Jeffco Schools Pages 6 and 7
August 2014 Vol. 7 No. 2
A Jeffco Schools Publication
www.jeffcopublicschools.org
Books and breakfast boost summer skills
Our Mission To provide a quality education that prepares all children for a successful future.
Jeffco Public Schools is home to nearly 86,000 of Colorado's finest students. Step inside one of our 154 schools and you will see a staff dedicated to building a bright future for every student. Our staff is supported by a committed school board, involved parents and a caring community that combine to provide a quality education that prepares all children for a promising future.
Left: Edgewater Elementary School teacher Gina Martinez works with students on literacy skills in the school’s Jeffco Summer Early Literacy program. Below: Jeffco Schools Superintendent Dan McMinimee visits with Edgewater Elementary students at the school’s free breakfast program.
Six Jeffco schools kept their doors open this summer, inviting students to stay in class to boost their reading skills. Over 600 students at Edgewater, Molholm, Lasley, Stevens, Pennington and Swanson elementary schools, attended Jeffco’s Summer of Early Literacy program, a grant-funded reading curriculum supported and initiated by the Jeffco Schools Foundation in partnership with Title I. The program is in its third year of a five-year pilot project. Students received free breakfast and lunch and three hours of intensive literacy instruction in small classrooms of 15 students with licensed teachers. Since the program began three years ago, it has helped at-risk, low-income students make literacy gains, instead of being faced with the “summer slide,” or a loss of academic skills over the summer break. Teachers and principals at the schools said students are eight times more likely to reach TCAP proficiency in reading by third grade and are also seeing gains in students’ reading exams.
“For us, this summer program aims at closing literacy and achievement gaps because the classroom instruction mirrors the literacy blocks that occur in classrooms during the school year,” said Edgewater Principal Celeste Sultze. “This is serious work for our school and our kids, but we have masked the work as a fun and engaging environment.” Jeffco Superintendent Dan McMinimee visited Edgewater to see how the day of learning and instruction comes together. “I made a few friends at breakfast, talking to some of the students about their summers and their reading classes and it was good to see them excited about learning,” said McMinimee. “What a difference this kind of program can make for a community. I saw friends eating with friends, parents and grandparents. I like to see a school act as the hub of a community.” The literacy program emphasizes learning through fun and novel activities and engaging parents in the process. “Parent engagement is a key component of the program. It allows parents and families to
accompany students to eat meals and interact alongside their child,” said Jeffco Schools Foundation interim executive director Denise Delgado. “We have found that we have a high
success rate of students exceling throughout the summer when their parents are engaged, part of the process and understand what their child is learning.”
Creighton student’s doodle reaches Google Creighton Middle School student Ryan Shea recently created a Google of a doodle. The seventh grader’s artistic doodle creation caught the attention of Google’s Doodle 4 Google contest. The Google Doodle is known to computer users around the world as the interesting and creative artwork that appears on Google’s search engine homepage. The 2014 contest’s theme, “If I could invent one thing to make the world a better place…” encouraged curiosity, possibility and imagination. Shea designed “The Universal Nexus” drawing that modified the Google logo to resemble lunar landscapes and space shuttles. At the end of the school year, a school-wide assembly surprised
Shea with the news that he was Colorado state winner of the design contest. “I came up with the idea that it would be cool to visit different
worlds and see things we haven’t seen before,” said Shea. His prize for winning the state competition was a trip to Google
headquarters in California, an Android tablet and a T-shirt printed with his doodle design. “We were excited and honored to
Doodle 4 Google Colorado winner Creighton Middle School seventh-grader Ryan Shea with Principal Nick Kemmer and art teacher Maurine Moody.
be associated with an organization that represents creativity, innovation and learning of the highest caliber. Our art teacher, Maurine Moody, has always developed fun and creative projects that engage students,” said Principal Nick Kemmer. “That one of our students’ works will inspire others to dream big and use their imaginations, is a representation of our school.” In May, online voting determined the five national finalists and one national winner who received a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 Google for Education grant for the winner’s school. An 11-year old from New York won the competition out of more than 100,000 submissions from around the country.