"The more you focus on what's good, the more good you will see."

Time. Time is the holy grail of education. If we only had more time... Related to that quest, I recently read a book by Todd Whitaker (@ToddWhitaker) and Annette Breaux (@AnnetteBreaux), The Ten-Minute Inservice. Contained in the book are 40 quick (10-minutes) training sessions to build teacher effectiveness. Ten-minute training sessions! That's a manageable amount of time; 10-minutes is affordable.

The first inservice that I wanted to use at Riverside Elementary from the above mentioned book was 'Twenty-Five Reasons to Be Proud of Our School.' A quote that stood out from this chapter of the book inspired the title of this blog post. So with the help of several teachers we planned how we would deliver this to our staff at a staff inservice

First, we showed our staff a video containing of our students. Leading up to our inservice, I was stopping students in the hallway and asking them what they liked best about going to school at Riverside Elementary, or why they were proud to go to school at Riverside Elementary. After the students initially answered, I asked them if I could ask them again so that I could record their responses for a project that I was creating. The following is the iMovie that was shared with our staff.

After the video was shown, we presented an example of what each staff member was about to do next. Each staff member was given four paws to write four reasons why they were proud of our school. All of the paws were then collected and compiled into a giant Huskie paw, which now hangs near the front entrance of our school. We want everyone coming into Riverside Elementary School to know ALL of the reasons that our staff is proud of our school!

Below is a sampling (in no particular order) of the responses.

Proud of my school because...

1. ...of the kids. They are the most important part of our school.
2. ...we practice being respectful, responsible, and caring.
3. ...we have a great support system. The ESO has done a lot to help our school.
4. ...all of the great learning going on.
5. ...everyday the students make me smile.
6. ...we care about our students
7. ...our students and staff work hard everyday.
8. ...the staff never gives up on a student. They work hard with each child's education.
9. ...we are always learning new things.
10. ...we are a team.
11. ...it is fun to be at a smaller school where everyone knows the kids.
12. ...we have fun while learning.
13. ...we grow a little everyday and we are always getting better.
14. ...we have fun learning with the students.
15. ...the students are very creative.
16. ...our students show enthusiasm for learning.
17. ...the kids are so much fun.
18. ...our students are eager to learn.
19. ...we have parents that are involved and communicate.
20. ...our students are willing to help others.
21. ...our community is supportive and involved.
22. ...we are the Highland Huskies!
23. ...we get to be a part of a tight-knit community that is committed to kids.
24. ...teachers work together to improve student achievement.
25. ...it is very rewarding.

Hearing Our Students' Stories

One of the things that I hope we can accomplish through social media is to give our students at Riverside Elementary a voice in telling our story. To accomplish this, prior to Thanksgiving, I asked our fifth grade teachers to select a couple of students that I could work with and we found times that I could work with them that didn't cause any of the students to miss out on any new learnings in their classrooms. We started to work through the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, editing, revising, drafting, and publishing) with a topic that I provided. Posted today are the finished products. So please enjoy what a small selection of our fifth grade students had to say when asked, what are you thankful for in regards to going to school at Riverside Elementary (I had planned to have this published by Thanksgiving, but plans don't always come to fruition; sorry).

Alyssa Clarke
I'm thankful for going to Riverside Elementary School for many reasons. We get to go on field trips, have pep rallies, watch good plays, and do the Walk-a-thon. The teachers help the students and are nice to us. I'm also thankful for going to this school because we get to do fund raisers that help us to buy things for our school like iPads for the teachers and our Promethean Boards. I'm really thankful for this school because the kids are respectful and caring to everyone; also, they help us when we need to be helped.

Matt Colbert

At Riverside Elementary I am thankful for our cooks and their good food.  Also, I am thankful for teachers, students, and friends who are respectful, responsible, and caring.  I am thankful for people that respect me and don’t say mean things, but instead say nice things.  I am thankful for our fun specials’ teachers: Mr. J, Ms. Feldman, Mrs. Burns, Ms. DeLacy, and Mrs. Pat; they are cool because they are nice and caring. Lastly, I am thankful for all the teachers and my principal.

Jocelyn Day
Thanksgiving isn't just about eating meals and getting together, it's also about thinking about what you're thankful for. I am thankful for being at this school every day because I get to see all these fun and nice teachers that help us with problems at recess, and do things to make learning fun. All the students at Riverside Elementary get a good education. The teachers are great because they let us have fun through learning programs and online things that help us learn. Our specials teachers do a great job at making sure we are good at what we do in our specials, and preparing us for our futures. Also, our students are respectful, responsible, and caring, which is the Huskie Way.

