The Woodland Brag Blog

1/11/12

 

Happy January!  I hope you are enjoying this break from the normally cold weather of January!  While, personally, I miss the snow and the activities that need snow, I am loving not having to experience the bitter cold we have had in past years.  I am confident the snow will come and I will be able to be out in it!

Here are some recent comments from substitute teachers about Woodland:

"It is a wonderful school to sub at, everyone if very kind."

"Very energetic (in a positive, focused on learning way) and engaged group of students."

"...the teachers are excellent with plans here and the kids are wonderful!"

Couldn't be prouder of this wonderful school community that we have built together!

Have a great day!

Linda

1/4/12

Good Morning!  Happy New Year!

I have some great news to brag about today!!  As we work hard as a school community to help each student at Woodland SOAR (succeed, outshine, achieve at high levels, and reach their highest potential), we need to celebrate evidence of success.  Here is a BIG piece of evidence! 

A team of students representing Woodland recently won highest honors in the WordMasters Challenge – a national language arts competition entered by approximately 220,000 annually, which consists of three separate meets held at intervals during the school year.

Competing in the difficult Blue Division of the Challenge, and coached by Mrs. Nicole Ewing, the school’s fourth graders tied for seventh place in the nation in the year’s first meet, held in December, among 698 school teams competing at this grade level and in this division.

Two of the school’s students earned highest honors for individual achievement as well:  Fourth grader Anika Deshpande and fifth grader Amelia Lund both earned perfect scores in the meet, which in the entire country only 62 fourth graders and only 130 fifth graders did so.

Other students who achieved outstanding results in the meet included third graders Amber Prock, Ethan Tran, and Sydney Pollmann; fourth graders Christa Aasare, Owen Douglas, Andrew Mantini, Jacob Prosch, Matthew Seawood, Abigail Whittemore, Kyra Balentine, Jonathan Christianson, Lindy Oujiri, Taylor Quan, Kaylie Toleno, and Sydney Warcken; fifth graders Hayden Audette, Logan Fisher, Corey Hines, Sawyer Hoff, Vincent Kroll, Blake Loughrey, Patrick McArdle, Zoe Vanden Berk, Maya Bidwell, Madison Gute, Anna Heltemes, Kailee Hillman, Nicholas Krolnik, and Andy Sukhram; and sixth graders Emily Anderson, Lyria Gansop, Ryan Peterson, Jake Wulff, Henry Huynh, Diane Nyugen, Skyler Walz, and Matthew Zethren.

The WordMasters Challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships.  Working to solve the Challenge analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically.  Though most vocabulary-boosting and analogy-solving activities have been created for high school students, the WordMasters materials have been specifically designed for younger students, in grades three through eight.  They are particularly well suited for able and interested children, who rise to the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.

Congratulations to Mrs. Ewing, the fourth grade teaching team, and the students in Mrs. Ewing's reading class!  Your Woodland community is very proud of you!

Congratulations, also, to all the other third through sixth graders who received special recognition for their achievement in the WordMasters competition!  Many thanks to Mrs. Jennifer Leslie for her coordination of the WordMasters program.

WordMasters is a rigorous program that requires the students to study and apply their knowledge at high levels.  All children who participate in WordMasters, whether they receive recognition or not, are growing in their reading skill level and vocabulary usage!  Congratulations to each of the students participating in the program! 

WE, the Woodland Elementary school community, are working together to help every student SOAR!   This is one more example to show that we are making a difference!

Have a great rest of your week!

Linda

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12/21/11

Hello!!  I hope this blog finds you happy and healthy and ready for your kids to be home for winter break!

We have started a new tradition at Woodland of celebrating student learning in our weekly staff bulletin.  I'd like to share some of the items we celebrated this week.

• After nine days of competition in the "Sumdog Osseo Area Contest", Woodland was one of the daily winners!
  You can view the full leaderboard here: http://jupiter.sumdog.com/osseo_schools/results  At Woodland, by the tenth day, 187 students had answered 238,189 questions correctly.  Three students had over 15,000 correct answers in 10 days!!
• There were three perfect CML (Continental Math League) scores at Woodland for Meet 2 in December:
  Jacob Prosch (Grade 4); Shelby Opusunju, and Ryan Pederson (Grade 6).  Ryan also had a perfect score on the first meet this year!
• Great work on the first WordMaster vocabulary analogy competitions this month!  WE have an amazing number of students who received scores of 15/20 or better (and that’s fantastic for this challenging test).  Here’s the data:
• Third Grade – 17 students with scores of 15 or higher
• Fourth Grade – 30 students with scores of 15 or higher
• Fifth Grade – 46 students with scores of 15 or higher
• Sixth Grade – 35 students with scores of 15 or higher
• AND  - there’s more!
  Anika Deshpande, fourth grade, and Amelia Lund, fifth grade, achieved PERFECT scores on this challenging test!! 

