The Reading Championship!

We all know that reading is THE most essential skill for students to master and at Lely Elementary, we focus like a laser on reading. Over the course of the year, we have developed an extensive reading incentive program to hook kids into reading. I've never been one to champion incentives for reading because I think once kids find "their books" they will read ravenously for the rest of their lives. It's all about the search for the books that match the student. Part of the art of teaching is making that match between students and books. 

When kids do not even attempt to read books, an incentive program is appropriate. After all, we are trying to hook them on reading and if an incentive furthers that cause, I'm all for it. Once they find the books they love, they will be off and reading on their own without any need for incentives. 

Our program has evolved over the course of the year into what it is today, and it may still grow. We set aside one day per quarter to celebrate the kids' accomplishments in reading. On that special day, all kids who reach their reading goals get a certificate and a Lely Elementary Reading Goals Brag Tag. They also get a cookie-decorating kit from the cafeteria. We mail a post card home so parents can see that their kiddo has been recognized for their reading; a parent connection is important. Kids who attain 100+ Reading Counts Points (Reading Counts is our reading program at Lely Elementary) are recognized as Century Club Members and get special perks (additional certificate, pizza, etc). To top it all off, we crown a Reading Champion Class each quarter. The class that has the greatest percentage of kids reaching their reading goals is crowned the Reading Champion for the quarter.

The reading championship is hotly contested and the kids really get into it. Often we will see kids encouraging each other to check out another book or read over the weekend so that they can more easily reach their reading goal. They are generating a positive peer pressure that recognizes the class as a community of readers. Kids recommend books to each other, talk about books, and come to the library multiple times per week. We, as the media team, keep tabs on their reading as well. The amount of traffic in the library has increased exponentially over the past year and we love the busy hive of learning that we are creating. 

On our reading celebration day, our principal, reading specialist, and media specialist walk around to all of the classrooms to deliver the good news to the kids and teachers. We pass out the certificates, recognize the Century Club winners, and celebrate all of their accomplishments. Most of the time, the kids are waiting to see if they will be crowned Reading Champions. We make sure to take the trophy with us to all of the classrooms. When the kids see that trophy come through their door, there is an audible gasp from the kids. It is awesome!

Mrs. Palmer's Q4 Reading Champions

This quarter, for the first time, we had a tie for the Lely Elementary Reading Championship. Mrs. Palmer's third grade class was one of the winners. This is a class that had a few kids reach their reading goals during the first quarter of the year. As the year went on, Mrs. Palmer coached and cheered on these kids so that more reached their goals during second and third quarter. During fourth quarter, this group was determined! They worked so hard and pushed each other to win the Lely Elementary Reading Championship. Neighboring classes knew something was going on in this room when they were presented with the trophy. Things got loud!

Mrs. Carbonell's Q4 Reading Champions

Mrs. Carbonell's class was the defending champion! In fact, this class was the Q2 AND Q3 champion. Only once before had we had a back-to-back winner. Mrs. Carbonell's class is now the only three-time champion in Lely Elementary history. To win three times is an awesome achievement but to win for three consecutive quarters is simply amazing! These kids were excited readers all year long and were frequent visitors to our media center.

The reading celebration day each quarter is always such a fun day. It is a day that kids really look forward to and the excitement is apparent on their faces as we walk the campus with certificates and trophy in hand. We are doing everything that we can to hook our kids on reading and this incentive plan has proven to be a hit!

We are working on some big surprises in the media center for next year. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks. We're incredibly excited!

Making the News

We all know that kids can do amazing things when given the opportunity. Often, kids crave more responsibility and part of learning in schools is giving kids more responsibility. We want kids to become more independent and grow into curious, self-reliant learners. There are many roles in a school that kids can do instead of adults. Our Leader in Me program helps us identify various roles that kids can take on and many tasks that kids can do instead of adults. After all, we are a community of learners and we all teach each other and learn from each other.

