Anne Arundel County Public Schools, MD Parent's Corner, 25 Feb 2020

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From YouTube: Parent's Corner- March 2020

Description

Shelley Davenport talks with Amanda Salveron, Coordinator of Elementary Mathematics and Jane Friend, Coordinator of Elementary Literacy about the new Curriculum & Instruction Family Newsletter which can be found on all school websites and why it's important to parents.

The visual information in the "Newsletter" section of this program is only a sample and may not represent current information.

A

Today, on parents corner a conversation about some special newsletters that can help you help your child.

A

Thank you for joining us for another edition of parents. Corner I have two special guests with me today and I'm so happy to have them. We have Amanda sovereign and Jane friend and ladies I thought we'd just start with you introducing yourselves. Given us a little information about you so Amanda. Can you go excellent.

B

So I'm Amanda salver I'm, the coordinator of elementary mathematics, I, am one of three mathematics coordinators here in Anne, Arundel, County, Public, Schools and I am pleased to be here with you today and share some information about our newsletters. I do have a 12 year old, daughter at home, who is in seventh grade and so I understand how important it is for us to have really good relationships between home and school, so that we can be helpful for our students, but it's also for our schools. Awesome.

A

Awesome Jane and.

C

I'm Jane friend, coordinator of elementary reading, an integrated literacy like Amanda I'm, a third of that team. So myself and my team focus on elementary K through five and while I'm, not a parent. I am a proud aunt of a kindergartner and.

B

You can bet it goes along.

A

With constantly.

C

Trying to figure out what's going on in school, getting tired of that answer! Nothing! So we're looking forward to sharing these newsletters as a way to open up the communication between what your your children are learning in school and what questions you can ask at home to support their learning and extend it as well so and.

A

That's why I brought you here so thank you well, I brought you here today and I'm so excited about this show, because um so these newsletters are a little different from the newsletters that I remember back in the day a little paper newsletter finding out. What's going on at the school, all the parties and whatnot, so so how? What? What was the decision? Why was there a decision made to make these newsletters?

A

What was sort of the purpose behind that and either one of you can go or both when.

B

I think about our system and our strategic plan in Anne Arundel County, Public Schools. We often see the hashtag that we are better together. We recognize that here in in central office, in our schools, we are all tasked with working together and reaching out to the community so that we are all better prepared to teach our students build relationships with our families, because we recognize that our families are part of our team right.

A

So we are all one big family, including the parents, and and we really need them yeah and.

C

Shelly you mentioned newsletters that perhaps you used to receive.

B

C

So they might, parents can expect to still see receive school-based newsletters with information about things like class parties, events that are going on in the specific school that your child is enrolled. These newsletters focus more systemic things that our system has in common, so we have about 80 elementary schools across an Arundel County, and one thing that we have in common is the curriculum or what our children are learning in the schools across the system, and so these newsletters focus on the different themes, the concepts, perhaps the standards that the different themes focus on for.

A

Us might not know this and I know it just from when I worked in a school, but also the kids at rolling Knowles are learning the same thing as the kids at bodkin at the same time, they're all working on the same themes at the same time, exact. So that's why these newsletters could really come together and be useful. That's correct, right, right, Wow!

A

So thinking of the newsletters I think we'd like to I think the best way is to really be able to see them so I'm Amanda, you have a lovely laptop with you today. um Just give us a look and and I guess. The first thing is: where do we find them? How do we know how to get to them?.

B

Okay, all of our parents should start here at the a a CPS or org website for Anne Arundel, County, Public Schools, and up in this top toolbar. They can go ahead and select their school I'm going to head over to elementary and just choose Annapolis as our first one. If I scroll down a little bit, you'll see that under the picture of the school I actually need to go into the specific school website and all the schools have those right. Yes, they do great and once I get into that school website.

