From the desk: EW school district make coordinated effort

Elaine Kanas

Dear East Williston School District Community, 

As you can see from the way we organize our 2013-14 district goals (found on our district website at www.ewsdonline.org > click on the Our District tab on the horizontal navigation bar > click on 13-14 Goals listed on the top of the page), our district curriculum and instruction focus extends beyond the individual grade level and content area to support an articulated program of study for our students K-12 that spans the variety of content areas. In fact, a building and district theme this year, highlighted at our first Superintendent’s Conference Day Convocation and building faculty meetings, is “All In” which describes our coordinated efforts to support our students’ learning and our continuing curriculum development and implementation, including Common Core instructional alignment.

In that spirit, many of our professional development activities involve teacher and administrator teams across grade levels and content areas learning and working together. On Oct. 2, Assistant Principal of Elementary Education James Foy, North Side Reading Teacher and Elementary ELA Content Specialist Kathleen Cunningham,  ELA Secondary Chair Steve Collier, Social Studies Secondary Chair Brian McConaghy, Director of District Curriculum Information and Middle School Life Danielle Gately,  Wheatley Principal Sean Feeney and I attended an English Language Arts conference jointly sponsored by the New York State Superintendents’, Teachers’ and Administrators’ Associations entitled Common Core: A Collaborative Path to A New Vision for Learning. 

Student Achievement Partners (www.achievethecore.org) served as presenters. They are a non-profit organization developed to support the 46 states (that includes New York) that belong to the Common Core Consortium. As almost all consortium states (with the exception of New York and Kansas) have waited to implement the new assessments, Student Achievement Partners’ focus for the conference was not on testing, but was to provide instead, a rich opportunity to delve specifically into the instructional aspects of the Common Core and explore resources to support student learning in some of the key shifts that characterize ELA instruction under the Common Core. These include: 

Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction.

Reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational.

Regular practice with complex text and its academic language. 

An important takeaway from the conference was the key role that content area subjects play in helping support these shifts outside of the ELA classroom, including an increased emphasis on students engaging directly with content specific text in their subject area classrooms, “reading to learn.”  This year, the development of a common writing style sheet, shared input into the new common core aligned tenth grade research paper from all subject area teachers, district-wide Tier 2 academic vocabulary lists and the movement toward more theme rather than topic based foreign language units include those actions that our East Williston School District is undertaking in other content areas to collectively support the ELA Common Core shifts.    

We value open communication in our district and schools and want to hear from you. A gentle reminder not to hesitate to directly address any concern or suggestion to the person involved, whether it be teacher, principal or superintendent. My experience has always been that positive relationships between home and school are most effectively supported by honest interaction and communication on both sides and that staff really wants to hear from you when there is a worry, question, concern or compliment!    

At the Sept. 30 board of education monthly business meeting each of the building administrators presented an overview of curriculum initiatives and activities planned for the 2013-14 school year.  

North Side: Highlights in ELA included increased emphasis on non-fiction texts, reading additional complex texts more closely and with focus on “evidence-based” writing. The introduction of Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessments (K-4), a comprehensive one on one assessment for each student to determine student independent and instructional reading levels, was described, as well as the full implementation of the Fundations Program in all classrooms grade K-2 with sequenced skills lessons that include print knowledge, alphabet awareness, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, fluency and spelling. The Leveled Literacy Intervention System, a targeted small group intervention program to support response to intervention for at risk students, is also being implemented in grades 1-4. 

Mathematics initiatives included fewer topics at each grade level with greater depth; emphasis on basic number facts and number sense and emphasis on understanding why the math works as well as application of math to authentic contexts. Grade levels are now utilizing the math modules provided by the New York State Education Department. Parents can find these modules at www.engageny.com – you can access from the district website from the left navigation bar ‘Common Core Curriculum Info’.

