NBS Principal Newsletter
February 15, 2021
#NBSColtPride
Good morning. I hope you are all staying warm in the frigid temperatures.
We have completed our MAP testing for the 3rd and 5th graders and will move on to our 2nd and 4th graders this week. Please make sure to read your child's' teachers updates for more information. We will have a make-ups for any student that was not able to complete the assessment in the near future. Stay tuned for more information.
#NBSColtPride
#WeAreOne
5 Essentials Survey
This year all students and teachers across Illinois will have an opportunity to participate in the seventh annual statewide Illinois 5Essentials Survey. This survey is designed to generate a detailed picture of the inner workings of your child’s school. As a parent, this opportunity will allow you to share your thoughts on the important elements of school effectiveness in a survey about your child’s school.
On behalf of the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois 5Essentials Survey will be administered online by UChicago Impact at the University of Chicago. The survey gathers data related to five indicators that can predict important student outcomes, including improved attendance and larger test score gains. These five indicators that affect and predict school success are:
· Effective Leaders
· Collaborative Teachers
· Involved Families
· Supportive Environments
· Ambitious Instruction
Prior research in more than 400 schools has shown that schools that were strong on at least three of these “5Essential” indicators were 10 times more likely to improve student learning gains in math and reading than those that were weak on three or more Essentials.
All teachers and 4th through 12th-grade students will be responding to this survey. 5Essentials Reports will be generated for schools if their teachers and/or students meet the response rate threshold of 50 percent. Once complete, these reports will be sent to schools and districts and will be included in the State School Report Card.
Additionally, our district has chosen to provide the optional Parent Supplement survey. If at least 20 percent of Barrington 220 parents complete this survey, a parent supplement report will also be generated. The parent data will not be reported on the State Report Card.
Your participation in the parent portion of the survey will help us understand the conditions at your child’s school and guide improvement. Your identity and survey responses will be kept completely confidential and will never be connected to you or your child.
The Illinois 5Essentials Survey for students and teachers will be conducted between now and April. The Parent Survey Supplement will be conducted between now and April. To take the parent survey please visit https://survey.5-essentials.org/Illinois/parent survey to begin.
For more information about the Illinois 5Essentials Survey, or to view previous years’ Reports, please visit https://www.5-essentials.org/illinois. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact 5Essentials Client Services at 1-866-440-1874 or 5essentials@uchicago.edu.
North Barrington Alumni
Below you will see a fundraiser that supports a club that occurs at BHS. One of our previous students, Olivia Giglio, is the Vice President of this great cause and club. Please join me in supporting her and the club to help feed children throughout the world. We are very proud of our students and will continue to support them whenever we can.
Important information in regards to Quarantine and COVID Cases
- COVID-19 FAQs for Parents/Guardians
- Here is the school guidance that we follow to the letter: https://www.isbe.net/Documents/IDPH-COVID19-Exclusion-Decison-Tree.pdf
- Keeping secondary contacts home is a parent's choice. It is not a CDC, IDPH, or LCHD recommendation.
- Definition of close contact - Someone who was within 6 feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period* starting from 2 days before illness onset (or, for asymptomatic patients, 2 days prior to test specimen collection) until the time the patient is isolated.
- CDC - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/contact-tracing/contact-tracing-plan/appendix.html#contact
- LCHD recommended we NOT send classroom letters, protecting the identity of the person is required and paramount.
- For confidentiality reasons, we won't be identifying the classroom the person was in or if the positive person is a student or adult, as much as possible. This is due to the privacy of the information.
- If there is ever a situation that the nurses are unsure of, they immediately contact the LCHD
- We submit all positive cases students or staff to the health department and they follow up on each case.
- When we feel we do not have enough information (late at night typically), we do a short-term quarantine of any possible affected students or staff until we can feel we definitely know if they are a close contact.
- Our HR department and Director of Nursing contact trace right away (regardless of nights or weekends) when we find out about a positive case.
Math Fact Fluency
As part of our desire to support our students at North Barrington in mathematics, we are launching a school wide math fact fluency routine in all grade levels. Knowing the basic number combinations – single-digit addition and multiplication pairs as well as their counterparts for subtraction and division – is essential for effective computation and problem solving. All children are able to master the basic facts. Children need to develop a good understanding of the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in order to construct efficient mental tools that will help them learn and remember their basic math facts. All students will be receiving a booklet where they will set goals and practice these skills.
We are taking a Three-Step Approach to Fact Mastery at school:
Help children develop a strong understanding of the operations and of number relationships. (Number Sense)
Develop efficient strategies for fact retrieval through practice.
Provide timed mixed practice for students to use their strategies once they have been developed, to increase speed and automaticity.
Ways Parents & Caregivers Can Support Math at Home:
Talk about math in a positive way. A positive attitude about math is infectious.
Encourage persistence. Some problems take time to solve.
Encourage your child to experiment with different approaches to mathematics. There is often more than one way to solve a math problem.
Encourage your child to talk about and show a math problem in a way that makes sense (i.e., draw a picture or use material like macaroni).
When your child is solving math problems ask questions such as: Why did you...? What can you do next? Do you see any patterns? Does the answer make sense? How do you know? This helps to encourage thinking about mathematics.
Connect math to everyday life and help your child understand how math influences them (i.e. shapes of traffic signs, walking distance to school, telling time).
Play family math games together that add excitement such as checkers, junior monopoly, math bingo and uno.
Computers + math = fun! There are great computer math games available on the internet that you can discover with your child.
Talk with your child’s teacher about difficulties he/she may be experiencing. When teachers and parents work together, children benefit.
Important Dates
February 18th and 19th - 2nd and 4th Grade MAP Assessment
March 17th-18th - Parent-Teacher Conferences
March 19th - No School
April 21st - May 5th - Virtual Art Fair
Austin Johnson - Principal North Barrington Elementary
Email: ajohnson@barrington220.org
Website: https://www.barrington220.org/north
Phone: 847-381-4340
Twitter: @NBarringtonColt