Eagle News 9/30/19

Last day of September. October here we come! The trees are changing colors and the leaves are starting to drop. And our younger students are still trying to master my two-syllable name. I had a kindergarten student last week cheerfully say to me, “Hello Mr. Peedoo!”

Once again, the Alpine Elementary Community came together as we met the PTA Fundraiser goal of raising $10,000! We had brought in $5,200 through Thursday of last week and then had a huge day on Friday to get over the $10,000 mark. The PTA will use every dollar to directly benefit all students at Alpine Elementary. Thank you Alpine Elementary Community for your generous donations! And huge shout out to Ryan Johnson and Max Connect Marketing for providing t-shirts for all of our students! We are also grateful to Chick-Fil-A for donating lunches to the classes that brought in the most money and to Zurchers Party Store for donating decorations for the Friday dance party.

For the past four years we have used an assessment for our K – 3 grade students called DIBELS to measure what we call the Big 5 reading components: Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension. There is a multitude of research to indicate that the foundation for individual student success in elementary school is the ability to read at grade level. The DIBELS assessment is now called Acadience, but the grade level tests have not changed. We administer the Acadience test three times a year to our students. The Beginning of Year (BOY) assessment lets teachers know where students are with their foundational reading skills. I have attached Alpine Elementary’s Beginning of Year assessment scores for the past four years. You will notice that our scores continue to improve. We of course want all students to be proficient readers, meaning they are in the blue or green categories. Students who are yellow or red have some gaps in one or more of the Big 5 reading components. Because of improved reading instruction at the lower grade levels, the number of red and yellow students have decreased over the past four years, which is reason to celebrate. Congratulations to our dedicated teachers for the outstanding instruction students are receiving! Parents of K – 3 grade students will learn more about their child’s reading assessment at Parent Teacher Conferences October 7 – 11.

And thanks to our School Community Council for paying the $12 per student assessment fee, our 4^th – 6^th graders are receiving the Acadience assessments this year for the first time, so our upper grade teachers will have reading assessment data to help them with their in-class instruction.

            2016 – 2017—95 students

            2017 – 2018—68 students

            2018 – 2019—51 students

            2019 – 2020—47 students

The following students were nominated by their teachers and recognized last week for consistently demonstrating the character traits of the Alpine Big 3: Responsibility, Respect and Readiness to Learn.

Camden Abbott–6th Grade, Ms. Kuo

Ellie Fugal–5th Grade, Mrs. Weakley

Lupita Gallardo Figueroa–6th Grade, Mrs. Kaczmarek

Bella Gerber–6th Grade, Ms. Kuo

Becca Hale–Kindergarten, Mrs. Aitchison

Beckham Larkin–Kindergarten, Mrs. Aitchison

Tim Neves–5th Grade, Mrs. Padgett

Quacy Omane’ Brimpong–6th Grade, Mrs. Kaczmarek

Rachel Schmidt–4th Grade, Mrs. Orgill

Eliza Smith–3rd, Mrs. Duke

Alexis Smith–Kindergarten, Mrs. Aitchison

Cora Spencer–3rd Grade, Mrs. Chen

Maren Tomkinson–2nd Grade, Ms. Andersen

Libby Topham–5th Grade, Mrs. Weakley

Have a great week, and as always, remember that it is a great day to be an Eagle!