PADDLE FORWARD in 2014-2015

Paddle Forward

in 

2014-2015

Welcome back to Neuse Charter School

I hope you all had a very enjoyable summer. I am looking forward to an excellent year with each student showing excellent progress each nine weeks.

Individual Education Program meetings will be scheduled for a Wednesday or a Thursday afternoon after school, and I will be sending you home invitations to your student's meeting so that you can plan for when that will be.

My office  and classroom is off of the new cafeteria if you need to find me at school.

My email is npeele@neusecharterschool.org

I will add websites that I feel will be helpful to you throughout the year.

For those of you who have students that have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, the 

ADDitude Magazine is excellent and is online.

Mrs. Peele

May/June

End of the Year 

I just finished a course called "Reading Foundations". I learned so much about teaching reading to students with disabilities in this course. One thing that I wanted to share with you is the importance of fluency, decoding words/phonics, and reading comprehension and that they all need to be taught in order for students to become good readers. It is my goal to continue to do just that.

As we wind down the year, my students have just written some amazing  Who, What, Where, When, and Why poems. Just answering these questions and putting them in poetry form was amazing. They are so creative and I shared some of them with Mrs. Haumont in the Media Center. By writing this type of poem, the students gained more practice in getting into the habit of answering these questions in their reading and writing.

I am working with some of the teachers in working on practice EOG readings and math problems.

I use a  checklist for each reading passage and ask the students questions about the passage as we read together. I am reading Paddle to the Sea to my fourth grade students and asking them EOG type questions as we go along.

It is a time of high anxiety at home and at school. Exercise is so important for each child. Focusing on the task at hand can help kids not get so overwhelmed with all that they need to do before the last day of school.

Thank you, parents, for all that you do with your kids. They are such a pleasure to work with.

We will be working very hard from now until the last day of school. I am so proud of all of my students.

Thank you and have a positive last few weeks of school,

Mrs. Peele

Week of February 24, 2014

EC News and Information

On Thursday, February, 27th, there will be the second meeting for the Exceptional Children's Department Continuous Improvement Plan. We will discuss various activities that the EC departemtn engages in to meet the North Carolina State standards for our school's EC department. There will be a time of sharing between team members of any ideas to improve the department in order for us to continue to meet state requirements.

The meeting will be held in the EC classroom closest to the office at 3:35. 

On ADHD and LD:

The ADDitude Magazine is very helpful to parents of children with ADHD, as well as Learning Disabilities.

Go to www.ADDitudemag.com to recieve and download your free copy of Book to Success at School.

For helpful websites go to :

www.Chadd.org

www.Ldonline.org

www.Schwablearning.org

www.Copaa.org

www.Wrightslaw.com

Some software to help students with writing and reading are:

Kidspiration

Inspiration

Co:writier 4000

Dragon Naturally Speaking  at Nuance.com/dragon

Bookshare--  books read aloud

I hope these sites and software programs will be helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Peele

EC Cipp Meeting Announcement

 

 

Working to Make Kids Smile

 

 

Teaching students to write is a great reward for me as a teacher. Two of my students have been working on constructing a paragraph using all the stages of writing. Using a graphic organizer to get their thoughts down first, they wrote down any word they could think of about a trip that they had taken at one time. Next, they wrote three details and explained the details. After that they wrote their introductory sentence and conclusion sentence. Once they did that, they put all those sentences into their rough draft. They are already smiling and so proud of their work and they haven't even finished.

 

I attended my first out of four Foundations in Reading class. This is part of a state initiative to instruct teachers to help teach students with disabilities. The class was held in Greenville, NC.

 

**Next Thursday, January 30th at 3:45 there will be an EC Continuous Improvement Plan Committee meeting. Anyone on the Board of Education is invited and any teacher/administrator is welcome, as well. We will discuss the improvements we as an EC team have made this year in the referral process and in other areas. Activities for areas of improvement will also be discussed. One area is how to help K-3 EC students improve their Reading 3-D scores and how to help students in grades 3-12 improve their EOG and EOC scores.

 

*Report Cards and EC Report Cards go home this Friday.

*Awards will be next Friday, January 31st.

 

 

Enjoy the rest of the month!

Mrs. Peele

 

 

4

Full Steam Ahead

We are almost at the end of the first semester. It is hard to believe. I have seen so many great changes in our students but with today's standards it never seems to be enough. Do you ever feel like that? Please keep working with your students with all the love and understanding that you are giving them. It will prove to be a positive source of encouragement at all times. Love goes a long way in these days of stress and anxiety.

Last week I spent some time doing some reading and phonics testing. It proved to be very helpful and a positive tool in knowing what and where the students are missing certain skills.

Music helps kids memorize facts.

Reading helps kids learn to read.

"Thinking Aloud" while reading helps them to remember what they read.

Graphic organizers kept beside a student to mark on while reading helps a student remember what he has read and organize his thoughts, thus develop the main idea of a selection.

Vocabulary of questions is a major stumbling block to many students.

Please help explain the "lingo" in the question. Does he/she understand what is being asked, much less get the right answer!?  How do we expect the student to get the correct answer if he/she doesn't understand what is being asked?

NOT is a big, giant work to watch out for in test questions. Please help your student be aware of that dreaded word and what the question with NOT in it means.

Thanks.

January 16 and 17 are Teacher Workdays 

January 20th- Martin Luther King Junior Day

January 24th Report Cards go home

Thanks for all that you are doing for your kids!

Mrs. Peele