| This week, we have a guest blogger! The following message is from our amazing 6th grade teachers, Karl Olson and Karen Ollerenshaw. Enjoy!
Recently, Ginny, our Nature Vision instructor, brought the 6th graders out in the sunshine for a chance to act out photosynthesis. Students were assigned a chemical element and wore a badge to signify that they were either oxygen, hydrogen or carbon. Students then went to different tarps labeled with either H2O or CO2 and linked arms with other elements to form molecules of water or carbon dioxide.
Students at the water tarp passed through the root system of a plant (a brown hula-hoop) and were struck by a photon from the sun. This split the bond between the molecules and each student was free to make a new bond with another element inside the plant.
Students who made up carbon dioxide molecules entered the plant through stoma (a green hula-hoop), the light absorbing component of plants. Once in the plant, CO2 molecules were also zapped by a photon from the sun. The photon split the CO2 molecules which were then free to form new bonds.
Now inside the plant, all students (atoms of the elements carbon, oxygen and hydrogen) could form new bonds. Some formed a molecule of sugar, C6H12O6, made of 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms and 6 oxygen atoms. This is the simple sugar, glucose, that plants make as a result of photosynthesis. The remaining atoms (students) formed O2, or two atoms of oxygen joined together. This forms the gas oxygen that plants release and we all breathe!
Not only was this lesson a great way for students to grapple with the process of photosynthesis, it was also a valuable preview of the work they will be doing in chemistry classes in years to come.
Thank you Ginny for your excellent instruction. This enrichment opportunity was made possible by funding from the Discuren Foundation.
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| This week was staff appreciate week. Students and parents showered us with treats and kind words. The following link  Staff Appreciation.pdf is to a document that includes a few examples of the kinds of things staff received from students. We are very thankful for their appreciation. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did!
Until next time,
Melissa |
| Having worked at several different schools over the course of my career, I've had the opportunity to work with hundreds of teachers. While many of the teachers I have worked with are of very high quality, the teachers at Einstein really are the best. I could easily write a blog entry bragging about each teacher on staff. Today, I am going to take a moment to highlight two.
Allie Holzer is a 4th grade teacher at Einstein. Recently, one of our Lake Washington School District Board Members and our Director of School Support (DSS) for the Redmond Learning Community came to observe math instruction at Einstein. They spent an hour in Allie's class observing her teach a math lesson. Within 5 minutes of the observation, they were amazed at the quality of her instruction. The DSS, who spends significant time in classrooms around the district stated, "I've seen more high quality teaching strategies in 5 minutes in her class than I do in a full hour in other classes". We are very fortunate to have her on our 4th grade team.
Jane Wartenbe has been at Einstein since the doors opened in 1998. She recently received an email from a student that is in her first year at Arizona State University. This portion of the email from her former student exemplifies the kind of impact Jane has on her students: "I really wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all the great teachers I had. You especially had a great impact in my life. I learned the most English in your class and although that doesn't sound like a great accomplishment, it meant the world to me. Being fluent in two languages has given me so many opportunities and I feel like there is more on the way."
I am so proud of our staff.
Until next time,
Melissa |
| A few weeks ago I shared information about our new approach to writing instruction. In this week's blog, I am excited to share an update with you on the progress we are seeing in both the quality of student writing and in their attitudes toward writing.
Three times a year, students take a district writing assessment called a CDSA. Teachers are reporting incredible results in the winter CDSA results and in the quality of daily classroom writing. One example is in our Kindergarten classes. Kindergarten teachers are reporting seeing dramatically better quality writing at this point in the year. They explained that children are making great progress in being able to write detailed stories that follow an organized, logical structure. They explained that the quality of work they are seeing at this point in the school year is better than what they typically see in April from most Kindergarteners, not because this is a particularly advanced group of Kindergarteners but because they have been exposed to such high quality writing instruction! They report that Kindergarten students love writing so much they are choosing to do it during "Free Choice Time". In fact, they keep running out of writing paper and writing pens because the kids won't stop writing!
Also, parents of 3rd and 4th grade students have sent unsolicited emails to the teachers explaining how their children are thrilled to share their writing and how they report that writing is now their favorite subject!
I've also included one of many examples of student work that speaks to their enthusiasm for writing below. This piece is a page from a first grade student's "All About" book. I think you'll enjoy it!
Until next time,
Melissa
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| Einstein staff believes it is critical that all students be challenged in the area of math. To this end, we will provide students with differentiated math instruction when appropriate based on individual students’ needs.
