Greetings Kent Community,

Valentine’s Day at Kent included many kind words of appreciation and adoration shared between students and staff alike. It also included a few sweet treats shared among friends. The palpable feelings of anticipation, connection, joyfulness, and fun that reverberated through the campus today exist in stark contrast to the subdued and distant Valentine’s Day from last school year. Sometimes it’s the return of simple celebrations, routines, and traditions that remind us to be thankful for what we have.

Our school is deeply committed to developing critical readers and persuasive writers poised to learn and communicate through the written word. A common thread across all curricular areas, competent reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills lead to access and success in each class. Our English Language Arts department strives to support our students in applying literacy skills across subject areas. One strategy we’ve recently employed includes highlighting techniques and skills taught in English classes that can be referenced when expecting reading, writing, listening, and speaking tasks in other subjects.

For example, last month many teachers across curricular areas referenced ‘boxes and bullets’ in their classes as a highly effective strategy to organize one's thinking before writing, when applicable. ‘Boxes and bullets’ is a strategy that is actually introduced in our writing curriculum in 4th grade, and emphasized and practiced each year through 8th grade. By giving teachers across curricular areas insight into this strategy and the language around it, students are queued to apply a set of skills and experiences they have developed in English, to another curricular area. This month teachers are highlighting transition words and phrases as a way to connect ideas and explain evidence. We relish the opportunity to find explicit connections between student learning across subject areas, and know that our efforts to communicate between departments will serve our students well.

As a reminder, we will hold a level 2 lockdown drill at Kent on Tuesday, February 15th at 1:20 pm. Please see our newsletter from last week for more detailed information about our preparations for this drill, as well as what the drill will include. We look forward to a successful lockdown practice on Tuesday, while also emphasizing that our school will continue to be a safe and supportive place for all of our students.