Where You Can Keep Up With Burlington Public Schools in 2015/2016

If you are like Patriots' Head Coach Bill Belichick then you can skip this post on how to follow Burlington Public Schools through our various social media accounts.  Coach Belichick outlines his feelings clearly on social media in the short video below.

However in Burlington Public Schools, we like the fact that our social media accounts allow us to spread the word surrounding news and events from our schools and classrooms and provide followers a daily dose of BPS updates.  The information below outlines the avenues you can utilize to keep up with our daily tweets and posts.


Click on any of the icons below to follow our activity:

If you do use Twitter check out our district hasthtag - #bpschat

Follow these BPS administrator blogs:

Superintendent Conti's Blog

BHS Principal Sullivan's Blog

Memorial Principal Dressler's Blog 

Pine Glen Principal Lyons' Blog

Fox Hill Principal Johnson's Blog 

Francis Wyman Principal McDonald's Blog 

Other BPS Blogs of note:

Marshall Simonds Middle School Blog

Burlington Public Schools Blog 

Keep an eye out for our new Burlington Public Schools Update which will be e-mailed twice monthly...

A Great Site For Making Accommodations on the iPad - Burlington Blog Update (Edition 10)

The post below is actually a copy of a weekly e-mail that I send to our staff  to promote our Burlington Public Schools Blog which shares the great work going on across our school district. I also try to give a quick technology tip/resource that I think would be useful. It is the tenth post in the series.

Francis Wyman fifth grade teacher Kim Lynch shared a great site she learned about at the iPad Summit in Boston last week. The site, which was created by Liberty-Perry Schools District Technology Coach/Special Education Coordinator Amy Everhart, has a wealth of resources for making accommodations for students with special needs with the iPad.

photo via - https://sites.google.com/a/libertyperry.org/

As we head into our only five-day week in a six-week stretch Here are the latest posts from the BPS Blog. 

Day 46 - Decimal Speed Stacking - Mrs. Tate, Marshall Simonds Middle School Sixth Grade

Day 47 - Focus on Freshman - Joe Attubato - BHS Director of Guidance

Day 48 - Why is App Smashing Efficient and Easy? - Sarah Costa, BHS Freshman

Day 49 - A Procedure For Reading Difficult Documents - Mr. Milton - BHS Social Studies Staff

Day 50 - BHS Wins The Molympics! - Mrs. Czerwinski - BHS Science Department

Only 130 more posts to go... 

Related articles

• Some Interesting Posts I Read Last Week - Burlington Blog Update (Week 9) (patrickmlarkin.com)
• Are You Social (With Your Bookmarking?) - Burlington Blog Update (Week 8) (patrickmlarkin.com)
• Check Out The K12 Online Conference - My Weekly BPS Blog Update (Week 7) (patrickmlarkin.com)

Mrs. Fortunato Presents At Best Practices Conference In North Carolina

I had the good fortune of attending the RTI Best Practices Institute in Wrightsville Beach, NC with a team from Burlington.  It was great to hear some well-known RTI comsultants discuss Best Practice, but the highlight was listening to Burlington Math Coach Carrie Fortunato discuss all of the things happening in our Burlington Elementary Schools to make sure students are making progress developing their math skills. 

While the entire slideshow is above, I want to highlight a few of the key things that I took away from Mrs. Fortunato's presentation. 

• In Burlington we have clearly defined what math is in the elementary levels and prioritized what students need to know in grades K-5 within these defined areas.
• Our priorities are Number Sense, Number Concept, and Numeracy
• We have clear measures to check on the progress of all students and specific interventions we employ when we find students are lagging in progress.
• In addition we have clear data to see how we are progressing both as individuals and at each grade level.
• Slide 7 - Shows what was done last year in the first year of this work by Mrs. Fortunato and her team. 
• Slides 8-9 show the five clearly articulated parts of Number Concept
• Slides 10-11 show the five clearly articulated parts of Number Sense
• Slide 12 states what all Burlington students should be able to do in regards to Numeracy by the end of fourth grade
• Slides 22-29 describe the assessment procedures that we use for Numeracy in grades K-5
• Slide 43 highlights what are assessment procedures will look like next year and beyond

BPS Math Coach Carrie Fortunato

There is a lot more in the presentation that is work checking out, the key thing is that the work that Mrs. Fortunato has done along with our dedicated staff of classroom teachers and tutors has allowed us to ensure the development of strong foundational skills for all students.  This is due to the time an effort that has been given to make sure we all agree on the following three things:

1. What we teach all students
2. How we monitor the progress of all students
3. What interventions we put in place when students are struggling

It is clear that people were impressed with the work that has been done in Burlington in the area of elementary math instruction!  We look forward to sharing more about this work in the future. Thanks also go to Dr. Scott Methe and his graduate students from UMass Boston for their consultation work that has supported our efforts.

Connected Educator Month Begins In Two Weeks! What Will You Do To Connect?

For the second year in a row, the United States Department of Education has made October Connected Educator Month.  What is Connected Educator Month (CEM) you ask? Check out the following description from the great CEM District Toolkit created by Powerful Learning Practice:

Connected Educator Month (CEM) is a month-long celebration of community, with educators at all levels, from all disciplines, moving toward a fully connected and collaborative profession. 

 The goals of Connected Educator Month include:

• Helping more districts promote and integrate online social learning into their formal professional development 

• Stimulating and supporting collaboration and innovation in professional development 

• Getting more educators connected (to each other) 

• Deepening and sustaining the learning of those already connected

The Connected Educator Month District Tool Kit

The bottom line is that our students need to know how to create Personal Learning Networks (PLN's) that will allow them to connect with others who share their passion in a particular area. For this to happen to the fullest extent possible, we need out students to be surrounded by educators who can model the practices of a connected learner.  

With this in mind, I hope to profile one Connected Educator from my PLN on each school day during the month of October. To make this happen, I will be asking the members of my network to fill out a short Google Form and share a bit of information about who they are, where they are, and why they connect. Stay tuned...

If you are willing to help me achieve my goal of a "Connected Educator Profile" for each school day during October, please fill out this brief form.

Thanks in advance for your help!