Welcome back to another great year at Willow Springs! Hats off to everyone ~ staff, parents, volunteers and PTA members~ for another successful year in 2011, as we worked together each day to deliver a quality education for all of our children! Your efforts continue to define Willow Springs as a special community of caring, supportive adults who ensure 21st Century learning within an atmosphere of safety, respect and responsibility. We are very proud of our students for giving their personal best efforts on their recent NC End of Grade tests! Our growth scores are much higher than the county and state averages, indicating that our children are gaining faster than expected in their skills. This is due to their hard work, your diligence as their parents and the persistence and high quality skills of our teachers. Everyone here works hard and expects a lot of each other – keep up the good work!
This year, we are focused on increasing our technology integration and continuing to expand our efforts toward differentiation in order to meet the needs of every child. Teachers have already assessed students to gain a clear picture of their strengths and needs in several areas related to literacy (decoding, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary) and we will be assessing students regularly in each objective in math, to ensure that our instruction matches student needs. During our Early Release training days, we will continue to focus on teaching to varied learning levels, incorporate higher order thinking skills, and integrating technology. We will use our students’ data to better help us focus on their needs and modify our instructional plans to ensure success for all students.
What can you do to best help your child? First and foremost, check work every night – insist that your child read every day and complete his or her homework. Secondly, communicate with the teacher – our daily folders in K-2 and weekly folders in 3-5 provide a great vehicle for 2-way communication. Be sure to share any concerns with your child’s teacher in a note, via email or with a phone call and make sure that you come to conferences to find out where your child is excelling and where he or she may need some support. Finally, we hope you will feel free to come to school as often as you would like – to eat lunch, read to a class, help the teacher in the classroom, and the list goes on! We want you to be a part of our Willow Springs Family, too!
It’s going to be a great year!
