November,
2005
Calendar:
Nov.
7 – Palm Grant Workshops (1/2 Day workshops)
Nov.
8 – Fifth Grade Fieldtrip to
Nov.
8 – Creslane Site Council (4:00 Library)
Nov.
10, 17, & 18 – Parent Conferences
Nov.
16 – School Picture Retakes
Nov.
16 – Mrs. Tharp’s Title 1 Parent Mtg. (6:30-8:00 Library)
Nov.
22 – Blue Three AmeriCorps Team Leaves for Disaster Relief
Assignment
Nov.
28 – New AmeriCorps Team Arrives from Disaster Relief Assignment
Nov.
29 – Ms. Priddle’s Title 1 Pizza Party (5-7:00 Cafeteria)
Contributions:
Virginia
Franklin: One complete set of school
supplies for each grade
Mr.
And Mrs. Bernards = $200 for PE equipment/supplies
Mr.
And Mrs. Connor = $200 for PE equipment/supplies
Mr.
And Mrs. Westerberg = $200 for PE equipment/supplies
Barbara
and Tim Jenkins = $50 contribution in lieu of fund raiser
Commendations:
Fifth
Grade Students of the Month for the month of September:
Room
20 – Sean Champoux
Room
21 – Drew Pilson
Room
22 – Jennifer Dumas
Room
23 – Zack Parker
Discipline:
Well,
this is what we get by bragging last month.
Last month, we had one of the best reports of average office referrals
per day at 0.62. This month, although
not the worst, was BAD at 2:2 office referrals per day during October. The staff and I have been unable to determine
what was different that would cause this problem. We did notice that injuries during recesses
and PE also increased. Is there some
kind of correlation? We’ll keep you
posted.
Enrollment:
Creslane’s
Total: 566 (as of 10/31)
Kindergarten
80 (16 per session)
First 104
(26 per classroom)
Second 96 (24 per classroom)
Third 88
(22 per classroom)
Fourth 107
(27 per classroom)
Fifth 91 (23 per classroom)
264
are female students and 302 male students.
Creslane
has 64 Hispanic students, 21 Native Americans, 8 Blacks, 2 Asians, 3 “Others”
and the rest are White.
AmeriCorps
Team
(please see attached):
They
are here, and they are working in the classrooms. They spend most of their time at Creslane and
in the Creswell Clubhouse, the afterschool program for students in grades 3 and
4. On Fridays they work on community and
/or district projects. Last Friday, they
got wood off Jack and LaVae Robertson’s property to help compensate for the
wood they will use during their stay at the VFW. This Friday they will be working at the
Creswell City Library cleaning up the back part of the property downtown. We are so glad to have them!
Curriculum:
We’ve
completed our DIBELS scores for the beginning of the year.
DIBELS
is the acronym for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills. This is a series of tests to help us predict
whether students are likely to be successful in reading achievement. The indicators are gauged for appropriate
grade and time of year. We administered
this test to all of our kindergarten through third grade students last year.
Review
of Last Year’s DIBELS information:
Beginning of the year End
of the year
Third
Grade 49% Low Risk 39% Low Risk
Second
Grade 36% Low Risk 45% Low Risk
First
Grade 28% Low Risk 43% Low Risk
Kindergarten 24% Low Risk 25% Low Risk
The
“low risk” category indicates skill levels are on target (this is a good
thing.) As you can see from the data
above less than half of our students last year were on target in our primary
grades. Interestingly, even though our
students are not testing well with DIBELS, 80.2% of our third students passed
the State Tests.
Beginning
of This Year’s DIBELS information:
Based
on our staff discussions comparing DIBELS, interschool reading tests and State
Tests results, we decided to not test third graders with DIBELS and to wait
until January to start the DIBELS testing procedures for kindergartners. The DIBELS tests repeat tests given at third
grade every year for Title 1 purposes, and the Early Screening Inventory
duplicates the DIBELS at kindergarten level.
We believe using the time necessary for testing would be better spent in
instruction.
Second
Grade 41.7% Low Risk
29% Some Risk
34% At Risk
First
Grade 27% Low Risk
20% Some Risk
52% At Risk
We
want the “Low Risk” percentage to be the highest number. Comparing the results from last year you can
see that 25% of the kindergartners were at “low risk” last year and that number
has increased to 27% as they moved to first grade. This is good news because it shows that very
few of our first grade students lost ground in reading over the summer.
This
year’s second graders lost some ground over the summer as only 41.7% of them
are at low risk compared to 43% at the end of last year.
To
help our students achieve better reading skills, we are looking for financial
help in purchasing the ReadWell Kindergarten Program to implement at
kindergarten and beginning first grade levels.
This program is scientifically researched and deemed successful for
beginning readers. We were able to
purchase one set with a grant and like it.
We need at least three
more sets to use effectively at these two levels.
Math
and Writing Success Teams:
There is renewed excitement at Creslane as the two new teams have analyzed and discussed the successes and lacks being made in the areas of Math and Writing. The staff is ready for something that will help the students learn and retain higher levels of achievement in these two areas. It has been frustrating to everyone to keep reviewing things that were supposedly learned the year before.
Fund Raiser:
Unofficial results from our Reader’s Digest Gifts and Wrapping Paper fund raiser is over $8,000. Thanks go again to Barbara Sears for organizing, running and doing all the work necessary to accomplish this great feat. We are trying to earn enough money to install sound panels in the cafeteria to minimize the noise that is created with 100-200 students in the cafeteria at a time. According to our one report and bid we are about half way there.