Great things are happening at Woodland!  Kids are SOARing!

Happy Hanukah!  Merry Christmas!  Happy Kawanza!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Linda

12/14/11

Hello,

As we reach our 10^th year anniversary, we are reflecting on what is best for our students at Woodland.  One area of focus is looping.  Your thoughts and input regarding looping at Woodland are highly valued.  Please take the time to complete the survey that will be emailed to you this week.  We are in the process of collecting data to determine whether looping assists us in increasing student achievement and in implementing the most effective strategies for instruction.  The survey needs to be completed by December 20, 2011.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Parent Looping Survey

Have a great weekend!

Linda

11/11/11 :)

Happy Weekend!

If you are on your computer this weekend - and feel so inclined :) - please consider going to the SUN Newspaper website and voting for "Readers' Choice Awards" under the categories of best school and best PTA.  It would be great for Woodland to receive these awards two years in a row!

Here is the link:  www.minnlocal.com

Have a great weekend!

Linda

11/10/11

Greetings!  I hope this communication is finding you happy and healthy and ready for the winter months QUICKLY approaching!

In this writing I want to thank each of you for all you do to support Woodland!  We are so lucky, as a school staff, to work with parents and community members who do whatever it takes to support our work, our district mission, and our students.  Personally, I couldn't be in a better place!

We are so lucky to have several community partners!  The Noble Mobile and Croix Oil Company generously give us $500 each year to use toward Science and Math.  General Mills provides an email mentor for each of our sixth graders.  Through our Ementoring program, the kids have a mentor in the business world with whom to connect and the mentor guides them in the development of their writing skills.  Each week, over 30 Target Corporation volunteers come to Woodland to work with students and support their learning.

We also are very proud of our parent/guardian and grandparent volunteers!!  This wonderful group of school family members read to, and with, their children/grandchildren; they support them as they do homework; the work collaboratively with teachers to build a partnership focused on each child.  Those who are able also give NUMEROUS hours to volunteer projects at school or at home.  We also are lucky to have retired educators donating time to help us.  Last year, we logged over 10,000 volunteer hours - and we know there were thousands of hours beyond that that were never recorded!  It is amazing!!

Finally, we are so very lucky to have a very active, energetic, and supportive PTA.  This group of people, supported by our entire school community, works tirelessly to plan events to bring our school family together and raise funds to support the needs of our school (technology, support staff, equipment, programs for kids, etc.).  Over our ten years, Woodland has received a high level of support from PTA focused on student growth and development.

There are SO many people to thank!  It truly does take a village to raise a child - and our Woodland village is PHENOMENAL!  Thank you!

Have a great weekend!

Linda

10/10/11

Happy Monday!  I hope you all were able to get outside and enjoy the gorgeous weekend!  The weather was beautiful and the trees very colorful!

Have you been to school and seen our new office remodel??  We love it!  In order to create a safer entry, the office space was moved toward the outside windows, giving us even more space!  This allowed us to move our cumulative folders into the office space and put another office where they were stored. The construction went smoothly and we were able to be back in before Open House.  The new furniture and file cabinets have made our work space more efficient and open.

Having a secure entrance means that all building doors are locked during the day, with the exception of the front doors.  However, in order to get into the building during school hours, visitors must come through the office and check in.  This allows us to closely monitor who is in the building and helps us insure a safe and secure learning environment for our students. 

The new entry does change the way we do business at the beginning and end of the day.  In the morning, children need to wait outside until the doors open at 9:20.  Thus, we request that you not drop children off for school before 9:10 in the morning.  On days when the morning weather is rainy or cold (0 degrees or below), the children will be brought into school when the morning supervisor reports to duty (approximately 9:10).  At the end of the day, it can be difficult for parents to wait inside the vestibule, so please feel free to check in the office and wait inside the building for your student.

A safe and secure learning environment is one of the critical elements of an effective school.  Our new office remodel has allowed us to insure that is in place.  Many thanks to our School Board and district staff for all their work to make this project a success!

Have a wonderful week!

Linda

 

10/4/11

Greetings!!  We don't call this the Woodland Brag Blog for nothing!!

In my previous blogs I have shared the fact the Woodland won recognition from the Brooklyn Park Post last spring as we were voted by readers to be the "Best Public School in Brooklyn Park" and our PTA was voted to be the "Best Parent Group in Brooklyn Park".  And, that in August, we were named a Minnesota School of Excellence by the Minnesota Elementary School Principals' Association.

Now we can add that we are one of four schools in the Osseo School District that made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP); quite an accomplishment for a school of over 1000 students! 

We also learned that two former students, currently attending Park Center, received National Merit Recognition.  Jessica Sukharan is a National Merit Semifinalist and Chau-Ly Phan was named a Commended Student.  We are so proud of them!

On top of that, former student, Chelsey Gunderson, is the captain of her adaptive soccer team and was featured on Channel 12!

