Georgetown Elementary School

Mrs. Lisa Kuieck, one of our second grade teachers, shared her class book blogs with the Scholastic team.  As a result, our school has been honored by Scholastic with a feature article that celebrates all of the great work our students are doing as readers, writers and bloggers.

Our work is celebrated on the feature page of the Scholastic Website. With the help of the best parent club in the world and a librarian (Mrs. VandenBerg) who seizes every moment to honor readers, we have built an amazing collection of books within the past four years.  Readers can share book reviews in person, honor authors in their writing or promote books through book blog posts.

Samples of some of our books blogs can be found on Mrs. Boersma’s 4th grade blog, Mrs. Quigley’s 2nd Grade Blog and Mrs. Huizenga’s 2nd Gr. Blog.

Thank you to everyone who makes reading a priority and a point of celebration and honor at our school!

This year, our district has implemented MATH EXPRESSIONS, a math program with lessons for all levels of learners. We believe that the material is going to better prepare our students for secondary math learning.

Your children will be learning how to create math proof drawings.  Proofs are critical in mathematics.  They provide a way for a person (at school or at work) to present evidence of their answer.

To help parents understand proof drawings in third grade math, Mr. Bowen’s created this video. This video provides parents with a snap shot of the math instruction in our classrooms.

During the second week of school, we continued to focus on climate (BE NICE) in the classroom, hallways, lunchroom and playground.  To help students learn games for the playground, we paired upper el students with lower el students focused on fun, trouble free games.

Mrs. Jurewicz and a team of teachers led outside recess game training on September 18th.  You can view photos from this day on Mrs. Quigley’s blog. We will hold another day of training for grades 3,4 and 5 — and this training will culminate in a PULL (tug-o-war) to determine which local college is tops (Hope or Calvin).  This will be held on September 25 which is also our first popcorn day.  Details coming about how to pick your team in a post later this week.

We also created a video tutorial for inside recess games during rainy or very cold Michigan days.  Actors featured are from Mrs. Boersma, Mr. Gort, Mrs. Jurewicz, and Mrs. Bouwen’s classes.   These are games that can be played at home, too.

Our district has one of the most talented and creative and efficient secretaries on this side of the equator.  Her name is Jan Mullennix.  She has been the secretary to the Ass’t Superintendent of Curriculum for many years–and without her, we would be lost!

Jan takes all the thinking that teams of teachers do and shapes it into wonderful curriculum tools that look smart and attractive.  She just completed full revisions of our grade level brochures.  These will be available at the open houses and you can also view them online.

PreK

Kindergarten

1st Grade

2nd Grade

3rd Grade

4th Grade

5th Grade

Richard Byrne, author of the blog FREE TECHNOLOGY FOR TEACHERS, shared a new website, SMARTY GAMES, designed to help elementary students develop basic math and reading skills.  After visiting the site, I decided that this would be helpful to many students during the summer months.

Free featured games for mathematics cover basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Reading games include games that focus on alphabet recognition and story content, plus more.

It’s mid-summer and I am sure that a hand full of parents are looking for interesting links to reading.  I stumbled upon a link to a site that is operated by James Patterson. It is called: READ KIDDO READ

The website is filled with incredible recommendations for readers, ages 0-Adult — broken up by age groups.  In addition, titles to catch boy’s interests are also promoted.  If you have run out of titles to recommend to your young reader, this website is well worth the visit.

As an educator, I am fascinated with the brain and all the mysteries it holds to the way we process and learn information. Through my ‘twitter-sphere’, I discovered TED Talks and a brief and powerful talk about the way the brain creates meaning. As I watched and listened to this talk, I was reminded of the critical and necessary need for all learning to be visual–as well as interactive and repetitive. At Georgetown, we continue to refine ALL our instruction so that we are meeting the needs of varied learning needs with an emphasis on visual directions that also include modeled instruction. This talk helps to explain why this is a best practice strategy for instruction.

Smart Bean is an online resource that links parents to helpful learning tools and tips.  This site also provides links to recent news posts related to health, nutrition, exercise, and much more.  It is worth the visit–and I will post links to interesting articles when I become aware of them through my reader feeds.

Many of you know Mrs. Brouwer as our art teacher.  It is also important to note that she is also an ARTIST.   I realize that this may not surprise or shock you, and this makes logical sense.  What I do find most amazing is that Mrs. Brouwer shares her work as an artist with her students and also BLOGS about her work–even in the summer months.  This summer she is exploring the art of collage. Please visit her blog and leave an arsty comment to encourage her creative energy!

If you are working on math facts with your child over the summer months, I have a helpful link that is worth checking out.  The authors of this blog provide strategies for learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.  MATH FACTS

If you are looking for a site that provides practice with facts, here are some additional links to check out!

Kids Numbers

Online Math

Math TV – Video Mathematics Lessons

Ghost Blasters, Math Blasters

Math A Tube
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