Downingtown Students Earn National Recognition

The Semifinalists in the 2012 National Merit Scholarship Program and National Achievement Program were announced September 14, 2011. Eleven DHS East and DHS West students were announced semifinalists for these two prestigious programs.

Downingtown Area School District would like to congratulate the National Merit Scholarship semifinalists Alexander H. Jenkins, Catherine M. McEntee, Brandon M. Skinner of DHS West and Vaibhav Agarwal, Dilru C. Amarasekera, Ishaan Gulrajani, Katherine Y. Lu, Nolan P. Russell, Kiersten M. Schmidheiser, and Michelle S. Sheng of DHS East for their academic achievements.

The National Merit Scholarship program was established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and by approximately 440 business organizations and higher education institutions that share NMSC's goals of honoring the nation's scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.

DASD would also like to congratulate National Achievement Program Semifinalist Catherine A. Sampson of DHS East and James Scott of .

The National Achievement Program is an academic competition established in 1964 to provide recognition for outstanding Black American high school students. A student's standing is determined independently in each program. Black American students can qualify for recognition and be honored as Scholars in both the National Merit Program and the National Achievement Program, but can receive only one monetary award from NMSC.

Closing the Achievement Gap Invitation

Brandywine Wallace (Mrs. Leib)

 This week, Brandywine Wallace celebrated Fire Prevention Week with a visit on Tuesday from the East Brandywine Fire Department. Each grade level reviewed fire safety tips, including calling 911, Stop, Drop, and Roll, the need for smoke alarms, use of a fire extinguisher, and the importance of having a fire escape plan. Students also demonstrated their skills during a scheduled fire drill as they exited the building in record time. Freddie the Fire Truck also delighted the children with his amazing ability to answer their questions, tell jokes, and even squirt water at them. Very brave fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Cain, ascended the 75 ft. ladder on top of the fire engine and waved to the adoring crowd below. Special thanks to Chief Joe Edwards for arranging the visit and thanks to his crew for spending the day with us, even playing soccer at recess with the fourth graders! It is wonderful to have community support for our BW activities.

Lionville Elementary (Dr. Hessinger)

WELLNESS AT LE

We have displayed our Wellness banner in the main lobby!   In our October famly newsletter we have included a wellness "quiz." The homeroom with the most families to return the "quiz" will be awarded with an extra physical activity time. We are aiming for 100% of the classrooms to participate! Please check out our October newsletter posted on the LE homepage; it is filled with wellness information - bully prevention, staying healthy during winter months, and nutrition tips.

USING RENZULLI LEARNING REPORTS

At the time of this publication, the top three learning styles of our students based upon their completion of the learning profiles are: technology, peer tutoring and discussion. We are already increasing our use of laptops (thanks to the upgrade in the wireless access points in the building this year and the repair of a laptop cart that wasn't charging the laptops), smart boards (every full sized classroom has one) and response clickers (brand new this year); we are finding that students respond very well to the use of these technological tools! This picture is an example of Mrs. Wood's third grade class using the smart board as well as white boards in a math lesson.

RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION AND INSTRUCTION (RTII) - PRIDE TIME

LE has launched our RTII program this week. All grade levels are implementing PRIDE time. The implementation of RTII has been a part of a multi-year process. Last year, a few grades initiated RTII. In my discussions with staff since my arrival, I learned that specific supports needed to be in place to launch a school-wide program. Some of those supports included: school-wide master schedule allocating time (completed by the principal with lots of input from all staff); time for teachers to collaborate (we have designated every Tuesday morning 8:15-8:45); appropriate learning spaces (you saw pictures of this); clear roles and responsibilities; adequate resources (still working on this); shared ownership; appropriate allocation of human resources; and strong leadership and direction from the principal. Each grade level is scheduled for 30 minutes of PRIDE time daily, while Kindergarten is scheduled for 20 minutes daily. Throughout the summer and during the month of September, the LE staff and I worked on each of these components; we are still a work in progress and will continue to hone the program throughout the year. The PDE RTII Self Report will guide our work to review our progress in the six core characteristics of RTII.

This week, parents received a personalized letter notifying them about our PRIDE Time program; this letter included the child's PRIDE group assignment. The letter also explained how we assigned the groups, what assessments we used and what each group will be focused on (mass customization). Earlier this year, I showed pictures of some of the small group learning spaces we created in the building, and now they are all in use throughout the day with PRIDE groups of all grade levels. We will be monitoring student progress by using a variety of assessment tools throught the year. We will also be changing groupings as the needs of students change.

FIRE PREVENTION LESSONS

Lionville Fire Company presented fire safety lessons to all our Kindergarten classes this week. Children learned about fire prevention as well as how to behave when faced with a real fire.

We are grateful to Lionville Fire Company for coming to instruct our students! Fire fighter Ross dressed in his full fire fighting attire and shook every child's hand to show that fire fighters are not scary and are here to help in an emergency.

DATA ANALYSIS YIELDS GRADE LEVEL INSTRUCTIONAL FOCUS AREAS

On the September 29^th inservice day, teachers met by grade levels to identify focus standard(s) based upon their data review.  

2011-12 grade level focus areas as selected on 9/29/11 are:

In my daily walk-throughs of every classroom, I am seeing evidence that these areas of focus are guiding instructional planning of lessons.

