Music, English language learning and a visit from a best-selling author.
October is the month of data retreats in Elementary School. All our faculty are involved in these retreats throughout the year. We use them to evaluate, analyze and diagnose student achievement and wellbeing data. There are four goals for these conversations: identifying school-wide trends, grade-wide themes, areas of focus for each class and next steps for individual learners.
Over the first six weeks of school all teachers gather data through various forms of assessment. and student feedback on their teaching, as well as how each student feels towards school. As part of the half-day retreat, we invite different experts from across the school to help teachers make informed decisions about student learning. These experts include our Pedagogical Coordinators, Learning Support Teachers, Talent and Enrichment staff, School Counselors, ELL teachers and School Administrators.
Our new Assessment and Data Coordinator has helped our faculty access data and make sense of the information in different ways. Each teacher can use the support of pedagogical leaders in the months ahead as they adjust their plans to meet the needs of their students.
An important part of each retreat is to celebrate the successes of each team, acknowledging how our staff’s hard work over the previous year has made an impact on student learning this year. This year, we’re celebrating a lot!
Our achievement data for our measures of academic progress is the strongest it has been since TKS opened 13 years ago. Our performance on mathematical number sense screeners is our best yet as well. Student feedback has also been very positive, especially in terms of their social and emotional wellbeing. Nevertheless, we always look for ways to improve our practice and set aspirational goals for our students.
Approximately 13 different acts performed, cheered on by an enthusiastic audience! Many from our GES community entered the musical showcase and the talents were all very diverse, with piano taking the lead for the most performances. “We are feeling pretty excited and confident!” said The Twisting Sisters. Rseel and Jena said, “We’re feeling thrilled and excited!”.
The buzz in the Circle Theater was evidence that everyone was very excited about the performances, but as soon as Mr. Diglin started his speech, the audience calmed down. Grade 5 students, Cliona and Riona, co-hosted the showcase, and reminded people to stay in their seats and be respectful audience members.
The performance’s most unexpected musician was STEM teacher Mr. Mark Jeffrey! He played the guitar, and sang the famous Beatles song, “Yellow Submarine”, and asked for audience participation.
There were also some surprising advanced musical instruments, which were really cool to watch and hear! The Twisting Sisters got up on the stage, and were clearly a crowd favorite, as they twisted and bopped to some classic 50s tunes. They received hearty applause for their performance, and deserved it!
In the end, Rseel and Jena played the chicken dance, and the audience even joined in! It was a wonderful combination of performance and audience participation!
In the Musical Showcase, GES children group together and show excellent teamwork - go Sharks! All these performers showed that they are all wonderful risk-takers, and our audience was so glad to cheer them on!
Our next musical showcase takes place in November.
Author: Ghalia M. Althobaiti, Grade 5 studentEditing help: Wendy Foreman, GES librarian
Over the course of the four years, students are able to collaborate with the homeroom teacher to develop their English language skills. The most important thing as an English Language homeroom teacher is to connect with the student’s culture. I do this by collecting a family survey of the home languages spoken in the classroom. Currently the 1TD 2022-2023 class has nine different languages in a class of 18 students. Each student speaks at least one different language other than English!
First, connect their home language with the school language. In Math, students wrote the number 1 to 20 in their home language. Then at school, students compared the roman numbers at school with their numbers. In writing, students have access to English Language resources which empower them to use vocabulary they are acquiring. Resources include picture dictionaries, vocabulary cards sorted by a variety of themes which include food, activities, emotion, transport.
Mr. Wright and Ms. Daramola have used the Responsive Classroom practice to teach English learners how to add adjectives to sentences, have done shared experiences like creating jello or lemonade in the classroom, and have led small group lessons to encourage English Language learners throughout writing and reading.
Sharing an experience like creating jello was a great way to help ELL students write their own how to writing pieces. Ms. Daramola and students read the directions of how to make jello, then followed those directions to make a delicious snack for the end of the day. While students waited for their snack, they constructed their writing in small groups, with teachers, or individually. At the end of the day, students were able to enjoy a sweet treat while sharing their writing pieces.
We feel that collaborative planning and teaching between teachers of different grades is vital to our identity as TKS educators. Being able to explore these opportunities over extended periods of time allows us to develop higher-level strategic viewpoints based on what we learn from successive cohorts. As a result, we can see that these practices positively impact the acquisition of English language and associated important literacy skills, providing a solid foundation for success for our students in their TKS journey.
First grade students love to make lemonade in the classroom. 1TD students worked collaboratively to write a lemonade recipe that teachers had to follow. To support ELL learners, Ms. Daramola used pictures of ingredients, worked with the class to create a word bank, and allowed students to work over a period of time to review their steps. After groups had completed their work, it was time to test their steps! Each group had a teacher follow their recipe, step-by-step, with no corrections. This lesson added vocabulary words that students did not realize were important to use in a how-to writing piece. At the end of the lesson, the students enjoy a nice cup of lemonade for all of their hard work!
Grade 3 students had the opportunity to listen to and learn from international best-selling children's book author, Robin Page. Robin, and her husband Steve Jenkins, have written and co-authored more than 60 amazing non-fiction books, all which share fascinating information about our world in fun, engaging styles. Designers by trade, Robin and Steve use their creativity to create unique collage-style illustrations to go with the research they present, and this style has become a trademark of their well-known writing style.
Robin's presentations have been centered around how non-fiction authors come up with their questions, and how they turn those ideas into research ideas. Our third-graders are currently diving into research about the adaptations of living things, and are learning to tune into curious questions to drive the research they will continue to do.To learn more about Robin and Steve’s amazing book collection, visit their webpage. You can also stop in the GES Library to check out one of their books (we have more than 30!) or head to Sora to read a digital version.
