San Vicente School Weekly Bulletin
A Professional Learning Community-- January 24- Feb 5
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. {Martin Luther King Jr.}
Principal's Message
Welcome to 2022!
I am excited to begin a new year together with all of you. COVID has presented many challenges throughout the last two years and it continues to do so. However, we continue to take all of the necessary precautions to ensure that our San Vicente family is safe.
San Vi team, there are many important things to come for 2022. We have iReady diagnostics, CAA ELPAC, and CAASPP up ahead. Teachers are diligently working to prepare our students for academic and emotional success. I can not ever thank anyone in enough for all of the hours of time that you all put into ensuring that your kids have nothing but the best! I appreciate you!
I am pleased to announce the return of our counselor, Mrs. Yesenia Arreola! Congratulations on your new baby girl! May she bring you all the joy a mother can ever have. I would also like to welcome Ms. Sandra Lara to our fourth-grade team! I am so pleased to have you on our team!
A final word of recognition to Angie, Susana, Maricela, Sofia, Marci, and Lillybeth: You are the foundation of our school. You have all of the fire that fuels the passion and without that fire, our kids would not endure. Thank you for taking on such a huge task of bringing things together during the pandemic challenge! The rest of our team, you have so graciously stepped up to help in our times of great need. Once again, I feel the love and so do our children.
Panther Proud,
Dr. Bailey
Safety (LCAP Goal 3)
Crosswalk Supervision
Directional Signage in the Hallways
Dismissal Teacher Supervision
Food for Thought (LCAP Goal 2) (Edutopia)
5 Ways to Bolster Students’ Confidence in Math
Exposure to a variety of approaches to problem-solving provides students with opportunities to improve their math skills.
By Dani Fry
As math teachers, we’ve all had students who struggled with mathematical problem-solving. Now more than ever, this seems to be a rising cause for concern in the wake of the pandemic. Maybe it’s because students didn’t have as much exposure to mathematical situations due to being at home more, or maybe it stems from the lack of time to fill in learning that has been missed, so we rush more quickly through the concrete understanding within problems to the abstract part of solving.
Regardless of the reason, there are some things we can do to build up our students’ skills in this area.
When we break down learning into smaller, actionable steps, we can partner with our students and empower them to own their learning and see lasting results more quickly. It’s important for students to be aware of the processes they are building as problem solvers and how that will help them to be ready for the future in more than just the math classroom.
5 WAYS TO BOOST STUDENTS’ PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS
1. We can immerse students in problem-solving in all aspects of the math workshop: When teaching a specific computational strategy, embedding numbers in word problems helps students to build operational sense and reasoning behind using a skill. Even number sense and fact fluency can be sprinkled with context. During small group instruction, teachers can strategically and flexibly place students in groups that focus on building specific process skills, not only computation.
Using a simple chart can help you to sort through data and add students to specific groups based on the needs you see as you look through their work. Guided math groups could focus on teach points, such as being able to visualize the problem, utilize a representation to help them solve, or write an answer statement to help students recontextualize the problem after they’ve solved it.
Strategy groups would be focused more on computation or place value needs. If you’re unsure of a student’s understanding, you can place them in the conferring column. Conferring with students one-on-one provides space where the teacher can listen to students thinking out loud to get a better understanding of their mathematical ability.
2. We can give students consistent exposure to high-quality problem-solving: According to Peter Liljedahl, author of Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, “Good problem-solving tasks require students to get stuck and then to think, to experiment, to try and to fail, and to apply their knowledge in novel ways in order to get unstuck.”
The go-to in our district for promoting productive math struggle is Exemplars. This resource encourages students to get stuck and power through really difficult, real-world, multistep situations. The tasks they provide encourage students to show their thinking processes in a variety of ways. You can really tell it’s a great task if all student thinking looks different. In a world where instant gratification has become the norm, we can remind students that when they get stuck, it’s exciting! This challenging moment is part of learning and making new connections in their brain.
3. We can be intentional about providing students with a variety of problems that contain a blend of previously learned skills: This makes it necessary for students to think and make sense of every problem they encounter, instead of being able to anticipate an operation based on current content or the title on the page.
For example, when students practice independently, one or two problems could be on a recently obtained skill, but there could also be a problem from a previous cluster of learning and one for an upcoming concept from a lower grade level. Not only does this provide students with an opportunity to practice their problem-solving skills; it gives the teacher the opportunity to ensure that students are retaining previously learned skills from earlier in the year and from the prior year.
