Principal's Blog...

Thoughts from the desk of Mr. Giard

October 29, 2007 - Today was the first day of our fall parent conferences. Parental involvement is vitally important to a child's success in school. The research shows that students who have active parental involvement in their education achieve at a higher level. Parental involvement tends to decrease during the middle school years across the nation. We are working hard at Tyl Middle School to change that trend.

October 30, 2007 - I just finished reading an article on increasing students' reading ability and the importance of being a good reader. All the research points to the fact that children need to read and they need to read often. The more exposure that students have to a variety of literature they better they will become at reading, as well as interpreting what they read. Students receive 30 minutes of independent reading time each morning from 8:15 to 8:45. They also receive 90 minutes each day of reading and writing instruction.

November 26, 2007 - Our server has been down, so I have been unable to post until now. I met with the district media coordinator, Kristie Foss, today to discuss implementing teacher web ages during the second half of the school year. This would enable teachers to post assignments, handouts, and homework on a daily basis in a very efficient manner. This would greatly increase parental access to their child's educational program here at Tyl. We will be meeting with teachers at the end of January to introduce them to the software. We will experiment with various web page templates during the second half of the school year with full implementation the first day of the 2008-2009 school year. Stay tuned for more information in January and February.

January 3, 2008 - Tyl is excited to introduce X-Block to our students. Our teachers have been working very diligently to develop the program. Each teaching team at all three grade levels have developed X-Block plans. X-Block is a new initiative from Whatever It Takes, the district-wide book for the year. X-Block is one period a week where students will receive further instruction in a challenging area, enrichment opportunities to take their learning to the next level, or further their research in a particular area. During one period a week, staff at each grade level will work with students to identify their area of greatest need or opportunity and they will receive instruction in that area. Each week, students will fill out a planning sheet where they will plan their X-Block period. Teachers will then come together to go through the planning sheets and form student groups from there. We firmly believe this will take our instruction to the next level.