News from the Cardinals' Nest
Colchester Elementary School March 2024
A Community of Enthusiastic Learners
Read Across CES
March is Read Across America month. We were fortunate to have storyteller Len Cabral join us to share his tales. Students laughed and sang along with him. Special guests, such as the Superintendent and First Selectman, joined us during lunch to share a book or two. On Friday, March 1st we dressed as our favorite book characters. We strive to keep the excitement for reading growing as our hope is that every child develops a love of reading!
Caring Cardinals Show Kindness
Working together is fun!
As a culmination of Kindness Week, CES came together as a school community today to support staff and student wellness. Our goal for students was to allow them time to connect with one another, engage in technology free tasks, complete hands-on engaging activities, build social skills, and find some extra joy in learning. Classrooms participated in a variety of activities including, but not limited to, kindness crafts, community building activities, puzzles and board games, STEM activities, and buddy reading.
What is happening in literacy?
Readers and writers are hard at work learning about important topics in our Wonders Units. In kindergarten and first grade students are learning about animals. Topics include the animal kingdom, focusing on different kinds of animals and how they survive. First graders are discovering how animals’ bodies help them, and how animals help one another. In writing, students in first grade are writing informational pieces, while second grade learners are writing narratives. The focus for grade two is reading different types of narratives while learning about communities and how members help one another.
It is so exciting to see all the wonderful efforts being put into learning a variety of spelling patterns and incorporating these and all our new vocabulary words in the writing.
Amazing Growth from Fall to Winter
We are very excited to share that students are making excellent growth! We conducted our midyear benchmark assessments and were pleased.
In reading, our Cardinals made amazing growth.
Kindergarten: On and above goal students grew from 26% to 72%. That's a celebration!
First grade: On and above goal students grew from 60% to 71%.
Second grade: On and above goal students grew from 56% to 65%.
In math, growth was as follows:
Kindergarten: 100% of students made growth on the iReady assessment in Algebraic Thinking
First Grade: 100% of students made growth on the iReady assessment in Algebraic Thinking
Second Grade: 80% of students made growth on the iReady assessment in Algebraic Thinking
We read 100 books!
Many classes are celebrating reading 100 books. We love to see our Cardinals developing the love of reading. Many classes celebrated their reading with pajama days.