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Happy New Year CGS Family!
The week of January 23rd we will be celebrating kindness by participating in the nation-wide Great Kindness Challenge. The goal of the project is to instill kindness in children until it becomes a habit. The original developers envisioned that through this challenge, children would develop a sense of purpose and gratitude. By performing simple acts of kindness they could become instruments of peace for a healthier and happier community. Allowing children of all ages to initiate service to others builds a strong sense of community in and outside of school. All students at Taylor Prairie School, Cottage Grove School, and Granite Ridge will be doing different activities such as: dressing-up in ways that relate to kindness, learning about random acts of kindness, singing songs, and reading stories. This week will culminate by Taylor Prairie and Cottage Grove school working together to support our local food pantry with a food drive service project. We are looking forward to this special week at Cottage Grove School! More information will be sent via school email regarding the dress-up days and needed items for the food drive.
Another opportunity for students to develop autonomy is in our Cottage Grove School Makerspace, and boy, are our students busy making! What is a Makerpace and what is Making? A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside our school for making, learning, exploring, and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools. This space is helping to prepare our scholars for the 21st century in the fields of science, technology, engineering, architecture, and math (STEAM). It provides opportunities for Making using hands-on-learning with a wide variety of materials that promotes critical thinking skills. Some of the skills that are learned in a makerspace pertain to electronics, coding, and robotics; while others promote construction, design, and creativity. We are happy to report that Cottage Grove has been awarded a MGEF (Monona Grove Education Foundation) Grant and a PTO grant to boost our high tech tools including Bee-Bots, Osmos, and Magnatiles. In addition to this we continually need donations of consumable items. These items are often materials found in the home such as egg cartons, plastic containers, cardboard boxes and paper tubes. Look here for a list of items we continually need.
Lastly, January brings report cards. This will be your child’s first report of the year. Our MGSD Elementary Report Card is designed to communicate what is occurring in the classroom. Teachers use grade-level content area standards in their planning and intentionally align learning targets and instruction to those essential grade-level standards. It is worth noting that essential standards listed on report cards capture the most vital grade-level learning; however, other content standards are included in classroom instruction. Our goal with essential year-long standards is that each student is secure in those grade-level standards by the end of the year. Many students will be “beginning” or “developing” throughout the year as they continue to practice grade-level skills.
Report cards are just one communication tool we use with families. Teachers can also communicate progress with work sent home, through Seesaw and other digital communication, phone calls, emails, and student conferences.
Looking forward to a wonderful 2023 year filled with kindness!
Warmly,
Dr. Wright
Principal
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