At Cotton Belt Elementary School, we are cultivating a service-oriented community of learners who strive for personal growth and excellence as communicators, collaborators, creators, and critical thinkers. We are Connected As ONE; school, district, and community, we emphasize learning together, serving together, and giving together to build our schools, district, and community.
Our students, staff, parents, and community members continue to work hard each and every day to provide an environment of college and career readiness for our boys and girls. Student achievement continues to be a top priority. We are continuing to see academic growth with our students each year. Cotton Belt Elementary is helping all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by providing authentic learning experiences for our students in ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies. As always, our primary goal is to improve student achievement. Teacher effectiveness has a direct impact on student achievement. Continuous improvement and learning is key to growing our teachers. We have continued to focus during the 2022-2023 school year on this goal by using MAP data and other data sources to make instructional decisions, providing a balanced literacy approach to teaching reading and writing, providing interventions for struggling students in math and reading, and utilizing technology tools to enhance instruction. Summative data each school year and other data resources provides direction and guidance regarding our student’s strengths, needs, and the professional development opportunities we design for staff. This school year we furthered our learning of Lucy Calkins’ Workshop Model and began implementing Lucy Calkins phonics within K-2 classrooms to go along with our Reading and Writing Workshop Model. As a staff we have been examining our Math curriculum vertically and horizontally to make sure the needs of our students are being met. Together, we have learned ways to increase student engagement within the literacy workshop. Our goal is not only to help students and our staff grow in their learning but to also increase the social emotional well-being of our students and staff. This school year we were able to add full time music and art back into the fine arts program for students. We were also able to employ a full time reading interventionist, a behavior interventionist, and a mental health therapist.
We will continue to provide college and career readiness through the implementation of rigorous standards in language arts and math and continue to Learn, Serve, and Give as ONE in York School District Number One.
Jennifer Bolin, Principal
Paige Timmons, Chairperson/School Improvement Council
