Dear Craig Families,
One of the most commonly used reading and writing strategies at The Craig School is RACE, a design that helps our students support their written responses with evidence from the text. Parents, I know all of you heard the teachers discussing the RACE strategy during your parent/teacher conferences. I hope this explains even further what you heard.
The acronym is posted almost everywhere at Craig. Readily seeing the mnemonic helps students remember which steps, and in which order to write a constructed response.
We start the RACE strategy in reading classes as early as fourth grade, understanding that our emerging readers may only get as far as R (restating the question) and A (answering the question). It’s not always easy for students to answer questions in a formal style. Often their language tends to be more informal, so explicitly teaching the skills of putting thoughts and answers into more formal writing early on will position the students for middle school and the next step to RACE the C (citing evidence from the text).
Students are taught to highlight the question words to be used in Restate. When answering the questions teachers are pointing out the connection to Project Read Written Expression as well. The more opportunities the students have to recognize the interrelationships of the strategies the greater the chance for generalization.
In sixth grade, we pull the instruction of Restate and Answer into Science and Social Studies classes. Teacher modeling is still required, but we are now looking for the skill of Restate and Answer the question to become more automatic. When students are ready, Citing the source is introduced in all of the content areas tying in Project Read Report Form, to support where examples and details are found in the text. Scanning for information can be challenging so we start simply, giving the page number to find the evidence and then scaffolding from there. The students are then taught to underline the evidence from the text that supports their answers. This will prepare them for the hardest part of RACE - E - explain. Students need to be taught to explain their evidence without just restating. We present simple sentence stems that help supports their explanation. The stems will eventually be removed once the students understand how to show why the textual evidence matters. We use the detective analogy. A detective collects a lot of the evidence and then has to explain how each piece of evidence proves his case.
The process of using RACE is woven throughout the Craig curriculum and throughout the student’s years at Craig. It becomes more sophisticated as time goes on and requires lots and lots of practice. With that practice, we have found that our students learn to do what every good writer does.
Sincerely,
Janet Cozine
April 1, 2022 (Fri) - 12:00 Dismissal
April 11-15, 2022 (Mon-Fri) - School Closed [Spring Break]
April 18, 2022 (Mon) - Classes Resume
May 6, 2020 (Fri) - 12:00 Dismissal
May 17-19, 2022 (Tues-Thurs) - GMADE/GRADE Testing
May 30, 2022 (Mon) - School Closed [Memorial Day]
May 31, 2022 (Tues) - Classes Resume
ART
Spring is approaching and so is our earth day bottle cap mural. We are still collecting bottle caps of all sizes and colors for our mosaic school mural. Collect them in a bag or container and send them in with your kids or drop them off at the school. It is going to be fun, educational and beautiful. Thank you in advance for your support.
Suzy Kutcher (art teacher)
ADMISSIONS
It's time to enroll in The Craig School Summer Academy! Please fill out the registration form to enroll your child in the full-day or half-day program. The dates of the Summer Academy are July 5th- 28th and 29th, depending on whether your child is enrolling in the morning or afternoon program. Prices and times for the camp are on the registration form. Spaces are limited for the Summer Academy, so please enroll right away. Click this link for a full description of the program.
https://www.craigschool.org/academics/summer-academy/
If you have any questions regarding re-enrollment or The Summer Academy, please reach out to Nicole Moon in the Admissions office.
nmoon@craigschool.org (973) 334 1234.
FAMILY STEM NIGHT
Family STEM Night was a huge success for our community.
Visit our photo gallery for a few photos from the evening!
HIGH SCHOOL HIGHLIGHT
CSHS Chapter of the National Art Honor Society: In the spring of 2021, The Craig School High School proudly announced the formation of its own chapter of the National Art Honor Society (NAHS), a nationally recognized organization that acknowledges those students who have demonstrated a love and aptitude in the visual arts. Led by our NAHS Director, Mrs. Tartaglia, the goals of the CSHS NAHS chapter are to guide the members of the NAHS to achieve their potential in art, develop their art portfolios for college pursuits, bring greater awareness to art in both our school and our community through art publications and national art competitions, and to celebrate their amazing artistic accomplishments.
PACS EVERYDAY!
Log onto our store, browse our items, order for your student and your family and The Craig School receives 20% of the order! All of the proceeds from this go towards the community events that we have planned throughout the year for you and your students to enjoy!
PACS Executive Committee information along with membership forms are on our website.
It is not too late to join our membership drive, please email Angelina Bright, PACS PRESIDENT at pacs@craigschool.org
Research shows that many children find success in learning when presented with a variety of learning modes. At The Craig School, one of the modes of learning is gained through bodily kinesthetic activities that are modeled and supported with mentor activities. In language arts, the second and third grade students are learning to create paragraphs based on a specific subject. From this topic, the group works together to create a key point and supporting sentences. The key point is researched in a variety of ways in order to develop information to support the subject in the paragraph.
