Pow Wow Principal's Press
September 29th
Reminders for Next Week
Please ensure you have all the necessary paperwork from the front office for your conferences. Once you have finished, please give a copy of your sign-in sheet to Rachel Moree for Title I documentation. ** There is a short powerpoint presentation in your mailbox that reviews Tools for Working with Families. Please review it and sign the roster by the sign-in sheets to document that you've completed it by October 5th. This will be a very helpful tool for conferences.
Collaborative Planning:
Below you will find the schedule for collaborative planning next week. Please be sure to come on time and prepared with all of the necessary materials you will need, based on your conversations with admin and coaches.
Managing Response Rates through Talk Moves!
Career Week!!! 4th and 5th Grade will be participating in our first annual event!
Special thanks to Ms. A Patterson for putting together the entire event!
Monday: College or Career Goals During Free Play
Tuesday: Be the Professional During Free Play
Begin creating a story board, rap, poem, story, or media presentation about the career of their choosing.
Wednesday During Free Play Continue working on story board, rap, poem, story, or media presentation
Thursday: Career Day!!!
Moonshot Academy
The Fall literacy program, Moonshot Academy, at Vero Beach Elementary will begin on October 10TH and run through November 16th. It will be every Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4 to 5:30 pm. The goal of the program is to strengthen literacy skills, and engage students in project based learning through engineering and robotics. This will push us closer to the Moonshot goal of having at least 90% of our students reading on grade level by the end of 3rd grade.
To maintain consistency, Moonshot Academy will be conducting professional development and unit planning sessions on Saturday, September 30th from 8am to 2 pm in VBE cafeteria. It is strongly encouraged that the teachers who will be teaching MSA be in attendance. Lunch will be provided!
The teachers who will be working the Moonshot Academy are: Ms. Craner, Mrs. Berwick, Mrs. Browning, Ms. Mathews, Mrs. Smith, Ms. Singewald, Mr. Lee, Mrs. Blue, Ms. Tuck-Henson, Mrs. E. Gonzalez, and Mrs. Blidgen.
See Ms. Blidgen with any questions.
Our #VBEVIP is Mrs. White! Enjoy your special parking spot, and keep making those nominations on Twitter!
Our Crayola Creative Leadership Team Winners are....
We are hoping to start see the amazing strategies of cross-curricular connections all over VBE as a result of the training. Part 2 of the training will take place in December and will include the entire staff (with supplies and goodies)
Please come by Ms. Emerson's office to get your treats!
Updates from Ms. Van Brimmer
Our #KDISlowChat Challenge this week was to be creative in engaging our students and we have a lot of opportunities do this within our ELA block. Here are a few of the ideas that were tweeted out that you may want to use in your classrooms.
Mini-Flashlights: Repurpose your hurricane supplies and have students use a mini flashlight to spot the digraph, spot text evidence, track the text, or whatever skill you want them to highlight. I got mine at the Dollar Store and the kids love them!
Gestures & Funny Faces: Have students act out how the characters are feeling, stage directions in a drama, or their reactions to texts. Give the kiddos a chance to show their personality and bring the text to life!
Writer's Stage: Use your classroom microphone for students share their writer's "voice." Students can share examples of text evidence, elaboration, or an outstanding hook/clincher.
Updates from Ms. Ragley
Charting a Flight Plan for Change...Empowering Students to Use Math and Think Mathematically.
The Standards for Mathematical Practice describe ways in which developing student practitioners of the discipline of mathematics increasingly ought to engage with the subject matter as they grow in mathematical maturity and expertise throughout the elementary, middle and high school years. —Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, page eight
Mathematical Practice #5 Use appropriate tools strategically
What it means to Teachers?
· provide a variety of tools and technology for students to explore to deepen their understanding of math concepts
· provide problem solving tasks that require students to consider a variety of tools for solving.
o Paper/pencil
o Concrete models – base ten, two colored counters, 1 cm cubes, geometric solids, etc.
o Rulers
o Protractors
o Calculators
· Allow students to choose appropriate learning tool
· Creatively find appropriate alternatives where tools are not available
What are students doing?
