Coming soon to Arno…

May 23

504 Plan Meetings

MTSS 4:00

May 24

IEP Meetings Sbonek

1st Grade DRA Day

SIP Meeting 3:45

May 25

Elementary Jazz Band Tour grades 4 & 5 9:00 in the gym

Tiger Ball Game for safeties 11:30

PTSA Council Meeting 6:30

May 26

3rd Grade DRA Day

V.K. Meeting 7:30

APMS Orientation all 5th grade to gym 9:00

May 27

Book Checkout Ends

May PBIS extra recess

PBIS team meeting all day

May 30

No School- Memorial Day

Attention all PTA Members!

The PTA Meeting scheduled for Thursday, June 3rd has been cancelled. On behalf of the new Officers we would like to thank everyone for your support this year! Without your support there would be no PTA or PTA Events! We look forward to working with everyone next school year. Have a fun and safe Summer! We will see everyone in the Fall!

Mary Howard Week 3

“We need to build strategic knowledge, independent problem solving, confidence and competence. Give them a repertoire of strategies”

Key to Tiered support- A STRONG Core- Please review the concept of guided math below and answer the following questions on your own or comment on the blog…

Do I differentiate now for math?
If not, how do I meet the individual needs for my students?
If this is not my practice, what are ways I can incorporate guided math into my class classroom (with math talk)?
How do I know if students are understanding the content and how to give feedback to them so they can use this in their learning?

Guided Math Best Practices

Guided Math Best Practices combine Guided Math with current Math Best Practice Ideas.
1. Meets individual needs.
2. Diversifies for special education needs.
3. Scaffolds average students to algebra and story problem connections.
4. Challenges high achieving students with algebra and story problem connections along with extension activities.
5. Promotes mathematical thinking using Mathematical Process Skills.
6. Utilizes engaging, concrete, hands-on activities that promote mathematical understanding of concepts.
7. Incorporates daily spiral review.

Angela Bauer uses these Guided Math best practices and trains teachers to use them in a guided math format. Her teacher professional development workshops detail how to use these best practices in math in any classroom. The following video was created by North Shore School District 112 in Highland Park, Illinois after Angela Bauer had trained their Kindergarten through 8th grade staff.

Guided Math incorporates best practices from Eric Jensen. His book called Brain-Based Learning details many aspects of best practices to use for optimal student growth. Page 331 summarizes a list of these ideas. Guided Math uses many of these ideas. Here are just a few!

purposeful and consistent pre-exposure
multiple exposure & activation for 1-3 days
often rich with talking and activity
emphasis on context, meaning & value
learning is also action, movement
search for questions
immediate, dramatic feedback
mobility, face each other, partners, groups

Learn more about brain-based learning at www.jensenlearning.com

Guided Math also incorporates best practices from David Sousa and his book, How the Brain Learns Mathematics. On pages 126-127, David details that “the teacher should monitor the students’ early practice to ensure that it is accurate and to provide timely feedback and correction if it is not. This guided practice helps eliminate initial errors and alerts students to the critical steps in applying new skills.” Here are 4 guidelines he thoroughly discusses.

limit the amount of material to practice
limit the amount of time to practice
determine the frequency of practice
assess the accuracy of practice

Guided Math Best Practices incorporates math best practice ideas from the leading math and brain experts.

Here is a video after Angela held a follow-up workshop at NSSD 112. Monica transformed her classroom into a Guided Math class. Her students were learning at their own pace and at their own level. The engaging activities promotes thinking and questioning about math concepts. This thinking promotes mathematical understanding.

In conclusion, Guided Math Best Practices are helping to transform teaching because the real results are these practices are transforming students into mathematicians!

RtI Arno Team

If you are interested in the joining the Arno RtI team, which will not meet until fall, please let me know. I can still get you Mary Howard’s book for the summer. On the team so far…

Sandy, Michelle, Stella, Cindy, Barb, Todd, and Cathy

Play Ball

Don’t forget to remind your safeties of our Tiger Game that is coming up! We will be departing the building around 11:30 so please listen for the call down. Thanks!

New Food Service System

We are pleased to announce a new Food Service system, MyPaymentsPlus, that will show up-to-date meal balances and will also allow you to make online payments directly to your child’s meal account!

