Highland Park utilizes supplemental program to teach students

Highland Park Early Primary School Principal Mark Irvin said Tuesday that Highland Park is seeing great success in utilizing a new educational program for teaching kids the alphabet.

Irvin said during the monthly meeting of the Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees at Havre Middle School two Highland Park kindergarten teachers tested the ABC Boot Camp program last year and found the program helped many of the students learn and retain their alphabet. This year, all eight of the kindergarten teachers used the program and saw equal success, he added.

“It has been a great success,” Irvin said.

He said they had found many of the first-year students enrolled at Highland Park struggled with the alphabet, lower and upper case letters and forming words from those letters. That was why the school implemented the inexpensive ABC Boot Camp supplement program to help teach the students, he said.

Kindergarten teacher Julianne Henry was the one who did the initial research into the program and was one of the original people to implement it in her class last year, he said. Using her class, the school was able to get some statistics on how the program is helping students, he said.

They assessed the students at the beginning of last year, he said and found that out of approximately 500 samples of her 19 students going over all 26 letters, about 38 percent of the students were able to identify letter sounds correctly. After the program, it rose to approximately a 75 percent accuracy, he said. At the start of the year 61 percent of the students accurately identified capital letters, he said, and 53 percent accurately identifying lowercase letters. After the program these increased to 80 percent and 76 percent respectively, he said.

The program is helping this year as well, he added.

“We’re really in pretty good shape right now for mid-March,” he said.

Some of the students are coming into kindergarten with no idea of how to remember the alphabet and formulate sentences, but with exposure in all kindergarten classes, they are able to learn and retain the information, Irvin said. The whole kindergarten was able to reach an 80 percent benchmark of being able to identify letter sounds, he said. Also, students who were able to name the letters came up to just less than 80 percent, he added.

Irvin said using ABC Boot Camp, students are learning a letter a day until they get through all 26 letters in the alphabet. He said the letter-a-day structure is significant because, in their regular curriculum, they don’t cover all of those letters in that short of period of time but rather throughout the entire course of the year. ABC Boot Camp is acting as an introduction to the alphabet so when students revisit it throughout the year, that acts as more of a refreshing course.

“We did it as the kids go through the year into their programming. We are able to help them out a bit further,” Irvin said.

At the end of the boot camp, the school did a fashion show for the students, he said, where students got to wear their letters. He added that it was great and got the parents involved with helping the students design their costumes.

“They even made me one,” he said.

This year, the Parent Teacher Organization also purchased a social and emotional series called “Mind Plus Heart” by the company Proud to be Primary, he said. The series helps students learn social and emotional skills as well as address students with different emotional issues, he said.

“This is the first year that we have done that, but we’ve seen some pretty good success with it and we are pretty happy with how the kids responded to it,” Irvin said.

The series consists of eight components: emotions, self management, a growth mindset, relationships, social awareness, kindness, respect and responsibility.

The way it was laid out and the way it was presented to the students was that each kindergarten classroom started with a single component, he said. The component was covered in class for about two weeks before the materials were rotated around to different classrooms, he said. They started the series at the beginning of the year, Irvin said, and it took about 16 weeks for every classroom to complete the entire series.

Each component consisted of books, lessons and supplemental materials to engage students in activities, he added.

Irvin said the series was a success, although they will want to look into the program to further explore its effects on each student.

Irvin said Highland Park also saw great success in the Math Night event they held at the school, adding that it was probably the largest turn out they have ever seen.

Math Night is an entirely academic event, unlike the Halloween Carnival they hold every year, he said, although there are still games and activities for students to participate in. He added that they also gave out packets to families to take home.

The event had about of 275 people in attendance, he said.

“It was just a great turn out,” he said. “… It was very crowded, very packed.”

Highland Park enrollment up, but district low

Irvin told the board that enrollment numbers are up for kindergarten and first grade, with 161 students enrolling into kindergarten at the beginning of the year, he said, almost max capacity.

As the year has gone on the number has reduced slightly, he said, with approximately 156 students currently enrolled, averaging 19.5 students per classroom.

“The Class of 2031 is in good shape,” he said.

The Class of 2030 is also looking good, he said, with 133 students currently enrolled in first grade, approximately 18.4 students per classroom. He added that, for first grade, there is one less classroom than kindergarten.

Havre Public Schools Superintendent Andy Carlson said that even with the higher enrollment at Highland Park, enrollment for Havre Public Schools is still low.

Permissive levies approved

The board also approved Carlson’s resolution for permissive levies.

Carlson said they will not be requesting any levies to be voted on in the election.

He said the district has a pretty clear picture of funding for next year.

A few things are pending in the Legislature, and they always hope for more funding, he said, although the budget is pretty much figured out. Carlson said they are not requesting any voter-approved levies, although in the future they may need to make the request. He added that the schools want to remain responsible to the taxpayers.

Board approves high school

curriculum changes, transportation request and recognizes students

The board approved a few changes in classes offered at Havre High School for the 2019-2020 school year.

Havre High School Principal Ed Norman said a few programs have had a constant low enrollment through the years and the school needed to review what was offered to students. A few programs were reclassified and one class, Child Care Occupation, was removed from the courses offered. Norman said elements of the class are offered in a variety of other classes and it made sense to remove the course.

The board re-approved the request by North Star School District 99 to cross boundaries into School District A for the purpose of picking up high school students and approved offering M 105, contemporary mathematics through Montana State University-Northern as a dual-credit class.

During the meeting the board also presented awards recognizing Martin Wilkie and Mick Chagnon for excellence during the wrestling season.

“To both of you and your teammates, well done,” Carlson said.

Aaron Alexander also received the “Yes I Can” award, an award recognizing the achievements of students with special needs.

Carlson said it is a big deal — it has been a long time since someone in the region has received the award.

“I’m very proud of you,” he added.

Director of Special Education Karla Geda said she has known Alexander for a long time, and he excels as a student and is a great kid. She said Alexander is the first one to step in if someone is in need.

The board awarded Havre High School student Alexis Haney the Prudential Spirit Community Award for her community service.

Carlson said that Haney has worked hard and excelled as a student as well as worked hard in her community. Haney has gone above and beyond what is expected of a student, he said.

Geda said at the end of the meeting that Child Find will start today at Van Orsdel United Methodist Church, 410 Fifth Ave. in Havre. She added that the event runs for two-and-a-half days, with free screenings for children from 0 to 5 years old. The screenings use developmental indicators for the Assessment of Learning to assess motor skills, concepts and language.

Child Find is a national mandate for all schools to have a process for identifying children who may have delays and need special services; it is a part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

People can call 395-8550 to set an appointment or for more information.