Willets Road: School-wide curriculum goals include “Eyes on All Kids” with continued differentiation of instruction to meet the learning needs of all students; a focus on academic intervention that is targeted to specific student needs and the use of benchmark data to help struggling learners as well as support student challenge. Grade 5 has shifted to an elementary model and is working with LitLife (literacy staff development) to implement a reading and writing workshop model in the classroom that provides students with more reading and writing time and fosters independent reading.  Grades 6 and 7 are implementing written research projects. There is continuing redesign of 5-7 math curriculum for Common Core alignment with integration of the NYS math modules. The science curriculum continues use of the Grade 6 online textbook and implementation of an online text in Grade 7.

Wheatley: Principal Feeney described three important school initiatives. Student honesty, (see his report from the September BOE Work Session on the district website at www.ewsdonline.org > click on School Board on the left vertical navigation bar > click on BOE Meeting Presentations on the left vertical navigation bar > click on 13-14 BOE Presentations), the tenth-grade research paper, and academic vocabulary.

He also provided an academic overview that included a detailed look at Regents and AP performance over the past few years. Overall, students continue strong performance on New York State Regents exams, with an identified goal to increase mastery level on the English Regents exam.

AP participation continues to grow. Where the student participation rate in 2008 was 240, it is projected to be 320 based on this year’s course selections. 

The overall score distribution on the AP exams has seen an increase in the passing rate each year. Detailed student performance on the various AP exams, including how many twos, threes, fours and fives, was shared including discussion and implications for future practice. While the average scores on both English Language and English Literature AP exams continues to exceed the state average, identified goal areas included strengthening student performance on those two exams as well as on the physics B AP exam.

The complete power point presentations from each building principal are available on the district website at www.ewsdonline.org  > click on School Board on the left vertical navigation bar > click on BOE Meeting Presentations on the left vertical navigation bar > click on 13-14 BOE Presentations.  

A reminder that all board presentations are posted after a board meeting at the site listed above. 

Ten of our Wheatley seniors have been named Commended Students in the 2014 National Merit Scholarship Program. Congratulations belong to seniors Uzayr Arif, Justin Borczuk, Suril Butala, Caroline Dickson, Jacob Freund, Joseph Jacob, Aakash Jhaveri, Lauren Perry, Samantha Siegler and Tao Zeng.

Commended students place among the top five percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2013 competition by taking the 2012 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Wheatley senior Matthew Huhn was named a 2013-14 National Hispanic Recognition Program Scholar Recipient. Each year, the NHRP honors about 5,000 of the highest-scoring students from over 250,000 Hispanic/Latino juniors who take the PSAT/NMSQT®.  Congratulations Matthew..

The Columbia Press Association recognized Vintage, Wheatley’s literary magazine, with a 2013 Silver Medal. Congratulations to all the contributors and especially to last year’s editors Michael Lituchy, Sienna Brancato and Heather Chau and faculty advisor Rick Leidenfrost-Wilson.

Upcoming Events:

Willets Road and Wheatley Book Club – DASA Initiative: Oct. 16.

Join me at the upcoming parent book club which is part of our Dignity for All Students (DASA) initiative. The guidance department will be hosting this parent book club that will focus on the ever changing landscape of adolescent behaviors and potentially negative consequences. 

The book to read is “Sticks and Stones,” by Emily Bazelon. You can register by e-mailing Sherri Schacter, Wheatley guidance counselor at schacters@ewsdonline.org or Karen Stein, Willets Road guidance counselor at steink@ewsdonline.org. For Oct. 16, please read parts one and two (Chapters 1-6). 

From 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Room 450 at Wheatley. 

Parent University Is Back – Nov. 7 

The guidance department and PTO volunteers will once again host an evening of informative parent workshops. Two sessions (7 p.m. to 8:10 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.) will focus on pressing issues we face as parents and those affecting our children. The workshops are made to fit the needs of all parents at North Side, Willets Road and Wheatley. A sampling of workshops include, Coping with Core Curriculum, eStudent: Explore the Parent Portal and Naviance, and Bridging the Gap from Home to School. Registration information and detailed descriptions of all workshops will be e-mailed to district parents.  

Have a Good Weekend. As always, please e-mail me at kanase@ewsdonline.org or call me at 333-3782 with any questions, suggestions, and or any topics you would like to see for this newsletter.  

Best regards, 

Elaine Kanas, Ed.D.

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