Lincoln School Honors Jay Conley from Heavenly Licks

This year, on the 2^nd anniversary of Jay Conley’s death, the Lincoln School families decided to remember him in a special way at their annual Ice Cream Social.  A collection for Make-a-Wish was held with a goal to build an ice cream cone to meet Jay up in the sky.  Over $300 was raised in his memory and we are sure he is smiling at the giant ice cream cone.

For those of you who weren’t fortunate enough to know Jay, he was the popular owner of Heavenly Licks Ice Cream Shop for over 23 years. He passed away unexpectedly on June 4, 2010. Jay was a man who loved life and loved people. Whenever you entered Heavenly Licks you were greeted by this happy, funny and charismatic man who not only knew the name of your child but, had a way of making your child feel special. Many of Jay's customers went to Heavenly Licks as much for a serving of his contagious humor and happiness as for an ice cream. We all miss the smiling face of this special man who is now making ice cream up in the sky!

Lincoln School welcomed over 400 students  staff and new kindergarten families for next school year to the Ice Cream Social. The event was once again a big hit and we wish all our families a safe and happy summer.

Geography Bee Participants Selected

Our 2012 Geography Bee will happen on Friday, June 1st. All our students in grades 2-5 participate in the National Geograhy Challenge and the highest scoring students at each grade level are selected to participate in our school-wide Geography Bee.

This year's participants will be:

2nd Grade	3rd Grade	4th Grade	5th Grade
Peter Sevastyanov	Julia Foley	Anais Abrego	Gunnar Frawley
Sera Kawakami	Ferdinand Akombi	Emma Munro	Robert Winer
Will Dugan	Ryan Maher	Jackson Texeira	Cory Bright
Aidan Salickram	Eli Champoux	Piper Frankenthaler	Matthew Bornstein
Ethan Lessor	Iain McMaster	Elisabeth Schwarze	Abby Champoux
Anthony Ericsson	Max Vollertson	Cormac Lynch	Max Salkin
Megan Strasnick	Alexander Lock	Ethan Brodeur	Adam Bayoussef
Aidan Sullivan		Shane Buckley-Fennell	Max Mullaney
Matthew Viliott		Cole Lepler	Stephen MacIntosh
Sam Brodeur		Coleen Keenan
Ellie Ferris
Erin Doherty

The NCLB waiver for MA and what it means for Lincoln

Over the past few years I haves shared many pieces of information regarding the Federal NCLB law, and particularly how it impacted Lincoln because of our use of Federal Title I funds. While I commend the law and it's authors for addressing the need for proficient readers and mathematicians, the law punished schools who were performing very well and labeled them as failing schools. How can MA, which is considered and statically proven to have the best performing students and schools in the country, have 82 percent of it's schools labeled as failing just because they did not meet a statistical target of 100% perfection. This is the AYP formula and its one size fits all consequences for schools. It simply wasn't working.

While Lincoln made AYP last year in the aggregate and all our subgroups and was one of the 18% of schools in MA to do so, I have consistently shared my disdain for this law. I am truly excited by the fact that MA was granted a waiver from many of the NCLB requirements. Here is the official press release from the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

What really excites me is the fact that we will now have an opportunity to be truly innovative. MA will not escape accountability for student performance, as some have suggested, but rather lead the way for the rest of the country on how to reach students who are not proficient. The waiver is hardly a free pass. In fact, MA schools will now have layers of data goals that will give the public, school administrators and teachers a broader look at how students are performing and showing growth. We will also be able to use funding sources, like Title I, with greater levels of flexibility to address what our individual school and student needs are, rather than the one size fits all "you must do this" approach that NCLB requires.

These data goals will still be measured using the MCAS, and eventually the replacement for the MCAS (which is being developed by PARCC) but they do look at several improvement categories and will use a 4 year span of data with a weighting system that gives the most credence to the latest scores. This is important because the year to year view of student performance only told part of the story, as did the AYP student performance goals. The MA DESE has created some guiding documents but this simple 4 page documents compares the Pre and Post NCLB based on the MA Waiver. The overarching goal is to cut the proficiency gap in half by the 2016-2017 school year. Many schools have done this already over the last 6 years.

The bottom line is, we are a good school doing many great things. We will now have ability and the flexibility to do even more great things and implement innovative but appropriate ideas with the goal of being an even better school. Ideas such as the successful Summer Academy can be expanded. We will be able to add to our Title I Tutors to more effectively implement a Tiered System of Support, and we'll be able to upgrade and improve our progress monitoring and assessment practice. It is my commitment to our students, staff and parents that we will stay the course for improvement and work diligently to provide the very best education to all our students. I am glad the policy makers have also made this commitment.

