Jr. High Enrichment

Our new Jr. High Enrichment program has been going very well.  Each Friday, the 7th-9th grade students have chosen a special enrichment class that they get to participate in.  There are 10 classes that the students have been enrolled in.

1. Social Sciences
2. Drama Club
3. Choir
4. Strategic Games
5. Student Body Officer
6. Expressive Art
7. Classic Film
8. Spanish Club
9. Japanese Club
10. Study Hall

The classes are one hour in length and are selected each term.  It is enjoyable to watch the students mingle among the grades and experience interests outside their typical school day.  The teachers are amazing and are doing a great job in creating meaningful experiences for each Jr. High student.

DIBELS Testing

DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a reading fluency assessment that all K-6th grade students will be able to experience within the next week.  DIBELS helps the school determine who is meeting basic reading benchmarks and who is At-Risk for reading deficiencies.  In kindergarten and first grade the reading assessment looks at letter naming fluency and initial sound fluency.  Then 1st and 2nd graders are testing in nonsense word fluency and beginning reading.  The 2nd through 6th grade students are tested in their reading fluency and accuracy as well as their retell fluency.  It can be a very exhausting process for the those conducting the assessments.  However, the students have been doing a fantastic job.  I have personally tested many students and have been very impressed with the amount of high quality readers that we have at the school.

Once the results have been entered into our system the school will identify the At-risk readers and provide additional support to increase their skills. The At-risk students will then track their reading progress through the progress monitoring program provided by DIBELS.

We will conduct the DIBELS benchmarks three times per year.

RAZ-Kids.com

The school has just recently launched a new and exciting program to incentivize and motivate students to read.  There are several students who love to read and often spend hours on end reading, however, there are those students who prefer spending time engaged in doing other things.  RAZ-kids.com provides reading electronic materials for students at their level of ability.  RAZ-kids incorporates high interest topics in both nonfiction and fiction texts. The books are in vibrant color including moving graphics, sound effects, and highlighted vocabulary words which can be decoded for the students.

http://www.raz-kids.com/

Students have the opportunity to listen to the book, read the book, read the book out loud and have their voice recorded and then listen to themselves read the text.  They then can take a quiz to monitor comprehension.  As students complete the activities they can earn stars.  Star are collected and then used to create a personalized rocket.  Student then progress through the ranks beginning with Ensign, moving to commander and then to general.  Rank advancements seem to be extremely motivating for the students as well as the creation of their own rocket.

The school has enough funds to purchase licenses for all Kindergarten through third grade students.  Luckily, I too have a login where I can grant access to select students in grades 4-7.  If you think your child could benefit from RAZ-kids, feel free to contact me and I can set your child up with an account where he or she can begin reading leveled texts and enjoy the same features our younger students have come to appreciate.  To learn more about it, follow this Link to RAZ-kids

Technology in the school

There are some fun new gadgets this year that the teachers are excited to implement in their classrooms.  Last year each classroom was outfitted with a Document Camera called an Elmo and digital projection systems.  This was such a hit among the teachers, towards the end of the school year additional technology was introduced.  Over the summer teachers were able to create meaningful lesson plans and using programs such as PowerPoint to create presentation materials for student learning.  Now, teachers can display their PowerPoints utilizing more interactive teaching methods. The MimioBoard is one such tool.

Mimioboards can turn any ordinary whiteboard into an interactive whiteboard.  They enliven lessons with audio, video, and Flash files.  They can record audio and video lessons to reuse whenever the teachers want.  Teachers can import existing lessons from popular applications such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat and save their whiteboard notes and drawings to their computer.

Within the next week or two, teachers will be receiving yet another tool to create more engaging and interactive lessons.  The MimioPad wireless tablet lets teachers use their interactive whiteboard while walking around the room—up to 30 ft away from their computer. Through the use of multiple wirepless tablets students can collaborate from anywhere in the classroom. Up to 50 MimioPad tablets can be connected to one computer. The award-winning MimioPad tablet gives teachers more ways to encourage class participation. The school has also purchased the MimioVote™ assessment system which allows teachers to create formal and informal assessments where students can submit responses providing immediate feedback on the spot.  These two new enhancements are very exciting for both teachers and students.

So the next time you visit a classroom, come and see for yourself the motivating and engaging lessons this kind of technology can make possible.