December 

My cat about 5 years ago- maybe we'll have snow this Christmas!

      I hope you all had a very good Thanksgiving break. From now until December 18th, we will be very busy indeed. 

     I am using a progressive level reading series called SRA which is working very well with my students. Each passage has 5 questions. If they get 4/5 correct or more, they can move up to the next level. After each reading, their questions are corrected by the students and their progress is marked on a graph.

We continue to monitor the progress of IEP goals.

In math, please make sure your children have memorized all basic facts. If not there are many websites that help make it less of a drudgery. www.AAAMath.com, Grand Prix mulitplication, IXL, and scholastic are just a few that help with memorization.

     Three teachers from the Exceptional Children's Departement attended the Annual EC Conference in Greensboro, NC. The theme was "Believing in Achieving". All three teachers first attended an Autism Institute, plus various other classes such as  Orton Gillingham Reading approaches, news updates from NCDPI, use of LiveBinders in our classes as a means of having quick access to other websites and teaching materials, classroom managment, and a class on the use of a therapy dog for students with disabilities. The key note speaker was Anthony Ianni who played basketball for Michigan State and has been diagnosed with autism since he was very young. He was the first person with autism to play college basketball and to be in the Final Four. He was very inspiring to say the least. We also heard Rebecca Garland speak, the Associate State Superintendent. She is an excellent, inspiring speaker as well. At the Director's Meeting, the NC Director of EC Services spoke and gave many updates to EC Services in the public schools of NC.

     The EC Department had their first annual Continuous Improvement Plan meeting in October. The following is the agenda that was followed:

Exceptional Children’s

Continuous Performance Plan

Committee Meeting , October 24, 2013

AGENDA

1.       Welcome

2.       Review of the CIPP for 2013

3.       Review of state EC submissions since August

4.       What’s Ahead

5.       Questions and Suggestions for the rest of this school year

We plan to have the next EC CIPP meeting at the end of January. 

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Please see the following sights for parent help:  www.ecac-parentcenter.org, www.weekdate.com, www.additudemag.com.

I hope everyone has a great first week in December.

Mrs. Peele