Grant Prybil

I am thankful to go to Riverside Elementary. Our good cooks make awesome food, and they have a good selection of food, too. We have people that teach us the best possible things that we need for our future. Our kids are very good at helping the teachers out,too. This school has money because we do all the fundraisers that allow the teachers to have iPads , Promethean Boards, good white boards, and other stuff for our classrooms. All of the specials teachers are very nice, too; they help us out with a lot of stuff.

Mr. Ewald

Riverside Elementary School is a great place! There are many things at this school that make me thankful. Number one among these things is the students; they are the best. I am, also, thankful for the willingness of our staff and students to work hard towards learning. I admire the staff for how eager they are to try new things.  As a result of the iPads and everything else that we are provided with for our staff, students, and school, our Elementary Support Organization (ESO) deserves recognition of our thanks. Furthermore, it should be known that the exceptional involvement and support that we receive from all of our parents and families that contributes toward our students' education causes a great sense of gratitude amongst us.

It is my hope to continue to work with various small groups of students throughout the school year so that our kids - our best storytellers in our school - have a platform where they can share.

I am thankful for...

Recently, Mrs. Sulhoff's classroom door caught my attention. The door was decorated with a turkey made-up of sentences that each of her second graders had written about something that they are thankful for at Riverside Elementary. I stopped. I read the sentences. I smiled.

I thought how these statements would be perfect to publish on my blog this Thanksgiving season to share with a larger audience some of our students' perspectives as to why our school is great!

Mrs. Sulhoff enabled her students to type their sentences and then email them to me through their class's Google account that had been previously created while they were using a set of Chromebooks. 

I am thankful for my teacher because she is caring. Maddie

I am thankful for my teacher for teaching me. Remington

I am thankful for my teacher because she helps me when I am frustrated. Payton

I  am thankful for the library because there are many books to read. Riley

I am thankful for the teachers who keep me safe. Jordan

I am thankful for my friends because we help one another. Kinnick

I am thankful for the teachers who help me learn. Jasper

I am thankful for the garlic bread that the cooks make. Taylor

I am thankful for my friends because they are nice. Julissa

I am thankful for Mrs. Johnson for helping me learn more. Stella

I am thankful for Mrs. Sulhoff who helps me learn. Aaron

I am thankful for the cooks who make us healthy food. Grace

I am thankful for the people who keep our school safe. Kael

I am thankful for the people who keep our school safe. Andrew

I am thankful for my teacher for teaching me. Landen

I am thankful for having good friends at school. Sully
I am thankful for my teacher because she is nice. Shauna

I am thankful for the Harry Potter books I get to read at school because they are full of adventure. Helen

I am thankful for my friends because they make recess fun. Malachi

I am thankful for a class who works hard and makes me smile everyday. Mrs. Sulhoff

And I am thankful for the staff and students who work so hard to ensure that we all learn and enjoy coming to school at Riverside Elementary School. Mr. Ewald

Thinking about the Unthinkable

School security is an important and timely topic for us all. It is magnified as a result of various tragic incidents that have transpired in schools throughout the country. In our efforts to be proactive, Riverside Elementary (and virtually every other school throughout the country) is examining our plans for dealing with emergency response procedures.

Last year, we began a partnership with the Washington County Sheriff's Office. As a result of that partnership, our staff was introduced to ALICE, an acronym for Alert, Lock-down, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. ALICE increases awareness of options in the event of an emergency. The primary thinking behind ALICE is that hiding is no longer the only option. The staff at Riverside Elementary is planning to conduct three drills this school year practicing the ALICE methods. The first two drills will take place after-school, and will only include staff members; the third drill, which will be communicated in advance, will take place during the school-day, and will involve students.

This year, we have formed an Emergency Response Team (that includes our secretary, classroom teachers, representation from the Washington County Sheriff's Office, and myself) to examine policies and procedures specific to our school. Our team meets regularly to review and improve our current practices. 

As a result of our Emergency Response Team's work, several changes are being planned that we will communicate in-advance via your child's Friday folder (look for this to come home on Friday, November 22nd). Additional changes may take place in the future as the Emergency Response Team continues to meet and look at how we can make our school as safe as possible. We welcome your comments as you experience these changes which are designed to enhance the secure environment we are providing to our children.

