August Newsletter

Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Lion's Share, your one stop shop for all things Teaching & Learning!

Each month, we'll use this newsletter to keep you informed of the incredible instruction, spectacular strategies, and limitless learning happening across Lockhart ISD, while giving our staff, families, and community a closer look at the work happening every day to support our students.

Teaching & Learning is a big team, encompassing Curriculum & Instruction, Bilingual Education, Special Services, Technology, and Communications, so there will never be a shortage of great things to share! More importantly, our goal is to make The Lion's Share a helpful resource that keeps you connected to the work happening across our district, celebrates our students and staff, and highlights the people and resources helping make it all possible.

We have an All-Star team working behind the scenes every day to support our staff and students, and we are fortunate to have families and community partners alongside us in that work. As we embark on this new school year, we hope you'll enjoy the newsletter, share your feedback, and never hesitate to reach out when you have questions or need support. We are here to help!

As always, THANK YOU for your commitment to the students of Lockhart ISD and for making every day and every moment count. It takes all of us working together, and we're incredibly grateful to everyone who chooses to be #LockedInForLockhart!

All the best,

Adam Miller

Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning

We’re Krystin Feole and Suzanne Gaddis! We have the privilege of supporting teaching and learning across Lockhart ISD's early learning and elementary campuses! While our work covers a little bit of everything, our main goal is to support teachers so they can do their best work with students.

You’ll find us working alongside teachers and campus leaders with curriculum and instructional resources, professional learning, new teacher and mentor support, instructional strategies, and the implementation of district initiatives. Much of our work is focused on making things clear, more manageable, and more useful for the classroom, whether that means planning learning opportunities, answering questions, or helping connect district priorities to everyday instruction.

Most importantly, we’re here as a resource for you. Whether you have a curriculum question, need help finding a resource, want to brainstorm an instructional idea, or simply aren’t sure who to ask, we’re always happy to help!

We’re looking forward to a great year of learning, growing, and supporting you along the way.

Seesaw serves as both a digital portfolio of student work and an open line of communication between school and home. When using Seesaw, be sure to utilize the Skills tagging feature. These skills align with the TEKS and allow teachers to track individual student growth and progress over time. Consistently tagging student work with the appropriate skills creates an ongoing record of learning and can help streamline SBRC grading.

Student work shared in Seesaw provides meaningful evidence of learning for students, teachers, and families. Remember, not all work added to Seesaw has to be completed digitally. Analog activities, such as paper-and-pencil work or hands-on learning, can quickly be captured using the camera on an iPad or Chromebook and added to a student’s journal.

Teachers, consider exploring these Seesaw 101 lessons with your students (independently or by modeling one in just two minutes).

Then, put those Seesaw skills into practice with everyday learning activities like these:

• Math: “Take a picture of your model and record the steps you took to solve.”
• Reading: “Now that you wrote in your journal, tell me about your favorite part and why.”
• Writing: “Take a picture of your writing and record one thing you're proud of.”
• Science: “Photograph your investigation and explain what you noticed.”
• Centers: “Show what you created and tell us what you learned.”
• Reflection: “What did you learn today? What are you still wondering?”

• Need printable PDFs in SAVVAS Realize?
• Finding printable student materials is simple! Click Tools in the top navigation bar of your grade-level dashboard to view and download Student Edition Unit PDFs. Click the image to view the full-size graphic.

• Looking for a quick refresher? You can also revisit the Savvas myPerspective Activation Training for guidance.

Access TEKS Resource System YAGs and course materials directly through this link. For easy access all year, these resources are also saved on the Teacher Resource Page.

Decades of reading research prove a simple fact: reading comprehension relies heavily on background knowledge; the context, facts, history, and vocabulary behind a topic. The more knowledge students build about the world, the greater their overall comprehension and learning will be.

This is where RLA and Social Studies naturally fuel each other. When students learn historical context in Social Studies, it brings stories to life in reading class. When they explore big themes in RLA, it deepens their understanding of history.

