Curriculum & Instruction Update
Greene County Schools March 15, 2023 Volume XII Issue 03
EDUCATE * INSPIRE * CHALLENGE * SUPPORT
Instructional Technology
The GA DOE has put together a fantastic resource for teachers. Go to https://inspire.gadoe.org/, or click on the app on your Classlink dashboard and create your free account. You can add your courses or use lesson plans, curriculum maps, links to videos, or instructional materials for your course. You can also upload your content to the site and help build the site for fellow teachers in Georgia. Here is a quick video of what you will find in GA DOE Inspire:
https://www.loom.com/share/2d5674f1615a4e8fa088dcad9acf47bf
Testing season is in full swing and I would like to share our testing calendar with everyone so you will know what tests are scheduled for specific dates and buildings. Our testing calendar was put together with the input of all of the buildings and can be accessed here. EOG and EOC teachers can access some information and resources by joining my Canvas course at https://greene.instructure.com/courses/9516
In each newsletter, I will select a few of our software programs and highlight our top users throughout the district. Shout out to our top users so far this year on our apps!!!
Canvas – Antonio Duran, CMS
IXL – Summer Ward, GCPS
Renaissance Learning – Heather Reyes, CMS
iReady – Summer Ward, GCPS
PBIS Rewards – Ashley Llewellyn, CMS
Congratulations to our students that participated in the Student Technology Competition. The Regional Student Tech Competition was held on Saturday, Jan. 21st at the Barrow Arts and Science Academy in Winder. Greene County was represented by CMS students Kelis Brown, Jaxxon Armour, Brandi Johnson, McCall Jones, E’mari Armour, and Brandi Johnson. We had two projects to bring home medals in the competition. Kelis and E’mari placed third in their age group and category. Brandi placed third in her category and Group. A special thank you to Mr. Wesley Glosson and Mrs. Sheila Williams for volunteering to be judges in Winder! We look forward to this competition growing in the upcoming years. Finally, a big thank you to the teachers that incorporated this into their class activities!
Here are some interesting websites and apps (freebies) to use in your class.
Social Studies- “History Maps” – think of this as combining Google Earth with a History textbook. (https://history-maps.com/?utm_campaign=mb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew).
As you read the text, the map moves to the part of the world that relates to the text. Even if you don’t teach Social Studies, this site is still pretty cool. Do you need a video to enhance your lesson? Use Crash-course on Youtube (https://history-maps.com/?utm_campaign=mb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew) to find relevant videos on almost any topic.
For our younger students, teachers give https://www.vooks.com/ a try. Vooks is an entire library of storybooks brought to life with animation, read-aloud animation, music, and read-along text. Teachers get a free subscription for life!
Teachers can also save time with videos, pre-made lessons, assignments, and quizzes with PBS Learning (https://gpb.pbslearningmedia.org/). Just click on the “subjects” tab and select your area and explore. Teachers and students can create a free account and use this valuable state-standard resource from GA Public Broadcasting.
Third Grade Rocks
Third-grade students had an awesome opportunity in the STEM Lab with Mr. Garrett to create rock candy. After learning many new facts about heat and how igneous rocks are formed, students were able to create their own rock candy. Students had to maintain a detailed log of their candy and observe the changes just like a scientist. The final stage was to enjoy their creations!
100th Day of School
A huge milestone for any primary age student is counting to 100. As students are learning to count, we recognize patterns, groups of tens, skip count, and one-to-one correspondence. So naturally, we count the number of days school is in session and celebrate the milestone of the 100th day of school. This year we had a school full of 100-year-old boys and girls walking the halls with canes, walkers, bent over holding their backs with their dresses, glasses, and gray hair. Students celebrate the success of one hundred days of school with a day full of activities such as counting objects, grouping objects, skip counting, studying patterns, counting the number of words we can read, how we could spend $100, how many jumping jacks can you do in 100 seconds. Some classes created displays at home to share with their classmates. Some of the displays we had this year were made out of candy, beads, stickers, and even pennies. This time of year always brings a unique spirit to the day as we celebrate being 100 days smarter, brighter, and wiser.
PBIS Heroes at GCPS
Anyone that enters our building will hear the buzz around our school about HERO expectations. At GCPS, we strive to create everyday HEROes that meet the call of our PBIS expectations. We take these expectations seriously and want students to not only learn them for themselves but also look for them in others. In our building, H is for hardworking, E-engaged, R-respectful, and O- organized.
In order for students to have an understanding of these expectations, we spend time in the fall when school starts and then again upon returning from Christmas break to teach and reteach the behaviors through what we have named PBIS boot camp. Students rotate to each area of our building to learn and model the expectations for that area. The areas students visit include the hallway, restroom, playground, and cafeteria. Also during this time, teachers take time to review classroom HERO expectations along with technology usage.
