Springfield Elementary is helping all students develop the South Carolina Graduate’s World Class Skills by providing a caring and safe environment where staff, students, families, and community engage in the process of teaching and learning together in an effort to continually promote academic, social, and emotional growth. Our staff strives to teach to the whole child. Our students and staff strive everyday to carry out and practice our school values by choosing to: do our best, be responsible, and take care of each other.
Our school's top initiatives incorporate the four C’s of Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity. This starts with our staff by utilizing Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) to work and learn together in grade level and vertical teams for Literacy, Math, STEAM, and school culture. These teams consistently use the four C’s to effectively determine essential standards, plan effective and engaging lessons, create and analyze common assessment data, and determine plans of action to help students who need remediation as well as enrichment. Our PLC’s help our staff and students effectively promote the following school initiatives.
Our school and district have completed the fourth year of our STEAM initiative with Discovery Education. Springfield Elementary has four teachers who act as STEAM leaders, along with our Lead Teacher who attend monthly professional development to learn strategies and creatively brainstorm new ideas to bring back to our school. Our STEAM Committee shares these ideas with our staff through professional development opportunities throughout the year. This process has inspired our teachers to embed more STEAM activities which are heavily focused on the four C’s within their lessons for our students.
Between our STEAM initiative and a focus on “Read to Succeed”, one of our literacy goals was to provide inquiry opportunities for students across all content areas. Our staff was offered an inquiry course through Read to Succeed as well as professional development with a focus on inquiry to provide training to our staff. Our reading coach also offers coaching cycles for teaching to provide units of inquiry for their students. Our staff also continued to work on creating inquiry units for students during planning, which was a goal for them this year.
The Literacy and Math instruction at Springfield Elementary, consistently emphasizes the four C’s for our students. We utilize the Lucy Calkins reading and writing units of study for our literacy instruction. Guided math is the foundation for our math instruction. These methods of instruction allow for differentiation, and provide opportunities for our students to think critically, practice and utilize communication and collaboration skills with partner and group activities, and to be creative on a routine basis in their writing and math problem solving.
Our school continues to collaborate with the community by participating in community service projects. Our school participated in the Angel Tree Project, where we worked to provide food, clothing, and toys to families in need. Through our partnership with LifePointe Church, Springfield Elementary continued to expand the Leadership Enhancement and Development (LEAD) Program. This program partners students with community members who act as mentors in an effort to develop each student’s leadership potential. Springfield also continued its fourth year of its partnership with Winthrop University and hosted several aspiring teachers during their internships.
We continue to communicate and collaborate with our stakeholders through various methods and events. We hosted multiple family fun nights with our PTA as well as virtual curriculum events such as “Meet the Teacher”, “Literacy Night”, and “STEAM Night”. We also continued our annual “One School, One Book” to encourage our family literacy initiative. We strive to keep our families informed of school events and updates through our monthly newsletter, “Hoofbeat News”, our school website, and our Twitter account.
With the help of our Parent-Teacher Association, School Improvement Council, parents, community partnerships, staff, and all other stakeholders, we will continue to provide a caring and safe environment for our students to ensure they continue to grow academically, socially, and emotionally.
Adam Fantone – Principal
Chris Kauffman – School Improvement Council Chair