B

You'll see that I'm now in Annapolis Elementary and for every school over here on the left, you will see a button for newsletters once you open the newsletters today, we're specifically going to talk about what you see over here on the right-hand side, which is curriculum and instruction in the center here you'll see the school newsletters, which will be different for every school. But these newsletters that we're going to talk about today are a little bit different.

B

You can see that they are available for pre-kindergarten through grade five they're available in both English and Spanish, for our families. I'm going to go ahead and click English grade for awesome and you will see what pops up is a picture of one of our great students, and it tells you that you are in theme three for grade four. So that's just a quick check of where we are now.

A

I'm gonna, stop you for one. Second, you said it's a theme, three of grade four. What what do you? What is theme three mean, there's, there's different themes throughout the year, so we.

B

Do we have four themes in in our grade levels and they don't always line up specifically with the quarters, but we do follow it sequentially, one through four throughout the school year, okay, I'll.

A

Just make sure our parents understand and so.

B

I scroll down, it gives us some basic information about what your fourth grader is learning. At this time of the year, the focus is inquiry and we're moving into critical thinking theme. Our students are going to be focused on in Korea as an astro as a natural extension of curiosity, you'll, see social studies, some information about, and then we come down to mathematics, I'm gonna, talk specifically here about mathematics for just a moment and you'll see that there are links for each of the units again within theme.

B

Three, our fourth graders participate in four units: nine 10, 11 and 12. These are actually each a link, so I'm gonna go ahead and open that, and you will see it takes you right to the parent newsletter.

A

All right so because you are a math person, you're gonna really explain what the math newsletter looks like for us. That's awesome absolutely.

B

You will see that this is specifically geared for our parents. They are written by members of the elementary math curriculum team, and that includes some of our classroom teachers, but also our central office staff.

B

We want to be able to give parents some access to what students are doing in the classroom each and every day during this unit, you'll see there's a quick note to parents over here on the right-hand side, you'll see just some important tips and concepts of how you can support your child, be successful in mathematics on the bottom left of each newsletter. You will see that there is vocabulary. This is the vocabulary that students are going to be studying during this specific unit of mathematics.

B

This front page is the same for every unit for every grade level, one through five throughout the entire school year. So.

A

Really, quick by front page, you mean the structure of the page. The content is different, but the structure is.

C

B

You for clarification to understand.

A

Mm-Hmm, okay, so.

B

As I scroll down, you will see that we move into some specific strategies to support your student learning again. We are still looking at teaching mathematics in a different way than some of us learned, so we want to be able to give parents some ideas of what their students not only are hearing in the vocabulary. But what are the examples and strategies that they're taking part in during the school day? So there are some specific strategies to support again. This is fourth graders at this time and then we also like to provide some games.

B

These games were specifically chosen to align to the content, that's taught during this unit, but they were also chosen so that they are low prep and that they need very few materials. So we hope that parents will engage with their students in these different games at home to support their learning. Now.

A

Amanda, so are these games that the kids are playing in the classroom as well, or is this just something that you come up with that you think would really help parents help their kids at home. So it's.

B

Probably a mixture of both okay. These games are all chosen from the curriculum documents, but our teachers do have choices of which of the games they choose during instruction, so they may have seen this. They may have seen something similar, but these were the ones that we thought would best work at home: okay, okay, so as I scroll down again the final page again in the structure of our newsletters, you will see there are real-world connections, we're always trying to have our students and our families and teachers make real-world connections to mathematics.

B

Where do we see math living in our worlds? So.

A

That's another way, so the parents could play the games with the kids, but then also when they're, you know stuck in traffic somewhere. They could just talk about some of these. Well. Did you ever think of this or create some of their own real-world connections? Absolutely.

B

Absolutely just a couple, a couple ways to plant the seed for parents to be having that conversation. If I may I'm going to go back and just choose the Spanish version just to show you the one main difference between our English and our Spanish version. Again, you see we have all of our headings. Okay and all of the basic components are translated into Spanish.