Using a teacher modeled outline, the students organize their thoughts and are ready to develop their paragraphs. The second and third graders work together to learn the definition of a paragraph through a choral exercise using hand motions that moves the concept to mastery. In Mrs. Kenny- Johnson and Mrs. Miller's classrooms, the students write sentences using transition words on individual sentence strips. Before moving on, the students are able to mix up these strips and put them back in order. By reading the transition words, students can identify the organizational flow of their sentences. After the foundation of the paragraph has been created with supporting sentences the children are asked to “Prove it.” The kids dive into additional research on their subject in order to have a more in depth understanding of the topic and are able to prove, explain, or show evidence for the supporting sentences.
Finally, the sentence strips are transferred to typed documents. Some students type these documents, and some use support with our speech to text program; where they can read to the computer and the words are typed for them. Students highlight the transition words, synonyms, and supporting sentences so that they can continue to see the pattern throughout their paragraph. In order to continue to support the editing process, the students conference with their teachers before turning in a final draft. The final draft goes through a finishing format and all of the highlighting is removed. These sequential steps are repeated and continue to build for paragraph development. These steps are paramount as future paragraphs will grow from 6-8 sentence paragraphs into multi-paragraph essays as students move into the upper grades.
View our photo gallery!
Spring Lacrosse Meeting
Bringing Back Lacrosse after a two-year Covid hold.
Students in grades 5th to 8th are welcome.
Google Meet on Monday at 4:00 pm
The purpose of this meeting is to discuss our lacrosse plan for this season.
To join the video meeting, click this link: https://meet.google.com/zyw-vdia-ubi
Otherwise, to join by phone, dial +1 320-318-8117 and enter this PIN: 289 644 876#
BADGER HOMEWORK SUPPORT
Dates the Week of March 28th
Monday, March 28th
Wednesday, March 30th
Thursday, March 31st
Please remember to follow the same traffic patterns at homework support dismissal that you do at regular dismissal. Thank you!
If your child is leaving early or not coming to Badger Homework Support, please contact Mrs. Butter by email at bbutter@craigschool.org or via call/text message on the homework support hotline 1-862-207-9863. Thanks!
TUESDAY, June 21 at Ballyowen Golf Club!
Registration at Craig School Golf Outing Registration and learn more about the event at https://www.craigschool.org/giving/annual-events/. Our Annual Golf Outing is looking for support! You can join us for golf, sponsor a faculty member, join us for dinner or even become a tee box sponsor! Information about how you can help with our Golf Outing Auction will be forthcoming. Please reach out to Katie Burke, Director of Development, at kburke@craigschool.org if you have any questions. I hope you'll join us for this fun day on the links!
Janet M. Cozine Auditorium
We are going strong in our campaign for the Janet M. Cozine Auditorium! To date, we have raised $165,000! If you haven't given to the campaign, please consider a gift today to celebrate the amazing 42 year Craig School career of our esteemed Director of the Lower and Middle School, Janet Cozine. You can pledge here: Donate to the Janet M. Cozine Auditorium, pay via Text2Fund by texting Badgers to 71760, pay via Paypal at https://www.craigschool.org/giving/ or send a check made payable to The Craig School. Thank you for your support of this initiative to honor Janet!
On Saturday, May 21, 2022 we will be hosting a walk to honor Janet M. Cozine. We hope you and your families will be joining us for a celebration of Janet and a stroll down Mrs. Cozine’s daily route along the Boulevard in Mountain Lakes followed by refreshments on the Mountain Lakes campus.
Craig School Emergency Contact System: The Craig School uses a multi-tiered communication system that provides to our families, the highest level of certainty that you are made aware of any change in the opening or closing status of Craig Lower Middle School and Craig High. Our various communication tiers include:
DROP IN OPEN OFFICE HOURS with Dr. Loftin, Head of School
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday- LS/MS 2:00pm -3:00pm
Thursday - High School Campus - 2:00pm- 3:00pm
These hours are open for parents to schedule a meeting, drop in and discuss any issues or concerns or to just say hello.
973-334-1234
PACS EVERYDAY!
Log onto our store, browse our items, order for your student and your family and The Craig School receives 20% of the order! All of the proceeds from this go towards the community events that we have planned throughout the year for you and your students to enjoy!
PACS Executive Committee information along with membership forms are on our website.
It is not too late to join our membership drive, please email Angelina Bright, PACS PRESIDENT at pacs@craigschool.org
Birthdays: Please note:
We understand that some children want to share a “birthday treat” with their classmates on their special day. If you are planning to have your child bring food items into school for sharing please abide by the following:
Treats will be shared at snack time or homeroom (at the teacher’s discretion) and not during lunchtime or recess. We have more than one group-and sometimes grade- together at those times and it is difficult to single out only certain children for the treat while others are present.
If you have any questions, please email Mrs. Ellen Meisenbacher at emeisenbacher@craigschool.org
Thank you for understanding.
If you have any questions regarding the program, please contact Mary Calvano at mcalvano@craigschool.org.
ATTENDANCE
Drop Off
Please schedule student arrival no earlier than 8:00 am. Classes begin at 8:20 am.
All absences and late arrivals should be reported to our main office. Please send an email to Kimberly McGroarty kmcgroarty@craigschool.org OR call our Main Line (973-334-1234 x 101) before 7:30 a.m.
For more information on ways of giving to Craig, please contact Katie Burke, Director of Development, at 973-334-1234 or make a donation online by clicking here.
