“A strong mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.”
-Patricia Neal
Dear Grand Oak Families,
Wow! Another week has come and gone. I wish the sunshine would come back so we could enjoy some spring-like weather!
We continue to randomly call our parents every week and the feedback that we have received has been great. Our parents are enjoying the school year, love the communication and they feel like students enjoy school and are safe! We are very proud or our staff and we want to keep our momentum going throughout the entire year. We continue to focus on teaching students in a variety of ways and remember that our Personalized Learning doesn’t = students solely learning on their own. It means students working with teachers in small groups, some independent tasks and constant accountability regarding progress. The best part is that if students are excelling they can continue to grow and learn at their own pace. Please also continue to follow us on Facebook to keep up to date with school happenings and wonderful pictures of our student learning. We are very proud of what our teachers and students continually do each day!
I also wanted to share a great website that I found a few years ago that pertains to education and finding new ways to engage our children. We constantly are talking about doing a better job of preparing our students for the future and having them move at their own pace when possible. This year we have spent more time showing our teachers how to integrate new technology and we are beginning to see our students beginning to “create” with the tools they are learning. As a principal I am constantly reflecting and reading about education and technology and when I found out about this program I thought it was worth sharing. There is even a short video that parents can watch at www.TED.com that may engage you and get you thinking about technology and learning. The TED website is all about “ideas worth spreading” and the video that I watched was presented by a gentleman named Sal Khan and it talked about something called the Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org) that has gained in notoriety over the last few years (there is an application for the iPad if you are interested in it).
This website allows students to not only practice a variety of skills ranging from simple math to Calculus but it also has video tutorials and a fun skills based process to allow kids to earn badges and move along a continuum. I think this will be a worthy technology site for our students from now and in to the foreseeable future. Please give it a try and as always, feedback is welcome.
Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your families.
Respectfully,
Mr. Giovanelli
I will be sharing information and ideas from a book entitled 180 Days of Manners by Forrest and Menger. Our focus will be on good manners and how they should be used in all that we do J:
1. Always be kind to new students- We have been getting a lot of new students at Grand Oak and it is important to remember how it feels to be new. What a wonderful gesture it would be to make friends with your new classmate and make them feel at home. A great way to “fill a bucket”.
2. Good manners are important at physical activity- Continue to talk and reinforce good manners and teamwork for your children. When our children are on the playground we need to make sure that we are always fair, we don’t argue and we work together to have fun and be healthy!