Recess Used As Punishment In Montgomery County, Maryland

Sherwood Elementary School 1401 Olney-Sandy Spring Road Sandy Spring, Maryland 20860 (301) 924-3195 Fax (301) 924-3294 Parent Letter #4 September 24, 2009 http://web.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/sherwoodes/ Exciting news this week—we are getting two of the SMART boards (promethean boards) installed in the next few weeks. We will put one in the media center for all classes to begin experiencing, and one in the fifth grade since they will be using these a lot in middle school. Thanks to the PTA for their support in purchasing these first SMART boards. We have attached the DEBUG steps. We teach this process to all students so that they have steps to follow when there is a conflict. We hope this process will diffuse conflicts and allow all participants to calm down and think through a situation. Please encourage your child to use these steps and to report issues to an adult so that we can address them. We have received a large number of requests for the individual student data reports. We are waiting for some downloads of data and hope to get these reports out to parents by October 2. We have also attached information about the Baldrige Quality Academy. MCPS adapted the Baldrige business model to the school environment. We plan to have some parent training meetings this fall to explain the process and discuss the Quality Tools handbook that we handed out at Back to School Night. Fifth grade parents: We are still awaiting copies of the Parent Handbook. As soon as they arrive we will send out the 4 handbooks from Back to School Night. Why does my child have to miss recess on some days? Teachers are working very hard to help children learn the responsibility of completing homework and classwork. If a child has not completed homework or classwork, they have used that work time to play. Students need to learn this consequence. Recess is not a right for students. While we all agree that fresh air and exercise is a good idea, students also need to learn consequences for not following through on responsibilities. If a student does his work when he is supposed to, there is no issue. If he is not held to this expectation, he will quickly learn that completing work is not required and there is no consequence. Teachers will keep children in during recess to address both work completion and behavior. It is our hope that parents will explain consequences to their children and the result will be that work gets done when it is supposed to be done. If the work is too difficult, then the teachers need to know this so that the work can be addressed. Choosing to not do the work when it is assigned is not an option. Congratulations to our new Great White Shark news staff. They will produce several student newsletters this year. Molly Martell, Nicole Reich, Rachel Waks, Bolu Tani-Olu, Venessa Nyambi, Nikki Patel, Shane Ramsey, Deddeh Johnson, Diana Guzman, Maggie Lin, Genevieve Otero, Jessica Cromwell, and Brianna Smith. We sent home the school discipline policy last week. Please review it and send back the tear off sheet. Parents are invited to stop in for coffee and conversation on Thursday, October 1, anytime between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., at the office of the MCPS Department of Family and Community Partnerships (DFCP). It's a great opportunity to ask questions, find out about programs and services in the school system, and pick up tips on how to support learning at home. DFCP is located at 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, in Room 50. Enter through the West entrance. For more information, please call 301-279-3100. The George B. Thomas Learning Center (known as Saturday School) will begin registration on Saturday, September 26th. The weekly program is held at Sherwood High School. This is a great opportunity to provide your child with some extra help over the weekend.

We need some Milkweed seed cases. If you have some growing out back and can send them, we would appreciate just a few. Thanks! News from last week: Each grade level will be sharing their math facts program directly to parents. Some grade levels are finding that the computerized program is not helping their students succeed, but it provides good practice. So we will explore this topic this year to see what is best. If you would like to purchase the CD for math facts, please contact Mrs. Ramirez in the school office. You should have received a letter about the flu vaccine that will be administered to students on October 13th. This is for the regular flu, not the swine flu. We cannot administer the vaccine without your written permission, so if you want you child to have this free vaccination, please complete the form and return it to school. If you can volunteer to help the health room on this day she will need at least 10 volunteers to help walk children from classrooms to media center. The staff is preparing a Staff Concert for October 23rd. More information will be out soon, but save the date! If you are a room parent, you will be planning out the upcoming Halloween party. Please be sure that you check with your child’s teacher about the limits on spending and expectations for food. Please let your child’s teacher know ahead of time if you are planning to send in treats for birthdays. Several grade levels have specific processes for this, so please be sure to contact the teacher ahead so that you know what is expected. The office does not know the specifics, so please don’t call the secretaries about this. Talk to your teacher. Thanks! The Board of Education will hold one more open forum for public comments---Thursday, October 15th at Kennedy High School beginning at 7 pm. Next Week activities: Monday

