At Matilda Dunston Elementary School, we help all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by empowering teachers and students using critical thinking and collaboration. We continue to focus on a high level of rigor, hands-on experiences, and active engagement. Our teachers and staff continually seek opportunities to remain abreast of current and effective classroom strategies such as reading and writing workshops, Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) Program, differentiated instruction, research based interventions, classroom management best practices, curriculum integration, innovative use of technology, and analyzing data to identify strengths and areas for improvement. We focused on unpacking the standards through the Data Driven Instruction process in order to increase the level of teacher knowledge required for teaching and assessing specific concepts.
Our focus is to immerse young students in a developmentally appropriate, rigorous, and engaging, literacy-based curriculum. Creating differentiated learning experiences to enhance learning opportunities for all students will ultimately develop skills that produce lifelong learners and productive citizens. A common planning period is provided for teachers daily, so they can collaborate during the school day. With shared planning times, teachers are able to work on curriculum integration, data analysis, and identification of individual student needs.
Our Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings continue to focus on grade-level and teacher needs. We work to identify instructional strategies that are most effective for each grade level. We collaborate with outside instructional specialists to strengthen our math, reading, writing, and our adaptive digital content usage. We will continue to incorporate the PLAN, DO, STUDY, and ACT model in order to identify areas of strength and weaknesses.
At Dunston, we believe teamwork and communication with stakeholders in our community are vital to the successful development of future South Carolina graduates and leaders. We have found much success with our mentoring programs here at Dunston. One of our programs, Heart Math, was continued with the support of a variety of community members. Over forty students met weekly with a math mentor/tutor and all students saw an increase in math skills and math confidence. In addition, our Distinguished Gentleman and Elite Ladies mentoring programs are growing and are providing our most at-risk students with positive role models. We are committed to collaboration and continued dialogue with our stakeholders to ensure our students are strong academically and as citizens in our community.
Stephanie Mitchell, Principal
Anna Baker, SIC Chairperson
