Bee Clean – For Everyone’s Cars!
Greetings Parents and Community Members: Another week has passed since we last spoke and the amount of learning and engagement we’ve seen in the classroom has been tremendous! It has been a big week for not just our students, but also for our staff as well. We were able to come together for our PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) last week and learn from district resource Dr. Katelyn Plescoe as we took a deep dive into interpreting our data. We learned that for grade 3-5 students, the best predictor of Georgia Milestone achievement is actually how they did the year before! We took that knowledge and are beginning to learn about the correlations of past performance on GMAS with past STAR assessments. Did you know that a student’s Fall STAR score is HIGHLY correlated with how they will do on their end-of-year assessment 8 months later? When teachers know this data, they can begin to really drill down on what students need while keeping the anticipated end result in mind. But remember, achievement levels are not everything! Our goal is about increasing student growth from 3rd to 4th and 4th to 5th (and K-3 as well) when compared to other like students in the state. Having these open discussions in our grade level PLCs with a continual focus on individual students — and not just school-wide data — will help us plan for the level of instruction that your children need!
At the lower grades, where statewide assessments are not happening quite yet, we used our STAR data to help measure student growth, track their scaled score over multiple years, and identify skills and standards that need to be addressed, and began to roughly track a student’s Lexile score (also known as their reading level and grade equivalent). At Brandon, we use STAR for a number of things, but most notably to track progress throughout the year and over multiple years while making sure adequate growth and standard acquisition is happening as time progresses. You will continue to hear about these assessments in conferences this year, so please reach out to your teacher to learn more!
Some exciting things that our students did this week are below:
- Mrs. Lander’s Media Center class began to use the maker space room at Main Campus. Children in Ms. Cohen’s homeroom created their own robots using circuits.
- Mrs. Dumont’s 3rd grade art class studied animal artwork from famous artists. They created line drawings using black oil pastel, and they came out fantastic!
- Coach Wyman continues to WOW in PE as she incorporated all sorts of team-building strategies when students used cooperation to cross a river to help build a well in Sudan.
- Students in Ms. Harron’s 5th grade class shared stories from another culture. Students were bold enough to stand in front of their class and share without reading off of anything. Risk-takers in action!
- 4th grade had an awesome trip to the Atlanta History Museum.
- Dr. Courtney conducted her first chorus rehearsal of 2018-2019. Get ready for our big Holiday show!
- We began learning about Hispanic Heritage Month, as seen through Senora Estrada and Senora Sosa’s colorful outfits and dancing in Kindergarten.
As you can clearly see, the list goes on and on! I love being able to get into classrooms each day across all grade levels and see the amazing things our students and staff are doing. Just last week, I spent 30 minutes just sitting and learning with Ms. Murphy’s Kindergarten class, criss-cross applesauce and all! As we continue to trek along each week, please know that we are here and available to help as needed. Remember, please continue to follow our drop-off and pick-up routines. No students should be left unsupervised prior to 7:30am.
Have a great week!
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