These changes, while they may initially be an inconvenience, are intended to enable us to continue to provide a secure, child-centered environment while continuing to welcome parents and visitors to our school.

Flex

We are labeled a SINA school at Riverside Elementary. We are a School In Need of Assistance. That statement can be quite deflating, but it shouldn't be. I challenge you to find a school that isn't in need of assistance and/or couldn't make improvements. We're all works in progress.

In fact, I could argue that there are several hidden benefits of being a SINA school. 1) It draws our attention to the group of students that we need to give extra supports. 2) It forces us to develop a plan for improvement. 3) It gives our school a little bit of extra money that allows us to enhance some of the things that we do.

This year our SINA plan now includes a component that addresses Response to Intervention (RTI). I am not going to go into detail explaining RTI, a simple Google search for RTI will return many hits to give you that information. Just know that RTI is a systematic method of delivering interventions to students, and that RTI is trending (for good reason) in education.

Last year, the Highland CSD's administration team studied Simplifying Response to Intervention, written by Mike Mattos. After the administration's learning from the book, Mr. Armstrong was generous to purchase the book for all of our teachers throughout the District.

This September, Riverside Elementary was fortunate enough to use a portion of our SINA money and send our Building Leadership Team to Cedar Rapids to hear the RTI expert himself, Mike Mattos.

A portion of the time spent with Mattos in Cedar Rapids was devoted to formulating a plan to create systematic interventions at our school. Coordinating a systematic block of time throughout the building for interventions isn't easy work to do, due to the logistics of scheduling, but it is the right work to do. Nonetheless, over the course of two days, we had brainstormed an idea as to how this might look at Riverside Elementary. Through multiple meetings spent developing this idea, by the end of September, we had a plan that we felt comfortable with.

 

What we came up with were Flex teams/Flex time. Our rationale for the Flex title is three-fold 1) students are going to get stronger, 2) groups will be flexible, and 3) our plan/process will be flexible, too. A note outlining the details of this should have come home with students on Friday, October 25th (below is a link to that note).
Introducing Flex - Google Doc

We're aware that this will be a work in progress. It is a starting point. As we begin, and as we go we will make adjustments to improve our plan/process. Nonetheless, the implications that this has in regards to student learning is exciting and that has us excited!

Pucker Up!

Last year, after our students reached our fundraising goal from our walk-a-thon, I spent a day working from the roof of the school. This was unappealing to me as I suffer from Acrophobia, more commonly known as a fear of heights, which encompasses a climbing ladders. Getting from the ladder to the roof, and then later from the roof to the ladder took some courage on my behalf. Otherwise, spending the day on the roof wasn't too bad (despite the cool mid-autumn temperatures).


This year, I agreed to kiss a pig if our students reached our fundraising goal from our walk-a-thon. In hindsight, I think I'd rather spend multiple days on the roof as opposed to kissing a pig. Tomorrow is the day that I am scheduled to kiss a pig. I am not excited about this, and I become less excited about this with each passing moment as my famous 'kiss-heard-'round-the-school' approaches.

However, saying that our students are excited about this is an understatement.

Everywhere I go, I am a distraction. I walked into a second grade classroom, and one of the students who was listening to a story on the computer blurted out, "You're gonna kiss a pig." The student was listening to an audio story with headphones on so she did not realize just how loud she was shouting. This announcement brought more, similar announcements so I decided it was best for the students' learning if I just left the classroom.

Last Friday, I was paged to Mrs. Swain's classroom; I walked down the hall anticipating the situation that I would be entering. I walked into the dark classroom, and the students were seated in a circle around the teacher. It was Ukelele Friday. I had been invited to listen to 18 giggling, smiling, first graders singing the songs that they had created, 'If you're happy and you know it kiss a pig' and 'Mr. Ewald kissed a pig, E-I-E-I-O.'

Our third graders are learning about different types of communities - urban, suburban, and rural. Students are in groups creating visual representations of these communities. Yesterday, a group of students approached me at lunch to ask for a small photo of myself so that they could place the picture in the pigpen that they had designed in their rural community.

I did however, have a small fraction of students who were empathetic towards my cause. I even heard one story from Mr. J how when it was announced how close the students were to meeting their goal, a student spoke-up to her classmates and said that $8K-some was more than enough money and that their fundraising efforts should cease in-order to protect my best interest. Kids are the best! This was the minority, though; it was not the popular consensus.