Outside of the boot camp refreshers, students earn points for displaying appropriate behaviors in these areas. At the end of each month, we celebrate these accomplishments with a school-wide incentive. The PBIS team hosts a variety of events that allow students to have fun celebrating their positive choices. In December, we hosted the “Reindeer Games” which allowed students to participate in a variety of fun games. We had parent volunteers and teachers run stations such as snowball toss, reindeer antler toss, bow toss, pin the tail on reindeer, and penguin waddle. For February, we hosted Football Shenanigans where all stations were football related. Students played the positions of the center trying to hike the ball into a basket, the quarterback throwing the ball at a target, and trying to knock the lineman off the table with a football. Students also had a chance to practice their art skills by learning to draw a football.
Creating positive experiences for students is important to us and one way we can do that is to make students feel appreciated when they are displaying the HERO expectations that we teach daily. This is one of the many reasons we feel that a monthly celebration is beneficial. Students want to participate. Therefore, learn how to not only make positive choices but also learn how to work towards a goal.
Read Across America
CBJ PreK Celebrating Black History Month
100th Day of School
7th grade Novel Study
Mrs. Beal’s 7th grade ELA students have been reading All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. They have created a character development analysis and are currently working on symbolic representations of themes found in the novel. For example, some students drew scales to represent the idea of justice. Students enjoyed this hands-on activity that shows their understanding of 7th-grade ELA standards.
Read Across America
Students had the best day celebrating Read Across America Day! We had special visitors from the community that came to read to our students. Our 5th graders dressed up as their favorite book characters, then went on a field trip to CBJ preschool to read to the preschoolers. It was a special experience for the students and teachers. 8th graders wore sports jerseys to “team up for reading” and enjoyed getting to have read-alouds in their content areas, as well as independent reading time.
Art @ CMS
Students are getting creative while learning art with Ms. Llewellyn! 7th-grade art students have been learning about Pop Art. They studied Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-like artwork. Most students utilized onomatopoeia in their art, which allowed them to review one of their ELA standards about figurative language. In high school art, students have been working on self-portraits to show an understanding of proportion, form, and value - all of which also relate to math standards. Ms. Llewellyn always takes the opportunity to make cross-curricular connections in art!
National Read Across America Week at GCHS
Guest Author
Guest author, Ms. Karen Robertson, kicked off Read Across America Week at Greene County High School as she shared highlights with students from her book, Epiphany: Journey to Finding the Real You.
Musical and Literacy
The GCHS Band continued the Read Across America celebration providing musical selections sharing the connection between music and literacy -- music not only teaches the skill of reading music, but it also helps to develop listening skills.
Book Tastings
Throughout the month of March, we will continue the Book Tasting Event, which will give students an opportunity to sample or “TASTE” books that have been pre-selected by the media specialist.
Cell-abrating Collaboration
Mrs. Calicott and Mrs. Drane are trying something new this semester at GCHS. They’re both teaching segments of biology this semester, and they have decided to take a leap of faith and fully collaborate on their courses. Mrs. Drane is the first to say that biology is not her strongest science discipline, while Mrs. Calicott loves all things biology. Together, they develop the lesson plans for their classes, the notebook activities, the class activities, the labs, and the assessments. You’ve got to see these two in action as they work through how students would think about a test question or discuss ways to make things clearer for students to understand. Excellent collaboration!
Recently, biology students learned about the cycling of matter and energy flow in living organisms and ecosystems through photosynthesis and cellular respiration. These two processes are difficult for students to conceptualize and understand, so our teachers went to work to develop an activity for students to model each of the processes and actually carry out the chemical changes that occur. Utilizing chalk markers, table tops, paper, and scissors, students would be able to build a glucose molecule from carbon dioxide and water within a tabletop chloroplast followed by breaking down the glucose in a tabletop mitochondrion. Not only did these teachers collaborate to create the activity, they then joined forces and co-taught the lessons together using the team teaching model to ensure that all students could be supported through the modeling activity.
GCHS Gets the Ron Clark Experience, the Harry Potter Way
Ms. Julie Benkoski, a science teacher at Greene County High School, in addition to other secondary teachers and administrators across the Greene County School District, recently visited The Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. The visit included a campus tour, the chance to observe a classroom lesson, and the exciting opportunity to be slide certified! And yes, Ms. Benkoski is “slide certified.”
Ms. Benkoski’s excitement and enthusiasm from this experience led her to provide highlights during a Harry Potter Wizard’s Work-themed professional learning session. Ms. Benkoski shared various engagement strategies, ways to create a climate and culture that promotes success for all students, and ideas for building meaningful relationships with students. The amazing presentation, complete with videos from the academy, not only inspired teachers to implement changes within their classrooms but throughout the school.
