OCTOBER UPDATE 2010

TEAM
The school year is in full swing. TEAM (the new BEST) began in August. We have 18 teachers this year going through the TEAM process k-12. It will be a learning experience for all of us, mentees, mentors and our District Team Committee (which consists of 6 teachers and 2 administrators). Every day we receive emails from the state with new information. Please do whatever you can to support our new teachers.
ESOL
Many of you have commented on how diverse our population has become. It has truly been enriched with students from many cultures. How wonderful this is for all of our students. This year we have about 140 ELL students receiving support in learning English. We are trying hard to meet the needs of this population. On October 12, 2010 at 6PM we will have our first Open House Information Night for our English Language Learners and their parents. The adult Ed program has becoming actively involved by providing classes for parents in learning English not only at night but during the school day at BHS.
LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM
The wiki is all set with the draft of our LA curriculum uploaded. It can also be found under Teaching and Learning on our website. In the next few weeks your district facilitator will provide you with a login and password so you may access the wiki and add new information to our draft. We need your input. Remember this is an interactive curriculum that we will all use to help us provide for the learning needs of all of our students. It will be exciting to be able to collaborate on this endeavor.
MATH CURRICULUM
The math curriculum committee met in September. They are working on editing and revising the draft of our math curriculum. Our goal is to present this to the District Curriculum Council by the end of November and then onto the Teaching and Learning Committee of the BOE. This document will also be a draft and we want teacher input which includes supplementary resources that will ensure student understanding and successful learning.
COMMON CORE STANDARDS
In the spring of 2009, governors and state commissioners of education met to develop a common cores of state standards (CCSS) for K-12 in English Language Arts and mathematics. The state of Connecticut has adopted these standards on July 7, 2010. “These standards are internationally benchmarked; prepare all students to succeed in a global economy; support the State BOE’s 5 year plan; and support Connecticut’s Secondary School Reform. All our curricula committees will be addressing these standards as we move forward. The state has worked to correlate matches to our GLE’s. Some of these matches are exact, some partial and in some instances there is not match. I will give you some information monthly to help you better understand how we will compare our current curriculum to the CCSS. You can access these standards at http://www.corestandards.org