THE CRAIG SCHOOL

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Message from the Head Of School

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR

Dear Badger Families,

Parent-teacher conferences will be starting the week of November 6th. They will run every morning from November 6th through the 10th, as well as all day on Thursday and Friday, November 9th and 10th. All conferences will continue to be virtual, and you will sign up for the time via Sign-Up Genius. Information with links to sign up will be emailed home Monday and will be put in the VIP folders Monday afternoon. Renee Hecht will send you a link to the conference the day before your scheduled time.

All conferences include the Reading, Language Arts, and Math teachers. If the student is involved in a separate Orton or Speech session, that teacher will also be present. The majority of the focus is spent on Reading, Language Arts, and Mathematics; therefore, either the Science or Social Studies teacher will be present. If your child’s Science teacher is present in the fall, then the Social Studies teacher will be present in the spring, and vice versa.

Parent/teacher conference is a time for parents to receive important information about their child and for teachers to hear your perspective about your child’s needs. Our main goal is to explain and answer questions about your child as well as address your concerns. If there is anything you know you want to discuss or questions you want answered, feel free to email your child’s team before the conference so we can use your time to help you best. The homeroom teacher is a great resource to help facilitate that message. The parent-teacher connection truly helps the teacher-student connection. We look forward to meeting with you and sharing your child’s progress thus far.

Have a great weekend,

Jennifer Guthrie

Director of the Lower & Middle School

CALENDAR INFO

November

12:00pm Dismissal: Faculty Forum - 11/3/23 - Friday - LSMS

School CLOSED: Parent-Teacher Conferences - 11/9/23 & 11/10/23 - Thursday-Friday - All Divisions

Picture Retakes - 11/14/23 - Tuesday - LSMS

12:00pm Dismissal: GrandFriends Day - 11/21/23 - Tuesday - (9:00am-12:00pm) - LSMS

School CLOSED: Thanksgiving Break - 11/22/23 - 11/24/23 - Wednesday-Friday - All Divisions

December

12:00pm Dismissal: Faculty Forum/Trimester 1 Ends - 12/1/23 - Friday - LSMS

Goals & Objectives/Report Cards Emailed Home & to Districts - 12/15/23 - Friday - LSMS

12:00pm Dismissal: Gingerbread STEM Day - 12/15/23 - Friday - LSMS

School CLOSED: Holiday Break - 12/18/23-1/2/23 - Monday-Tuesday - All Divisions

COMMUNITY NEWS

Athletics- A big shout out to our Soccer team who just finished an undefeated season! Congratulations to all our players, Coach Furlong and Coach Kutcher! Well done!

PACS - Thank you to all of our families for helping make this year’s Halloween celebration incredible. We had 32 amazing trunks decorated for our Badgers with plenty of treats donated by countless families. The grade-level parties were a big hit with games, crafts, and of course themed snacks! Thank you!

Leadership Council- October is Dyslexia Awareness month and our Leadership Council Dyslexia Awareness committee, headed by co-chairs Natalia and Michael T. organized an informative assembly for our youngest Badgers followed by games centered around awareness. The committee gave a very informative presentation and answered some tough questions from the audience about dyslexia. They had wonderful advice for their audience and let them know they are in a place that supports them. We are so proud of our Peer Leaders!

The Halloween committee worked hard to bring some new and exciting games to the 7th and 8th graders. Thanks to Molly and Matias for your hard work chairing this committee.

Veterans Day Committee- is working diligently to put together a great day on November 8. In the morning we will have a full school assembly with three speakers, followed by our 2nd annual Veterans Day luncheon. There is still room so if you have a family member who served and would like to join us please let me know, lgiven@craigschool.org.

ACADEMIC HIGHLIGHTS

Project Read: Report Form is a multi-sensory, non-fiction comprehension program. At The Craig School, all of our students are introduced to the Project Read program in various forms. In Reading class, it is used to organize thoughts on ideas for background information before beginning a novel. In Language Arts it mirrors the Project Read: Paragraph Writing strand as it is used to organize research for paragraph writing. In Social Studies and Science, we use Project Read: Report Form to organize our thoughts about facts. With a fun mix of learning styles, our students are taught how to determine the subject of a report, for instance, a section of a history textbook or a scientific magazine article, by visualizing a skeleton! In this case, a report’s subject is the spine that the rest of the report hangs on. When categorizing and organizing facts, we use graphic organizers, and all the while, we use kinesthetic hand signals with our verbal repetition of the whole process.

As our students advance in their abilities to categorize facts, synthesize and generalize information, and prioritize the importance of each bit, we start to see a familiar pattern emerge. Our Key Points have Details, which occasionally have Supporting Details of their own. What we end up with is an outline. Our Project Read: Report Form skills have prepared our brains for how best to organize the information in nonfiction texts into the broadly useful skill most commonly referred to as Note-taking. Categorizing and organizing the information is what allows our brain to retrieve the information when it is needed. Taking notes is an integral way for students to take ownership of the material they are responsible for, parse it out, and process it in a way that will be meaningful. In the Middle School grades, note-taking is modeled by teachers and practiced by students using our textbooks, magazine articles, and informational websites with the goal of taking that skill with them to high school and beyond.