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Welcome to Avalon
Elementary!
I became part of
the Northgate School
District four years ago
as the Assistant
Principal in the Middle
High School where I had
a great experience with
the students, staff and
parents. This year, I am
truly honored to be the
Principal of a wonderful
school and look forward
to being part of such a
welcoming community.
This
is an exciting year for
the Northgate School
District and the Avalon
School community as we
are embarking on our
first year of the
Keystones to Opportunity
Grant.
The grant
awarded the Northgate
School District $710,000
per year for a possible
five years.
As the school
district has benefited
from this grant as a
whole, Avalon has
benefited in a number of
ways that will have an
immediate positive
impact on our students.
We have begun by
providing new literacy
curriculum, books and
resource materials to
all of our students and
teachers.
Our teachers have
begun to participate in
a number of trainings
specifically tailored to
the best practices in
literacy development.
Our most exciting
training so far was
provided by Dr. Anita
Archer to the entire
Northgate faculty.
Dr. Archer is a
nationally renowned
researcher, author, and
educator that brings
research and theory into
practice.
Aside from
training our teachers,
leading an evening
dinner and presentation
with our community, Dr.
Archer also taught six
classes throughout the
school district as
demonstrating her
practices with our
students.
At Avalon, she
taught Mrs. Maxwell’s
third grade and Mrs.
Smith’s sixth grade
classes focusing on
background knowledge and
vocabulary development.
After each lesson
she debriefed with the
teachers that observed
the lesson providing
valuable insight to the
purpose and techniques
of a master teacher.
In
conjunction with these
great resources we will
be initiating our “Focus
on Literacy” campaign in
our school to further
the importance and
enjoyment of reading
with our students.
As we all know
children will do as we
do, not always what we
say. With this in mind,
we have begun our
campaign by
photographing all of the
adults in our building
reading.
With the
assistance of our art
teacher, Mr. Zettle and
the efforts of our PTO,
the students designed
“custom” frames for all
of our pictures and they
are now proudly on
display in our main
foyer.
In the next phase
of our campaign we are
asking our parents to
submit photographs of
them reading to their
children so we can add
them to our display as a
powerful reminder of the
importance of literacy.
We
are entering our sixth
year of our Positive
Behavior Interventions
and Supports program.
This year’s theme
is “Detect Respect”.
In our kick off
assembly students from
all grades participated
in presenting respectful
behaviors to our entire
school.
The highlight of
the program was a skit
acted by our sixth grade
student “Respect
Detectives” who detected
disrespectful behavior
and demonstrated how to
be respectful.
This program
included the featured
components of our PBIS
anti-bullying curriculum
which are: Stop, Walk,
and Talk.
Our faculty will
continue to provide our
students opportunities
to learn respectful
behaviors and practice
them in their daily
lives.
As always, we
will continue to focus
and reinforce the
positive behaviors we
expect to decrease
unwanted behaviors.
We
are looking forward to
working closely with the
members of our school
community to provide our
students a challenging
curriculum and the most
rewarding experience
possible.
Sincerely,
Joseph J. Peacock, Jr.
Principal
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