At the beginning of each topic, teachers will use a pre-assessment to determine if there are students that already have a solid understanding of the upcoming concept. The students that can demonstrate that they have this will be given an alternate course of study during that topic. This may include one or more of the following types of learning opportunities:
- Online math curriculum (enVision online, IXL, First in Math, etc.)
- A project related to the grade level topic that will provide students an opportunity to demonstrate higher level understanding of the concept
- In some cases, when there is no possible way to go further in-depth with the grade level concept, a student may be introduced to a new concept typically taught at a higher grade level
- In most cases, students will continue to receive homework for the grade level topic and will always take the end of topic assessments with their classmates.
NOTE: If your child is provided with an introduction to a new concept typically taught at a higher grade level, please be advised that this is ONLY an introduction to the topic. Your child will still be taught that topic in the appropriate grade level per district and state standards and pacing guides. At that time, if your student demonstrates skill in that concept, they will be given the opportunity for enrichment as outlined above. It is important that you and your student understand that by being exposed to the accelerated concept in a grade level earlier than the one it is typically taught, they are not excluded from being exposed to that concept again. Additionally, based on best practice research in the field of mathematics instruction, the enVision curriculum “spirals” meaning students will be exposed to the same concepts over several years, each year learning the concept in a more advanced way than the year before.
Parents, if your child feels that they have mastered the concept they are learning within a topic, please feel free to ask your child’s teacher about their placement in their math group. Teachers will save or send home pre-assessment data and can explain their rationale for keeping your students within the grade level topic if you have questions about their decisions. Please remind your students that just as in sports like the game of baseball, once a professional player learns how to throw the ball, they don’t stop practicing that skill, they practice important skills like that each day; learning how to perfect it, challenging themselves to see how much better they can get! An important life skill we are really trying to emphasize with students is the skills of self-challenge which means students will be encouraged to push and challenge themselves as well! Like you, we want your children to learn all that they can in their time at Einstein which is why we make deliberate, data-driven instructional decisions each day that maximize each student’s learning opportunities.
Don’t hesitate to ask your child’s teacher for more information about this important topic if you have questions.
Until next time,
Melissa |
| Last August, while your students were enjoying their last week of summer vacation, teachers returned to the building and participated in many district and building directed meetings designed to prepare them for the coming year.
One afternoon, I surprised the staff by inviting seven college students to speak to them. As the students began to introduce themselves, our staff began to gasp and squeal with delight because the students were all former Einstein students!
The students all shared some of their favorite Einstein memories and encouraged the staff on ways they could inspire their incoming students. The students spoke with passion and great respect for our staff regarding all the ways the staff had prepared them for life after Einstein. It was a very special moment for the students to be able to thank the teachers and for the teachers to hear positive feedback directly from their "customers".
Students shared many profound things about ways they were impacted academically and in some cases, how our staff members completely altered their outlooks on reading or learning in general because of the way the Einstein staff taught a particular subject.
One student spoke about her career as a member of the USA Jump Rope team. She shared that she had traveled all around the world competing and representing our country and how it was the thing she was most proud of in life. She also shared, that she pursued this interest after seeing the Hot Dog USA Jump Rope Team perform at an Einstein assembly! Who would have known that after sitting in the audience at an assembly, she would be inspired in such a way that would dramatically impact the course of her life?!
The Hot Dog USA Team performed again at Einstein last week. Our wise PTSA anticipated that kids would be on fire for jump roping after watching this assembly so they purchased many jump ropes for the students to use at recess (and it was a good thing they did)! Students have already learned many of the basic tricks the team demonstrated! I was so impressed last week watching them jump during recess. I couldn't believe how hard they were working! And to think, there could be a future USA Jump Rope Team member in the bunch!
If you ask me, assemblies matter! While they are important for obvious reasons like community and culture building in our school, they matter because it just takes one demonstration or presentation at an assembly to dramatically impact a child's life! The example above is clear evidence of that!
Until next time,
Melissa |
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Hello Einstein Community,
One of the things I love the most about our school community is our generosity. One example of this generosity is our 2nd Annual Canned Food Collection conducted by our Kindergarten program as part of their 100th day of school celebration. This year, each of the four classes had a goal of collecting 100 cans each but they did far better than that! Click on the link that follows for the details on this project reported by Redmond Reporter: http://www.redmond-reporter.com/community/140352923.html.
I look forward to sharing more examples of our community’s generosity in the future!