$9K is a lot of money. Kudos to our students, parents, families, and community members who contributed to this. Your support is appreciated by us at the school. Your support allows our ESO to do things like purchase iPads for all of our teachers. Your support allows the students to experience excitement leading up to, and the euphoria of seeing their principal kiss a pig. Thank you, sincerely.

We'll be sure to post pictures of this 'event' so that everyone can share the students' delight.

Change is a Good Thing

"One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Subduing the other's military without battle is the most skillful." - Sun Tzu
That is the quote at the beginning of the chapter titled 'Rapport,' in Teach Like a Pirate. That is the purpose of PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports). We don't want to have to manage misbehaviors. We want to be so good with our management tactics that we prevent misbehaviors from happening.

I am in the process of training for a half-marathon that I will be running at the end of October. During the school week, I run when everything is still dark and all is still quiet. One of the things that I love about training for half-marathons, as a result of the peace and quiet of the early morning,  is the time that I have to reflect and think. It was during a run this past week that the content for this blog was drafted.

At the beginning of the school year, our PBIS team (Rebeca Yoder, Janelle Sulhoff, Mallory DeLacy, Jordan Jaspering, and Anna Burns - kudos to you five for the work that you are responsible for with this) decided to create a new system for recognizing students who show the Huskie Way of being caring, respectful, and responsible. Out (for now) were the Huskie Paws, as they were replaced with a ticket system. There are different colored tickets that students receive for being caring, respectful, and responsible; each ticket is labeled with one of those three words. When an adult in the building catches a student being caring, respectful, or responsible that particular student is given a ticket. The student then signs a sheet in his/her classroom that shows all of the students who have earned tickets, and they put their ticket into a drawing. At the end of each week, the drawing takes place and one student from each classroom is recognized for showing the Huskie Way of being caring, respectful, and responsible.

The feedback so far is positive. I am told that while I am announcing the winning students' names, the anticipation in the classrooms is worth seeing. Validating that point is the fact that before I am even finished on the intercom, there is a line of students that have made it to the office to claim their certificate and prize.

Change gets people energized and excited. It keeps things fresh, and it keeps people on their toes. If this was a fable, it would end with a moral. The moral of this story would be that change is a good thing.

PALS and PD

Last winter, Heather Feuerhelm, our former Grant Wood Area Education Agency (AEA) literacy consultant, introduced our fifth grade teachers and students to a literacy strategy named PALS. As word spread regarding our fifth grade team's implementation of PALS, our fourth grade teachers became interested to learn how it works/what it looks like so they, too, could implement PALS into their classrooms.

PALS is an acronym for Peer Assisted Learning Strategies, which pairs two students with the same text. A round of PALS gives each student an opportunity to read to their partner for five minutes. After each student has had their turn to read, both students alternate retelling facts pertaining to what was just read for two minutes. Each student then has five minutes to continue to read, and retell/summarize what they are reading; students finish with reading and making predictions for another five minutes apiece. PALS provides clear structure and purpose for our students and coincides nicely with the 'Read to Someone' rotation of the Daily 5.

Last year, our Iowa Assessment scores, which tests students in grades three through five, for students proficient in the area of Reading increased to 79%. This is an increase from our scores of 67% of students proficient in 2012. PALS is one inference that we have made in regards to these improved test scores.

Another indicator is our DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) benchmark testing, which all students take in the fall, winter, and spring. One component of DIBELS assesses how well students are able to retell what they read, a major emphasis of PALS. Last year during fall testing, 17% of our fourth graders had meet their spring expectancy for proficiency in retell. By the spring, we had 74% of students proficient in retell; a 57% increase! Also impressive is the improvement that our fifth grade scores showed, last year. Only 1% of our fifth grade was proficient, based off of the spring expectancy in retell, last fall. By the spring, we had 65% of students proficient in retell; a 64% increase! This year, the fifth grade group that received the PALS instruction last year as fourth graders is beginning the year with 61% of students already having met their spring expectancy for proficiency in retell from their DIBELS tests.

Earlier this month, Misty Forbes, our returning fifth grade teacher, led our teaching staff in some professional development regarding PALS. Misty talked about what PALS is, and gave our teachers an opportunity to go through a round of PALS as students. As a result of this new learning for staff, third grade is now doing PALS and our younger grades have some ideas for how they could alter PALS to make it work for their students. We are also starting to work with Rich McGrath, our new Grant Wood AEA literacy consultant, to see how we can keep the momentum of PALS going and build upon it.

