Elementary Essentials

The Kansas State Department of Education recently released a revised version of the Dyslexia Handbook. In it, the authors describe using Scarborough’s Reading Rope and Structured Literacy to guide our teaching in reading. Over the past few years, you have studied the reading rope and now we will dig a bit deeper into the other requirement.

What does the term Structured Literacy mean and how does it fit with the instruction we provide in Olathe? In this short video, the teaching principles of Structured Literacy are explained.

Literacy Brief 4: Structured Literacy - Teaching Principles

The selection committee will be finalized this week and members will be notified of the dates and times for meetings by the end of next week. We will begin phase two of the resource adoption process which is the studying of resources and using a rubric to evaluate the resources for quality.

The ELA department has provided paper templates for writing in the primary grades to the District Store Front (DSF) for printing. As soon as the DSF folks have uploaded the documents to the storefront you will be able to order them. These templates can also be found on the English Language Arts website. The pathway is: ELA Website - Elementary – Curriculum Resources by Topic – Writing Resources.

Sometimes when the instructional materials ask you to repeatedly teach the same thing

over and over, you may be thinking to yourself, WHY? Did you know that striving learners need up to 400 repetitions for concrete learning to take place? Think about using choral responses during your 95% group instruction to help cement skills in our learners’ brains!

Although it may seem repetitive for you as a teacher, these opportunities for responses are so beneficial for our students that need that many repetitions.

If you are having trouble accessing materials on the ELA and MTSS Websites, be sure you

are signed into your web browser. All access rights have been given to district personnel.

Spelling: The “answer keys” for spelling words (mapped words for teachers) are available on the ELA website in grade level folders.

This is your next opportunity to gather for learning. We will be meeting from 8:00 AM – 11:30 AM, by grade level, at the same schools you were at on August 8. During our time together, we will focus on teaching comprehension, implementing Writing Units of Study, and learning about the MTSS fluency intervention.

Our focus for comprehension instruction is text structure. We want to remind, affirm, and expand your knowledge in this area. Prior to October 13, do a bit of analysis on where you are at in your understanding of narrative and informational text structure. We will connect your knowledge with the research, generate new learning together, make sense of our learning, and leave with an individual goal for teaching students how to be more critical thinkers when they read different text structures.

Writing Units of Study will also be a focus for this morning. We will provide you with a variety of topics like watching a video of a lesson, planning for quarter 2 unit of study, helping struggling writers, and much more. You will be able to select the topic that works best for you and join other teachers that have selected that same topic to learn from each other.

The last section of the day will be tailored to grade levels. K-2 will focus on how core phonics materials relate to research and student development in sight words. Grades 3-5 will be focused on Fluency Intervention. This intervention is for students that have completed word recognition interventions but are still at risk. We are working to make sure to meet the needs of teachers already working in this area and teachers new to the intervention.

See you soon!

See the following information regarding information and resources to help prepare for parent teacher conferences. Conferences Elem Essentials

Lots of information in the Science newsletter from KSDE! You’ll discover a SunWise toolkit, Kansas Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom, etc. KSDE Science Newsletter

Please check out the social studies newsletter for important social studies related items. Our social studies contest is BACK! Check it out to win an awesome prize!

We have some exciting news to share: Rachel Swearengin (MP, 5) has been named a top ten finalist for NATIONAL History Teacher of the Year. Also, Nancy Smith (HN,1) has been awarded the KSDE Civic Advocacy Award for her Farm to Plate PBL work at Heatherstone Elementary! CONGRATULATIONS Rachel and Nancy!

I hope each of you has had an amazing week. Please reach out if I can assist or support you. Thanks for all you do! ~Julie