Community Service and Special Needs Students

March 30th, 2010

Two weeks ago, while one TWLS class was at Stages Theater learning about drama, their peers were outside in the cool, crisp spring air for a Community Service Project.
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Weekly Highlights: March 22-24

March 23rd, 2010

This week, we have a quick story from Katherine Taylor about the TWLS field trip to Stages Theatre before the kids go off on Spring Break!

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2nd Spring Spectacular Coming Up

March 19th, 2010

Spring is finally here, and with spring comes the TWLS 2nd Annual Spring Spectacular!  On Saturday, June 5th, the TWLS kids will spend the evening dining and dancing with their classmates at our prom.

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Weekly Highlights: March 15-19

March 16th, 2010

This week, check in with our teachers and their weekly highlights.

Special note: Sue McCrary and her class are looking for another senior citizen to shop for on Tuesdays - please get in touch if you know anyone who’d appreciate the help!

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Reading Instruction at TWLS, Part 3

March 10th, 2010

Post by Ann Rooney

Welcome back for Part 3 of our ongoing series on TWLS’s Core Academics and reading programs.  Last week we talked about phonemic awareness, what it means, and how it differs from the more commonly-discussed subject of phonics.  This week, we’re going to look directly at phonics.  Phonics teaches children the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. It is the sound symbol relationship we use to read and write words. Scientific based research concludes that the use of a systematic direct instruction approach is particularly beneficial for students having difficulty learning to read.

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TWLS in the News!

March 10th, 2010

We’re delighted to note that today there’s a great profile of TWLS in the Star-Tribune.  Head of School Ann Rooney and TWLS parent Kate Heegaard Hartfiel spoke with the Star-Tribune about the unique advantages of TWLS for every one of our students - we accept only those students who we believe we can help, and then we exert all of our creativity to meet each of those students’ learning needs and preferred learning styles.

Weekly Highlights: March 8-12

March 9th, 2010

This week, check in with our teachers for some great highlights, outdoors photos, and a Learning Made Fun tip for blending spelling and fishing!
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Read Across America Day

March 4th, 2010

Every March 2nd, in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the National Education Association sponsors a nationwide reading of Seuss’s books in order to inspire kids to read and families to read to their kids. This year, the 106th anniversary of his birth and the 13th anniversary of Read Across America, 45 million children and adults came together at home and in their schools to put on the Cat in the Hat’s trademark red-and-white stovepipe hat and read to each other. TWLS - teachers and students alike - has always been delighted to be involved in Read Across America Day. This year, we gathered our Seuss stuffed animals, from Lorax to Cat to creatures even more mysterious and our Seuss books to listen to all our students get up on stage and read. It was wonderful to see them go up in front of the whole class, feeling comfortable with and excited about reading in public. But enough description - here’s the kids themselves!

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Weekly Highlights: March 1-5

March 3rd, 2010

This week’s wonderful Weekly Highlights!:

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New RSS Feed!

March 2nd, 2010

We at TWLS are delighted to let you know that we’ve set up our blog page to make it easier for you to follow us through better RSS support.  In case you haven’t used an RSS reader before, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  This means that if you want to follow our blog updates, but don’t want to check back every day, you can get your browser to check for you and let you know when there’s something new. 

How does one do this?  Well, if you go to our blog page and look in the left-hand sidebar (or go directly to our feed), you’ll notice a new orange icon next to the “TWLS Talks” header.  Click on that, and it’ll take you to a page with links to an assortment of news readers, powered by Google, Yahoo, AOL, and many others.  Any of those links should set you up with an RSS reader (should you not already have one), or set your current one to get our updates for you.

Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or concerns - we hope that this will provide another convenient avenue for you to keep up to date on our news!