I recently communicated to parents that we would
be conducting a “quiet safety drill” in the upcoming weeks. The scheduled drill did not occur due to a
snow day. That being said, we will be
conducting the drill in the next few weeks.
On Friday (March 7) we will meet with grade levels of students to
demonstrate what a fire drill or quiet drill will be like during lunch. The Safety Team at EES has been working on a
protocol for when students are in the cafeteria and we are now ready to teach
this to students. The reason I am
sharing this with you is to provide you with some context in case your child
brings this up. The Safety Team is committed to doing this in a very
developmentally appropriate way in order to lessen any anxiety. I know this is
a difficult subject, but as we have learned all too often, schools need to
have plans in place, plus time to practice them in a coordinated way. The routine safety meetings have helped us to
forge a great relationship with the Essex police and fire departments, which I
believe is key to keeping our students safe!
My second topic today is changes to WIN
time. We began an initiative known as
Response to Intervention (RTI) about 5 years ago. This is where we assess all students and
provide them with “What they Need” (WIN) during a scheduled block each day. I have heard concern from numerous parents
about students who are not in a small group during WIN. The thought is they are not getting targeted
instruction at this time. While I have
been confident with the work that we have been doing with students during WIN, the
staff at EES has heard this message and we are piloting a new concept. We have decided NOT to use classroom teachers
for intervention so that they can work with the remainder of the students in
the class. These students will receive
targeted instruction from their own teacher in a variety of ways. Teachers have decided to determine what these
students need on a class by class basis, so if you are interested in knowing
more you will have to contact the teacher directly. We have data to show that RTI is working, but
we continue to improve our model from year to year. I will be happy to report
out at the end of the year as to how this change has worked for both students
and teachers.
WIN
movement activities have been occurring due to the ongoing support from parent
volunteers. It is great to see how much the children enjoy these movement
breaks. The newest addition is WIN Enrichment. A wonderful EES parent, Rebecca Davis, came
up with the idea of a creating a WIN Enrichment Cart, which has been stocked
with great extension activities. This
cart is currently being piloted at third grade, with the intention of expanding
to other grade levels over time. Thank
you to Rebecca for the inspiration behind this!