In order to view your child’s meal balance and/or make online payments, parents will need to create a free account at: www.MyPaymentsPlus.com A link to the site is on the Food Service page of the district website – http://apps.k12.mi.us/about-us/food-services/, and also available through the Allen Park Public Schools Mobile App (Search: Allen Park Schools). Once you’ve created an account online, you may wish to download the free mobile app (Search: MyPaymentsPlus)

Setting up an account is an easy one-time registration. You will need your child’s student ID number, which is located in your ParentConnection under the Demographics tab.

Additional information, including program features and free mobile app, is included in the flyers attached.

We hope our families enjoy this new convenience and look forward to a successful program launch!

Thank you

Grade Level Scheduling for next year

I have set aside floaters on Monday, June 6 to help us further along our trek into an MTSS system in which your grade level will work on a common schedule framework for the fall. I will try and coordinate with Barb, Michelle, Stella, and Cathy to have them available to forecast kids that you will have next year and how that will mix in. The goals for your schedule should be:

Common Language arts block (to accommodate tier work, practices like guided reading could be staggered- or at the same time depending how you view it)
Common Math Time
Common time for science/SS would help planning for the rest
Within your common times, please review your current practices so that we can maximize instructional time. This would include recess time not exceeding 25 minutes (plus lunch) daily, exception of K, I don’t mind some initial morning recess, but by week 3- that needs to be over.
Review your morning arrival work- valuable on-task time is there for the taking. We do not have preps until 9:30- What a great time to plan some grade level interventions!
Please review the non-negotiables that were agreed to by the grade levels. I should be able to see these practices going on in your room. Please let me know what materials and/or training I can provide to get us in the right direction. Please highlight these items and their times in your schedules- that I would like to have to me by June 17 in whatever format look you wish
If your grade needs additional time, please see me for some options, please remember the preps are common so as to offer time to meet among the grade- that can be an option
Working with Michelle/Cathy/Barb/Stella should offer insight to build your schedule around instructional time, not when a student is pulled out.

Please understand that this starts to allow us to implement various degrees of tiered intervention in the classroom, grade level, and building. Please let me know if you have any suggestions as we move forward. I will have info on classroom placement for students very soon. I understand that there may unforeseen obstacles that come into scheduling in the process, try and get as close as you can to the above.

K-5 non negotiables

Grade 2

rocket firework animation

M-STEP Is Done!!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations to 4th grade on wrapping up their testing and the whole building for completion of the M-STEP this year. It certainly has been a process but I feel that you have all prepared the kids in an exemplary way and have given us the best scores we could ask for. The state data is supposed to be in by mid August, so I will share what I can, when I can and we will certainly get the data team on this when its time. Again, great job on test completion, I look forward to our scores!

Great Job 4th and 5th Graders!!

What a great performance by our 4th and 5th graders at Tuesday evening’s concert performance with Mr. Skebo at the helm. It was a great “Road Trip” theme, perfect for this time of year. Very impressed as always with our Arno talent!

Mrs. Kalis’s Book Clubs

Reading a good book and collaborating with partners are some of the best practices we can do in classrooms. Please enjoy some pics of students in Mrs. Kalis’s class enjoying their book clubs

Math Groups and Skill Practice in Mrs. Smalley’s Room

Junior Achievement

Mrs. Hool’s class working on a group activity with their Jr Achievement representative from Ford Motor Company.

Rover Rap Up

These past couple of weeks, we have showed pics of the 5th grade students getting trained in building “Rover” type vehicles from kits- with instruction from real world engineers. There was a culminating event between all rooms last week in which their vehicles had to perform distance tasks within team competition. Team building and collaboration is big college and career skill.

Off to the River Raisin…

Our second batch of 5th graders recently took a field trip to the River Raisin Battlefield. A little history of that battlefield area:

From January 18th to January 23rd, 1813, the north bank of the River Raisin became a battleground where the forces of the United States and Great Britain fought each other for the control of all of Michigan and the Lower Great Lakes. At stake was the destiny not only of the 2 countries (United State and Great Britain), but also the future of Frenchtown, (known today as Monroe Michigan) and of Canada, and of Tecumseh’s alliance of Native-American tribes.

nwea_logo

NWEA TESTING

Our third round of NWEA Spring testing began this week with 3rd grade Reading and math. Our staff use this assessment to measure the growth that students have achieved in Reading and Math over this school year. Students will be taking the NWEA assessment on Chromebooks in their classrooms in grades 2-5.