Create, Conserve, Learn, and Protect

 This week, second grade students beautified the Cub Run butterfly garden as part of their grade level service-learning project.  With the help of teachers and parent volunteers, they weeded, planted, mulched, and watered the garden to prepare it as a Monarch butterfly habitat. This habitat will provide the resources necessary for Monarch butterflies to produce successive generations and sustain their migration.  The students have learned that without nectar from flowers, Monarch butterflies would not have the energy needed to migrate to central Mexico.

 Red Apple Cable Channel 21 will air a special segment about our second graders and their work on the butterfly garden sometime in June.  You can imagine the students are very excited that their hard work and effort will be showcased on TV!

Words, Words Everywhere

What are Word Walls?

A word wall is an organized collection of words prominently displayed in a classroom. This display is used as an interactive tool for teaching reading and spelling to children. There are many different types of word walls including high frequency words, word families, names, alphabet and content vocabulary.

What is its purpose?

Word walls have many benefits. They teach children to recognize and spell high frequency words, see patterns and relationships in words, build phonemic awareness and apply phonics rules. Word walls also provide reference support for children during reading and writing activities. Children learn to be independent as they use the word walls in daily activities.

Word walls can also be used:

• To support the teaching of important general principles about words and how they work.
• To foster reading and writing.
• To promote independence on the part of young students as they work with words in writing and reading.
• To provide a visual map to help children remember connections between words and the characteristics that will help them form categories.
• To develop a growing core of words that become part of a reading and writing vocabulary.
• To provide a reference for children during reading and writing.

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BYOD

 Several years ago, my family gave me an iPad for my birthday. At first, I wasn’t sure if I really needed it or would use it.  But now I love it!  I love the convenience of being able to have books with me at all times and have even learned how to highlight and make notes in the professional books I read.  I can also enjoy playing a word game with several of my principal colleagues.

These devices have great potential for changing the face of education in ways I don’t think we even know. Recently Apple announced a new partnership that will bring digital textbooks to students.  Handheld devices will allow students to carry all their books with ease.  Publishers are providing online access to textbooks and resources.  Students can get access to tutorials.  If they don’t remember how to solve a particular mathematics problem, they will be able to hear a teacher explanation as they watch it being solved on the screen.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is catching on in Fairfax County Public Schools. Many FCPS schools at all levels are allowing for and encouraging a BYOD program to support increased access to digital resources, including the new online social studies textbooks and other instructional programs when deemed appropriate by the classroom teachers.  Students can bring laptops, netbooks, tablets, e-readers and in some schools, even Smart phones.  Parents and students are required to complete a device use agreement permission form.  Once completed, students can register their devices at their school where they will be approved for use on the FCPS-secured wireless network.  This ensures internet content is filtered for each student connected to the network while on school property.  To get more information about the BYOD program at Cub Run, contact your child’s teacher or visist our website at www.fcps.edu/CubRunES/

 Note: To learn about the BYOD program at Carson Middle School, take a look at this short video, found at http://dl.ebmcdn.net/fcps/mp4/schoolscene/2012/ss09_byod.mp4.

Online Testing Pioneers

This year, our 5^th grade students were the first group of students here at Cub Run to have an online testing experience.  In preparing for the Standards of Learning (SOL) spring 2013 writing test which will be administered online, all of our 5^th graders participated in a full-scale online field test.  I am happy to share that the students did a great job and the field test went off without a hitch!

 This May, students in grades 3 and 5 will take the SOL science and history tests online and grades 4 and 6 will take their history tests online.  To help students get ready for this change, the classroom teachers and our technology specialist, Mr. Magwire, are working together to provide practice with Virginia’s SOL online test simulator (ePAT).  The simulator contains SOL-released tests and hands-on practice with the online tools that students will need to be familiar with before taking the tests in May.

 Although it has been exciting to watch this transition from the traditional paper and pencil assessments to the online tool, there’s been a little anxiety with it too.  But, as we all witness in our interactions and observations every day, the adults worry more about the technology aspect of it more than children do!

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When I grow up I want to be….

 From the time I was in elementary school, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher.  I used to “play school” with my friends and subject my younger brother to pretend school work and lessons.  Often as educators, we ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Some children have an immediate answer to this question.  They may dream to be a professional athlete or they have an interest they want to follow, such as a love for animals and want to be a veterinarian. This past Saturday I attended the Pathways to Success Leadership Conference for 5^th and 6^th grade boys and girls who attend Cub Run, Deer Park, London Towne, and Virginia Run.  This conference was a time for students to get to know themselves and think about what they want for their life. It was a time to question others about their journey through life and how they can make their own path. Students got to choose three different workshops to hear a variety of speakers such as Chief Aircraft Operations Officer from NASA, Emmy Award-Winning CBS News Editor, a lawyer, FBI Special Agent, a Sportscaster, just to name a few. These professionals shared how their hard work and honesty have helped them become great leaders. Students learned that choices they make today can help them become what they dream about for tomorrow.

 Even though I am a principal now, I still love teaching and instruction.  I taught for 12 years in the classroom and those years were some of my fondest moments so far in my career in education.  I hope the students who attended the conference learned that opportunities are limitless and only theirs to imagine and achieve!

IN’s are in!

The purpose of the Interactive Notebook (IN) is to enable students to be creative, independent thinkers and writers. IN’s are used for class notes as well as for other activities where the student will be asked to express his/her own ideas and process the information presented in class.

Requirements vary from class to class or subject to subject and are set up according to the directions of the teacher. One side is where the student will process new ideas by recognizing information in creative formats (i.e. illustrations, diagrams, flow charts, colors, and cartoons), express opinions and feelings, and explore ideas. The other side is where the teacher provides information such as class notes, discussion notes, handouts with information, and/or content vocabulary.

For students, teachers and parents, the IN becomes a portfolio/scrapbook of the student’s learning and growth during the year. Students and parents are able to review assignments and new learning concepts as well as student grades, thinking, writing, illustrations, and organizational skills. Learning study skills and taking notes is an acquired skill. Students who develop these skills increase their learning and will have more positive assessment results.

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Building Reading Stamina

 As you know, reading well is a crucial life skill. Having good reading stamina – the ability to read well for prolonged periods – is vital in ensuring we are proficient readers. Lack of reading stamina is like trying to run a marathon without training or driving a car without gas! Reading stamina is the energy needed to fuel your reading habits. If you don’t improve your reading stamina, reading becomes frustrating and yields little pleasure and results.

As you visit classrooms throughout Cub Run, you may notice signs hanging outside the classroom doors announcing the reading stamina goal for the class. This goal is determined by the teacher and his/her students. One of the first steps is to teach students how to pick “just right” books and read independently. A key to this is building student stamina to sustain independent reading. Research shows when an independent reading component is added to a structured reading program, reading scores go up. Over the first half of the year, teachers have posted the total minutes of sustained reading in their classes…they started with a minimal time (in some cases 3-5 minutes in the lower grades).

Wow! Look where they are now!

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