One of the areas in which students have excelled at is the morning news program. Under the direction of the school media specialist, kids present the morning news program to the rest of the school on the closed circuit television station. There is a combination of factors that make a news program good, or bad. 

Our fifth graders this year made our news program excellent. They were professional in their jobs, they were lively on-air, and they were fun and engaging. The rest of the school got to see these kids' personalities while they delivered the news. Students and teachers consistently reported that the news was engaging and they got to know the anchors a bit over time.

Connor - Anchor, Sound Master, Slides, Script

Jayla - Team Leader, Anchor, Slides, Script

Josh - Anchor, Sound Master, Slides, Script

Kevin - Anchor, Slides, Script

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Lauren - Anchor, Slides, Script

Rodney - Team Captain, Anchor, Sound Master, Script, Slides

In the newsroom, there are four "jobs" that kids can do. We train each kiddo on every job. This cross-training comes in handy when someone is absent or is not able to do the news one day. It is easy to switch around personnel to make sure that the news goes off without a hitch. 

We have our "Slider" - the person who controls the PowerPoint slides to correspond with the script that the anchor is reading. 

We have our "Scripter" - the person who controls the script, keeping it just ahead of the anchor so that there is never a long pause while delivering the news. 

We have the "Sound Master" - the person who controls which video feeds are seen on television and controls the microphones and other sounds. Everything revolves around the Sound Master.

And we have the Anchor - the star of the show. It is imperative that the anchor delivers the news smoothly and with feeling, inflection, and life.

I cannot convey how proud I am of this year's fifth grade news crew. Last week was their last week on the news crew so that we can move fourth graders into those positions for the last two weeks of school. We do so in order for these fourth graders to be ready on Day 1 of next year when the news begins. Our fifth grade team was professional, crazy, fun, and excellent at their jobs. They have set the bar extremely high and the fourth grade team knows it. I have no doubt that next year's news crew will perform as well as this year's team. After all, they had some amazing role models.

The Legacy Project: Well-Deserved Recognition

Teachers and schools never get enough positive news coverage. There are miraculous things going on in schools and classrooms everyday and yet, because there are so many, there is no way to cover them all. We always hear about negative things regarding public education but when you walk into a school, you tend to see the great things happening in the school. Here at Lely Elementary, we try to get our story out about all of the great things happening at school. 

One program that we have adopted since last year is the Leader in Me program where we work toward training kids to be leaders and then putting them in situations where they can excel as leaders. As part of that program, we are transforming what we are doing at school. We want both teachers and students to make their mark on our school and, in some cases, leave their mark. One way we are accomplishing this is through our Legacy Project. 

The Legacy Project is a concept that came to us during a Leader in Me Environmental Team meeting. We thought it would be great if the class leaving our school each year, the fifth grade class, would create some kind of physical entity for our school as a memory of them. The effect would be that as the years go by, the outgoing fifth grade classes would lend a hand in beautifying our campus. 

Kirstin Stockwell, our art teacher, bought into the project right away. Since she sees all of the kids in the building and since her class is best geared toward something like this, she led the fifth graders in designing the 2020-21 Legacy Project. After successfully writing a Donors Choose grant for supplies, she had the students create "stained glass" panels using paper and color. The panels range in theme from food to abstract design, but each student's personality shines through their panel. 

One morning, Mrs. Stockwell was hard at work hanging the panes in the wall of windows in the media center. We have since deemed that wall of windows our campus art gallery :) After arranging all of the panels in the windows, we took a look. It was breathtaking. Each panel was an individual work of art, but together, they combined to form an amazing work. This is a point of pride for our fifth grade class, and our entire school. In fact, an anchor at ABC7 News saw the project on Twitter and decided to make it a news story on the six o'clock news. Here is a link to the story: https://vimeo.com/549522270. What a cool thing for kids to see their creations on television.

