RCO Meeting
11/3/2015 meeting called to order at 6:05
Welcome
Christine Evert CE gave us a warm welcome
Attendance count: 13
(more came late)
Introductions (see attendance list)
Ground Rules and introduction of Minute Taker (told everyone
to stay on task). Read minutes summary
from 10/6/15. Minutes approved in RCO
Business. Parent Education (Diana Fitzer)
Diana
Fitzer, kinder teacher, spoke on the curriculum in kinder. She mentioned she
would be going through some of the math and sewing in her presentation. She
started with sewing. Diana pulled out a
big, green ring and she showed needles (size 16 embroidery needle if you want
to try this at home with your student) and she said that she insists that the students
thread their own needle. She gives tips
to student, and said teachers help to knot the thread for the student. But by 1st grade, they should be
knotting their own thread. She then
demonstrated the running stitch. Pumpkin
pillow is very motivating. They all want
their pumpkin pillow. Diana said when
you are doing sewing projects at home, you can give some guidance. On the pumpkin pillow, the dots only go part
way around so that they know where to start and stop leaving an opening for
stuffing. She also talked about students
learning the length of the thread needed. Lots of sewing projects you can do at
home.
In
Kindergarten, students talk about 4 kinds of life (not 5 or 6): Animals,
Plants, Fungi and other (all other things).
Then they hear about them in stories.
Diana told a story about coming to work from her house and seeing
toadstools in a neighbor’s yard. She used
this to introduce primary concepts within the scientific method of observation
and identification. And then she showed
her toadstools she brought in. This can
be a springboard to include more talks of life, vertebrate and
invertebrate. She showed a cat
skeleton. Diana said she asks the
students if they might be offended if the cat bones were set out for
observation and a few said they were so she opted not to put them out. Then she said there is a song for everything,
including vertebrates and invertebrates.
“My
spine is made of many boney vertebrae; they protect my spinal cord…” She added,
“Then we go through the skeleton.” This
is a current subject she wanted to mention before we got into the math.
Diana
said we hope that the children are familiar with patterns before they get to
Kinder but this year is a younger class so they started with working on
patterns. Then she showed caps from jars
and laid out a pattern and would ask the students what would come next. She also talked about common core and how we
try to narrate our math problems more now.
She showed cards representing a river and river rocks. The river rocks would be used with fact
sheets. For instance, five rocks minus
two rocks leaves three rocks. And then she can tell a story with math in it
using the visual aids. The students always
do the math facts, but in this way, they are conceptualizing rather than just
using rote fact. Then the students use a
space within their workbook for a picture, choosing one of the math facts to be
support by the picture. They create the picture and narrate what they drew:
“First I took five rocks…” this helps to prepare them for the lower el when
they are narrating more math and abstract concepts. Caps are used with dice and the students roll
them to get their math fact. They repeat
the same process. We use the word
“groups” now because that is more along the lines of the common core (instead
of ten bars, for instance).
Q. A
parent asked about common core “what I have heard from research is that Montessori
math is amazing and I wondered about the difference between common core and
Montessori math.
A. When
I first started teaching Montessori math, there were a lot of gaps in the
common core but they have started to fill those in. There is a lot of freedom to teach common
core with Montessori materials.
C.
Sometimes a student wants to show a lot of different methods to get to
solutions, and I think maybe students struggle more if limited to one option.
A. I
like that students have more freedom within the new common core. Montessori wants the child to know it well
enough to teach it. That thinking is
right along common core that if you can write it out, you know enough to teach
it.
Q. How
many works do they get and what is the time frame for them to finish?
A. I
assign one work and they know that they can tap me or the assistant anytime to
get checked off. The last few years we
have covered enough just assigning their first work, then of course during the
work period, I cover lessons. They have
work files they can access easily. They
know where materials are and can pull them out.
Just assigning the first one helps them to learn to take direction from
a teacher but I also make sure they are covering the curriculum.
Diana then talked about bead work within Montessori
Math. The colors that are assigned to
different groups represent the bead stair.
The children will color these to learn the colors for each number:
Red 1
Green 2
Pink 3
Yellow 4
Aqua 5
Lilac 6
While 7 (the children will inevitably learn that they don’t
have to color this one)
Brown 8
Dark Blue 9
Gold 10
We have started a number of the week chart. This helps to give an interest in math at
group. This is just a quick way to cover
a lot of things that are on that standards list (benchmarks). Before this, it is a much harder
concept. Which number comes first. Sometimes they can rote count. We do greater than and less than and they
love that. They like to imagine very
large numbers compared to much smaller ones.
Ex. hundreds and thousands are greater than 3. And we add a little every
day to keep it on their minds.
For the golden beads, the ones we have for demonstration are
actually glass and that gives it some weight.
This weight is important to conceptualize. Diana showed the block on 1,000 golden beads
and pointed out that it is heavy and this represents a much larger number than
the ten beads or an individual bead.
Then Diana laid out the equation card on a white rug. White rugs show golden beads better. Then she showed the process of booklets that
would eventually lead to them working out the equation with the beads. We check their work right away rather than
putting it in a folder to be checked later.
Q. How
do you encourage a child who is convinced that they cannot do math?
A. By reminding
them of instances when they can do difficult things. We talk about different ways we can handle
frustration and disappointment. This is
one of the first things we do. We show our disappointed faces and share our
strategies for dealing with those feelings.
