Together We Can

October is a busy time for our students, filled with learning opportunities, community events, and fun activities!

At the September 26 Board Business Meeting, PCG presented on their plan to evaluate the Special Education Action Plan. You can view their PowerPoint online. PCG will be doing focus group interviews as well as school visits. I can not wait for PCG to see all the great things happening around our schools.

Best,

Stacey Heiligenthaler, Ph.D.

Chief Officer of Special Education and Student Supports

stacey_heiligenthaler@greenwich.k12.ct.us

Riverside School's professional assistant Dr. Morahan provided push-in services during second grade recess to engage all students in fun activities and to build on their social interaction skills. This service supports the implementation of the Second Step program throughout the school day.

District psychologist Dr. Fabian Agiurgioaei Boie visited Ms. Weiss' preschool class at Cos Cob School this week to talk about mindfulness and read the book, "The Worry Cloud." The class practiced taking deep breaths to blow their worries away, just like how wind blows clouds away.

Third grade students at Parkway School are familiarizing themselves with their new communication board on their playground. The communication board is used as a resource to assist the students in expressing their needs and conveying their thoughts with each other through the use of symbols and pictures. Overall, communication boards enhance social interaction, promote inclusivity, and support the development of essential communication skills, making recess more enjoyable for all students.

Mrs. McKay's writing class at Central Middle School is working on writing a memoir. Students are working on developing essential writing habits, writing with a purpose, and writing for an audience.

Can you identify a prime factor? Ms. Brookman and Ms. Ferguson's co-taught sixth grade math class at Central Middle School is learning about prime factorization. Students are working in small groups to identify factor pairs of numbers.

Eastern Middle School counselors, Ms. Rix and Mrs. Moore, taught Mrs. Fergus' sixth grade class the third in the series of six lessons supporting the sixth graders' transition to middle school.

Western Middle School's Special Education teacher Mr. Franco and District Inclusion Specialist Ms. Rachel Rubin collaborate on implementing an ELA lesson using enCORE. Students are identifying sight words and vocabulary using various modalities. enCORE materials are based on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) that provides students with moderate and severe disabilities access to the general education curriculum.

On September 25, GPS celebrated the Greenwich High School Fall Health Fair. Along with many community agencies, Dr. Alina Agiurgioaei Boie and Dr. Fabian Agiurgioaei Boie, from the Behavior Support Team, provided information and resources on mindfulness, SEL, stress reduction, and the importance of mental health well-being.

Middle School counselors, Ms. Magana, Ms. Fina, and Ms. Moraiz, spent some time learning about all the great opportunities available to students who wish to attend Wright Tech; a state provided option for a career tech high school choice. The deadline to apply is December 15th, you can find out more information on the application process here.

On October 17, school counselors met with high school juniors to discuss next steps as their begin their college search.

with Jocelyn Bruchman

Recently, legislation about literacy in education has been popping up across the country. The science of reading and the research has now made it clear: learning to read is not an innate ability — in any language. Unlike speaking and listening, learning to read and spell does not come naturally to humans and those processes cannot be mastered by simply watching others do so. Decoding, encoding, and the process of pulling meaning from the words on a page is a formula that is being taught in Greenwich Public Schools, so let’s talk about how you as parents can help your developing reader at home.

Motivation to read is often fueled by a reader’s interest in a book’s topic or pictures on the cover and within the book. However, your child’s interest does not determine their ability to recognize and comprehend the words within that chosen text. Components which can contribute to your child’s reading success in a book can include word frequency (commonness or rareness of words), complexity of vocabulary, sentence length, abstract or figurative language, and others.

That is a lot to consider when choosing the right title for your student.

Fear not, there is a great trick to help ensure your scholar’s reading achievement while maintaining their ability to choose a book they want to read. My go-to when parents ask about stocking their home library is called the 5-Finger-Trick. Whether you are in Barnes & Noble, at the library, or looking through your own child’s home book collection, open to any page in the middle of the book and ask your kiddo to start reading aloud.

Watch the print closely and count your reader’s miscues (errors). The sweet spot or the goal in this method is to accrue between two and three miscues. If your child makes no mistakes or even just one while reading the page, the text is not likely to be stimulating for your student.

Conversely, if your learner chooses a title and makes four to five errors on that random page, the chosen piece will likely result in frustration for your pupil while reading that book independently.

However, that does not mean your child should throw that book in the return pile. If a text is too advanced for your reader to decode independently, there are options.

First, provide tricky words: some students may be capable of decoding most of the words, but need your help to bypass their specific difficulties. While reading for leisure, it is acceptable to provide kids with the answer to the age-old question, “What does this word say?” This simple act can help remove those obstacles which prevent your child from reading on in this book or even reading more often.

Second, not every book needs to be read independently! The option is always present for an elder (adult, older sibling, audiobook) to read the complex text to your learner. There are many benefits of read alouds which are never lost, even as we age into adults. These benefits include, but are not limited to: exposure to new vocabulary, intonation, expression, listening comprehension; and can promote areas like prediction, inferencing, and a love of reading.

With so many options in order to help our developing readers access various levels of literature, it is sometimes alright for them to “judge a book by its cover”.

The Concordia Conservatory UNIQUE Series consists of three 30-minute interactive musical shows created for neurodiverse individuals of all ages.

Please visit the new Special Education and Student Supports Department webpage on the Greenwich Public School Website. Information about Special Education supports and services as well as contact information is provided

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Email: stacey_heiligenthaler@greenwich.k12.ct.us
Website: https://www.greenwichschools.org/teaching-learning/special-education
Location: 290 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich, CT
Phone: (203) 625-7493