Checking in on skills from the previous year can be a preassessment and helps the teacher to adjust future pacing, since they are informed about student needs before a new cluster of learning is started. Number sense routines are also the perfect time to offer a variety of problems within the math workshop because students get the daily opportunity to see peers solve problems flexibly, observe that computation can be approached in different ways, have a specific time to play with numbers, and build connections across concepts. I’ve compiled some great options for number sense (most of these are free).
4. We can make cross-content connections with reading and math: Utilizing a consistent reasoning routine across grade levels can create a habitual way of thinking for students as they make sense of problems. A good resource for this is Routines for Reasoning. The 3 Reads routine from this resource is great for making connections to reading comprehension. You could ask students, “Who are the characters in this problem? What are they doing? What is the setting? What happened in the beginning, middle, and end?” When students begin to think this way and train their brain to go through this process of visualization, it becomes more automatic, and students start to become sense makers.
5. We can ensure that our grading and assessment practices reflect our values: One way to do this is to bring students into the learning process by using a rubric, such as this one, as a self-assessment tool of the problem-solving processes. I have seen teachers utilize this as a whole class by focusing on one column at a time, where the teacher led the class in scoring teacher-created student work. Students would then later rate themselves and focus on how to move themselves to a higher level within the rubric on that skill. I’ve also seen teachers be very successful with using this rubric during one-on-one conferring.
According to the specific student’s understanding, the teacher can point them to analyze their work based on a specific column of the rubric. The teacher then guides the student to make a plan to focus on that one skill.
This might look like pointing the student to an anchor chart of representations in the classroom as a reference, helping the student with some sentence stems for communication, or even giving the student a word bank to help them learn how to use more math vocabulary within their justification. Teaching students how to use a tool like this one can give them a more concrete way of pushing themselves to deeper levels of learning, not just toward getting the correct answer.
I’ve also seen teachers display “expert”-level student work in the classroom as a guide for other students who are striving toward the same goal. Another encouraging tool could be a checklist with each problem, to give credit for correct representations and justification of thinking in addition to a correct answer.
Parent Corner (LCAP GOAL 4)
Dear parents,
URGENT: During drop off and pick up times, our parking lot is extremely busy. Due to the fact that we have such a small parking lot, I would like to request your assistance in ensuring that you are using caution at all times when you pick up your kids. Safety is our priority at San Vicente. Next, please be sure to drop your students off and pick them up in front of the school. If you are late or if you need to pick up your students early, please check in with the front office. Please help us to keep our campus safe by coming to the office for assistance. We appreciate all that you do for our kids but our campus is currently closed to parents in an effort to keep our students and staff safe. If your child is celebrating their birthday, please work with their teacher to create a celebration that does not involve food or party favors of any as they are completely restricted during COVID as a measure of continued safety for all.
Parents: PLEASE SIGN UP ON PARENTSQUARE to receive regular school and district communications. Check the district website for details. Thank you for your attention to this very important matter.
Please get involved in our ELAC and School Site Council meetings. We need your input to assist in the ongoing task of helping our students grow socially and academically.
REMINDER: Please assist us in making sure that you make use of our upper parking lot before and after school. It is dangerous for our students when parents park their cars in the front parking lot as the driveway gets congested and backs up on Metz Road.
I am requesting your continued support with the following: Please assist your student(s) in filling out their COVID questionnaire each day before sending your students' to school. There is a link available on our district website. Thank you.
Next, please continue to check-in on ClassDojo, Seesaw, and Google Classroom regularly to ensure that you are receiving current news and information about your child's/children's class(es) from their teacher(s).
PLEASE NOTE: Our office hours are from 7:45-4:30 pm.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us for assistance and support! We are here for you!
Finally, please continue to check our school's website, Facebook page, and Parent Square regularly for updates and upcoming events. We value your input and our kids thrive from partnerships.
Thank you for supporting our school!
Important Dates
Jan. 24- Aeries Closes for Progress Reports
Jan. 24- Virtual IEP Marathon Day
Jan. 25- Virtual Staff Meeting 3:25pm
Jan. 27- Virtual ILT Meeting 3:25pm
Jan. 27- Virtual SSC Meeting 4pm
Jan. 31- Virtual IEP Marathon Day
Jan. 31- Earthquake Drill 1pm
Feb. 4- Fun Friday
Feb. 4- Western Day
Library Corner
Counselor's Corner
CONTACTING Mrs. Yesenia Velasquez-Arreola
EMAIL: yvelasquez-arreola@soledad.k12.ca.us
PHONE EXT. 11641
M-F 7:45AM-3:25PM
WEBSITE CLICK HERE
San Vicente Elementary School
Dr. Gaige Bailey
Principal
1300 Metz Rd, Soledad, CA
831-678-6420