We also reviewed the impact of last year's school-wide RACE strategy; we found that the focus on the RACE strategy showed a one year gain in the overal student performance in grades 3, 4, 5 in the open-ended response for Reading; there was no gain for math. This led us to know that we need explicit focus on a strategy for improving students' performance on the open-ended problems for mathematics. There was little to no transfer from Reading to Math by our students. For 2011-12 we will continue to focus on RACE for literary response and are in conversation about selecting a school-wide strategy for Math.

Pickering Valley (Mr. Fernandes)

Kindergarten is off to a great start! The children have participated in "Picture Day", "Silly Sock Day" and "Teddy Bear Day". We enjoyed a visit from The Lionville Fire Company and learned a lot about the fire truck and fire safety. We are learning about trees and watching the leaves change colors before our eyes. It has been a fun and exciting Fall!  

Mrs. Madarang's 2nd grade class is studying communities. To learn more about local community helpers and their jobs in the community, the class reached out to their parents who worked in the community as well as local business people. Several medical professionals and bankers visited the class over the past two weeks to share information about their jobs and their role in the community with the children.

Fifth Grade spent an exciting two days participating in the American Math Challenge. All math students swooped down on available computers before school, during recess, during math class and, of course, as soon as they got home. Points accumulated from our efforts put Pickering Valley in the top 50 schools across the country. Way to go 5th grade!

Shamona Creek (Mrs. Welsh)

What an incredible experience the 5^th grade at Shamona Creek had this week. Using their knowledge of history, culture, and government of the medieval time period, students worked collaboratively to build amazing castles. This hands-on experience allowed students to apply new learning and problem solving skills with the help of many parent volunteers.

Students in grades 2 and 3 started RtII groups this week. (Response to Instruction and Intervention) The theme in second grade is "On the Prowl for Knowledge," with teams named the Pumas, Lynx, and Tigers.... The theme in grade 3 is "Wag your tail for a great tale," with teams named the Dalmatians, Chihuahuas, and Beagles... Targeted reading instruction occurs every day for 30 minutes. The children tell me that they "LOVE RtII! It makes reading so fun!" Mrs. Benner and Mrs. Disney's kindergarten classes enjoyed a visit from the Lionville Fire Company as part of Fire Prevention week.

Dr. Mussoline visited Shamona Creek for the morning on Thursday. He saw the use of SmartBoards in a variety of settings, learned about how iPads can be used for instructional purposes, observed guided reading lessons engaged in "math talk" with second graders. As always, we are happy to show off our wonderful school.

West Bradford (Mrs. Wert) 

Through our differentiated faculty meeting, our staff focused on the 5 non-negotiables of Differentiation...and we have been making connections to our practice in these areas.  How have we used data to effectively group for instructional practice within the curriculum and how are those tasks respectful?  With the start of our K-5 Charger Time! (our RtII block), I know Carol Tomlinson would be proud to see our efforts!

Downingtown Middle (Mr. Indeglio)

Field Trip

DMS Science teacher, Mr. Kang, took his seventh graders on the annual canoe/stream study trip. The students determined that the East Branch of the Brandywine River has ACCEPTABLE water quality. The students tested pH, D.O., biological index of macro-invertebrates among other tests on Oct 7. The team studied various sites via canoe along the four and a half mile river trip. Despite the beautiful weather, Dr. Bruton and Mr. Basilio both ended up in the water. The students are calling their mishaps "team causalities to torrential rapids". Everyone had a great time.

Classroom

The 7th grade students are learning about organism adaptations and predator/prey relationships in science class. Camouflage is a particular kind of adaptation, and students modeled camouflage by creating their own camouflaged butterflies to hide in their science classroom. Dr. Bruton and Ms. Welch were "predators" as they hunted for hidden butterflies.

Yearbook

 The 8th grade helped with the cover of the yearbook by posing for a class picture outside this week. Thanks to Ildi Brown from the aerial picture.

Footloose

Auditions for the DMS production of Footloose concluded today, Friday, October 14; students eagerly await the casting results which will be posted by Friday, October 21.  Rehearsals will kick off with a parent meeting, cast bonding and read-through on Saturday, November 5.

DHS West

Activities

Next week, Generation 4 Change will proudly host speakers from the non profit

organization, Invisible Children. In an effort to gain awareness and support the

speakers, Alex, Aleah, Elisabeth, and Geoferry (aka Roadies) will give a presentation by

showing their latest documentary clip from Uganda. The documentary is called Tony

and follows Nate Henn's trip to Uganda. Nate Henn spoke at Downingtown West

in 2010, so we are excited to see his journey to Uganda.

The Downingtown West National Honor Society is hard at work. They provided forty

guides for Back to School Night and are in the process of collecting items for Operation

Holiday Stocking. These items will be shipped to our men and women overseas. In

addition, NHS is gearing up for The Annual Canned Food Drive. The collection will be

delivered to The Lords Pantry in Downingtown prior to Thanksgiving.

Awards

One of West's students, Jordyn Giannone, has been selected to participate in The Walnut

Street Theatre's "Seeing the Stage Through Our Eyes" program. She will be viewing each

final dress rehearsal at the The Walnut Street theater and writing a feature article about

her experience. Her articles will be posted to the theatre's website and may be selected

for inclusion in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Downingtown West student, Zachary Barr, a senior tailback and strong safety, was

recognized by Eagles' broadcaster Merrill Reese on his weekly radio program as the

Southeast Pa. Player of the week. After four games, Zachary was averaging over ten

yards per carry.

Senior, Dan LaClair, was named Player of the Year for the Downingtown West golf team.

STEM Academy (Mr. Fiore)