Lake Murray Elementary School provides all students with opportunities to develop the World-Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate, as well as the life and career characteristics, by creating an innovative learning environment that focuses on leadership and self-directed learners. The campus exemplifies student learning and growth by emphasizing collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking. Our vision is to help develop self-directed, global citizens who lead and learn with excellence. Through this culture, the LMES faculty aspires to provide the highest level of teaching by making decisions based on what is best for each individual child.
We invest in relationships and provide support while celebrating the success of all students. One way we do this is through our “morning meetings'' and “closing circles” that are held across campus at the start and completion of each day. We use this time to focus on Lexington District One’s Profile of the Graduate: Knowledgeable, A Creative Thinker and Problem Solver, An Independent Learner, A Communicator, A Collaborator, Future-ready Literate, Personally and Socially Responsible, Kind, and Resilient. Through our counseling department and librarian, students are provided with videos, activities, and books, as well as a monthly class challenge to support the students with these concepts. As a culminating activity, at the end of each month, a student from each homeroom is selected who exemplifies the trait well in class for a celebration in the cafeteria. To support school-wide leadership, our fourth and fifth grade students had the opportunity at the beginning of the year to fill out a “school leadership application” to join teams such as the news team, announcement team, navigators, book buddies, flag patrol, friendly helpers, and student council to name a few. Each of these teams is led by a staff member who supports the students in taking an active role in the culture and climate of the campus. Our goal is for our students to leave LMES with the tool kit of the qualities of a leader as well as how to lead and support your school. As individual students, the use of the ticket system as well as LMES Model Mariner cards are ways that we celebrate students for making strong choices and showing great character. As our school motto states, “Anchored in Leadership, Anchored in Learning” and the foundation of our school culture is centered around this.
In regards to our school-based literacy plan, the literacy coach worked with each grade-level team to examine the new South Carolina College and Career Standards for English Language Arts, which will be fully implemented in 2024–25. In addition, our K-3rd grade teachers and special area teachers (special education, interventionist, ML teachers) participated in Year One of the LETRS training offered by the state department. This training has been very beneficial in developing a common language for teachers in how they instruct students in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary. In addition, all of our 4K–third grade teachers implemented both the Heggerty and UFLI curriculum to strengthen students' phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling, which supported the professional development provided in LETRS. In kindergarten through fifth grade, the LETRS spelling inventory was given to identify and provide small group instruction to increase students’ score on the writing rubric as it relates to conventions and spelling domain.
As a subgroup, we have focused on the progression of our students who are in special education for reading. As stated above, our special education teachers participated in LETRS training as well as implementing Heggerty to support the students in these foundational skills. Most of the students served in ELA for resource services have a weakness in phonemic awareness and phonics. Therefore, by having the students hear the same terminology in both the general education and special education classrooms, as well as the curriculum being in alignment, we have seen a positive impact on their data. Another area of professional development with the resource teachers has been centered around writing. We held a coaching cycle with the administration, our literacy coach and resource teachers regarding writing goals for IEPs as well as curriculum resources to use to meet those targets. The intent is to support students where they are on the writing continuum in conjunction with what they are learning in the general education classroom. For our Reading Recovery and Response to Intervention teams, communication between these programs and the regular classroom teacher was again at the forefront. Data meetings and overall student progress were reviewed extensively to monitor the mastery of the skills and strategies taught in the RtI small-group setting. We also discussed how they were being carried over to the classroom setting. All of this could not have occurred without the planning and leadership of each of our teams in making certain all students received quality instruction, regardless of setting. We are proud of LMES staff members, and their dedication, love and willingness to do whatever it takes to meet the needs of our students.
We are extremely fortunate to be surrounded by a strong community that supports the school in any way possible. From our “Career Café” in which guest speakers come and talk to our third through fifth graders about different career opportunities to our LMES Mentor Program in which adults are paired with students with whom they meet with weekly, we are very grateful for our stakeholders and their investment in our students! We also pride ourselves in providing opportunities for service to others. This year, our students participated in a food drive for the Ronald McDonald House, collected more than 300 gently used coats for Mission Lexington, raised money for Special Olympics and contributed money for Relay for Life. Due to the collaborative culture that exists among all of our stakeholders, families, and staff, we are equipped to provide the best learning experiences and opportunities for all of our children.
Jennifer Stanley, Principal
Kathyrn Zellers, SIC Chair
