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SOUTH BRUNSWICK: AROUND THE SCHOOLS

By Amanda Rosenberg, Constable Elementary School Principal
As each school year draws to a close in the spring, our focus shifts to the following September. Reflecting back on the year to plan for the next is a critical part of educators’ work.
Analyzing data, setting goals, and working collaboratively drive the Constable School teachers and administrators towards reaching our goals.
This year, Constable School has identified three School Goals to focus our professional development, student growth, and school improvement efforts.
The first goal is for all teachers to support and promote student self-regulation by implementing at least one new self-regulation strategy into their teaching practice.
Self-regulation involves teaching students to monitor their own learning, increase self-awareness, and strengthen self-motivation.
It’s about helping students set goals for themselves, monitor progress, restructure if goals are not met, use time efficiently, and self-evaluate.
The concept of self-regulation crosses all content areas and grade levels.
It’s a quality that will help students learn new material, accomplish projects, and become more self-reliant and responsible citizens in life beyond the school walls.
Our second goal focuses specifically on our younger learners as they acquire foundational literacy skills.
Ensuring our teachers are even more equipped with an extensive repertoire of strategies to increase children’s phonological awareness is critical in making certain that all students develop into proficient readers and writers.
Phonological awareness is a broad term, referring to the ability to focus on the sounds of speech.
The term encompasses the ability to focus on the separate individual sounds in words and the relationship between sounds and the letters that represent them.
Phonological awareness is the most critical prerequisite for learning to read.
Through attending professional development sessions, reading current research, and participating in Professional Learning Communities, Constable teachers will further enhance their knowledge in this area.
Differentiating instruction to ensure that all students’ academic, emotional, and social needs are being met is a challenging responsibility for teachers.
For many years, teachers have focused on gathering information about each child in order to assess their academic readiness, learning styles, and interests.
They then use this information to modify the content, process, and product of lessons to best reach individual learners.
This year, Constable School is committed to providing our teachers with additional training, strategies and support to effectively differentiate instruction.
We believe accomplishing these goals will lead to increased student growth for every child. The work and the journey will be shared by all Constable teachers and administrators, and many district stakeholders, including the Language Arts Supervisor, Sherry Sassine; Math Supervisor, Stacey Ta; Instructional Support Supervisor, Allison Dubois; Special Education Supervisor, Laurie Faigin; and Superintendent, Dr. Jerry Jellig.
Students’ families play an important role as they support their children’s learning at home and maintain a relationship of open communication and collaboration with school.
When teachers, educational leaders, and parents come together to work in the best interest of children, all of our goals can be achieved.