Monclova Primary
Weekly Bulletin
Events for Week of May 13- 19
RIGHT TO READ WEEK - READERS ARE LEADERS
Monday, May 13
FIELD DAY - WEAR YOUR EXERCISE CLOTHES - $5 DONATION TO YMCA
Readers have a bright future - wear sunglasses
Character Wheel - 9:00 am
Board Meeting - 6:00 pm
Tuesday, May 14
Reading is an adventure - wear flannel or camouflage
Mr. Puppet visit - see schedule on staff calendar
Wednesday, May 15
Readers are Thinkers - wear a hat
2nd Grade zoo field trip - 9:00 - 1:00 pm
3rd grade Sauder Village field trip - 9:00 - 1:00 pm
Thursday, May 16
Readers of today are leaders of tomorrow - bring a stuffed animal
Staff Meeting - 7:30 am
Fire drill - 9:05 am
Principal/Director meeting - 1:00 - 3:00 pm (Betsey out)
Friday, May 17
Generals are Leaders - AW colors and General gear
4th Grade Fallen Timbers visit - 9:00 - 10:30 am
Family Fun Night - 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Announcements
Thank you:
to staff for great day of learning and sharing with one another during our last PD day of the year. It's great to hear of our professional learning and how you have put it to use in your classrooms to improve student learning and engagement.
Fay for being the best school nurse! We are so fortunate to have you at Monclova as you go above and beyond the role of a school nurse. So glad we got to celebrate you this week!
to those staff members that were apart of the Monclova blood drive run through MAPS.
Reminders:
Mr. Puppet schedule:
8:50 am - 9:20 am - AM Kindergarten classes and Preschool
9:25 - 10:05am - Grade 1
10:10 - 10:50 am - Grade 2
11:00 - 12:50 am - Potluck lunch with the staff
1:00 - 1:30 pm - PM Kindergarten and Preschool
1:35 - 2:15 pm - Grade 3
2:20 - 3:00 pm - Grade 4
Next week (May 13) will be the last week to check out books in the library. There are many events going during week so feel free to send kids down before 9:00 am or work with Mrs. Mueller to set up a time for your students to visit.
Next week (May 13) is the last week that the tutors will see their groups. End of the year benchmarking will take place the following week. However, with all of the events during the week they may need to use Tuesday, May 28, too.
Be sure to turn in your parent contact logs. You need to document 3 hours of parent contact outside of scheduled conferences, IEP, planning and 504 meetings.
A reminder that grades need to be finalized on May 29 NOT on the last day of school. Every standard on the progress report must be assessed at some point in the school year!
The building calendar is filling up, please make sure you are keeping up on the events. Most events on are the staff calendar and the live calendar on our website.
May 13 - Field Day
May 13-17 Right to Read Week
May 14 - Puppeteer presentation
May 17 - Family Fun Night
May 21 - Kindergarten Patriotic Program
May 24 - 4th grade talent show
Words of Wisdom and Action..............................
Word walls are used at all grade levels and for all content areas. Do students know to use them as a resource? What purpose are you wanting the word wall to serve in your classroom? As you are reflecting on the year and thinking about changes to make, practices to keep or new practices to try, think about items hanging on your walls. Are they effective and needed or causing student distraction? Below is a take on word walls, something to consider.
Building a Better Word Wall
Transferring ownership of the class word wall to the students can increase their engagement and learning.
By Justine Bruyère April 22, 2019
It was raining again. My second-grade students were indoors for recess and enjoying free time when a student approached me and asked, “How do I spell because?” I responded, “That’s a tricky one—have you checked the word wall?”
The student answered with a familiar tune, “Oh yeah! I forget about the wall sometimes, it’s so high up.” She waltzed over to the word wall and craned her neck to find the word because written at the top of the wall, in my handwriting.
A few moments later, “Mrs. Bruyère?” I looked up to see another student. He paused, then said, “T, e, n, i, s, e, e—how do I spell Tennessee again?”
For 13 years I fiddled with word wall systems, hoping to uncover one that worked for the learners in my class. When the word wall works, the classroom begins to move more fluidly, so it has always seemed worth the effort to improve it.
TAKING ACTION
On a Monday morning soon after that rainy day, I called a class meeting to ask my students for their ideas on how to improve the word wall. A funny and bright student spoke first, “I sort of forget the wall is there most of the time.” No one disagreed. Another student chimed in, “The wall doesn’t have the words I need on it. I know how to spell all—OK, most—of those words already, but the words I need aren’t there.”
Another problem was placement. It was too high—in fact it was hard for some students to see the entire top row of words clearly.
My students shared many ideas during our class meeting that day. Eventually, they selected a section of wall for our words—a section that was accessible to them—and we affixed laminated sheets of white paper to the wall, one for each letter of the alphabet.
This approach to the word wall problem is supported by a social-constructivist, transactional learning theory that learners build knowledge and make meaning through their interactions with each other and with words. My focus centers on teachers and students as active participants engaged in dialogue that supports deep and wide understandings.
A 5-STEP PROCESS FOR IMPROVING THE WORD WALL
1. Finding the right location: I started by asking my students to find the most accessible place in the room for a student-created word wall.
2. Establishing rules together: I asked my students how the wall should function. For example, would they like to draw pictures or tape pictures next to the words? My students decided not to use pictures, but many classes would make the opposite call.
How do students want to manage the wall? And who will write words on the wall—the teacher or the students? My students decided that they would be the ones to add words to the wall. First a student writes a “striving to spell” word on a recipe card, and a friend checks it. I complete an additional check to guide and nurture in-the-moment phonics and feature learning. This nurturing takes on different forms with each child. In one case, it might be stretching the child to notice digraphs or diphthongs, and in another instance it may look like asking a students to explain what they know about the sounds in the words son, done, and tone.
Once those steps are complete, the student who came up with the word records it on the word wall.
Do students want to use certain colors for certain types of words? Color-coding can be a very helpful clue, and my students decided that on their wall, Dolch or grade-level words would be written in blue, nouns in pink, action verbs in green, and adjectives in orange.
3. Igniting real conversations and connections to words: Try asking questions or offering tips. A few suggestions:
- “Do you think that would be a good word to add to our word wall?”
- “I wonder if we can make a list of words that would fit into this word family?”
- “This week, I noticed that ‘irr’ makes the ‘er’ sound in squirrel. What new word surprised you this week?”
- “If you need help with the word different, that’s Kyle’s word. He has offered to share his method!”
- “What other words have a sneaky first letter?”
4. Conferring with students to heighten learning: Occasionally, students will spell a word on the word wall incorrectly. For these cases, I use one-to-one teacher time to do a quick activity, make reference to a text, or play a comparison game to draw the student’s attention to common misspellings and the correct spelling of the word.
5. Celebrating the words: During share time, I encourage students to view the wall and share a reflection about a word that they added, used, or better understand now because it’s on the wall. During this time, I also promote and support new additions to the wall.
After a few weeks of using our revamped word wall, a student asked how to spell Tennessee. The boy who had asked me originally jumped up and said, “That’s my word!” He hopped over to his word and ran his finger along the letters, while explaining his method for remembering to add two S’s.
What was the most important aspect of changing the wall? You might think it was spelling-related, but it wasn’t. The most important aspect of the new word wall was that it was not created by me for them. This wall was created with their hands and held their words, and it provided evidence of their learning.