Welcoming the Yellow of Spring

I’ve been welcoming the yellow of spring. (And the lime green of the new leaves on the trees, cotton candy pink of the cherry blossoms, and misnamed purple petals of the Redbud trees.) 

Data on Reading

I saw this graphic posted the other day and it matches what I’ve been thinking, and why I’ve been emailing my school board so much recently with information and thoughts on reading. 

My main point is that students have to be able to read proficiently before they can do pretty much anything else in school: calculate math word problems, understand their science textbook, or graduate.

I have been digging more into how many kids are showing to be proficient and not proficient in our district on the M-STEP test that measures proficiency in math and English Language Arts (ELA). And the numbers are not good. However, at the elementary school level there are concrete things that could be changed in reading instruction that would support all students! Changing these things would positively affect all students as they move up through school!

Hawaii

Last week had some pretty extreme highs and lows. The high: we were lucky enough to go to Hawaii on a spring break trip (the major benefit of my spouse’s job as an airline pilot is being able to fly standby for free). The low: on return home from spring break we realized our house had been broken into.