OES Spring Newsletter 2013

7/29/2019 OES Spring Newsletter 2013

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Friday, March 1st was Na-tional Read Across Amer-ica Day, in honor of Dr.Seusss Birthday. To cele-brate, students at OES hada door decorating contestand tried to guess the num-ber ofgoldfish in thelibrary goldfish bowl.

Throughout the week, stu-dents celebrated with crazysock day, striped shirt day,dress like your favoritestorybook character day,read my shirt day and hatday.

Wednesday evening, Feb.27th was K-6 Family Liter-acy Night at the PLC.Children and their familiesreadScrambled Egg Super,by Dr. Suess, and got toinvent their own bird andits egg. All who attendedcelebrated Dr. Suesssbirthday with cake and a

family photo booth.

Thank you to the many

parents who came into ourclassrooms asMystery

Readers. Happy Birthday

Dr. Suessfrom OES!Many thanks to the Octo-rara K-6 Reading Special-

ists who organized the

weeks events!

READACROSS

AMERICA

A NOTE FROM MS. WILSON

Dear Parents/Guardians:

At OES, Reading Work-shop looks much like acoachs practice. Stu-dents have been given agreat deal of instructionand guidance on how tochoose a just rightbook. The workshoptime begins with a 10-15minute mini-lesson dur-

ing which the teacherreads aloud and modelsthe new skill or strategyfor students. Studentsare then released to theirreading spots to practicethe new skill or strategyas they read their inde-pendent reading book.As they read, they arerequired to capture their

thinking on sticky notes,or complete an inde-pendent, directed read-ing task. The stickynotes, journal entries, ortasks provide evidenceof the students thinkingas he/she applies thenew learning. Whilestudents are readingindependently, the

DATES TO REMEMBER:

March 13-Parent-Teacher Conferences

March 14-Family Math Night, OIS

March 28-April 1No School, Spring

Break

April 8-11, 15,16-=PSSA Math and

Reading

April 17--4th Grade 24Tournament

April 23-244th Grade Science PSSA

PA Common CoreNew Standards 2

A Peek Inside Mrs. Schurrs Class 4

Native American Dwellings in Room 9 5

PSSA Testing: Important Reminders 5

PMEA Chorus Fest 6

The Librarian from the Black Lagoon 5

Iroquois Healing Masks 4

Inside this issue:

OESH

appen

ings

OC

TORARAELEMENTARYSCHO

OL

Volume 1, Issue 2

Spring 2013

Kaitlyn Nuse as Charlotte fromCharlottes Web, by EB White f

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Please note, that Reading Workshopis only one, very important, part of ourELA instructional time. Students alsoparticipate in literacystations, writing work-shop, vocabulary/wordstudy/spelling andguided reading. Guidedreading allows teachersto group students by

similar reading levels and abilitiesand focus on particular areas of need:fluency, phonics, literary analysis.

So, although students

are not being sorted

by ability and sent outof the classroom to

different reading

groups, through the

teacher may conference individuallywith several students and/or may pullseveral students into a small groupwho may be struggling with the samethings. Additionally, a teacher maysee that a student or students havealready mastered that skill or strategyand this provides opportunity for theteacher to work with those studentsso they can move on.

There has been much discussion ineducation about the adoption of theNational Common Core Standards inthe State of Pennsylvania, and there-fore a change in standardized testing.Please know that those changes will notoccur until the 2014-15 school year ingrades 3-8 when students will be re-quired to demonstrate proficiency on agrade level math test aligned to theCommon Core State Standards, and onan English/Language Arts test alignedto the Common Core State Standardsfor Literacy. It is important for you toknow that the new standards requiremuch more in depth understanding,conceptual knowledge, and criticalthinking for students in all grade levels.

So, how does the change in state stan-dards affect your childs education?

Lets take a sport, any sport. Pretendyou are the coach, or think back to atime when you played on a sports team.Our athletes get better and excel be-cause the coach is able to provide in-struction on a focused skill set and thenthe players have the opportunity topractice and apply what they havelearned while the coach facilitates thepractice and responds to the individualneeds of the players. The coach talksand models the skill for maybe 10-15minutes. The players practice formaybe 40 minutes while the coach cir-culates among the players, works indi-vidually with some, repeating the mod-eling if necessary, and even workingwith a small group of players who arestruggling. The athletes do the majorityof the work during the practice, and

those doing the work learn the most.

