Good Morning Memorial Families,
We hope that your family enjoyed the long weekend. It was wonderful to see so many families in for parent teacher conferences last week and we hope that you found the time meaningful and helpful to you as you support your child at home. Coming on the heels of parent teacher conferences is the end of the first trimester of school. Grades close for the first trimester on December 1st, and you will be able to log into Powerschool to view your child’s first report card of the year on December 9th. Our report cards are standards-based, and our teachers benchmark out the standards throughout the year with the goal of proficiency on grade level standards by the end of the year. Because they do not cover every standard every trimester, you may see some standards blackout out as N/A.
Next Monday night, Lauren and I, along with Liz Garden, the principal at Clough, will present our School Improvement Plan for the elementary schools. We are deeply focused on understanding where our students stand as individuals as we emerge from the pandemic, supporting all students through high quality instruction, and engaging our students in deep learning opportunities throughout the year. You will see these three themes of Understand, Support, and Engage within our goals. We have been spending a lot of time with grade level teams as well as vertical teams looking at grade level standards, assessing to determine where our students currently are in relation to those standards, and then designing instruction that is personalized to meet the unique needs of our students after several years of disrupted learning. We are holding our standards firm, meaning that we teach all students grade level content, and yet we are trying to be flexible with the way in which every child gets to the grade level expectations. As you know, we have implemented a WIN (What I Need) block into each grade level four days a week to allow intervention and extension to happen without missing important grade level instruction. Many of our students need additional support in the area of literacy and in particular, writing at this time, and so we are deeply committed to providing each child with the time and opportunity to strengthen these skills. To learn more about our focus for instruction and learning, be sure to tune into the school committee meeting next Monday night, and if you have any questions after watching, be sure to let us know.
Have a wonderful week. I’m sure that you are happy your children will be in school for a full five day week. I know we are!
Warmly,
Wendy and Lauren
