Weekly Message

Parent message
November 8, 2009

Thanks for coming out to Math and Science Night last Thursday.  It was a great time and we had a wonderful turn out.  Thanks to the PTA for helping us fund the presenters and the activities.

The week, we have lots going on:

Nov. 11 is a holiday for students celebrating Veteran’s Day.  School will be closed on Wednesday.

Nov. 12 is the pick-up day for the Penny Drive, so please send in your loose change by Thursday.

We will be accepting pre-orders for yearbooks this week through December 18.  We are hoping this will alleviate any problems with having enough for everyone who wants a yearbook in May.  If you would like for your child to have a yearbook this year, please make sure you send in your order by the deadline.  You can find the flyer and envelope in your child’s Friday folder.  Track 2, yours will be sent home when you track back in.

Remember our food drive going on now!  We will be collecting through Nov. 20 to help out families in hopes that everyone will have a great Thanksgiving this year!

Update on Professional Learning Teams at Willow Springs
October 16. 2009

We really appreciate your support of the new Early Dismissal days, and we want you to know that this time is being used for some serious work to meet the needs of the students here!  Our PLTs have really been working hard  and we have accomplished a great deal to ensure that all students will experience success at Willow Springs Elementary.  So far this year, our grade levels have focused on developing essential skills in reading, writing and math.  The grade levels each discussed the key objectives for learning and then we lined everything up and shared with the grade levels above and below to make sure that we didn’t have any gaps, and the teams were able to stress objectives to place more attention on to help students be more prepared in various areas. 

Once the essential skills were determined, teachers have been studying the curriculum and using our resources to develop common assessments that will allow teachers to know if their students have mastered the objectives.  After each assessment, the teachers work together to determine which students need extra remediation on specific skills in order to become proficient.  They discuss strategies and work together as a team to come up with a plan to help all of the students on the team become successful.  Just like a team of doctors work together to diagnose and treat their patients, our teachers team up to help diagnose and support students who need help with essential skill development.

Teachers study the data from these assessments to assist them in helping each other grow stronger in their teaching skills. This allows them to see which methods were more productive for the students, and all learn from those strategies. Not only do they research and share ideas and proven methods, but they also develop ways to extend the learning of level 4 students who need to be stretched in their thinking.  By utilizing the strengths of all teachers on the grade level, the students in every classroom are able to reap the benefits of the collaborative efforts of the entire team.

The teams are also working hard to develop what we call a pyramid of intervention for literacy and math skills.  This pyramid helps teachers know what interventions are most useful for specific types of problems that students may be having.  By diagnosing carefully, and having this group of interventions to rely on, teachers are better able to meet the needs of individual students without ‘re-inventing the wheel’ each time.  Developing this pyramid of intervention takes a lot of discussion, studying research and looking at our own data.  It requires that the team meet often to discuss strategies that they have been working on to see if they work as well as they had hoped.  We will be working on the basic pyramid all year in order to make it as strong as possible.

When you look at our topics for the Early Dismissal Days, you will see a great deal of repetition.  That is because we follow the same process for each essential skill and objective – every time your child is assessed, the teachers are studying that data to improve, themselves!  Throughout the year, we will develop and revise the Pyramid of Intervention and we will look at each assessment to study data, finding out where we need to improve, deciding which students need remediation and determining which students need extension learning. 

Camille Miller
Principal,
Willow Springs Elementary