They have great stories on disappointment. They are very resilient.
Thank you Diana for coming and sharing Kindergarten with us.
RCO
BUSINESS (early, jump)
Jumped to RCO Business and Darcy came in to talk about
Holiday Tree Sales. She talked about the
tree farm in Pleasant Hill. The owner (former Ridgeline parent) wants to
partner with Ridgeline again for tree sales this year, a you-cut lot where we
get 50% and the tree farm gets 50%. We
will have a work party on Nov 22 at 11:00 to 3:00. Tree sales are the 5th and 6th
and the 12th and 13th of December.
Board Report (David Vazquez and Amy Sage)
DV said
“The board talks about policy. We meet
the third Thursday of each month. The
meetings are open and please feel free to attend.” He introduced Amy Sage. A parent asked about where the meetings are
held and DV said that they are held here at the school. The parent said it
would be better if they met somewhere else because it is too difficult to get
back across town to school again. DV
said they have always met at the school.
Admin Report (Chrystell Reed)
Chrystell
Reed talked about a student opening that we are going to have in upper el.
She said we had the ALICE training,
which is the active shooter training.
She said it was very difficult emotionally but that we all left here
feeling more empowered and prepared. We
talked about different types of safety drills.
We got great feedback in regards to what we can do to improve our facility. For instance we are getting whistles for everyone in case we do need to attention. A parent asked about the emotional
component. CR talked about the specifics
of the lock down training and how things went. It is different doing this type
of a drill while building trust within the staff and teachers. A lot of this information comes back to the
safety committee and we make changes based on this.
Grandparents’ day is November 13. We will send info on Friday regarding
parking, driving, permission to take grandchildren home afterwards, volunteers
(volunteers please park at crossfire), remind them to bring their own
lunch. We will have refreshments at the
beginning but not lunch.
Barnes and Noble book fair, also November 13, additional
information is coming this week.
Site Council (Sally Steinman)
We have
had two meetings. We are looking at
tardies and absences and we have formed a subcommittee to hopefully reduce
tardies and absences. Since we have so
many new teachers we are looking at ways to support them and teach them about
our particulars about Ridgeline. The
last thing we talked about is an organization chart. We only briefly talked about this but it
would be something that you can look at and see who does what at our school and
where you can go to get your questions answered.
RCO
BUSINESS (cont)
Christine motioned to accept the minutes and Michelle Lodwig
seconded. Minutes are accepted
T-shirts and spirit Day.
We received some thank you cards and will start our spirit day on
Fridays when you can wear your colors and Ridgeline t-shirts. CE thanked Michele for championing the
t-shirt project. They reminded us that
the color is blue so that you can just wear blue for spirit day too. A parent
asked about the opportunity to order t-shirt again and they said they would. Colors change each year based on the kids’
deciding. Also, all donated t-shirts
ended up being paid for by generous donations from our families.
Skate world recap photos are available. We had a really great time.
The DDD total update: It is
difficult to show a total because we have some families contributing in
increments. What our thermometer shows
is the money we actually have. The DDD
$9,632. There is a little more in the
bill pay monthly (committed but not yet received). We are at a little over $10K counting
promised contributions.
And thank you for all who helped. Eduardo Tapia has done so
much, the signs and the tree.
Pasta Dinner and community marketplace
Pasta Dinner on Feb 19th. We are planning to ask for a donation and are
hoping to not have to have a big push. But last year we did make a lot at the pasta
dinner. What we want to do is allow the
children and the community to form a market place. They can sell their own wares. Crafts, facepainting, fingerknitting. We would still have the bowls that we did a
silent auction on. We would have people
(students and families if they want) to sell their wares (maybe on the
stage). This is a way of including kids
in the whole process. Space is an issue.
ML sent around a sign up for DDD momentum and Event
Coordinator.
Read-A-Thon.
Information sheets went around.
The first sheet shows the reading challenge and the second sheet showed
a copy of the flyer. Jen Hackstadt
talked about the read-a-thon and how it had gone in the past years.
Fundraising
Barefoot Books, presented by Tanya
Petal. She invited everyone over to see
the books and talked about multicultural literacy. She wanted to suggest a fundraiser for the
school. She had puppets along with the
books and she talked about selling items.
20% of gross sales would come back to the school. Games, puzzles, paper crafts and puppets. A lot of these books can be used in the
classroom. She highlighted a few in particular.
She said she would like to partner with Ridgeline and would always have
inventory on hand. There would be no parent volunteer hours needed and no
shipping costs. There might also be a
way that she can set it up so that any parent who buys online on behalf of our
school will contribute 20% to the school.
Christine asked about selling at
Marketplace. Tanya said that she thought
she would like to try to fit something like this in before the end of the
year. She also though the read-a-thon
would be a good time to sell her books.
CE responded and said that it might interfere with the end of the year
asks already weighing on our families.
CE said we get a lot of feedback about this sort of thing. Then a parent asked about the process for
coming forward with a fundraising idea.
ML said anyone who has an idea will send it to the RCO and then it will
end up here to see if this is something that we want to do, as a community. We
typically decide on next year’s fund raising the year before at the last RCO
meeting of the year. That is when we set up all of the main fund raising events
at the end of the school year. It is
good to start talking about it now but the end of the year is when we make
these decisions.
We did run over so CE
said, “last minute questions can be emailed to rco@ridgeline.org”