Guest Blog Post from our Student Principal of the Day

Last month, 3rd Grader Eli Champoux, had his name picked from a hat in one of our raffles from Pizza Bingo Night. His winning prize was to be "Principal of the Day" and shadow me for the school day. As part of his expereince, he is writing a guest blog post on the Lincoln School Principal's Blog. Below is Eli's description of his day as Principal of Lincoln School.

I had morning duty, and welcomed a new student and gave his family a tour. I stopped in on some of the classrooms, and 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. McBrine, even asked me for a raise! One thing I will definitely remember, was how my older sister seemed a little emabarrased when I visited her 5th grade class.

I distributed the math-a-thon packets for every class in the building and I read Rapunzel to Mrs. Breda's Kindergarten Class. Mrs. Breda was my kindergarten teacher and I remember sitting on the rug hearing other people to read to us.  This time I was the one sitting in the rocking chair reading.

I have a lunch meeting scheduled with Mrs. Corduck, the Franklin Early Childhood Principal. I am going to explain how kindergarten was for me so she can learn more about how to help preschoolers be ready for Kindergarten.

The day was very busy and things seemed to go quickly. I had a full schedule and many things to do. I want to be a football player and a video game creator when I grow up but being a principal isn't so bad either.

Principal of the Day
Eli Champoux

Expanding the learning day? Technology did it for us.

It's really a simple formula; more time equals more learning. This is not news to those of us in education and it certainly doesn't seem like an earth shattering revelation to others. A recent study by Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer looked at the correct "recipe" for highly effective schools. His study is highlighted in a recent Boston Globe column by Gareth Cook. Mr. Fryer identified 5 common elements, one of them was extended learning time. This one aspect has proven to be very challenging for public schools mainly due to the large scale financial implications of extending the school day.

Before Fryer recognized the need for purposeful learning beyond the traditional six hour school day, Lincoln and the Melrose Public Schools starting using a variety of technology tools to "expand the learning day" with targeted activities.

Lexia, a powerful literacy development tool, is web-based and provides individualized student accounts that are closely followed by teachers, tutors and administrators. The folks at Quantum Learning, New England's largest Lexia user group, know full well the benefits of this program and how it's consistent student use with teacher follow up instruction based on the Lexia results, can make huge improvements with students decoding and comprehension skills. When students use Lexia from home or in school 3-5 times a week for 20 minutes each, we have seen students close a 1 year reading gap in 6 months.

Similarly, the Symphony Math program, is a web-based program where students progress through various stages of math skills, while the program responds to student answers, forcing students to tackle additional problems they demonstrate difficulty with. This program, uses a strong visual component to learning math, which for struggling math students, can be the piece that ties it all together.

In both programs, teachers and administrators can view each individual student's progress, where they are struggling and then respond by providing the students with some additional instruction. These programs are powerful, but they still will never replace direct, explicit instruction. However, when they are used consistently by students and the information is used by teachers to help students, the results for us have been impressive. It is real time data and assessment without testing.

With only 6 hours in the school day, we must find ways for students to engage in meaningful and directed work outside of the school day. Technology, and in particular, web enabled responsive programs like Lexia and Symphony, may be the answer for those who are looking to catch students up, but are constrained by time.

A Tiered System of Support through a Comprehensive Literacy Plan

As a school that made AYP last year, we were one of only 11% in the State. We have made great strides over the past few years but we are always seeking to provide students with more and to insure that all students become proficient in their academics.

Literacy Instruction in Melrose and more particularly, Lincoln Elementary, has evolved greatly in the last 3-4 years. With the adoption of the Harcourt Storytown Balanced Literacy program 4 years ago, our current 3rd grade students will be the first group of students taking the MCAS who have had the benefit of one consistent literacy program. We also shifted our instrucitonal approach to focus on small group explicit instruction, based on the practice of guided reading. These changes required a fair amount of professional development and some time to take hold, but the results have been very positive.

As with any new curriculum adoption, after the initial implementation stages and adjustments, we needed to take a look at the effectiveness of the program and what areas within reading were our students not progressing they way we expected. So last spring we did a series of assessments and we also studied the data from our own district assessments. We initially worked with Literacy Consultant, Dr. Ilda King, who helped us to determine that we needed to do a better job of teaching our students automaticity with their decoding skills which would then result in better fluency as children reached higher grades. This was going to be a task that required a K-5 effort.

