Help Needed

Hello Castle View families,
We are rolling along this year, our first Reading Lions assessments are being completed. We are focused on increasing reading Fluency and Comprehension skills. You can help your child with these important skills by reading to and with your child and then asking questions about what was read including who was the main character, what was the problem in the story, how was it resolved, where and when did the story take place. These questions will help students recall details and sequence of the story. Fluency is the rate a student is able to read or decode. Fluency tests are a cold (not practiced) read of 1 minute. The Fluency rate is the number of words read correctly in 1 minute. The key is fluent reading, not racing to the end of a passage. Students who are able to read with inflection, pausing or stopping at punctuation, and correct decoding of words have a higher level of comprehension or understanding what they have read.
I am also happy to report that our Reading Lab is full of volunteers and our own K teachers. We are able to serve about 30 primary students in the area of reading. Thank you to all who are involved with this critical intervention. Mrs. Backstrom reports that she is already seeing improvement in Fluency with her students who are participating in the Reading Lab. We will begin a second session after Thanksgiving, so if you are interested in signing up, be on the look out for flyers for Reading Lab training.
Another area of interest for Castle View is building a permanent stage downstairs. Many of you know Mrs. Sperry, either through your child's participation in a school play, variety show, or promotion ceremony or coming to one of our productions. We are so very fortunate to have her as a volunteer! As we have continued to grow, we are not able to host large audiences in the multipurpose room any longer. Hence, last years promotion ceremony was held downstairs on the blacktop. It was a great venue for that event and Mrs. Sperry and I both wished we could have a permanent stage downstairs. So, we contacted the district and received quotes for building a permanent stage. It would be poured concrete with safety railings and a ramp up the back and would sit next to D9. The same place we put the rented stage for promotion last year. With a permanent stage, we could host much larger audiences and have a wonderful outdoor stage for events. The bids to build the stage came in at $13,500. Mrs. Sperry is already planning fundraisers to build the stage. The first one is candy gram sales for Halloween. Sales start Thursday and continue through October 29th. Candy grams are only 50 cents. The next stage fundraiser will be a school wide Avon sale. We hope everyone will be able to find at least one item for themselves or to give as a gift. Mrs. Martinez, an Instructional Aide in one of our Special Education classrooms, will be facilitating the sale. We hope everyone can support this effort for our Stage Fund.
Have a great month, Mrs. Calhoun