B

When we get down to mathematics, you will also see that each of our unit feet our unit newsletters are translated into Spanish as well, but there's one thing that I think is very important. This first page, as we saw before the structure, is the same. The note to the parents, the strategies here of how you can help your students at home, as well as the vocabulary, is all translated into Spanish, very intentionally and work with our ESO, our ela and lots of other partnerships.

B

We made decisions that we're gonna, ensure that instructions are in Spanish for both our spanish-speaking students and our spanish-speaking parents, but we purposely put the information around the strategies that students will see. We put that in English because we want the connection to be made with the students between what they're seeing in the classroom and then what they're seeing at home. Okay.

B

Okay, so again, the directions are in Spanish, but the basic information remains in English, because we wanted the students to be able to connect their work in the schoolhouse to the work that we're asking them to do at.

A

Home, okay, and so it through those conversations you knew that was the best way to make sure that happened. Yes with other groups.

A

All right so I I. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and I also well. We we don't want to just stick with our bath Mattox. We also want to find out a little bit more about language arts. So Jane can you. Can you tell me what what does that look like? What do one of the newsletters for language eyes? Look like absolutely.

C

So, as Amanda shared just below mathematics, you'll see one of the great things about these newsletters is they are across curricular, so just below mathematics is science which gives parents information about what students are working through during that theme, if we keep going down you'll get to elementary reading and integrated literacy, integrated speaking to all of the different types of literacy students will see. So digital media is a really big piece of this as well. This section is broken into two different parts. The first is reading and the reading is themed based.

C

So as you'll see the texts that are selected also fit into that critical thinking, theme or whatever theme. It is that the students are focused on throughout that portion of the curriculum. One thing that all literacy has in common across the grade levels as well as the schools in our system is interactive, read aloud, so that's a portion of the day where teachers read read to the students, I would argue. It's probably the quietest part of the day.

B

Because students.

C

Are so tuned into what the teacher is is reading they're reading with fluency and expression, and there's a lot of sort of plot junkies we're building up to that that, in with students, so this first paragraph will talk about the types of texts that we've selected to fit into that theme in the interactive read aloud portion again, that's the part where the teachers are reading to the student.

A

Giving specifics, or it's just the the types that a teacher might be picking up at that point more.

C

Often than not it's the types of text so whether it's primarily focused on literary or information, if it's a combination of both and sort of the things that those texts have in common okay, but in some cases as you'll see as we scroll down here, you'll see that some of the author's are highlighted, and this is an excellent opportunity where it says home connection there. In this particular theme, we'll see authors such as Jacqueline Woodson, Andy bunting- these are popular authors.

C

This is a great opportunity for for parents to take their students to the public libraries, ask them for more books on the authors, which is often a great hook, to get students to continue reading.

C

If you scroll down a bit more you'll, see questions to ask your students, so I think we've all had the response to. What did you do today? Nothing.

A

C

So some open-ended questions that will get the kids talking. What books are you reading at school? So then they're able to answer with some titles or some authors again that common? We know that in every school and every grade level teachers are reading to the students. So what is your teacher reading to you now and what do you think about that? What do you like so these are? These are great questions that will elicit some further conversation than the standard, nothing from her students and and.

A

Just to back talk just a second, so the word text is an e-book I, just wanna make sure our families all know that. So that's any I shouldn't even say any book. That is anything that the kids are reading. Great.

C

Question yes, so text is all inclusive, it might be even in in our primary grades. Now we have what we called a shared reading or a big book. So literally, it's an oversized book that all the students can see and read together. They read that it builds a class community and so that text would be included in that same with digital text. Anything that students are reading in the bigger sense of that would be considered, attacked and.

A

It could even be a word. This picture book would still be attacked absolutely.

C

So I just want make.

A

Sure parents knew that yeah I think the kids know that, because they're used to that language, the parents might not. Yes,.