Consider reaching out to your team members or diving into each other's curriculum and standards to look for overlap. The Teacher Resource Page (must be logged into your LISD account to access) is a great spot to start finding those natural cross-curricular links; RLA unit PDFs are linked and Social Studies YAGs are available for all teachers to view. If you have the chance, looping parents in on what students are reading gives families a simple way to keep building that background knowledge at home.

If you're curious about the impact background knowledge has on student success, check out Episode 5: "These Texts Were Just Oozing Information" on The Knowledge Matters Podcast!

Until next month, happy teaching!

🧡Ashley M. Figueroa

Hello from your Secondary Math and Science Content Specialist, Alana Trammell. I am excited to support you and our students in creating meaningful, rigorous, and engaging learning experiences across the secondary math and science classrooms. I look forward to building strong relationships with you by working collaboratively to foster a culture of continuous growth, curiosity, and academic excellence throughout Lockhart ISD. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need a thought partner, help with resources or want to share an exciting lesson you are eager to showcase, I am here for you.

EduProtocol strategies support the Childhood Unlocked Initiative by replacing passive screen time with active learning. So, what are EduProtocols? EduProtocols are simple, research-based instructional structures designed to make student thinking visible, increase engagement and empower every learner. By providing consistent routines that encourage active participation, EduProtocols can be used in every classroom and help students move beyond passive learning and become creators, critical thinkers, communicators and collaborators.

The Lab Report EduProtocol gives students an authentic way to practice the scientific method while making their thinking visible. As students develop a question, form a hypothesis, identify variables, collect and analyze data, and draw evidence-based conclusions, they experience science as a process of investigation rather than memorization. The structure of the Lab Report helps students organize their thinking, communicate their findings, and use evidence to explain what happened and why—turning the scientific method into something students actively do, not simply something they learn about.

• Lab REPort Smart Start Rep

The Comic Strip EduProtocol gives students a creative way to make their mathematical thinking visible. Instead of simply recording an answer, students use visuals, dialogue, and mathematical representations to show the story behind their thinking. As students explain their strategy, justify their steps, and connect the mathematics to a real-world or engaging scenario, teachers can see not only what students know, but how they are thinking. In the math classroom, the Comic Strip turns problem-solving into an opportunity for reasoning, communication, creativity, and deeper understanding.

• Comic Strip Math (EP+)

During our Powerful Teaching session at Inservice, we learned about four research-based “Power Tools” that can help increase student learning and long-term retention of knowledge.

The four Power Tools are:

• Retrieval Practice – Students strengthen learning by actively recalling information from memory.
• Spacing – Learning and retrieval opportunities are distributed over time rather than concentrated into one session.
• Interleaving – Related concepts and skills are mixed together to help students identify similarities and differences.
• Feedback-Driven Metacognition – Students use feedback to reflect on what they know, what they still need to learn, and how they can improve.

The video below demonstrates a word sort activity that can be adapted to provide students with meaningful opportunities for retrieval practice.

To implement the activity, give each student a vocabulary word on an index card. Challenge students to work together to:

1. Group related terms based on what they remember about the content.
2. Identify the broader topic or concept that connects each group.
3. Explain their reasoning and discuss how the terms are connected.

To increase retrieval opportunities, give students time to rotate around the room, discuss their terms with classmates, and reconsider how the vocabulary words are connected. During an initial round, you might allow students to trade cards as a scaffold, giving them an opportunity to encounter and discuss additional vocabulary.

Additional scaffolds can help ensure that all students are able to participate and retrieve content-specific knowledge. Consider providing:

• Sentence stems to support academic discussion
• Visuals or images to reinforce vocabulary and concepts
• Word banks or other prompts for students who need additional support

This activity can be a simple way to turn vocabulary review into an active learning experience while giving students repeated opportunities to retrieve, explain, and make connections among important concepts.

As we begin putting Childhood Unlocked into action, remember that this work is about more than simply reducing screen time. It's about making room for more play, more movement, more connection, more hands-on learning, and more childhood.

