LEAPing Our Way to Success

It is good to say, I am back (Mr. Hendricks).  My wife and I recently welcomed our newest member to the family, another little girl.  We feel so grateful to have such a wonderful, growing family.

That said, onto the school stuff...

This year our school adopting a program designed to meet EVERY students' needs in reading, according to their NWEA MAP scores from this year and years past.  With the scores, our students have been designated a fifth grade teacher to work with for 35 minutes per day on a specific skill using non-fiction text. Our block of time, which is called "L.E.A.P.", takes place from 10:50 to 11:25 each day, focusing on reading.  Specificially, we are currently working on improving the MAP strand of summarizing, so our groups are working on the skills: identifying main ideas and summarizing text.

Each teacher is designing lessons which meet his/her class where his/her class is at, according to their instructional level.  Along with focusing on a similar strand or focus, ALL of our fifth grade students are also using Scholastic News / Weekly Reader for their non-fiction text.  Recently, our students studied and learned more about the recent election and the various issues which the election focused on.  Now, groups are moving forward with new topics, but all are usually current events.  

For example, my small group is using the Scholastic News issue titled "Too Much Soda?"  In the issue students are learning about the effects of soda and will have to form their own opinion of whether or not this drink should be banned or at least used in moderation.

One feature we really like is the interactive website created by Scholastic News, which is currently free for ANYONE to use.  On this website, students, teachers, and families can access a digital copy of the current magazine we are reading, print off worksheets/extra practice sheets, or play games related to the topics in the article.  Definitely worth checking out: http://goo.gl/78Qbr.

We are excited to see our our L.E.A.P. time moves our students closer to their reading MAP goals and if this time makes our students feel more successful, one leap at a time.