· Considering what tools are available to use when solving a mathematical problem
· Are familiar with a variety of mathematical tools and use them when appropriate to explore and deepen their understanding of the concept
Daily Mathematical Routines
· Math Talk – Number of the Day – Calendar Math – Everyday Counts
o Effective communication about mathematics is essential to help students develop the thinking, self-questioning
· Spiral Review – 4 Square
o Opportunity for students to revisit and interact with concepts so they remain proficient in the foundational skills needed for higher level work
· Xtra Math – helps kids master basic facts
o Daily for students in grades 3-5
o Teacher must add new students to the program
o Class Reports and Certificates available to print
· IReady Math – 45 minutes of instruction a week
· RTi –targeted small group Tier 2 intervention and enrichment
o Identification and monitoring of skill deficit is based on assessment data
o Resources – Iready Tool Kit, Reteach Go Math, Go Math RTI Strategic Intervention
§ Go Math Resources are available on Think Central
Updates from Ms. Fredrickson
Matching Books to Phonics Features
There are several ways to match books to readers — by reader interest, by reading level, and by the phonics feature(s) a child is learning. Careful pairing of reading with phonics study gives children a chance to apply what they are learning about letters and sounds to the reading of words and stories. Because the goal of phonics instruction is to help children use the alphabetic system to read and spell words, it's important to provide students with this practice.
Why match books to phonics features?
An important step in teaching phonics is to provide students with practice in applying what they've learned to real reading and writing. Effective early reading instruction uses materials (books, stories, poems) that contain multiple words that children can decode. Other instruction might provide opportunities to build and spell words and write stories that also contain the same phonics features.
What should kids try first when they’re stuck on a word?
First, kids should think about what makes sense — using the first letter(s) as a clue. This helps keep the fluency of their reading and helps keep meaning at the forefront. Along with that, kids should correct themselves if what they read doesn’t sound right. Phonics is something kids should use when they still need help figuring out a word.
Use mostly leveled readers: These books have familiar sight words and a lot of longer words that children may not be able to read in isolation but can read with picture and meaning cues. For the very earliest readers, leveled books must be purchased online or in teacher stores. As children become better readers, it is much easier to find leveled books at the library. (For example, leveled books start at Level A. Frog and Toad, an easy reader, is level J.)
Use some sight word readers.
Sight word readers are similar to leveled readers when they are part of a leveled set. Like leveled readers, children usually need to figure out a lot of the words by using context. Unlike most leveled readers, sight word readers identify which new words are being taught in each book– words like the, a, what, etc.
Use a few decodable readers. Decodable readers are very useful for building up phonics skills, and non-readers to assist in building the decoding skills but if they are used in isolation, children do not learn to correct for meaning or syntax.
Have you ever thought about how kids learn to read?
Phonics is just one part of the puzzle.
Kids problem solve as they’re reading using three cueing systems.
This should look familiar! Running Records
a) Semantics (meaning) — what makes sense
“The boy bought groceries at the store” makes sense. “The boy bought gorillas at the store” does not.
b) Syntax (grammar) — what sounds right.
“My friend came to visit me” sounds right. “My friend came the visit me” doesn’t.
c) Graphophonics (phonics) — what looks right.
When readers have a good understanding of phonics, they correct themselves when what they say doesn’t match the print.
Updates from Ms. Keeley
As a reminder Form 1 is due to me by October 2nd.
The Edfoundation hosts our district science fair each year. Here is the link to the science fair page on the edfoundation website -
https://www.edfoundationirc.org/p/60/science-fair#.Wc3J2mhSyUk
Great resources for science fair ideas:
www.education.com/science-fair/
Some of the science fair ideas in the links above include demonstrations. Please make sure your science fair is an experiment that is testable, measurable, and graphable.
Suggestions -
I have seen other schools before take one experiment and then just change the variable in each group or in each class in a grade level. This can make it easier to plan for the experiments.
For example if a standard is about the rate of dissolving-
Group/Class One - Does temperature affect the speed of dissolving? (variable - temperature of water - room temperature, cold, hot)
Group/Class Two - Does the rate of stirring affect the speed of dissolving? (variable - rate of stirring - no stirring, slow, fast)
Group/Class Three - Does particle size affect the speed of dissolving? (variable - particle size eg. powdered sugar, granulated sugar, sugar cube)
You can repeat an experiment that you did the year before IF you have a different group of students and as long as it covers one of your science standards.
Next week we will talk about how to keep a science log. This is the biggest area that students get marked down on.
Please let me know if I can be of assistance to you.
WEEKLY PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT #Kidsdeserveit
continues with Chapter 2 of #kidsdeserveit
Please join us as we dive deeper into our pedagogy and connect with now 6 different elementary schools across the United States!