Our Legacy Project will become a staple of life at Lely Elementary School. In ten years, we will be able to look back on all of the cool new features to our school and note that kids did all of the creating. I'm sure that our campus will look much different in a decade than it does now, and it will all have started with our 2020-21 fifth grade class and Mrs. Stockwell. We could not be more proud of all of them.

Pardon Our Dust

In our media center, we have championed change. We want to evolve to make this a great, interesting, wonderous learning space and the hub of our school building. We have been taking baby steps for the past year but all of these baby steps add up. We have been able to add color, texture, MakerSpace items, lights, tents, teepees, and a host of other kid-friendly entities to our space. One things that had not changed was our old, dilapidated circulation desk. It was an eyesore even after dressing it up as best we could. With permission from our principal, Tammy Brown, our Facilities Manager Yanka Ruiz was able to schedule the construction of a new circulation desk. When we heard the news, we were ecstatic! This was the one thing that we could not do ourselves and we had no idea how long the wait would be in order to make this change. Would it be months? Years? Well, it came sooner than we thought.

We got a visit from the district construction team and they outlined for us what the process would be. We told them that we would make any changes necessary to give them the space to work. We chose our color palette and the design of the desk, and we waited a few days. Word came that the process would start so we moved to a couple of temporary tables for a couple of weeks. In that time, we saw the demolition of the old desk and construction of our beautiful new desk. We stayed open during this time, providing all of the services that we normally would, with as little impact to the kids and the learning as possible. This time period was not as difficult as we feared it would be.

As you can see, this was a big undertaking. The construction team was remarkable. They were considerate of our needs and tried to work around us. We also tried to work around them and since we all had the same goal in mind, things went seamlessly. As you can also see from the pics, the old counter was very high. While sitting behind the desk, we could not see many of our younger students. This desk was not conducive to an elementary school library. 

After a week or so, things really started coming together. We could see the footprint of the new circulation desk. It was much roomier than the previous incarnation. It was built with a busy media center in mind. There would be lots of closed cabinet space, a low counter for the younger kids, and lots of outlets for electricity and Internet connections. This would be a modern circulation desk. As more of the construction happened, we got more and more excited. 

After the construction team was finished, we unveiled our beautiful new circulation counter. Our color scheme matched our media center perfectly and it looked beautiful. The "ooooohs" and "ahhhhhs" from both students and teachers were audible as they entered the library. After we moved back over from our temporary space, we immediately noticed how much better this counter was. We could see the kids! We could store things and close the cabinets! We could have two functioning computers to serve the kids and adults better! 

This change was not a small change like the ones that came before. This change was ginormous! This change sets the tone for more changes to come but nothing we will do in the future will have as great of an effect as the new circulation desk. We are grateful to the district for completing this project during the school year and we are grateful for our team at Lely, from our principal to our facilities manager, who made this change possible. We are now ready for the next fifteen years of service to the kids and staff at Lely Elementary School.

Student-Driven Book Purchasing

 Last year I had a boy, Elano, come into the library and ask for a book called Hilo. I had never heard of this book before. He explained that it was a graphic novel series and that he was very excited to read it. Well, we didn't have it. I explained to him that our graphic novel selection was not very good. He just looked at me for a minute and finally asked, "Well, can you order it?" What a simple question. On our next book purchase, I ordered the Hilo series and one or two other graphic novels. I held the books for Elano since he asked for them. He was so excited when he came in and saw them. He got them all and gobbled them up in a few days. He came back elated and asked what else we had. Well, our selection was still very limited but Elano had shown me that if we have the books, kids will check them out. It's kind of the "Field of Dreams" premise. 

While Elano was repeatedly asking me to order more graphic novels, his friends were busy reading the Hilo series. I determined at that point that in order to properly serve these students, I had to pack the media center with things they really wanted to read. So, last year before Covid, we got in a few more graphic novels. We still hid them in a shelf along the far wall of the media center, off the beaten path. Kids still found them, lots of kids. 