Simultaneously in the spring, a group of teachers, administrators and community members from across the district participated in a grant from the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to develop a Literacy Plan for the district. The group worked with another Literacy Consultant, Dr. Elissa Arndt, who led us through the process and also introduced us to a book called Annual Growth for All and Catch Up Growth for Those Who Are Behind. All of this work tied in so well with what we were doing at Lincoln School, that we purchased a copy of the book for every professional at Lincoln and we all read it over the summer. We also met as a staff in July to discuss the book and how it can help us make changes and improve literacy instruction at Lincoln.

A small group from Lincoln (2 teachers, a SPED teacher, a Title I Tutor, the Principal and our Assistant Superintendent for PPS) then spent three days at the Summer Reading Institute with Sally Grimes where we immererssed oursleves in intensive hours preparing our own Comprehensive Literacy Plan based on a Tiered System of Support for students. While there, we learned that as a school, we were well ahead of most schools in Massachusetts, as far as meeting the needs of students and understanding what it takes structurally and strategically to make it happen.

The result was a plan that included expanded literacy assessment data for all students, progress monitoring for students who were behind, flooding grade levels with intervention staff members during their literacy blocks, providing students who were behind with as much focused instrucion they needed beyond the core literacy block, and frequent highly structured data meetings by teachers. We wanted students to be proficient readers by 3rd grade. In short, we were going to provide students with what they needed, when they needed it, and with the frequency they needed.

Our results have been outstanding thus far. We have continued work with all three literacy consultants and in fact, we invited Sally Grimes to come in December and present to literacy teams from all 5 Elementary buildings which has spurred a movement by the other schools for which we can serve as the learning site. We are also learning from a few schools in MA who have already excelled with this work. The Winthrop Principal, Mary Alise Herrera, and I recently visited the Murkland School in Lowell. The Murkland is a Level 4 school as designated by the DESE, which means they are in need of dramatic improvement based on MCAS scores. This K-4 school with about 380 kids, has a student population that is 90% low income and 60% ELL. Yet, in 1 year of a tiered system of support for both Literacy and Math, they made AYP and had huge improvements in their scores. The state has promoted the Murkland as a model for what the state hopes to help districts implement through their own model of a tiered system of support.  Our visit served as both reassuring that we are on the right path, and informational as we assessed what our next steps should be.

We continue to make tweaks to our system as we reflect and assess our system and our own teaching. However the data tells us that each time we reassess, using measures such as the DIBELS, the DRA2 and the Quick Phonics Screener, more and more students are meeting the grade level benchmarks and fewer and fewer are in need of intensive support. While we will always have students who need additional attention and support, our goal is to minimize that and provide appropriate interventions in a timely manner and make sure kids don't fall through the cracks. I look forward to sharing more information as we grow, especially some examples of student growth, but it has been a great start to this process.

Tips on cooking your Thanksgiving Turkey from our Half Day Kindergarten Students

If you are preparing a Thanksgiving meal next week, you may want to consider seeking some advice from experts. Some people will tune into the Cooking Channel's Turkey Marathon and others will use tried and true family recipes.

I recently had some time to sit down with our Half Day Kindergarten students in Mrs. Risinger's Class to ask them about some tips they may have for people cooking a turkey.

All generally agreed that it was important to cook the Turkey at the proper temperature. Ian suggested that you cook the turkey at 13 degrees for 13 minutes. This differed slightly from
Victoria's family recipe which calls for a much higher cooking temperature at 32 degrees  for 34 minutes. Be sure to leave enough time to cook a turkey using this method. Nevaeh normally sets her oven to 75 degrees which of course results in a fast cooking time. No one wants to wait around for the turkey. The gravy could burn.

Several of the students felt it was very important that you select the right size turkey. Chris was looking forward to his 200 lbs turkey that was to serve 20 people and Mary recognized that the cooking time would vary depending on the size of the turkey but anywhere from 6 to 10 minutes would be perfect for a juicy plump turkey of average size.

But the true culinary talents of these young chefs became apparent when they were asked how they would season their turkey. For those who enjoy that old fashion citrus tasting turkey, Nour recommended cooking it with orange juice and white rice. Malykai uses a more traditional method of "using the grease with the turkey baster stuff." Malykai also likes to stuff his turkey with "something green or yellow, like cheesecake." Who needs Pepperidge Farm?

Mila knows that everything tastes better with Catchup and of course, she would prefer to serve the turkey with cheese. Chris had a similar sentiment but for his own reasons. When asked what type of cheese he would serve with it, Chris offered "American. It's an American Holiday." Patriot spirit is alive.

Of course we couldn't talk about just cooking the turkey. After all, with guests joining you, presentation is everything. Victoria knows that a colorful display of bananas, strawberries and pineapples are the perfect touch to dress up a freshly roasted turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our families!