Calais Elementary School

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Principal's Report

Principal's Report 11/26/12

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Principal and Superintendent’s Report – November 26, 2012

  1. School Climate
  2. Discipline (Student Climate)

The Discipline Committee will be presenting an overview of PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) to the whole staff on 11/28. WCSU has BEST grant funds available for schools to form PBIS teams and begin working on implementation this year. If at least 80% of staff members vote to proceed with the program, we will begin designing our “universal” level of PBIS at a three-day workshop March 27 – March 29.

  1. Staff Climate

The gratitude wall is up and running in the staff room and a standing agenda item for “Staff News” has been added to weekly staff meetings. In general, there is a commitment amongst staff members to resolve conflicts by discussing issues by directly discussing them with one another.

  1. Wellness
  2. Fun Fitness Friday

Cross your fingers for a snowy winter! We will keep the same list of four activities this year. Contingency plans include snowshoeing as opposed to XC Skiing at Morse Farm, looking into the possibility of sending additional students to skate on short notice, and sledding.

While PD is important, so is fun with kids. Teachers will join an activity one week this year.

  1. Nutrition Committee

The NC is exploring working with Food Works and helping with the snack program.

  1. Curriculum and Instruction

The WCSU Curriculum Council members have recently been announced. This committee, a variation on that created in the new teacher contract, will create and monitor the implementation of the WCSU curriculum, instruction, and assessment development processes. Work will begin with the Curriculum Council and WCLT getting together to discuss Schooling by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.

Math and Literacy Steering Committees will also continue. Additionally, the committee formerly known as the Responsive Classroom Champions has been renamed and is now known as the Social Curriculum Steering Committee. All these steering committees will focus on developing core curriculum documents, evaluating the current curriculum, ensuring vertical alignment of curriculum, and determining professional development needs for the school system. Committees for all other curricular areas will be established once the Curriculum Council has laid the foundation for the curriculum development process.

CES representatives are as follows:

  • Curriculum Council – John Fish
  • Math – Kate Rob
  • Literacy – Mary Carpenter
  • Social Curriculum – Callie Weller and Cat Fair

Curricular Area Updates:

  1. Math

Kate Rob and Stacey Potter are attending Ensuring a High Quality Mathematics Education for All with Mahesh Sharma on 11/27.

  1. Literacy

Classroom teachers met in grade level teams (K-2 and 3-6) on 11/16 in our first attempt at a monthly “Data Day.” We looked at Fall Fountas & Pinnell benchmark assessment data and were happy to see that the majority of students are meeting standards in reading and many gained reading skills over the summer. The 3-6 teachers plan to use Data Days to align their various methods of data collection as well as develop new, streamlined, and quantitative tools for data collection. The K-2 teachers will likely use their meeting time to bring a puzzle from their current data and think about what data should be collected and passed on to future teachers.

  1. Science

At a recent staff meeting, several classroom teachers thanked Eric for help in finding resources and setting up virtual fieldtrips for science units.

  1. Students who Exceed the Standards and Academic Choice

The staff has spent some time discussing how we plan for and document differentiation for SES. The conversation is just beginning, but will hopefully yield some fruitful results ranging from some clearer procedures and a bank of ideas to push students ready for some extra challenge.

  1. Technology

Third graders love working with Storybird, an online storytelling program, with Eric and Mary. Mary reports that she is seeing improvement in students’ writing offline as a result of this work.

“Data Day” provided the opportunity for 2nd and 3rd graders to have a 45-minute technology lesson with Eric. Here’s an overview he provided of those lessons:

In 2nd grade, we focused on logging in, touch pad familiarity, and keyboarding. These are fundamental skills that we need to ensure students are comfortable with prior to demanding more technologically savvy skills. Students used Paint.NET to get comfortable with the touch pad and buttons as well as navigating the drawing and color tools. Students trouble shot simple problems, such as learning to undo a mistake, or resize a window. Not only does exploring this tool help students develop basic computer skills, it will also be used to create diagrams of the water cycle as part of their science curriculum. Students also spent time using Dance Mat Typing, a free online typing program hosted by BBC. While a typing program is not the sole solution to developing strong typing skills, it does provide an essential base to helping student develop familiarity with the keyboard. These programs help students reach ISTE the Technology Operations and Concepts standard (Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations: a. Understand and use technology systems, b. Select and use applications effectively and productively, c. Troubleshoot systems and applications).

In 3rd grade we continued writing using Storybird, an online storytelling tool that allows students to create stories using artwork hosted on the site. Using Storybird reinforces basic computer skills, such as practicing logging in/out of a computer and web tool, touchpad use, keyboarding skills, troubleshooting simple problems. These are all part of ISTE NETS-S Technology Operations and Concepts standards. Students published their work and began commenting on each other’s stories, which supports the Creativity and Innovation standard (Create original works as a means of personal or group expression), the Communication and Collaboration standard (Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media), and the Digital Citizenship standard (Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity).

  1. Other
  2. PTO Updates

After a fall of fundraising, the PTO has raised nearly $3,000 that will be set aside for an eventual playground equipment purchase.

The PTO will continue using existing funds and those raised from smaller events like movie nights to grant teacher budget requests. This winter, PTO funds will sponsor four days of clay work in art class with Georgia Landau.

  1. Facilities Updates

We will replace one of the doors leading from the lobby to the K-6 classrooms with a 42-inch door for just under $700. We have saved the old front doors to replace any exterior doors that are rusted through or otherwise damaged.

