December 15, 2017

December 15

As many of you know, I lost my mom when I was 11 years old to cancer. During my birthday I always tend to miss her the most! She was only 41 when she died and since my 41st birthday I feel so lucky to be alive and to be with my family. Instead of getting gifts from my family, my sisters and I go to the city and do random acts of kindness. This year we will do 46 acts of kindness. My mom was an immigrant and taught all four of us the art of giving back to our community. She was a teacher and because we lived in a community of immigrants many of the women would come to her for guidance. Our house was always that house, there was always someone over. I learned so much from my mom in the few years I had with her. The above picture of my mom I keep on my desk by my laptop. It is something I look at multiple times a day! It drives me to be a better mom, sister, friend, wife, and educator. I am constantly thinking how can I grow. In the last 7 years our school has been working hard to build our Agri-Science school. Now our program has been recognized by receiving a Golden Bell, gold ribbon and now 3 blue marks on the dashboard!! We did this as a TEAM!! No great accomplishment can happen alone. It takes a team, it takes a family. There is a lot that can be said with the strength of numbers. 

As I walked through classrooms this past month it was very nice to see whole group instruction taking place and then the teacher taking a group and providing intervention to those students who needed it. During our academic conferences we have targeted our students who need to make growth. This targeted instruction has to take place in ALL K-8 classes during ELA and Math. Please make sure your lesson plans reflect what you will be doing for that core group. These students are not performing at grade level and they still need to be exposed to grade level text AND be taught at the level they are currently at. What are you doing as the classroom teacher to make sure you are providing Tier 2 support at their independent level? It is the only way the student will make growth. If the teacher continues to only provide instruction at the grade level that gap will continue to get wider.

Quality Core Instruction

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of providing students with strong, effective core instruction at any grade level. Without sufficient initial instruction, the percentage of students in need of intervention support will likely be larger than the capacity of the schools to respond adequately. It has become increasingly clear to us in our work with schools that building intervention programs without maximizing the effectiveness of core instruction results in overtaxed intervention providers and severely diluted intervention programs that have little hope of providing the intensity of instruction required to adequately support struggling students.

Core Components of RtI for Literacy Instruction

Instead of only having an intervention-focused approach to meeting students’ needs, effective programming focuses on prevention, begins with the intensification of core instruction. Core instructional planning must address both students’ academic needs as well as their social-emotional needs in order to provide true access to core instruction. High quality academic instruction will not be enough if students are so disengaged that they fail to receive the instruction due to excessive absenteeism and/or behavior problems. Thus, effective instruction will include strategies that keep students engaged, such as beginning lessons by priming background knowledge; providing students with a choice of assignments, texts, and topics; providing opportunities for peer collaboration; and supporting students in setting reasonable yet ambitious goals and providing progress-monitoring feedback to them as they strive to achieve those goals.

Observable Fish Moments at SV:

Be There: Thank you Mindi for hosting our social this Friday. Thank you Sunshine committee for providing the food. 

Play: Please make sure you fill out at least one good news referral a week. 

Choose your attitude: Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. 

Make Their Day:  Make a positive phone call home!