No School – Yom Kippur

Opportunities: There will be a Harvest Festival at the Montgomery County Agricultural History Farm in Derwood on October 3 and 4. For more information, visit AgHistoryFarm.org On October 9th through October 12th, the Solar Decathlon will be held on the Mall in Washington. You can visit their website for more information solardecatthalon.org. Great opportunity to learn about solar power. The National Book Festival will be held on the Mall this Saturday, September 26th from 10 am to 5:30 pm. 75 authors including Judy Blume and James Patterson will be in attendance. For more information, go to www.washingtonpost.com/bookworld On Friday night, October 2nd, the annual campfire at Brighton Dam will take place. This is a fun community event. For more information you can call 301-206-8240. Attachments: Baldrige Quality Academy, DEBUG, Counselor Corner

UPCOMING DATES: Important dates for the first few months of school… What? When? NO SCHOOL – Yom Kippur September 28th PTA meeting October 6th at 7:00 Parent Coffee – Grade 5 October 6th at 9:30 Parent Coffee – Grade 4 October 6th at 10:30 PTA Meeting October 6th at 7:00 Sandy Spring Banking Begins October 7th at 9:00 Parent Coffee – Grade 3 October 8th at 9:30 Parent Coffee – Grade 2 October 8th at 10:30 K field trip to Sharp Farm October 9th at 9:30 Columbus Day- Parents invited to visit school October 12th Flu Mist (students with permission slips) October 13th at 9:30 Individual student pictures October 15th MSTA for Teachers - No school for students October 16th *Career Day* October 20th th 5 grade field trip to Historical Society October 21st at 9:30 th 5 grade field trip to Historical Society October 23rd at 9:30 Staff Concert October 23rd at 7:00 First marking period ends October 30th Halloween Parties October 30th at 2:00 th *Career Day has been changed from October 13 to October 20th *

!!!!DEBUG!!!! 1.

Ignore. If that doesn't work...

2.

Move away. If that doesn't work...

3.

Talk friendly. If that doesn't work...

4.

Talk firmly. If that doesn't work...

5.

Get adult help.

The adult response, when the child complains about a conflict with another student, is to ask the following: 1. Have you tried the DeBug system? 2. What step are you on? 3. Come back if you get to step five. When a child has reached step five and needs adult help, the adult follows these steps: 1. Send for the other child involved. 2.

Provide a place they can talk. Have them discuss: • What do you want to happen? • How can you make that happen? • Express confidence that they can work it out. • Have the children share their agreement with the adult. • If necessary, help the children talk it through.

The Baldrige Quality Academy at Sherwood Elementary School Why are we using Baldrige? Since 2002, Montgomery County Public Schools has adopted the Malcolm Baldrige model for continuous improvement as a roadmap for school planning. Baldrige in education is about helping educators improve the quality of student learning and the effectiveness of the classrooms, schools, and district. At Sherwood we use this process at several levels. For the whole school program, there is a leadership team comprised of parents, teachers, and other staff. This team reviews data, ensures that all stakeholder groups are involved, determines overriding goals for the whole school, and monitors the implementation of the goals. Each grade level team uses the same process to determine specific areas that they need to address. They use Linkages Charts to outline the steps in designing action plans. They set goals and monitor progress towards those goals. In the individual classroom teachers are guiding students in monitoring their own personal progress through data notebooks. How will we be using Baldrige at Sherwood this year? We have a school-wide effort to use many of the quality tools associated with organizational management. Students use Plus/Deltas to evaluate their learning, flow charts are created to help students understand the classroom processes and routines, issue bins are posted to provide an improved communication system between the teachers and the students, and many teachers collect and post data on classroom climate issues such as “transition time” and the “number of students who routinely turn in homework.” We will continue to use management strategies that will increase student ownership in their learning as well as support the grading and reporting system. Students will be learning how to set clear goals, how to manage their performance results through the use of data collection, how to analyze their work, and how to write action plans when there is a need for improvement. In addition children will be writing class mission statements and they will learn process thinking skills that they may use to aid them in meeting their mission. What is the Baldrige Academy? The Baldrige Academy is an on-site training center for classroom teachers throughout Montgomery County. The Sherwood BQA provides training for all of the MCPS schools, K-12. The Academy will provide teachers with the tools needed to implement Baldrige in their classrooms. As a part of this program, MCPS teachers and principals will be able to visit classrooms at Sherwood to see Baldrige in action. It is an honor that our school has been recognized as a training site for others. Using the Baldrige tools, we have developed Ground Rules for our visitors and Flow Charts for the process of visiting. The Academy will provide an “Issue Bin” environment outside of the classroom for discussion of what is observed. The input from our visitors will provide our staff with a Plus/Delta reflection on how we are doing with our implementation. We expect to begin providing training sessions to parents later in the school year. We hope that you will take time to visit the Academy and learn more about these exciting processes.