 

Principal's Report 10/17/12

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Principal and Superintendent’s Report – October 17, 2012

  1. School Climate
  2. Discipline (Student Climate)

The staff goal setting committees have essentially morphed into goal achievement committees at this point. The Discipline Committee has met a few times and has agreed that a successful discipline system is one that allows all children to be safe and learning and that increases positive and pro-social behaviors. The committee has decided to work toward a highly successful discipline system by doing the following:

  1. Collecting data about and studying what we currently do and what other schools do.
  2. Revising the discipline “rubric” that is currently in use (and in the family and staff handbooks) so that it becomes less vague and the language is accessible to students.
  3. Forming a PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) team to create and implement a PBIS system for the whole school. Five staff members, including Marissa, will be attending an introductory PBIS workshop for WCSU elementary schools on 10/26. The idea of PBIS and a system for students earning school-wide celebrations was met with great enthusiasm at the 10/10 staff meeting.
  1. Staff Climate

The staff climate committee created the following success statement: “All staff will feel comfortable enough to communicate with each other openly and respectfully, with trust, in a timely manner.” They have also brainstormed several ways of building the trust and relationships needed to reach their goal including, interviewing those who also work at other schools to see what other staffs do to build community, creating a “gratitude wall” in the staff room where staff members can post thank-yous to others, potluck lunches, and in- and out-of-school staff events.

It should also be noted that multiple staff members have remarked that it feels like everyone is working together and happy this year.

  1. Wellness
  2. Fun Fitness Friday

Winter adventures are officially coming as we have been approved for all $4,975 of our EPSDT grant proposal. Marissa will work with former coordinators to select a new one. Marissa is also working to bring together a group of FFF fans to brainstorm brown winter and other ideas – a classroom teacher has volunteered to be a member of this group.

  1. Nutrition Committee

The NC met for the first time on 10/10. Due to some unexpected absences, the committee did not finalize goals for the year yet. There did, however, seem to be consensus about working to bring in great food and some great cultural and science learning opportunities.

  1. Curriculum and Instruction
  2. Math

The WCLT and many math teachers throughout the district (including two Calais teachers) attended “Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics in Elementary and Middle School,” a course on using RTI in Mathematics on 10/12.

During in-service on 10/5, K-2 teachers worked with Loree Silvis to look at the Common Core standards. They focused on what we want all students to know and be able to do by the end of these three years, and finding ways to support learning over time using Investigations and other instructional tools and ideas.

  1. Literacy

The academic goal committee has decided to focus on writing. The team chose writing because we have some very reluctant writers, the writing NECAP scores have dropped in recent years (and lag far behind the math and reading scores), and because literacy work in recent years has emphasized reading. The team will work with the full teaching staff to create and administer six “stop, drop, and write” writing prompts. These writing pieces will be used for the following purposes:

  1. To gather a pre- and post-instruction data for each of the three text types required by the Common Core (information/explanatory, narrative, and opinion). This data will be used to inform instruction throughout the year.
  2. To familiarize students with “on-demand” writing tasks – these tasks are the essence of the NECAP and students currently engage in such tasks very rarely.
  3. To bring students together to engage in a common academic task – all grade levels will write to prompts that are as similar as possible.

During in-service on 10/5, teachers of grades 3-6 along with many specialists worked with Pam Chomsky-Higgins to keep language learned in lower grades during ISA (the Interactive Strategies Approach) instruction consistent and powerful. K-2 teachers spent the day with Pam on either 10/11 or 10/16 getting fully up to speed on ISA – a strategy that has helped Milton send nearly all of its students to third grade reading at or very nearly at grade level.

  1. Science

Due to the fact that we had fewer than 10 students in last year’s cohort, our Spring 2012 NECAP performance can’t be publicly released. We can say that we did quite well, nearly doubling the previous percentage of students scoring proficient or advanced!

To keep the science momentum going, Marissa has agreed to be the substitute science teacher in 4th grade if the teacher has to be out on a Friday. To get ready for this possibility, Marissa will be practicing with the teacher in the room some time soon.

  1. Students who Exceed the Standards and Academic Choice

Marissa will launch a committee of staff members and parents to focus on students exceeding the standards in late October or early November. Marissa also put out a call for parents interested in leading or having their children participate in Destination Imagination in the 10/12 newsletter.

  1. Technology

Netbooks are travelling safely between home and school with our 4th – 6th graders. One student was so excited to get working that he called us for help with his password as soon as he got home at the start of the long weekend.

Elizabeth McCarthy will most likely use her time at Calais this year to work with teachers to upgrade their web pages.

Eric Mongeon will focus on bringing technology to students – both by teaching students directly and by helping classroom teachers gain skills to integrate technology into their own lessons.

  1. Other
  2. PTO Updates

Membership is holding steady amongst parents and increasing amongst staff members. Thanks to increased teacher presence, the group will be putting on a Halloween party AND haunted house on 10/27. The 5/6-ers have already spent one great lunch planning their haunted house. They are particularly excited about formulating their budget proposal.

  1. Facilities Updates

The doors between the lobby and the hallway that leads to the classrooms are too narrow. We currently have an estimate of $3,200 for two 40-inch doors and a removable center post from Kamco. While this estimate has come down from over $5,000, it still feels high and Jason is working to find a lower price.

 
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