C

Great clarification, so the second piece of the literacy portion is the writing and the way that we are approaching writing in our elementary schools is we're focusing on one genre of writing for an entire theme. So this might be different than the way we learned to write. I remember when I was in elementary school, we switched almost on a weekly basis from a narrative to an informational to letter, writing to poetry and now you'll see those within an entire theme where students have really time to learn the craft.

C

They study authors a little more mastery than absolutely they take they're writing through the editing and revision process over and over again, so they're really proud. They get to try on different ideas, so their initial idea of what they might write about is not necessarily what they end up publishing. So it's it's really focused on the craft of writing and by the end of it, students have poured so much energy into it that they're so proud to share it.

C

So this initial paragraph here shares exactly what type of writing the students will focus on during the theme and again that stretches over weeks. So parents know that that's that's exactly what it's not flipping from week to week. They can study that craft so.

A

Then that would help if they were to read this, and that would help the parent to know what kinds of again they could use this. It's dinner conversation. Well, what are you writing now? What does that look like? They could talk about how they were writing in school and how it might have been different and I like that. Absolutely.

C

And- and you can see right below, the second paragraph gives some ideas for a home connection, so in this case they're studying historical text. When you visit the public library with your child, you could gear them towards that historical text, section of the library and study together, what kind things that they're seeing another popular one is persuasive writing and so kids really like that unit, because, of course, their their voice.

C

Their voice is heard through the power of writing, and so parents can really strike that conversation if they happen to be in that theme about what is it that you're trying to advocate for or against in some cases, okay and then, if you continue to scroll down the newsletter, you'll see some additional information for advocating building relationships.

C

A

Links just a little bit of everything done that could be useful to a parent.

C

Exactly and some important information, so some systemic dates, Amanda did mention the school-based noodle newsletters that are available. These dates are district-wide dates to keep in mind, such as early dismissals report cards, things that stay consistent throughout our entire system. Wow.

A

Well, thank you so much for showing us that that's really useful and it's nice to be able to see it.

A

So I know what you already talked to. One of you already talked to how there were so many different people that were involved in the process of creating these, but I thought it'd be sort of fun to ask you if it was there any piece of it when you were helping that particularly resonated with you got, you really excited that you were like. Oh, this is awesome. I want to make sure that the parents can can experience this or the kids. You know that this would work Jane. Did you well.

C

I think one of the most exciting pieces for me is the opportunity for the learning to continue outside of the school day. So we know that true, authentic learning requires application, and while we can present students with opportunities to do that throughout the school day, learning doesn't just happen from bell to bell.

C

So when students can apply the things that they've learned, for example, they're learning about electricity in school, if they can apply that to the real world around them outside of the Bell before and after school, and sometimes that requires some prompting from adults in their lives, and so what parents know exactly what it is that they can extend and ask. Then those opportunities to learn can extend beyond the school day, which is really really exciting. You.

A

Just made me, it goes something too I. Remember when my daughter started kindergarten, I'm I said oh I get to learn all of these new things. I mean there was a lot that I learned in the last 12 13 years now, because I got to learn with her, so I. Imagine that a lot of parents would have fun with that and would be able to really expand their own, we're all lifelong learners. Absolutely.

C

A

Encourage the kids as well and.

C

I think there's multiple opportunities: the newsletters lend themselves to lots of opportunities for that. So whether it's visiting the library and picking out a new book with an author that maybe your child its familiar with, but you aren't that they can introduce you to or a social studies unit that sparks an interest in visiting a museum together. So I think the opportunities are far beyond just saying. What did you do today in school? All.

A

Right so we could make these some family trips.

A

So amanda was there anything that particularly resonated with you or that you thought I'm just so glad we put this in there this way or so.

B

I think it goes back to where I showed the front page of each of our new newsletters that stays you know very similar in each grade level and we specifically reach out to the parents, and even this little dear parents box. That is the first thing to.

A

Show that structure so.

