In keeping with the Berkeley County School District vision, Goose Creek Elementary collaborated with numerous stakeholders to ensure the academic and social-emotional growth of all students. Our students and families continued to benefit from engaging Family Night events such as Math Night at a local grocery store and Family Reading Night complete with a Whole Child theme. Goose Creek Elementary parents supported our school with participation in Family Movie Nights, the Career Fair, Field Day, fund raisers and book fairs. Our PTO board worked hard to involve more parents, foster a positive school climate and raise funds for additional equipment and supplies. Weekly volunteers spent countless hours helping our teachers with a wide variety of tasks and projects. Our families and staff also demonstrated a strong commitment to supporting the American Heart Association as well as the Trident United Way. School-to-home communication was enhanced this year when teachers implemented electronic daily communication with various apps. Our Title I program also provided reminders and information in our monthly newsletter.
As part of the Read to Succeed Act, teachers developed Literacy Assessment Portfolios (LAP’s) and met with parents to review and support student growth in reading. Students who faced challenges in reading were provided with supplemental individualized daily intervention utilizing technology-based instruction with programs such as Smarty Ants™ and Lexia™. We also continued to offer small group reading intervention through our Title I program with three full-time and one part-time reading interventionists. We were able to provide two part-time math interventionists as well to support our students' growth in mathematics. Additionally, our students benefited from an array of online programs such as Reflex Math™, RAZ Kids™, PebbleGo™, Starfall™, Moby Max™ and Flocabulary™. This year our second through fifth graders used Chromebooks on a daily basis while kindergarteners and first graders enjoyed technology-infused lessons using i-Pads. This was the second year kindergarten students across the state were assessed using KRA – Kindergarten Readiness Assessment. Students in grades K-5 were also assessed quarterly with both the Reading Inventory and Math Inventory. Data collected from the Reading Inventory enabled teachers to track and respond to student progress in reading by monitoring the increase in Lexile range. Teachers also used information and data from formative assessments such as quizzes and unit tests to gauge student mastery of standards.
Together in Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) teachers analyzed data and refined strategies to improve learning and achievement. The collaborative efforts of special education, ESOL and classroom teachers helped ensure that all students’ learning needs were addressed. Our students enjoyed building relationships with their weekly reading buddies from Charleston Southern University and Goose Creek High School. Character education remained an important focus as we continued our monthly writing about character traits such as honesty, responsibility, kindness and citizenship. Each month two students from each homeroom were recognized in our monthly character breakfasts. Students and their parents enjoyed celebrating their accomplishments not only at these monthly breakfasts, but also at our awards day ceremonies at the end of each semester. GCE would like to thank our parents and community members for a successful year of learning and growing. We look forward to new adventures in the 2019-20 school year!