Until next time,
Melissa
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| Hello Einstein Community,
Last week, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in classrooms. I was repeatedly impressed by the work our students were doing in the area of writing. Not only were students writing a lot but they were very excited about the writing they were doing and the qualify of their writing was far better than what I saw in the fall! One example of their level of excitement can be illustrated in the following story from one of my visits in a 2nd grade classroom during Writers Workshop. Students had been writing at their desks for over 20 minutes when the teacher announced to the class that it was time to put their writing away. The class began to moan and groan as though they were just told they couldn't go to recess. The teacher kindly responded by giving the students two more minutes to write. When she announced this, the class began to cheer like they were just given the best gift in the world! I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Never before had I watched kids celebrate and cheer at the idea of getting two more minutes to write! This is not how students typically feel about writing and it isn’t just by chance that they feel this way.
This year our staff began a professional development program with the University of Washington's Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) in the area of writing instruction. CEL's philosophy related to instruction is based on a significant body of research that indicates students learn best when they are given a "gradual release of responsibility" in a content area. In the area of writing, a gradual release of responsibility is provided through a system called Writers Workshop which includes a daily mini-lesson including a very specific teaching point, guided practice, independent practice, and individual conferences with students about their writing.
Writers Workshop is not something most parents are familiar with. I'm sure many of you, like many of our teachers, learned to write in a very different way. Most of us were not "taught" to write but were "assigned" writing. As students, most of our teachers assigned a writing task, corrected that writing (filling the margins of our papers with red inked corrections or negative comments) but did not explicitly teach us how to write using a cohesive system including modeling for us what was expected.
Writers Workshop is antithesis of the old approach. It is a cohesive, systematic, intentional process. The teaching points are carefully selected and taught in the same sequence that professional writers follow. This "process approach" to writing, is not the way that most of us learned to write in school but is widely considered the most effective approach.
In the process approach, students learn to write within "Units of Study" that are focused on a specific genre. For example, students may spend a month working on a Unit of Study in the area of Non-Fiction Writing. In first grade, a non-fiction writing unit may result in an "All About Book" while a 5th grade non-fiction Unit of Study may result in an essay. Either way, the "process" is very similar. Students spend several days in a unit "collecting and drafting" their writing in a folder or notebook. Next, students spend several days "revising" the pieces they've collected. Using the Workshop process described above, teachers model how to use specific revision strategies that are aligned with state and national standards, then students are given many opportunities to practice that revision strategy using the writing they have previously collected. After several days of revising their writing, students complete the writing process by editing their writing (within the workshop process), publishing their writing, and finally celebrating by sharing their pieces in some way.
As a parent, you may feel like very little writing is actually begin done because you may only see their final pieces about once a month after they are published and celebrated, but rest assured, every teacher has carved out close to an hour a day for writing. Because of the nature of the Writers Workshop, much of the daily writing is done and kept in the classroom so it can be accessed over and over again throughout the year.
The next time you are in our building, take a look at the bulletin board in our main entrance. There you will find a new piece of writing once a month from each class. The pieces selected are examples of a particular student's personal best work. This may not necessarily be the "best" writer in the class but it is that student's personal best work which deserves to be celebrated!
Until next time,
Melissa |
| The Einstein Principal’s Blog is finally live! I must admit I am pretty excited about this! There are so many incredible things that happen here each day that I can’t wait to share with you all. We are the first school to attempt this in the district so there may be kinks to work out as we begin, but I am excited about the opportunity to dialog with the community about our school.
While I welcome open and direct communication from our community, it is important that the communication be conducted in a productive way. For this reason, I will be adopting the Einstein PTSA’s “Golden Rules for Social Media” for this blog:
Golden Rules of Social Media
The following rules must be honored for participation:
1. Respectful discussions only = We want to support a fair and open forum for conversation but respect is essential. Remember that disagreeing with an idea is different from attacking an individual. In that spirit, do not post messages that contain personal attacks against other individuals—not members of the community, parents, staff, teachers, etc.
2. Comments and responses are topic appropriate = When posting, please keep your comments consistent with the subject and purpose of the discussion.
3. No Solicitations = No one can post messages containing any solicitation of funds, goods, or services. This includes (but is not limited to) posting of job openings, position wanted messages, and direct fundraising requests.
4. No Advertising = No one can post messages containing any advertising of goods or services.
Inappropriate messages, comments, images, etc. will be removed at the discretion of the social media administrator(s). Repeated offenses may result in an individual being blocked from the social media service, or any other action that service allows, including referral to the service’s abuse monitors.
Thank you in advance for honoring these rules!
My intention is to update this blog about once a week. Please check back for updates, subscribe to the RSS feed, or “like” the Einstein PTSA Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/EinsteinPTSA) as new blog posts will shared there.
Until next time,
Melissa
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