This year, we took a different approach to graphic novels. While our budget is small, our grant opportunities are endless. We decided to write a Donors Choose grant for graphic novels. I looked at lots of sources to find the best graphic novels for elementary students. Our first grant was for 902.00 and was funded in two days. It was funded so quickly that I immediately put up a second graphic novel grant for 865.00. That grant was funded even quicker. Now, we had 1700.00+ of graphic novels coming to school. We cleared off the tables in the media center to display them so the kids could see all of the new books that we received. Well, let's just say that the kids were super stoked.

Many times we heard screams of elation when kids came across books that they had only heard about before. They ran from table to table, looking at all of the new, colorful graphic novels. You would think it was Christmas morning! We loved seeing the kids so excited about books! 

All year long, the kids have been flocking to the graphic novel tables. We have trouble keeping them in the media center. I have learned a lot from this experience. I learned from Elano that kids love graphic novels more than I thought they did. This experience also confirmed my conviction that kids will read more than they ever have if they have the right books. I know some teachers and parents don't like graphic novels because they are books with pictures but when you look at the amount of information on the page and all of the brainpower it takes to interpret the words and graphics on the page, graphic novels are an excellent exercise for the brain. And if kids willingly, doggedly read these books, then we have tapped into a slice of motivation that may not have been there for strictly text-based books. 

Often graphic novels act as a vehicle to get kids reading in the first place. From there they choose a variety of books. I would much rather have kids excitedly reading graphic novels than learn to hate reading by being forced to read books that they don't like. We try to nurture a child's natural love of stories by introducing them to the books that they will love and grow their reading abilities from there. Graphic novels often act as the hook that brings kids into the world of reading. 

Leader In Me Habit Boards

This is our second year as a Leader in Me school. While Covid played havoc with our school year, we were still able to make some gains in building a foundation of Leader in Me in our school. One of the things that we tried to do right off the bat was change the environment of various spots around campus. We wanted students and teachers to come to school on the first day and be "wow'd" by what they saw. One project that helped us accomplish this feeling was our Leader in Me Habit Boards that are mounted right outside the media center. We spent over two weeks creating these boards and mounting them to the wall for all to see. They are strategically placed because you can see them from the front entrance. On their way into the office, parents and visitors will see the boards and be reminded that we are indeed a Leader in Me school and there is much to appreciate about our school. 

Now that the year has been going full-steam, we will document some of the other areas that we have made progress. We will recognize the outstanding work of our teachers, staff, and students, and make sure that everyone knows what an amazing place Lely Elementary School is. This is just the beginning of our story. It is a good one to tell and throughout the next several posts, you'll get a sense of what our school year has been like with all of the challenges we have faced. Click this link (LIM Habit Boards) to see the video of our LIM Habit Boards.

A Beautiful Message

Since school campuses have closed here in Florida, teachers have had a tough time connecting with kids and trying to make them feel like there is some sense of normalcy. Our learning curve has been steep but, after a few weeks of e-learning, we've worked out many of the bugs. One thing that both teachers and students are sad about is not being able to be in the same place for school. So much of education is personal interaction and soft skills that make our days a joy. We can capture some of that in video chats with the kids but so much is lost due to the separation. That is why you hear teachers say that Shelter at Home is tough on them. We want to see our kids but we know that we cannot. For the safety of everyone, we must shelter in place.

Our Lely Elementary Reading Coach, Karen Pelletier, came up with a way for us to communicate our love for our kids directly to them. She wrote a poem, had each teacher take a picture with one word from the poem, and she put all of the photos together to give a strong message to our kids. They loved it! This is one of the many ways we are showing our kids how much we love and miss them.

We miss our Lely Lions,

that we used to see each day.

So we thought we'd get together,

so you could see us say:

We still love you and we miss you,

and together we'll get through.

But we have to say

school's not the same

without our Lely crew.

We remember all the kindness,

that you showed in many ways.

The smiles and love you gave us,

still warm our hearts each day.

Even though we're in different places,

and each inside our home,

we'll get through this together,

you will never be alone.

 Love,

Your Lely family