Elementary Update

January 2020

Early Childhood Center Update

It's hard to believe we are already in the new year. Our preschoolers are having a great start to the new year. We finished off 2019 with conferences and had a great turn out of parent participation. It's great meeting families on a one-to-one basis. Our GSRP and ECSE preschoolers are enjoying participating in the Happy Feet soccer program. Every week the students enjoy engaging in fun and exciting soccer activities. We are also excited to work with our Henry Ford health representative in regards to setting up a program with the American Heart society: Kids Heart Challenge.

Briarwood Update

Briarwood Health Team & Partner ship with Henry Ford Health

Briarwood Elementary School continues to team up with Henry Ford Macomb Hospital and Action for Healthy Kids to host a school-wide taste testing of kiwi! Over 300 samples were given during all 3 lunches. Of the 246 students surveyed, 229 said they would eat kiwis again at home! The students loved the sweet, sour, tart snack!. Thursday, Jan 9th will be our next tasting event and will feature grape tomatoes! The Briarwood Health Team continues to meet monthly with Ms. Gagala, they are proposing some healthy challenges to get 2020 off to a great start.

Fourth Grade Mathematics

Ms. Gugala's and Mrs. Swindell's Fourth graders collaborated to create posters that demonstrated their thinking, understanding, and ability to analyze multi-step word problems. Students represented these problems using equations with a letter standing for the unknown quantity, and assessed their answer's reasonableness by using mental computation and estimation strategies including rounding. The students really enjoy working together to create something that displays their hard work.

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4th Grade

Collaborative Word Problem Example

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Collaborative Word Problem Example

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Collaborative Word Problem Example

New Staff

This month we welcome new staff members to Briarwood. Ms. Rose Gottler will be joining Briarwood and Pinewood to teach art. She is enthusiastic about meeting the staff and students and keeping art on display throughout the building(s). We will be welcoming Mrs. Christina Giaquinto to the Cognitively Impaired/Resource room for K-2 students. Ms Giaquinto comes to us with experience and a passion to meet the needs of all students.

Pinewood Update

Happy New Year!

The staff and students are excited to be back at Pinewood for 2020! The classrooms are buzzing with engaged Reader’s and Writer’s workshops. Our student’s reading and writing stamina continues to grow through intentional efforts to do so. The return to the classroom also begins the winter assessment period. Teachers will use this student achievement measure to monitor student learning and to help guide their classroom instruction.

Professional Learning Communities (PLC's)

This school year, our district has re-commited itself to living and operating as Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s). As part of that commitment, we are happy to announce that at our first early release of the year, our elementary grade level teams will meet together in one building to discuss classroom instruction and student achievement data. The first meeting will be held January 8th at Pinewood. This is exciting news as all of our teams identified this as an essential component to moving their PLC’s forward.

We are also very excited to announce that we have hired a new elementary art teacher, Mrs. Rose Gottler who will start her career in Warren Woods on Thursday, January 9th.

Our student leadership team has their first meeting of 2020 on Wednesday January 8th. The team will meet together to plan the final events of this school year and take a look into 2020-21.

It’s a great time to be a Panther!

Westwood Update

Happy New Year from the Westwood Wildcats!

We wrapped up our year with so many fantastic events and activities here at Westwood.

Kindergarten ABC Fashion Showcase

Our Kindergarten Team hosted a special event for our students and their parents. Our little Wildcats are eagerly learning their letters, sounds, and many high frequency words this year. Our Wildcats wanted to demonstrate their learning by participating in the ABC Fashion Show. Each student was assigned a letter of the alphabet and worked with parents/guardians, at home, to create a unique display of their letter. It was impressive to see the amazing ideas and creative designs our students wore to the show. Parents and family members were invited to this special event. It was a huge success and we are so proud of students.

Reading Recovery Conference

Many of our current RR teachers and elementary admin were invited to attend the state conference this year. This is always a fantastic opportunity to learn more about literacy and support of the program. Richelle Barkley, our RR Teacher Leader, was honored to present at this year's conference. We are so proud of all the hard work and dedication of our RR teachers.

Math Update

Currently, our elementary buildings are spending time developing the future vision for mathematics instruction. During the month of December, our Math Steering Committee met to discuss the process for resource adoption. In the meantime, we've had the opportunity to explore the essence of mathematics, and are eager to continue the work with our math consultant.