To: Michael Green
Re: June Monthly Special Services Report
From: Deb Kernen
Date: May 20, 2013
This month the Special Programs Department has been working furiously at setting up 6 very exciting summer opportunities for our Woodland students.
Summer Math Credit Recovery Program-Mark Knudson will be teaching high school students who have failed at least 1 semester of math. Course offerings will include: Algebra 1, Geometry, and Advanced Algebra. The program goal will be for students will be to pass the summer course and recover 0.5 math credits, thus returning to their planned math track in the fall. They will spend 40 self-directed instructional hours with digital curriculum and 20 hours with the teacher in learning lab. The class will run for 2 weeks at 30 hours per week. Math Credit Recovery uses the Flipped Classroom model. Students receive their initial direct instruction from the digital curriculum offsite. The blended learning program (online and in-person) continues in the Open Learning Lab daily, where students receive one-on-one tutoring from a highly-qualified teacher.
Summer Math Camp at Woodland Primary School will be offered again this year. They have had excellent success with this program over these last four years. Students benefit by intense, focused instruction that will help them gain some basic skills they are lacking. All skills and concepts are directly related to the Common Core Math Standards. The teachers keep the day quite varied with an assortment of activities; seat work, whole group lessons, small group work, math games, physical movement, songs/cheers, recess, snack, literature, academic vocabulary, computer skill practice, drills, math art and more. After every session the team meets and evaluates each student’s progress. Teaching and activities for the following day are adjusted based on daily response to the intervention provided. We want it to be somewhat different than the typical school day. As a result of the school-wide grade level math assessment given 3 times a year, students are identified who would benefit from additional support and practice with fundamental math skills, particularly Number Sense. Andrea Edwards, Stacia Aschoff and Sandy Austin provide an effective intervention with deliberate, purposeful instruction and practice critical concepts and skills that students have not gained and internalized during the school year. Students are pre, mid and post assessed during Math Camp. Since Math Camp has been held at the beginning of summer, last year they assessed the students attending WPS in September to see if they retained skills over the rest of the summer break. They intend to do this again, this September. We would like to intervene earlier with younger students-to help them gain vital skills and understanding so they may experience success with mathematics sooner. We are inviting 24 students exiting first grade to attend who fit the criteria. Math Camp run from June 19-July 2- 9-12.
Social Skills Camp will be held at WPS and focus on social and life skills. Our 3 school psychologists-Jenn Barry, Monica Siegrist and Joe Crawford will be teaching the camp. Activities will emphasize friendship-building, positive interaction, emotional management, organization, following directions, and study habits. The program will include a variety of interactive tasks, such as cooking, games, art, focused instruction and group relations. It will run from June 17t June 27th from 9- 12.
LAP Math Middle School Summer Camp will be targeting our current 7th graders who did not pass the MSP in 6th grade. The activities will be more hands on and project based. They’ll be doing a sponge toss and creating histograms from our data. They’ll also be building scale models of the stairs in the stadium and running a math store for the kids to practice computing discounts and sales tax. The goal is for the students to get a second look at a few 7th grade concepts while also giving them a sneak preview of some 8th grade standards. The hope is that a strong foundation will help them be more successful in Math next year!! Jen Benedict and Holy Kojis will be teaching the class.
Imagine Learning English Camp: WPS and WIS are combining forces to provide our ELL students who are currently enrolled in our ELL programs and that are also participants in the Imagine Learning English Program. .Activities: Imagine Learning computer program, and its homework component, other language centered activities which will include using the gym for interactive games, also a story reading and language enrichment time.
Projected outcomes: Increased scores on Imagine Learning English program, more exposure and practice of conversational and academic English which will continue to benefit them in the classroom. This class is being taught by Alisha Robison, Joel Hingston, Melanie Ball and Natalia Dittmer.
The WIS Summer Math Camp will target fourth graders going into fifth grade who are identified as having 1’s on their common math assessments and teacher input. Activities will include math centers, mini math lessons that will include entertaining math games. They will also be doing project based learning and letting students guide own understanding of math concepts and real world applications. Outcomes will include deeper understanding of fourth grade math standards, students will have a preview of what to expect in fifth grade, gain more confidence in what they know and hopefully gain a more positive attitude towards math!! The teachers are Lynnell Murray, Heather Cage and Jessica Stavig.