A Message from the Principal
Greetings to all parents, guardians and friends of Pulaski School students!
I’d like to tell you about a number of things which are going on in the school over the next couple of months. Beginning right now, our Literacy Coaches and Teachers will be administering the Harcourt Phonemic Awareness Inventory to all Kindergarten students. We administered this assessment to all Kindergartners at the beginning of the year, and we are testing them again at this point in the year to see how much each of the students has grown in this skill, which is essential to becoming a good reader. The results will help us identify those students who are ready for further reading skills challenges and development, and will also help us identify students who require extra support to develop the necessary level of phonemic awareness.
Concurrently we will begin assessing all students in Grades 1 – 3 using an assessment called the DRA 2. Again, these results will be compared to the results we got at the beginning of the year, to determine the relative growth of every child in those grades. The results are then used to ensure that children are properly placed into instructional groups where the work is challenging, but achievable. In this way, we try to guide every student to the highest reading level they are currently able to reach. These results help us plan our teaching to make sure that every child is receiving instruction at the correct level.
Also, as most everyone is aware, we continue the process of preparing all of our Grade 3 – 5 students for the annual administration of the Connecticut Mastery Test in March, 2011. This test is administered to every public school student in the state to assess their progress in Reading, Writing, Mathematics and Science. These tests are extremely rigorous and comprehensive. Much of our curriculum is developed and designed to adequately prepare students for the CMT. The results of these tests do not come back to the school until late summer. At that time, the results are used to determine the relative effectiveness of all schools and districts in Connecticut, according to the Connecticut State Department of Education’s implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation.
We continue to make great strides in making sure that every student at Pulaski School reads independently for a minimum of 30 minutes daily while in school. Our Accelerated Reader program allows us to make sure that this is happening, because students are taking Accelerated Reader quizzes after each book they complete. This helps us know that not only are they doing the reading, but that they also understand what they have read. We have no doubt that this increased level of independent reading will help them achieve higher levels on all of the assessments I have described above. There is a clear correlation between the amount of independent reading students do and their ability to do better on ALL tests… not just reading tests.
To be sure, you can help in this process. I suggest the following:
1. Always encourage your child to do their very best at school, and stress how important a good education is in their life.
2. Try to get your child to school on time every day that he/she is healthy. I cannot overemphasize how difficult it is for students to keep up with the class in terms of learning if they miss too much school.
3. Make sure your child does his/her homework. Homework should most often be practice of previously learned skills, and like anything else, this practice helps the students refine and truly understand those skills. If your child is bringing home homework which he or she cannot do, please contact the teacher immediately. This should NOT be happening.
4. Encourage your child to read a minimum of 30 minutes every single day at home, including weekends. Reading, in my view, is the very best homework of all, because practicing reading is the very most important skill of all in terms of becoming a well educated person. If you do not have enough reading material in your home to keep your child or children reading daily, please contact your child’s teacher, our Media Specialist Paula Krutzky, or me. I will personally make sure your child has appropriate and sufficient reading material.
Once again, thank for your continued support of our efforts to provide your child with the very best education we can. You play a critical role in this process… we simply cannot do it without you!
Best Wishes,
Tom Brown, Principal