Teaching in a classroom should be verysimilar to coaching a sport. Unfortu-nately, over many years, we have cometo equate teaching and learning withsitting in a class and listening to ateacher do the majority of the talking,taking notes, completing worksheets(for which there is only 1 correct an-swer), and then being measured byhow many we got right on those work-sheets or on a multiple choice test andthen by the ultimate measureour re-port card grades.

The new state standards ask us toteach children not just the content andanswers, but to teach them how to thinkto get to the big ideas and deeper un-derstandings in the content that wepresent to them. They require us to

teach

PSSA scores. Its important to re-

member, that Readers Workshop is

not a program, but rather an instruc-

tional model that has been around

since the late 1970s.

We hope you have seen the growth in

your child as a reader. If you would

like more information about Reading

Workshop, or the research behind it,

workshop model, teachers are able to

match the instruction to each stu-

dents needs. This doesnt mean

your child isnt getting what he or she

needsin fact, they are getting more

of what they need. Weve seen theprogress in our fluency gains, in the

conversations students are having

about their texts, the increase in vo-

cabulary, and hopefully in your childs

see the website above, or, if you pre-

fer, feel free contact me to schedule

an appointment.

Sincerely,

Ms. Wilson

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Reading Workshop, continued from page 1

PA COMMON CORENEW STANDARDS INEDUCATION

It is important to remember that

Reading Workshop is not a program,

but rather an instructional model that

has been around since the late

1970s

NEWSLETTER TITLE

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar12/vol69/num06/Every-Child,-Every-Day.aspx

Continued on p. 3


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VO LUME 1, I SS U E 1

grades K-4, the district has re-writtenand is implementing the new commoncore math curriculum. Teachers havebeen and will continue to be providedwith professional development that sup-ports the teaching of the new curricu-

lum. In some cases, you will see skillsand concepts in math being taughtmuch earlier than they used to be. Theemphasis in math shifts from focusingon the right answer to a focus on thethinking a student is required to demon-

strate that led him/her to the answer.

In grades 3-6, the district is in process

of re-writing the English/Language Arts

Curriculum, much of which is already

being implemented. What we realized

was that our old reading programsthebasal readers, worksheets, end of story

questions and comprehension tests---

did not meet the rigor of the new stan-

dards. We realized we needed to di-

rectly teach students the thinking skills

your children to think critically by ana-lyzing and synthesizing information tosolve problems in math. They requireus to teach your children to apply think-ing strategies and to monitor their ownthinking when reading texts. They re-

quire us to teach your children to makeinferences, come to conclusions, formopinions and support those with text-based evidence.

Sound overwhelming? A bit. The goodnews is, we are well on our way. In

lish/Language Arts see the following

website:

http://www.pdesas.org/Standard/Commoncore

required when reading to learn and how

to monitor their own thinking when do-

ing so. To make that happen, we

needed to be better coachesand give

students more time for guided practice

in the skills they were learning and pro-vide them with opportunities to apply

those reading skills and strategies to

books on their independent reading

level. From that need, came the move

to Reading Workshop.

For more information on the PA Com-

mon Core Standards for Math and Eng-

BOX TOPS FOR EDUCATION:Keep sending in your box tops! This

year weve raised over $800 for OES.

Thank you!!!

Page 3

PA Common Corecontinued from p. 2

READ ACROSS AMERICA DOOR DECOR


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Iroquois healing group who would

attempt to scare out bad spirits from

sick tribe members. Some bad spir-

its caused disease and others caused

bad behavior. Their job was to scarethe bad spirits using masks, chants,

rattles, and dance in hopes that they

would leave the sick body.

Mr. Noons fourth graders recently

completed a social studies unit of

study on early Native Americans

and their interactions with Euro-

pean settlers in Pennsylvania. Dur-ing the unit the children learned

about the Iroquois False Face Soci-

ety. The False Face Society was an

Here is a snapshot of our class!In writing, students learned

how to write ahow topiece. One funactivity was chewing gum and trying toblow bubbles for the writing prompt,How to Blow a Bubble.

Currently, thestudents are writing different persuasive

paragraphs. They seem to be having funtrying to get the audience ontheirside. Soon the class will be learningabout different types of poetry and writ-ing their own.

In math, the students are prac-ticing their multiplication facts. By theend of the year, all students should havemastered their facts. Remember flashcards or First in Math are both greatways to practice! The students just fin-ished a unit exploring multiplication andfinding area. The next unit is on meas-urement.

