BEAR RIVER MIDDLE SCHOOLNewsletter

September 2019

BRMS Principal’s Message

It’s great to be back in school! The students bring an energy that is contagious. I just love seeing the enthusiasm a new school year brings. Fall is my favorite time of the year. Much work and planning has gone into this new school year. Let me touch on a one of the items we are implementing at Bear River Middle School this fall.

Last year our teachers came to the administration and asked for some help for many of our students who struggle with reading. As we began to look into this concern deeper, we found that about 18% of our students are reading below grade level. That is about 140 individuals who are not prepared to function at the middle school level. With that concern in mind, we have developed a school wide plan to get all students reading and to provide additional help and support to those who struggle.

We also noticed that those who struggle, often mask their deficiencies with inappropriate behaviors and thus become a disruption to the learning process of the entire classroom. These are often students who may be sent to the office for administrative discipline. If a student can read the instructions and understand the questions, they are more engaged and on task.

In order to provide support to our students, we have hired a full-time reading specialist who will offer classes to help struggling readers with specific skills needed to catch up. We have also enlisted the help of our language arts teachers to offer additional support in their classes. We have been working with a consultant and held a day of professional development training for all our teachers on how to

support this reading initiative across the entire school and various content areas. We believe that it will take students some time to catch up, but with increased focus and support, they can make great strides to reaching the goal of reading on grade level by the end of the year.

One aspect we are also focusing on is a reading enrichment class that will take those students who love to read and offer them new opportunities and adventures into reading. This is new territory for us in supporting both the struggling readers and the advanced readers. Our faculty and staff are excited and committed to reaching out to those needing our help to improve their reading skills.

We have asked our staff to model reading whenever possible, and to display how reading has helped them in a daily life situation. Our intervention period, Bear Time, will focus on students reading. If students are not called into another class for an intervention, they will need to be reading and practicing their reading skills.

In order to make this the most effective venture possible, we ask for your support as parents to please supervise reading at home. Read to them, read with them, listen to them read, ask them questions about the understanding of their reading. If they see the adults in their lives using reading as a tool for life, they will receive the message that reading is vital in life and will help them to achieve their dreams and goals.

Eldon Petersen and Gloria Dabb, BRMS Administrators