Curriculum Quarterly Newsletter

On January 27th, at Drew University, students in grades 7-8 who signed up to participate in the Jr. Model UN will form delegations of two to three persons, each of which represents a member nation of the UN. Students will research and address major world issues pertaining to their member nation while constructing resolutions to bring before their peers. Resolutions are presented, debated and ultimately voted on.

Students in grades 3-8 will participate in a STEAM Cardboard Engineering Challenge. They will be challenged to use cardboard to create a specific engineering project. Students will make a short video of themselves with their project containing a brief explanation of how they made their entry.

Students in grades K-6 will participate in a challenge titled Do You Want to Build a ????

They will use recyclable materials with specific engineering requirements to build a creation of their choice.

This year our focus has shifted to the infusion of direct, systematic, and explicit instruction in literacy. (Science of Reading ) Teachers are modifying their instruction by using structured literacy interventions when meeting with small groups. The younger grades (K-2) are using decodable texts to ensure learners are applying decoding skills to become skilled readers.

Various strategy groups are also formed when learners demonstrate a common need for direct instruction in fluency, comprehension or vocabulary development. Guided reading is still in place to be sure students are exposed to rich content and authentic literature where they can expand and strengthen their comprehension skills. We continue to use a writing workshop model but have added direct instruction lessons at the sentence level to ensure students are understanding sentence structures and are able to apply this to their own writing.

Teachers continue to work to help students increase their writing stamina through quickwrites, journals, writing in response to reading, and paragraph/essay writing that reflects different genres. We continue to have in place a systematic and sequential phonics program with Wilson Fundations now taught whole class in Grades K-3. Teachers also pull small groups to reinforce phonics concepts taught through this program. Our Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Program in grades K and 1 has strengthened our students’ ability to add, delete and manipulate sounds in words auditorily and in turn strengthen their foundational phonics and reading skills.

We are excited to begin our Walk Throughs with the sending districts at Watchung Hills Regional High School. Our first one took place on December 1st and it was for science. Our Central School science teachers, Dr. Jones and Mr. Viturello spent the morning meeting with the high school science supervisor and the other science teachers from the sending district middle schools. The afternoon was an open house for the middle school science teachers to explore the high school science classrooms for informal walk throughs. The goal was to have authentic, robust discussions centered around science. At the end of the day, high school and middle school science teachers met and debriefed, asked questions and discussed next steps in articulation for each respective discipline.