This month's unlock: Unlock Movement Look for one place in a lesson where students can get out of their seats: move to a partner, participate in a gallery walk, sort something around the room, use a human number line, or physically demonstrate their thinking. Movement throughout the instructional day is beneficial for all age groups and can boost retention of learning.

Over the coming months, we'll continue sharing practical ways to bring Childhood Unlocked to life in our classrooms. We're also beginning to form our Childhood Unlocked Committee with staff members who expressed interest in helping guide this work. Stay tuned for more as we learn, adjust, and build this initiative together.

We are excited to introduce our elementary RTI Aides, who play an important role in supporting students receiving Tier 3 intervention. Working alongside campus leadership and teachers, our RTI Aides provide targeted, skill-based instruction designed to help students strengthen foundational skills and make meaningful academic progress.

• ABS: Blanca Ramirez

• Nav: Paula Villalobos

• CFE: Michelle Salazar

• PCE: Jennifer Aviles-Mondragon

• BBE: Ashley Brito

• BLE: Adriana Lopez

We appreciate their dedication to supporting our students and helping every learner grow! 🦁

• Campus Support Teams for the Special Services Department

• For Lockhart ISD Employees that need information about Special Services (Special Education and Section 504) please access the Special Services Staff Website

• For Parents and Community members that need information about Special Services (Special Education and Section 504) please access the Parent and Community Special Services Website

At Carver, Mrs. Wilde’s class is already diving into literacy centers! While Ms. Wilde works one-on-one with a student, her other learners are engaged in purposeful activities that build foundational literacy skills. Students are strengthening alphabet knowledge, developing emergent writing skills, and even practicing spelling their names through hands-on arts and crafts.

We love seeing Mrs. Wilde create opportunities for students to work independently and stay engaged while she provides targeted, individualized support. Her classroom is a great example of how intentional literacy centers can maximize learning time and meet students’ needs.

At Plum Creek Elementary, Ms. Aguilar’s second graders are building strong reading comprehension skills by making meaningful connections, including text-to-text and text-to-world connections. We love seeing Ms. Aguilar use sentence stems to scaffold learning and provide support for different learners. She is also in the Power Zone, giving students specific and timely feedback on their writing. This keeps students moving forward, strengthening their thinking, and helping them grow as writers.

Most importantly, her students are invested in their work. They're focused on writing and excited to share their thinking with others, especially when a visitor with a camera enters the room!

At Lockhart Junior High, Mrs. Grogan’s 8th graders are exploring primary source documents and strengthening their analysis skills! Working collaboratively with a partner, students annotated a text and discussed questions together before independently completing a corroboration comparison and STAAR-aligned questions. Mrs. Grogan uses visual supports to help students understand expectations, follow directions, and stay on track. She also works within the Power Zone, moving around the room to monitor learning, provide support, and give specific, timely feedback as students work.

We love seeing this combination of collaboration, visual cues, and active teacher monitoring create a focused learning environment where students can build confidence, learn from one another, and deepen their understanding!

Digital citizenship is taught at every grade level. The digital citizenship lessons teach students how to use technology safely, responsibly, and ethically. Teachers follow the Common Sense Media curriculum. Parents can find resources for every age group at the same site. Some of the resources for teachers and parents include:

• AI Literacy Lessons
• Digital Well-Being Lesson
• Parent Guides to Social Media
• TV and Movie Reviews

Connecting families to Seesaw, creates a powerful "learning loop" between home and school, boosting student motivation and achievement. Our Pre-K campus and all elementary campuses use Seesaw as the portfolio for student work.

• September 1-11 - 1.5 Assessment Window (ISIP, StarRen, DreamBox), BOY Amplify Assessment Window, BOY Pre-K CLI Window
• September 7 - District Holiday
• September 15 - National IT Professionals Day
• September 25 - Strategic Planning Day & National Teacher's Assistant Day
• September 26 - Full Moon 🌕
• September 28 - K-5 RLA CBA 1
• September 22- New To Profession Day 2

These opportunities are available for various costs. See your administrator if you are interested in attending.