading the books you want to read, and for vacations in far off lands or in campgrounds in your own backyard. As a Facebook post I saw the other day claims, "A child only educated at school is an uneducated child."
Transference is a skill with which K-12 struggles overall. How do students transfer skills from one level to the next, even from one classroom to the next?
The answer comes with making school applicable to the outside world. But that will come, not with more time in a formal school setting; it will come when we all philosophically decide to articulate the skills that students must know in a way that they recognize as applicable to the real world.
Perhaps that's not happening and that's why kids go to their brain's computer and "empty trash" at the start of each summer. Or perhaps it's more about what we all do: take a break from learning one way and instead learn in another.
Perhaps the real goal here is to recognize and exploit the different lessons that have been learned over the summer months rather than condemning students or teachers for lessons seemingly lost. Incidentally, I don't think they've been lost, just packed away in a trunk somewhere for the new teacher to help unfold.
I am very grateful for all that you do. Thank you for the breakfast and your kind words.
TEI News
Roster Verification
In May, teachers will verify their rosters in order to verify the students that will be included in the calculation of their student achievement results. The deadline for teachers to submit rosters is May 25 at 5:00 pm. Principals have until June 10 to approve submitted rosters.
May 23-June 6 will be the teacher rebuttal window in oracle for summative performance evaluations.
June 2 is the last day to conduct spot observations and the last day to hold the summative conferences.
Contract Information
Human Capital Management is preparing to disseminate contracts for the 2016-2017 school year. Contracts will be available for all contract-eligible employees via Oracle Employee Self Service by early May. Please expect an email from notifications@dallasisd.org containing instructions on how to complete the acceptance process once contracts are available. Employees will have two weeks to provide an electronic signature.
According to Texas Education Code, contract eligible employees wishing to resign must do so 45 days before the first instructional day of the school year. The deadline for the 2016-17 school year is July 8, 2016.
A list of contract-eligible positions and additional information may be found on the contracts home page at http://www.dallasisd.org/contracts.
Celebration
Avance Graduation
Hector, one of our parents, graduated from the Asthma Program.
Our Parent Volunteers are the Best!
At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child's success is the positive involvement of parents. Jane D. Hull
On Friday, we had about 12 volunteers packing the fruits and vegetables for 489 students. This group of parents come every month to ensure that our families receive fresh, nutritious fruit and vegetables from the Food Bank. As you can see, our volunteers enjoy what they do.
Kudos
- To Ms. Martinez, Ms. Jenson, and Ms. Rodriguez for their leadership and coordination of the ACP testing. They did an awesome job setting up the logistics of the testing environment. By doing so, we can ensure that our students get the best setting to be successful.
- To all teachers for your flexibility during ACP testing. Thank you for your patience.
May 2016
Patricia Martinez 05/14
Mackenzie Moore 05/16
Theresa Martinez 05/24
Gabe P. Allen Elementary
Sheila Ortiz Espinell- Principal
Franceslia Rodriguez- AP
Russell Sims-AP
Email: sortizespinell@dallasisd.org
Website: dallasisd.org/allen
Location: 5220 Nomas Street, Dallas, TX, United States
Phone: (972) 794-5105
Twitter: @GPATeachers