Wow!  What a fabulous way to begin our 10th year!!  This is what WE are all about and why WE work SO hard, as a school community, to support our children.  The Woodland School Community is DEFINITELY experiencing the "fruits of our labors"!

Linda

9/8/11

Greetings on this BEAUTIFUL Thursday!

In this blog I would like to share the goals our staff will be working on during this school year.  At the building level, we have six long range goals that continue to be our focus; thus, our work this year will be to go deeper with our implementation of them.

The first goal is to focus reading and math instruction on the learning standards.  We have created, or will create, "I Can Statements" to help the children understand what they are responsible to learn and monitor their progress in mastering the standards.  We will also create and implement assessments to administer with instruction to help us monitor learning progress and plan interventions to help each student master the standards.  While we truly believe every student can learn, we also know that the time and resources needed to insure learning may vary with each child and the various standards.

Our second goal is to work collaboratively and use student achievement data to inform our practice and make instructional decisions.  Our teachers (regular education, special education, and ELL) meet weekly to review student work and assessment results and plan based on the data.

Next, we will involve students in their own learning by helping them understand the assessment process, monitor their own progress, and be able to communicate their progress to parents and families.  Research tells us that when students take ownership of their learning, their learning improves.

Our fourth goal is to continue to work to differentiate instruction on a regular basis so that the learning needs of each student are addressed.

New this year is a goal to increase opportunities for our students to participate in non-fictional reading and writing.  We will be working on this during the school year and hope to have a plan for years to come.  This work comes out of educational research around best practices to strengthen learning.

Our final goal is really the purpose for the first five!  We continue to work hard to eliminate the achievement gaps that our data tell us exist.  Woodland has slowly closed the gaps over the past several years, however, there is still work to be done.

This year we will continue to focus on our building goals, while also attending to the system priorities.  These priorities fit very nicely with our building goals.  We will be working to implement a new grading and reporting system that is based on learning standards.  That system will be in place this school year.  In fact, we are planning a parent information night on October 4th to share information about grading and reporting.  The second system priority is building cultural responsiveness within all district employee groups.  This has been a focus of our school for many years and we look forward to continued focus in this area.  The third district priority is in the area of behavior management.  Throughout the system we are being asked to analyze our building behavior plans and develop a philosophy centered on positive behavioral interventions and helping students problem solve behavioral issues.  Last year, Woodland implemented a new behavior plan that did exactly that!  Our plan is being used system-wide as a model!  This year we will continue to implement our building plan and build a climate of believing that if students can follow the rules they will and if they can't we need to teach them.

Whew!  We clearly have our work cut out for us!  However, many of the goals and priorities have been a part of Woodland for several years.  Our focus this year will be to not add more to our plates, rather to "go deeper" in our implementation of best practices that get the most "bang for the buck" in impacting student achievement.

Continue to look for - and expect - great things from Woodland!  WE will do it TOGETHER!

Have a great weekend!

Linda

9/7/2011

Hello!  The 2011-12 school year is off to a GREAT start at Woodland!  Yesterday we opened our doors to over 1000 students in preschool (4 Star) through sixth grade.  It was so much fun to see all the bright happy faces (okay a few were a bit nervous) as they entered our school doors.  It promises to be a fabulous 10th year!

We are so excited to receive the School of Excellence validation through the Minnesota Elementary School Principals' Association!  What an honor and wonderful recognition of the work WE have done together. 

The application process was very rigorous and included surveying our school community and staff members regarding the standards of a School of Excellence.  There were six broad standards:  Learning Communities, Diverse Communities, 21st Century Learners, Quality Instruction, Knowledge and Data, and Community Engagement.  Within each standard there were several criteria that needed to be analyzed and addressed.  Once the survey feedback was gathered and analyzed, a team of nine staff members reviewed the information and then summarized the programs in place that positively contributed to that standard.  The team also looked at areas needing improvement and developed a plan to strengthen those areas.  The written application was over 60 pages long and really summarized the work of our school staff, PTA, and community over the past 10 years.  We are very proud of all we have accomplished together.

As you think about the School of Excellence validation, don't think for a minute that you weren't a part of it!!  No matter your role in our school community, you have ownership of this recognition!  The programs and/or activities at Woodland that address the six standards are wide and varied.  They include the work of the Woodland staff members, PLUS the work of our PTA, our business partnerships, our volunteers, our parents and families - WE all should be taking credit for this wonderful recognition!

Thank you for all you do to support Woodland!  WE are making a difference for our kids!  We have great strengths that we have developed together and we have areas that we need to address in order to get even better.  I truly believe that this school community will continue to work to make sure that ALL kids SOAR (succeed, outshine, achieve, and reach their highest potential).

It is my great privilege to work in this school community!  Thank you for the role you have played in making us a Minnesota School of Excellence and the Brooklyn Park "Readers Choice Award" for "Best School in Brooklyn Park"!

Linda