Be Part Of Lincoln History - Buy A Brick

As school resumes, we will kickoff our Buy A Brick campaign. This fall we will be constructing a brick pillar sign on W. Wyoming Ave. Both our PTO and the 5th Grade class of 2012 have pledged a significant amount of funding to make this a reality but we are also selling bricks as part of the patio surround to help fund the project in its entirety. Each brick will include a short personalized message and the entire project is designed to meet the esthetic appearance of the original brick of the school with such fine detail, that we have matched the color of the capstones and the off white background of the sign to match the window panes of the building.

A big thanks to Lincoln Parent and Architect, Olaf Vollertson for working on our plans, including this image above.

Keep your eye out soon for the information on how to buy a brick and be part of Lincoln History.

Summer Reading and Fun

How is the summer reading going? Are you looking for ways to make it more exiting to engage the kids on a rainy day. Share some of your projects or neat things you have done this summer with books you have read. Post links below to any online projects or just have the kids reply with a comment about the books they have been reading. Be creative...post your videos, pictures or online created story maps and other features.

Below are some ideas and links for some neat technology tools to explore. I look forward to hearing from you Lincoln students!

http://dotlearnt.com/2012/07/23/free-summer-reading-adventure-for-kids-on-itunes/ 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/48-summer-websites-kids-teachers-keith-ferrell

• We used Voice Thread last year during our Author's night. http://voicethread.com is an amazing site that allows students to create web 2.0 slide shows that become interactive and collaborative. This is a great place for students to discuss common genres and books online. Students can create a slideshow summary of their book with pictures, audio, and text. Other students can leave text, audio, or drawn comments on the book reviews. 
• Wikis are an excellent place for students to share book reviews. Wetpaint http://wetpaint.com, PBWorks http://pbworks.com, and Zoho Wiki http://zoho.com/wiki are outstanding online wikis where students can write reviews about books they have read and share them with other students. 
• Bookcasting is a recorded audio podcast about a book. A bookcast is a movie trailer-like audio review of a book that students can create and share with one another. Free online tools such as Audacity http://audacity.com, G Cast http://gcast.com, or Pod Bean http://podbean.com make recording audio and sharing simple. Bookcasts let students be creative and provide them with a great sense of audience. It has the added benefit of acting as a book review to excite other students about reading. 
• Use visual and graphic imagination to make a cartoon version of the book they have just finished. Tools like Creaza http://creaza.com, Piki Kids http://pikikids.com, or Kerpoof http://kerpoof.com to inject a little fun into the book report. Kids can create a short cartoon or comic strip summarizing the book they just read. 

• Create a short video clip about the book. Creaza http://creaza.com, Kerpoof http://kerpoof.com, and Xtra normal text to movie http://xtranormal.com are all great online tools that allow kids to create short movie clips. They can create an interview type show where they interview characters in the book, create a short movie trailer for the book, or actually have characters act out portions of the book. 
• Create virtual and online trading cards for characters or real people from history they have been reading about http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/trading_cards_2/ 
• Get into geocaching. Everyone loves a scavenger hunt! Get in on the latest outdoor craze with geocaching, where families search for hidden "caches" or containers using handheld GPS tools (or a GPS app on your smart phone). Try a variation on geocaching called earthcaching where you seek out and learn about unique geologic features. Find more details about geocaching plus links to geocaching websites in this article from the School Family website, Geocaching 101: Family Fun for All, in Every Season. Then have your child create a blog about it using http://edublogs.org/ or www.sparktop.org 

Credit to www.teacher.monster.com for some of these ideas.

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.