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

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. 

________________________________________________

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

November News

Our students have been working very hard in all subjects.
In my reading classes this past week I reviewed  finding the main idea of a selection using the book, One Morning in Maine, by Robert McCloskey. After reading this to my students, I had them fill out a graphic organizer to help remember this story and the sequence of events. Using the graphic organizer, they then made a turkey with feathers- who, did what, where , when, and why. On each feather they copied the answer from their graphic organizer and the main idea was achieved.


Have a great week,

Mrs. Peele

Week of October 21-25th, 2013

Friday-  Early Release Day! Booster Bash at 5:00

Monday- October 28th/ Teacher Workday

I found a new website called www.ADDitude.com  

They are having a webinar for parents tomorrow at 1:00 about diagnosing children with ADHD. It's free!

If anyone has a gel-filled cushion for chairs for students and wouldn't mind me trying one, I would appreciate it.

Also we are in need of squeezey balls and chewy pencils if anyone has any. That would be great.

Welcome our new Exceptional Children's Department Teacher Assistants:

Karla Stern - EC Teacher Assistant Elementary

Karen Gooseman- EC Teacher Assistant Middle School and High School

I appreciate them so much. They are doing a great job.

2013/14  1st Exceptional Children's Continuous Improvement Plan Meeting

The first EC CIPP meeting for the year will be this  Thursday, October 24th at 3:45-4:30

in the conference room. We will be discussing the plan that was written last year, as well as improvements we can make this coming year. For more information please email me, Nancy Peele at npeele@neusecharterschool.org

Have an enlightening week,

Mrs. Peele

Exceptional Children's Blog

The following is a link to the Coucil for Exceptional Children's page on terms and definitions. I hope this will be helpful:

https://www.cec.sped.org/Special-Ed-Topics/Who-Are-Exceptional-Learners?sc_lang=en

Piglets on our Farm

I hope you all have a very good week.

Mrs. Peele