Something to Celebrate
A Behind -the -Scenes Look into Student Learning
Germs! Boogers! Oh, My!
Our 2nd Grade authors are busy celebrating their Informational books on ways to stay healthy! They have become experts on germs and keeping their eyes, ears and nose healthy! Check this video out!
I Disagree!
What's New?
Math
Our 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teams are working flexibly to meet the needs of their students. This practice takes time and careful study of both formative and summative assessment data. Kudos to them! If you have questions about how this process works, feel free to ask them! After break, our building will focus on problem solving in Math. Over the course of the next few weeks, I encourage you to reflect on the problem solving practices you have established with your students. What is working? What needs tweaking? The Math Practice Standards play a big role in problem solving. Are we using the language of these standards with our students on a daily basis? Lots to think about!
K & 1 Teachers will begin to use the AMC assessment with their students in January. After many conversations about the need for more informative math assessments other than MCOMP, we have decided that this is the route to go. The teachers and I will walk through the assessments together. I know that we will receive valuable information from this assessment that we can use to move students forward. Just as we pass along reading level information from year to year, we will begin to send AMC data as well. Knowing where students fall within the critical phase continuum will be helpful information to pass along. This is mainly for primary teachers, but intermediate teachers will be able to track student progress from kindergarten.
Literacy
Literacy
It’s no secret that Leea moved our cheese! Some of you have restructured your classroom libraries, taken an in-depth look at the details of each reading level and have begun utilizing some of the strategy lessons for Jennifer Serravallo’s Book. Many of us have taken a closer look at plot and how we can incorporate plot into our daily read alouds.
Many of you are in the midst of your Informational Reading and Writing Units of Sudy. After planning with teams, it is evident that integrating science, social studies and/or health is a great use of instructional time. Intermediate teachers, don;t forget about the pre and post assessments for each Lucy Unit that are available on the Heinemann Website once you have registered. Primary, although there are not any assessments available to you through Lucy, we can always create one for your unit. Let me know if you are interested!
Heads Up!
Schoology
You may have heard that Schoology will be the LMS (Learning Management System) that we use to share out student work and assignments. We will have a formal staff introduction to this in February. If you are interested in exploring Schoology before February click the link above and use your Novell login/password. Let Megan and/or I know if you would like help.