In readers workshop, the classis learning all about informationaltexts. It is amazing to hear what the stu-dents have learned through their read-ing. I have been encouraging the students

to check out books on subjects they are

interested in, be-cause it makesreading so muchmore fun!

In sci-

ence, we havebeen studyingchemicals. Through this unit the studentsare exploring the different parts of thescientific process. It has been really ex-

citing!The stu-

dents are reallylearning a lot andbringing a positiveattitude everyday. Ireally admire all oftheir hard work andlook forward to the

next few months!

Kevin Henkes. In the story, Chrysanthe-

mum does not like her name, but by theend, she realizes how special it is and

grows to love it. The students enjoyed

hearing older students read and had ques-

tions for the girls when they finished.

Thank you to all of our mystery readers

for sharing your love of reading with our

class!

The third graders in Mrs. Anthonys

room have enjoyed the surprise of mys-tery readers who have come in

throughout the school year. Parents,

school staff, and even other students

have come in to read. Students never

know who may pop in! Two fourth

graders, Sophia Zeiders and Mia Gaynor

came in and read Chrysanthemum by

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IROQUOIS HEALING MASKS

A PEEK INSIDE MRS. SCHURRS CLASS

WHOS THAT READER?

OES HAPPENINGS


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VO LUME 1, I SS U E 2

jects were then enthusiasticallyshared with the rest of the class. Abig thank you goes out to Mr.Henry, our student teacher fromLincoln University, who directed

this unit. All students thoroughlyenjoyed participating in this unitand learning a bit about the life-styles of Native Americans.

The third grade students in Mrs.Hetricks class have been learningabout Native Americans throughnonfiction reading. Students re-searched Native American dwell-

ings and then created scaled-downmodels of their favorite type ofdwelling. They also used their owncreativity to add design elementssuch as petroglyph style drawings,and totem poles. Completed pro-

lowing are some suggestions to

help your child do well: Have your child get to bed early

so they are well rested.

Provide your child with a good

breakfast.

Please be in school and on

time. Being on time by getting

an early start will reduce the risk

PSSA Reading and Math Testing

will be April 8-11 and April 15and 16 for all 3rd and 4th grad-

ers. PSSA Science Testing will take

place on April 23 and 24 for 4th

grade only.

It is important that you encourage

your child to do his/her best. Fol-

of stress.

If you need to make any ap-pointments, please do so af-

ter school.

Early Dismissal at 12:30: 4/8-4/11

Full Days: *4/12, 4/15, 4/16

(*Note4/12 is a snow make-up day and

Page 5

ROOM 9 CONSTRUCTS MODELS OF NATIVE AMERICAN

DWELLINGS

2013 PSSA TESTING: Important Reminders

As part of Readers Workshop in Ms. Miller's room, one group of students performed a play adapted

from TheLibrarian From the Black Lagoon . Lashani Brown, Matthew Cuddy, Annie Fuller, and Darren Ross

practiced their fluency working on phrasing, expression, intonation, and projecting their voices. Despite all

of the gossip and exaggeration about the librarian, the kids discover that they are going to love the library

after all!

THE LIBRARIAN FROM THE BLACK LAGOON


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JUMP ROPE FOR HEART

Jump Rope for Heart will be held

on March 22nd at OES. Donation enve-

lopes will be coming home soon. Please

help in this wonderful cause to help those

affected by heart disease. If you would

like to volunteer please contact Mr. Cooper

or Mr. Baumgardner.

Principal: Ms. Elena M. Wilson x2510

Principals Secretary: Mrs. Susan Conrad x2501

Attendance/Discipline Secretary: Mrs. Dorothy Mattick x2500

Guidance Counselor: Mrs. Michelle Moran x2531

Instructional Support Teacher: Mrs. Donna Edwards x2025

Reading Specialist: Mrs. Amy Steinmetz x2500

School Nurse: Mrs. Margaret Michell x2541

Food Service Director: Mrs. Linda Neff x3581

104 Highland Road

Atglen, PA 19310

610-593-8238

www.octorara.k12.pa.us

PTO: [email protected]

OCTORARA

ELEMENTARY

SCHOOL

TRAVEL THE CONTINENTS

Come travel with us for a fun night of hands-on math games,

crafts, and competitions while touring the world!

Students receive their ownPassport and Parents receive their own suitcase!

The port of call shall be at Octorara Intermediate School:

Thursday March 14th6:00-8:00 PM

OES Spring Newsletter 2013

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Transcript of OES Spring Newsletter 2013