This is it, folks... the last day of the school year!

When you look back on this year, you can see that together we accomplished a lot - and had a lot of fun at the same time! We had a bang-up Back to School picnic, a very popular Halloween Family Fun Night, and May Fair (despite the rainy weather!). The Burr Bulletin kept us up to date each week, the World Cultures Festival celebrated over 30 countries this year, and the Green Team revved up recycling at school. The Gift for Burr was an incredible success, BOOYA rocked several service projects, the 5th graders sold pretzels, performed "The Wizard of Oz", and worked at the school store. And that's not even all - there's so much more that can't possibly fit here.

To the parents who chaired our Creative Arts and Sciences programming... made photocopies and laminated... sharpened pencils... helped with field trips... organized Color Day activities... helped hang (and take down) the Art Show... planted in the garden... supported our teachers and staff... the list goes on and on... thank you. Thank you all. The PTO machine chugs along because of the efforts of so many of you... many thanks for your assistance, big and small!

Today we'll be saying our good-byes for now to our teachers, our classmates, and all the staff who make Burr School special. For most of us, it is a seasonal goodbye. For others, a more permanent goodbye.

To all the 5th graders and their families, we wish you good luck on your graduation and your continued growth and learning in Middle School.  Please come back to visit!  We'd love to see you!

To our departing PTO board members Kelly Brown, Dana Hanson, Lizbeth Heyer, and Allison Sharma, thank you for two years of service.  We are thrilled to bring on the new team of Colette Burke, Tracy Carter, Maren Oslund, and Jason Wong to continue with Nancy Caulfield, Steve DeJesus. Diana Fisher-Gomberg, and Weiqun Shi.

To Ms. Denney, Ms. Kelly, Ms. Toran, and other departing Burr staff: we will miss you tremendously next year and we hope you will visit us.  You will always be a part of the Burr family!

Finally, this is of course the hardest goodbye...to the one and only Cindy Bencal.  We've had joyous string of celebrations and bon voyages over the past several weeks--we just can't seem to get enough thank yous and goodbyes squeezed in during these final days!  We will miss you more than you know, but we promise to build on all of your successes at over the past 19 years at Burr.  We wish you a wonderful retirement and are all proud that we had you as a principal when you were unmistakably at the top of your career!

Sigh...

So, a great summer to all, farewell to those moving on, and thank you all for your generosity, your energy and your creativity this year.  Have a restful and healthy summer.

Steve DeJesus and Dana Hanson...and NOW Tracy Carter!
Burr PTO Board Chairs

As you know Burr has been working hard all year on Professional Learning Communities (PLC's).  Each grade level team meets for an hour a work to set goals, look at student work, and discuss interventions.  It has been a successful way to collaborate with colleagues.  Below is a list of what each grade level team worked on this year.  Next year we will continue with our PLC's and include more of an intervention model.

The Kindergarten team had a goal of raising the percentage of students who read at or above benchmark by 5% (to 89%).  We focused on four skills which would put students in a stronger position to read text at that level with stronger comprehension:

We designed and administered some common formative assessments to help us with this goal.

The first grade team had a goal to raise reading comprehension scores.  We targeted retelling strategies specifically using specific names and details.  We sent home a retelling bookmark that families can use.  Through read alouds and small group reading group work we also began to focus on beyond the text questions.  We discussed lessons that characters learn in stories as well as the message the author is trying to give the reader.  

The 2nd grade team focused on further developing students' retelling skills using retelling hands, bookmarks, and graphic organizers. Emphasis was placed on telling the main events from the story in order, including important details and character names. Students have been better able to demonstrate comprehension of what they have read using these skills.

The third grade students have been working on creating written paragraphs in response to questions for texts that they have ready.  This helps them to find exact details in the text to support their inferential thinking.  This also establishes a solid foundation for paragraph writing which supports the work and curriculum done in fourth grade, as well as for ELA MCAS.

The focus of the 4th grade teachers this year has been to improve reading comprehension and increase the quality of written reading responses.  Our PLC time was spent discussing and choosing common formative assessments, compiling data, developing lessons for the instruction of modeling reading strategies, and discussing individual student interventions or small group interventions that may have been needed. PLC time was also use for examining student work in the genres of non-fiction, biography, and realistic fiction.

The fifth grade goal was to increase the number of students who scored Proficient in the Non-fiction strand of reading on the MCAS from 77% to 85%.  We focused on understanding and identifying the main idea in the text to help us reach this goal, since it is such an important comprehension skill students need to have to be successful readers of non-fiction.  This skill is foundational in everything they do in their later years at school since they have to use it in Language Arts, Social Studies and Science.  We used common formative assessments to identify which students had difficulty with this skill.  Then we worked on using articles from Time for Kids and old MCAS passages to practice finding the main idea of a piece of text.  We worked with students in small groups to help them with their area of need.

One of my favorite sites is Reading Rockets.  It is a good resource for parents, has ideas to help young readers, lists of books and authors, videos and podcasts of children's book authors.
http://www.readingrockets.org/atoz/summer_reading

The Newton Free Library has a summer reading program for which children can sign up.  It makes students feel like they are part of a community of readers. Kids keep a log and get a little prize at the end.  There are also reading lists available on line:
http://www.newtonfreelibrary.net/childrens/booklists/

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has teamed up with the Red Sox to encourage students to read this summer.  Students can enter a lottery with their completed reading log to win prizes including tickets to a Red Sox game. http://readingmatters.org/

PBS has a site with many great links for kids.  Here is the link for Between the Lions with games, stories and video links about books and reading.  The animated books add an extra dimension to the reading experience - I loved Ruby Sings the Blues. http://pbskids.org/lions/

The Kids Reads site has great book reviews and recommendations for children's books. http://www.kidsreads.com/series/index.asp

Roy the Zebra is a site that has games which have to do with reading. http://www.roythezebra.com/index.html

Keep cool, have fun and don't forget to use sunscreen!

Kalpana Guttman
Literacy Specialist
Burr School