Elementary Reading Update

Accelerated Reader Update for K-5 TCS Students:

Date	1/13/17	1/26/17
AR Points	62,255	69,587
Millionaires	54	68

(Millionaires are students who have read a million or more words since the start of school.)

Visiting Cahaba Elementary

Mrs. Feilds' fourth graders are grouped into teams who hold one another accountable for reading. The team members talk about goals and recommend books to each other. 

Mrs. Feild's rigorous learning targets clearly communicate to students what they should learn today.  

Mrs. Higginbotham's students close read and analyzed poems about Martin Luther King. She differentiated the poems to accommodate various reading levels of her students.  Students used a graphic organizer to record their inferences about the poems, and then will write their own reflections, siting evidence from the poems.   

Third graders in Mrs. Wright's class use a mentor sentence to help them write complex sentences.

Mrs. Windham reads aloud a Series of Unfortunate Events book, stopping to clarify and question. Notice that students are having their snacks while she reads aloud, never missing a minute of instructional time.  Routines are well understood and initiated by students.

Fifth graders prepare to write an expository piece by analyzing a newspaper article about man's first walk on the moon. 

Fifth graders in Mrs. Wrights' class are preparing to write newspaper articles, free of bias or opinion, about the Revolutionary War.

Quotable Quote

“Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage and confidence in the doing.”

—Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
26th U.S. President

Kindergarten Walkthroughs at Paine Elementary

Walk into all 8 kindergarten classes at Paine Elementary and you know why our students become such proficient readers.  Our teachers have such a wealth of content knowledge on teaching emerging readers.  Students are given lots of opportunities to learn letters and sounds and how to put those sounds together to make words.  Our district uses Open Court Phonics to support phonemic awareness and phonics in kindergarten, first, and second grades. But our kindergartners aren't just decoding words; they are reading books and comprehending new content.  They are learning to write using correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.  It only takes a minute to be amazed in a kindergarten classroom.

Ms. Jones has designed lessons that include movement and fun.

Ms. Dillard engages her students in rigorous word work.

Ms. Bland formatively assesses her students by having them hold up cards for beginning and ending sounds.

Ms. Lackey actively engages and formatively assesses students by having them write words and sentences on white boards.  She can provide immediate feedback to individual students.

Ms. Moore utilizes her interactive white board to keep students engaged in learning sight words.

Ms. Barnes' extensive knowledge of phonics serves her students well.  

Students practice writing after their whole group lesson. 

Notice high level verbs in these kindergarten learning targets.  

Visiting Magnolia Elementary Classrooms

The academic coaches, Dr. Jennifer Cardwell, and I are going to attempt to visit classrooms on a regular basis.  Our intent is not to evaluate teachers, but to assess strengths and needs in order to provide appropriate support and professional learning to all schools.  We will periodically share a summary or “state of EE indicators” with each school.  This type of feedback has been proven to be affirming and helpful to teachers in the past. Thank you so much for welcoming us into your schools. 

Today, we had the opportunity to visit kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms at Magnolia.  

Kim Evans teaches Open Court Phonics to her kindergartners.

Ashley Sing helps her student stretch out a word in order to decode it.  

Emily Durham listens to her students read decodable texts.  

Music teacher, Chris Byars, plays a math game with students during the designated intervention period for Magnolia.  

Theresa Bivens provides math intervention for second graders.

Students at Magnolia are developing a genuine love of reading.

Students are developing the necessary stamina to read for extended periods of time.

Kindergarten teachers have developed word lists for students to practice.  They will be rewarded in an assembly when they have mastered all the lists.  

Learning targets that include high level verbs are displayed in each classroom.  

Elementary Reading Update

AR Update for K-5 TCS Students:

Date	12/15/16	1/08/16
AR Points	53,092	58,355
Millionaires	37	48

Setting Goals with Students

Magnolia students set goals for the new year.

Lisa Lothspeich, Cahaba 5th grade math teacher, helps students set goals for working in DreamBox.  Their progress is celebrated and noted on a display outside their classroom.  

At a recent EdCamp, Paine teachers shared information about how they help students set goals and keep data notebooks to record their progress. 

Second grade Magnolia students shade in a chart to keep up with their Accelerated Reader goals each trimester.  

 

From: Teaching Community by Dorit Sasson
 
The process of setting goals allows students to choose where they want to go in school and what they want to achieve. By knowing what they want to achieve, they know what they have to concentrate on and improve. Goal setting gives students long-term vision and short-term motivation.

Having sharp, clearly defined goals, which students can measure, will allow them to take pride in accomplishing those goals. They can see clear forward progress in what might have seemed a long drawn out process.

By setting goals students can:
1.improve their academic performance
2.increase their motivation to achieve
3.increase pride and satisfaction in performance
4.improve their self-confidence

By setting goals and measuring their achievements, students are able to see what they have done and what they are capable of. Seeing their results gives the confidence and assurance that they need to believe they can achieve higher goals.

Basics of Effective Goal Setting
Express goals positively: “To improve my spelling” is a much better goal than “Don’t spell with so many mistakes.”
Be accurate: If students set an accurate goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that achievement can be measured and can be satisfied at achieving it.
Set Priorities: When students have several goals, give each a priority. This helps them avoid feeling overwhelmed and helps their attention to the more important ones.
Write goals down to make them more meaningful.
Keep Goals Small: Urge students to keep their immediate goals small and achievable.
Set Goals Students Have Control Over: There is nothing worse than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond the students’ control.
Set specific measurable goals: If students consistently fail to meet a measurable goal, then they can adjust it or analyze the reason for failure and take appropriate action.