B

Just reaching out to them, because we certainly recognize that again, our students may be learning strategies and skills that were different than how we experience them as students, and we want to be there to support our students. We want them to know that there are multiple ways to solve: math problems, mom's, not right, and the teachers wrong or dad's, not right and mom's wrong.

B

There really is a lot of different ways that we can solve mathematics, problems and similar to what Jane's shared that learning extends outside of the schoolhouse each and every day we have math moments that present themselves to us. So we encourage our parents to make the most of each of them, because we're then asking our students to take these strategies, these concepts and these skills that they're building on in the classroom and apply them to novel situations right with our youngest learners, we can start by counting items in the grocery store.

B

We may talk about some ideas again. The grocery store is a great place. We can talk about money. We can talk about weight, there's so many of those opportunities that present themselves. We want to take advantage of them. We also share how parents can help their children be successful, and so sometimes those are very specific to mathematics.

B

But we also just talk about being positive about math, letting our students or our friends or everyone know that math may have been a struggle, but we all can do math right so being positive about that, making it part of the everyday life and the real-world experiences, which we then connect to the last page of each one of our newsletters. We try to create that real world connection to where do we see maths so that parents can make those math moments so.

A

And I think that that really is awesome because by building the parents understanding, then you can have them as a champion. Along with you, that's right.

B

Really important, that's right that partnership and that relationship is extremely important right.

A

Right, thank you. So another question I had and I think, is what what, if I have questions about something in the curricula or I think I shared with you. How back when my one daughter was in fourth grade, and she said: oh we're not doing division the same way, so the teacher said you know yours would be different and she thought that was so funny, but as a parent. What if I had questions okay well, why are they doing it this way or how does that all work? And what is what does this look like?

A

What what would you say? The parent should do at that point. So.

B

I think it's a great opportunity that now we have these newsletters for every theme that can be found right here on our website, as we shared that that would be the first place to go. That's going to give you that additional piece of information- it may be a little bit more specific than you may have had in the past, so this.

A

Is going to inform you just the actual document, absolutely.

B

Abs, that would be the first place again to go and look for that. I would also always reach out to the teacher our teacher strategies and ideas, and also different vocabulary that they use teaching throughout the day. That sometimes is helpful for our parents to hear from the teacher so that we can have that common language between home and school and.

A

The teacher I would think might also have for your specific child might be able to say. Oh, you know what this activity would probably really work well, or you might want to work on this one more knowing that student I'm thinking of reading, specifically after.

B

A

They know how that student is doing in the classroom and they could say this is what you might want to focus on, and here's some really great activities that are in there and.

C

Even when it comes to interest, nobody knows that about the children better than your child's teacher. So I mentioned some authors that we have in the curriculum, but we know that some students connect to some authors or genres of books, the types of books better than others. So when you're looking for specific recommendations or ways to support your child, your teacher is definitely the go-to, because you know one child might adore graphic novels, which we completely support and another might be an avid fiction reader and so or not. Let.

A

Them go with it and enjoy yes,.

C

A

So if we only have about a minute left today, but I wanted to ask you just to be sure what if the parents get really excited about this, but what, if their child just seems, really frustrated so they're asking them questions at the dinner table and the kid just really seems frustrated. What do you suggest that they do at that? Should they just forge ahead or.

B

So I would say again going back to this new this newsletter that we now have to offer. We have a little bit more information with those questions or ideas around theme concepts I would always encourage parents to leave it open, end it and turn that around and say. Well, what can you tell me? I love.

A

It I love it, but.

B

What can you tell me about.

A

B

You did here in math or about that that interactive read aloud that you've been working on in class.

C

Maximizing that interest to what what did you like about today? What are you excited from today? Awesome.

A

Wow there's so much we could talk about. So thank you. So much for joining us. I really really appreciate. It. I hope that the parents can use this I have a feeling that it's gonna get a lot of good use and thank you for showing us how to get there and thank you for joining us for another edition of parents corner until next time.