We have monthly learning sessions like this scheduled for throughout the school year. The framework for this idea was adopted from a Bettendorf High School PowerPoint that I saw on Twitter via Bettendorf's High School Principal. Thanks @casas_jimmy. Anyways, aside from Misty's PALS session, we've also already had a session regarding social media as a communication and a learning tool.  Some of the other topics that are initially planned are: Sharon Walpole literacy strategies, the implementation of data binders for our students, and using iPads in the classroom.

The fact that we have data to celebrate that correlates with our implementation of PALS is exciting! However, equally exciting are all of the teacher leaders within our building that are willing to lead professional development for our teachers.

The more you read...

I listened to Freeman Hrabowski, at the School Administrators of Iowa conference in Des Moines, last month, when he spoke a powerful message about how the more his mother read the better she was at reading. The better reader she became at reading the more she enjoyed reading. The more that she enjoyed reading the more she read. This is our goal; that our students will acquire the skills that will allow them to develop a lifetime love of reading and writing. 

While conducting classroom walkthroughs over the course of the first week of school, I became excited as I kept seeing a lot of the same language and procedures being used throughout the building. The language and procedures that caught my attention were in regards to our teachers' implementation of the Daily 5 and CAFE, which originated from the work of Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, better known as The 2 Sisters. 

The Daily 5 is a literacy structure for the classroom that allows students to learn and practice certain routines and procedures. It consists of five tasks that are introduced individually with modeling and practice so that eventually the students can engage in the task independently. While introducing a task, students gradually work on building their stamina to the point where they can be successful at being independent while doing that task. The five tasks, which are the same from kindergarten through fifth grade (although they, obviously, look a little different at each grade level), are: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, work on writing, and word work. Once all tasks are introduced and implemented to a level where students are independent, the teacher is able to work with small groups (guided reading) and conference with students one-on-one.

CAFE is an acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding vocabulary. The CAFÉ is a system that compliments The Daily 5 by utilizing the above mentioned reading skills to facilitate setting goals and then establishing both small group and whole group instruction.

During the 2011-12 school year, a group of 13 teachers voluntarily participated in a teacher-led book study of The Daily 5 with implementation beginning in the spring ('12). By the fall ('12), all K-5 classrooms had made The Daily 5 a part of their classroom practice. This summer ('13), Riverside Elementary was fortunate to send seven staff to the Iowa Reading Association Conference in Ames, Iowa where the authors,The 2 Sisters, were presenting. As a result of the success that our teachers are experiencing with The Daily Five and the learning that staff received over the summer, a portion of our teachers have taken the initiative and started to implement CAFÉ. 

There are multiple reasons that this had me smiling as I walked up and down the hallways, in-and-out of classrooms. The students have familiarity with this; for example, this year students are being re-introduced to this language and these procedures instead of being introduced for the first time. The teachers have had a year of using this structure in their classroom, and they have had a year to reflect on what has worked well and what can be improved upon. This is a system that really emphasizes both collaboration and independence amongst our students, which are two vital skills for the 21st century; students are also provided with both choice and purpose, which prove to be motivating. Finally, most importantly, it gives our students 1) opportunities to read and write and 2) opportunities to work directly with the classroom teacher.

So, please, ask your child about The Daily 5 (and for some students CAFE, too) and see what he/she has to say!

Welcome to My Blog

First of all, I'd like to welcome you all to my new principal's blog and thank you for taking the time to visit and read. I hope that it is enjoyable for you.

To begin, I'd like to share the three things that have happened leading up to the inspiration for this blog. 

1.) Writing has always been an activity that I’ve enjoyed. I remember loving to write stories in elementary school, and essays and papers as I grew older. I remember at West Branch High School that my favorite class was writing for the student newspaper, The Bear. 

Blogging has for some time been something that has intrigued me. In my previous position, I was responsible for setting-up and participating in collaborative book study blogs.

2.) I am inspired by the recent School Administrators of Iowa conference that I attended to become responsible for telling my school’s story. In the 21st century, a blog is a wonderful platform to communicate quickly with a wide-spread audience.

3.) As I continue to build a Professional Learning Network (PLN) via Twitter (@MrEwald_Iowa), I am inspired, again, to begin blogging. I want to contribute to the blog-o-sphere by sharing all of the wonderful things that happen at Riverside Elementary, as well as my reflections in ‘Let Me Tell You a Story...’

So please - read, enjoy, follow, and share what I have to say through this blog. Like most things, it will be a work in progress. However, there are so many great thing happening at Riverside Elementary that I feel obligated to share our stories.