Reading Program Gives Students a Summer Boost |
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Two hundred Northfield elementary students who attended Summer PLUS, and more than 50 teachers and staff, participated in the Springboard Collaborative Learning Accelerator this summer. The evidence-based program coaches teachers, trains family members, and cultivates reading habits in students so they learn to read by fourth grade.
Northfield Public Schools paid for and staffed the program using COVID funding. Hosted at Greenvale Park Elementary School, the 20-day experience in Northfield included family/teacher meetings, daily literacy instruction in five major reading strategies, family workshops, and daily reading at home for incentives. Participating students, mostly in grades K-3, came from Bridgewater, Greenvale Park, Spring Creek, and St. Dominic’s Elementary Schools. More than 100 families attended family workshops. Teachers expressed overwhelmingly positive comments about the program’s content and process.
Kindergarten teacher Gretchen Heil said it was her first experience with the program, and she liked that it focused on key foundational skills.
“It was what these kids needed. For the kids in my class, I saw some tremendous gains,” said Heil, who teaches at Spring Creek Elementary School during the regular school year. “Kids were seeing themselves as readers, and competent readers.”
Continue reading about Summer PLUS students here.
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TORCH Summer Scholars Build Community |
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Given the variety of experiences offered during the four-week TORCH Summer Scholars Program, Katie Lovrien expected that the participating middle school students would find something to interest them. But she didn’t expect a humble pond to create such a splash.
During a visit to the River Bend Nature Center in Faribault in mid-July, students were so captivated by the pond dipping activity – essentially, dipping a net into a pond and pulling it out to see what they had caught – that they had to be coaxed into leaving to catch the bus on time.
“They loved it. They caught tadpoles and a lot of different aquatic invertebrates, including some pretty big ones,” said Lovrien, who served as Northfield Middle School TORCH Director through the summer and is now a teacher at the middle school.
The TORCH Summer Scholars program ran from June 21-July 16 and served 40 TORCH students heading into sixth-, seventh- and eighth grades. Each weekday had a theme, and students could sign up for multiple days or weeks. The program was free, and students received free hot lunches four days a week and a packed lunch on Fridays (field trip days), through a partnership with the Northfield Public Schools Child Nutrition Services.
Read more about Summer Scholars here.
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Program Expands College Opportunities at High School |
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More than 100 Northfield High School students managed to attend both high school and college last year, without leaving their regular classrooms. How did they do it? Through a new pilot partnership between the high school and Minnesota State University, Mankato.
The concurrent enrollment pilot program allowed 108 students to take classes from Northfield High School teachers and receive both college and high school credit. Four classes were offered: Composition 101, German 3, French 3, and Spanish 4.
Counselor Mark Ensrud said it was the first time the program had been offered in Northfield, and participating students were overwhelmingly positive about the experience.
“They said this was a manageable way to do a college-level course with teachers they already knew, or had a familiar connection to,” he said. “That’s what we really hoped for, that it would feel like they were taking a rigorous class with someone they felt supported by.”
Read more about the program here.
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Data Nugget:
Northfield Community College Collaborative
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Launched in 2018 as a flagship Northfield Promise initiative, the Northfield Community College Collaborative (NCCC) makes it possible for local individuals to attend community college without leaving Northfield. Even in the midst of a pandemic, it was a great year for the NCCC. |
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Copies of the 2020-21 Greenvale Park Community School annual report were distributed this summer. If you’d like to read the online version, here’s the link.
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Northfield Promise exists to ensure all children in Northfield reach their full potential.
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Northfield Promise has been recognized as being in the Proof Point Gateway of the national StriveTogether network. StriveTogether is a national movement with a clear purpose: help every child succeed in school and in life from cradle to career, regardless of race, zip code or circumstance. In partnership with nearly 70 communities across the country, StriveTogether provides resources, best practices and processes to give every child every chance for success. The StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network reaches 13.7 million students and has partners in 30 states and Washington, D.C.
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