Putting a Strategy to Practice with a Twist
Ms. Oglesby, GCHS Environmental Science teacher, decided to flip the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model on its head! If you've ever taught science, science teachers present the essential information and then make the connections with a lab. Not this time. The Owl Pellet Lab was presented to the students FIRST! She wanted to see what the students could discover within their groups and to connect the information.
The purpose of the lab is for her students to learn about what the owl eats in the ecosystem. Students were placed in groups, and each was given an owl pellet to dissect. Students found in the pellets bones of small animals eaten by the owl. The students examined the bones to determine the type of bone it was and the identity of the small animal it was in that ecosystem. A rich discussion ensued as the students were examining the Owl Pellets. Great job, Ms. Oglesby!
Students are exploring and discussing what wonders the owl
pellets hold for the students to discover.
Young Georgia Author Winners
Special shout out to all our authors in Greene. We had a record number of submissions this year and we are pleased to announce we had several first-place winners!
All 1st place selections have been submitted to our RESA region (Northeast Georgia) to compete in the regional competition. The student pieces were truly amazing! Please congratulate these students when you see them!
GCPS YGA Winners
First Grade: Jaidyn Aliece (2nd Place)
Second Grade: Mikel Callaway (1st Place), Avery Sorrow (2nd Place)
Third Grade: Ja'Laylah Rodriguez (2nd Place)
CMS YGA Winners
6th Grade: Ma'Chal Teemer (1st Place), Kaytlin Williams (2nd Place), Brandi Johnson (3rd Place)
7th Grade: Zoe Jarrett (2nd Place)
8th Grade: Macy Moore (2nd Place)
GCHS YGA Winners
Teaching & Learning Updates
Gifted Information
Spring Gifted testing will occur after our last administration of NWEA. Any student with a score above 90% will be automatically referred for testing. If you have another student that you’d like to refer, please email Tara Burdette. Testing will be complete by the end of the school year so that students begin next school year with their gifted services in place.
Professional Development:
Professional Development:
Our next (and last) district PD day for this school year is May 30, 2023. We look forward to wrapping up a great school year and offering some great PD sessions!
Tara Thompson, EL Programs/MTSS
English Learner Programs
After attending the GATESOL Conference last semester, Jimmie Gilbert, Academic Coach at GCHS, and Morgen Gay, Academic Coach at CMS, collaborated this semester to plan and facilitate EL professional learning in the buildings to share with the entire faculties strategies to support ELs that they learned at the conference. Thank you, Ms. Gilbert and Mrs. Gay, for collaborating with the ESOL Department to share the responsibility of educating EL to the best of our ability in our district!
ACCESS Test
MTSS Updates
This quarter GCSS attended several professional learning opportunities to improve our MTSS practices. In January, Mr. Chris Williams, Assistant Principal at CMS; Ms. Jessie Draper, Assistant Principal at GCHS; and Mrs. Tara Thompson, MTSS Coordinator, attended the SSTAGE Promising Practices Conference in Athens, GA. The team learned of best practices in MTSS in other districts around the state are implementing. Upon return, the team discussed next steps to bring these practices back to our schools. We appreciate these individuals taking the time to focus on this important component of education.
In February, Mrs. Brenda Adams, an EIP teacher at GCPS; Mrs. Kelly Rogers, Director of Special Education; and Mrs. Tara Thompson, MTSS Coordinator, attended the Dyslexia Drive-In at the Oconee County Community Center. The team received updates on the Dyslexia Bill, Senate Bill 48, and best practices in teaching literacy through the structured literacy approach. Additionally, the team was able to review our instructional practices and MTSS processes as it relates to literacy. The work on improving those practices will continue next year with the leadership of the GCPS Dyslexia Committee. We are thankful for the time and dedication the team is taking to review our practices and consistently provide better educational opportunities for our students.
GaDOE Updates/Math Resources
New Standards Updates
- NEW for 2023! Georgia's K-12 Mathematics Standards (gadoe.org) - This page provides resources to support the implementation of the newly adopted mathematics standards (Implementation - Fall 2023).
Georgia Milestones Parent Q & A
Georgia Milestones Parent Q & A
Georgia Milestones Parent Q & A (Spanish)
2022-2023 Study/Resource Guides
Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 | Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8 | High School Physical Science (Grade 8 only)
American Literature and Composition | Coordinate Algebra | Algebra I | Biology | US History
Study/Resource Guides in Braille Ready Format
Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 | Grades 6-8 | EOC
Georgia Milestones Achievement Level Descriptors for Parents
Understanding the Georgia Milestones Achievement Levels
Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 | Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8 | High School Physical Science (Grade 8 only)
American Literature and Composition | Coordinate Algebra | Algebra I | Biology | US History