Gold Rush Elementary

Inspiring Purpose, Compassion & Excellence

Our annual school fun run – the Digger Dash! – was a tremendous success! Students enjoyed a beautiful day filled with fitness, teamwork, and school spirit. They loved running alongside their classmates, and we were so grateful to see so many families cheering them on from the sidelines.

This year, students weren’t just running for fun – they were running for a great cause: our new school marquee! The marquee will help us better communicate upcoming events, reminders, and celebrations with our school community.

Donations will be accepted through the end of September and can be made through My School Bucks or sent to school in student donation envelopes. Every contribution, big or small, brings us one step closer to reaching our goal.

A heartfelt thank you goes out to our PTO and the many parent volunteers who made this honored tradition possible. The Digger Dash continues to be a wonderful way to bring our community together in celebration of health, teamwork, and school pride! We look forward to honoring our fastest boy and girl from each class in a closing Digger Dash assembly in the coming week.

Each year, students across the district come together through a shared reading experience. This year’s selected book is To See An Owl by Matthew Cardell, a beautifully written story about a young girl captivated by owls. The book’s descriptive language brings these fascinating birds and their unique behaviors to life. Click here to listen to the story.

In art, students drew inspiration from the text to create their own owl masterpieces. They studied pictures to capture each owl’s distinct features, and in some grade levels, students even used ripped paper to mimic the texture of feathers.

A special thank you to Ms. Dazzio for thoughtfully designing this integrated unit, which connected literature and art in such a meaningful way for our students!

Students are beginning to explore the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) writing framework, which supports their ability to craft written responses to one or more texts. To launch this work, students in every grade participated in a pre-assessment. Older students read a text while our youngest learners listened to one, and all drafted a written response. This assessment helped teachers understand students’ prior knowledge and provided a starting point for instruction.

With this foundation, students are now learning the key components of the SRSD framework. They are practicing how to set a personal goal or create a positive affirmation to help them persevere through the more complex task of responding with text evidence. They are also exploring prewriting strategies, such as defining the gist of the text and breaking apart the writing prompt.

All students will also learn the T.I.D.E. acronym to guide them through the writing process:

• Topic sentence

• Important detail from the text

• Detailed explanation

• Ending

As students become confident with these strategies, older learners will advance to the next level of rigor—citing and analyzing two or more complex texts in their responses. We are excited to see how the SRSD framework will strengthen students’ skills as readers, writers, and thinkers!

2021 South Swift Fox Way, Parker, CO, USA

303-387-7700

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