Boiling Springs Elementary is helping all students develop world class skills, life and career characteristics of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by offering a safe and nurturing learning environment where all students can a grow and develop. Our faculty and staff take pride in offering students a variety of real-world learning opportunities with a blend of both community outreach projects and opportunities to enhance the arts.
Boiling Springs Elementary School is a proud PBIS School. BSE faculty and staff developed our Puppy Code using the “The Essential 55” by Ron Clark. The Puppy Code is used as a character focus to remind students to PAWS (Proactive, Aware, Win-Win Attitude, and Successful) and do the right thing. During morning meetings, teachers meet with students to discuss those character expectations and emphasize our PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Supports) initiatives. Staff members recognize students, throughout the school day, for making good character choices. Students are awarded Bulldog Bucks for their good choices at school. We publicly recognize these students for their excellent character each week with a weekly drawing to celebrate their good choices. We also host school wide celebrations to acknowledge those students committed to showing our Puppy Code with a virtual auction, a virtual Game Show with prizes, and the whole school celebrates at the end of the year.
This year, our teachers worked to ensure that safety was top priority for our students as we returned to school. With enhanced safety protocols, our teachers certainly embraced the challenges of this school year to ensure that our students continued to be top priority. BSE teachers worked to develop flexible learning boards to ensure that instruction at school and home were parallel. Each week, our teacher met to develop standards based flexible learning boards that were used to guide instruction in the classroom. However, the learning boards were also used at home for students that may have been absent for an extended period of time. This would ensure that our students were not missing the skills and learning opportunities going on in the classroom during their absence. BSE also continued their partnership with the Spartanburg Academic Movement to implement Continuous Improvement. SAM is a non-profit community organization that partners with stake holders from the business, education, community and government organizations to better the local community. The Spartanburg Academic movement offers Continuous Improvement Courses to educators to introduce them to the PDSA cycles as a means to track student progress and plan next steps. The Plan, Do, Study, Act process requires teachers to set goals and progress monitor those goals until the end of the unit cycle. BSE teachers had a refresher at the beginning of the school year and received feedback on implementation through SAM. Our Teaching and Learning Teams set the stage for teachers to reflect on their current practice and enhance our efforts in assisting each student to reach his/her full potential. This year, we put an emphasis on student ownership. We challenged our students to take charge of their own learning and articulate their success or continued learning opportunities to give them a voice in the learning process. Teachers are continuing to decompose the standards to offer students clarity in what they are learning. Teachers continued to use TLT meetings to discuss student achievement and progress. Our teachers spent time reviewing assessments results to determine individual needs of our students and next steps in teaching.
To ensure that we are meeting the needs of every student, teachers worked to develop more individualized lessons for small group instruction. The data from the SC Ready test, iReady test, and formative assessments, is the driving force behind our academic decisions. We continue to make adjustments to our curriculum to ensure that we are meeting the needs of all of our students. PDSA cycles have helped teachers to identify those students that need more support and to note those impactful teaching strategies that best support our students. We continue to offer intervention opportunities for students identified as needing more academic support. Such programs include Response to Intervention, LLI instruction, and Early 5K reading intervention. These intervention programs offer students the supports they need to be successful and are monitored to ensure that academic gaps are decreased.
This year, we took pride in highlighting our Reader Leaders and Published Pups at Boiling Springs Elementary School. At the end of each month, students from every classroom were celebrated for their effort in becoming a better reader or writer. Our reader leaders were recognized for their work and dedication to improving their reading skills. These students were invited to get a book from our book vending machine. Our published pups were highlighted by having their work displayed in the hallways.
Boiling Springs Elementary is continuing to learn and grow each year. With continued growth, our faculty and staff will also continue to grow to offer our students and their families the very best educational experience. We are thankful for the support of our families and community as we strive to prepare students for a successful future.
Michelle Kimbrell, Principal
Lee James, SIC Chair
