Dear MacArthur Families,
A huge thank you goes out to Firefighter Dale Holsti for providing all of our Kindergartners and First Graders with a presentation on fire safety. Firefighter Dale did an amazing job explaining fire safety to our students and he encouraged each of our students to go home and create a fire safety plan with their families. One of the key points Firefighter Dale made was that every family needs an exit plan and meeting place once out of the house. Sparky, the firedog, made a special surprise appearance and our students loved seeing him.
I would like to take this moment to thank all of our parents in advance for signing up for the Parent/Teacher conferences, which take place on Thursday, October 26th. Yesterday, all classroom teachers sent out a PowerSchool message for parents to sign-up for a 15-minute conference. This may seem like a brief meeting, but it can be so powerful. A parent-teacher conference helps to communicate areas your child's excelling in and to foster some specific ideas of how to improve upon your child's performance in school.
All of our K-5 students have been meeting with their classroom teachers setting goals based upon their most recent NWEA assessments. Goals drive much of what we do as adults every day. But students too often rely on us to determine goals for them. Did you know that there is strong evidence that goal setting has a strong influence on learning, a .50 effect size (Hattie, 2012)? The average effect size is 0.4, which represents a year's growth per year of schooling for a student. Effect size---the impact that a particular strategy, technique, circumstance or issue has on student learning. I like to refer to effect size as the biggest bang for our buck. What strategy or technique is going to have the biggest, most positive impact on our students' learning. Students setting goals is one area that definitely has a high effect size.
As we are preparing for Parent/Teacher conferences, another extremely high effect size is the teacher-student interaction. The teacher-student interaction has a .72 effect size on student accomplishment. When your child comes home and shares how they love their teacher(s), as a parent you know that can make all the difference in your child's school year. Well, now you have data to support your thinking. I know that as the principal of MacArthur I am blessed to work with amazing educators who truly go above and beyond for our students to help them succeed academically, socially, and emotionally.
Have a Great Weekend,
Marian Buchko
As our district-wide capital improvement projects continue, MacArthur Elementary will temporarily serve only cold lunches. Our food services team remains committed to providing healthy meals that meet all requirements of the federal school lunch guidelines. We will keep you updated on the progress of our new kitchen and the timeline for returning to the traditional lunch menu. Thanks for your understanding as we build new opportunities to better serve our students.
