The mission of Northfield City School District is to create a safe, supportive environment that promotes academic excellence in teaching and learning. Students are encouraged to reach their potential and become productive citizens and lifelong learners through excellent teaching, mentoring and modeling by faculty and staff. The Northfield Community School team joins parents and the community to foster each child's personal growth and self-esteem and to promote tolerance and respect for other individuals. In practice, students will:
Demonstrate creative and critical thinking and effectively use them in academic and social settings
Transfer learning thoughtfully and effectively to novel situations and problems
Demonstrate effective habits of mind
Demonstrate mastery of local and NJ core curriculum content standards
Demonstrate respect for themselves and others
Participate in a broad range academic success and involvement in extracurricular activities
Demonstrate understanding of technology and use technology effectively
Demonstrate the democratic living skills of consensus building and group problem solving in order to become active citizens in their community
We firmly believe that curriculum development is continuous and evolving. In this context, we recognize that the curriculum not to be an end in itself but rather a “first step” in the instructional process. We encourage foresight and creatively in the use of the materials while addressing the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards. Curriculum Office Contact information: Phone-609-407-4000x8519; Fax-609-407-9622
Attached is the Curriculum Office's Summer 2008 Newsletter. In it you will find current information from our curriculum office, as well as summer and fall professional development opportunities in-district.
Enjoy! Click here for Summer 2008 Newsletter!
2008 Study Group Results
As part of our ongoing assessment of our professional learning community, our Professional Development Committee surveyed our faculty about the quality of our study groups. Click here for the survey results.
"CONTENT:
This site was created by Peter Hudson, Web developer and teacher, and provides free, online typing lessons and exercises for beginning typists.
SITE DESIGN:
The site has a simple easy to follow format with the links grouped into three categories (Preliminaries, Lessons and Exercises) that are listed in the left sidebar. Adobe Flash Player is required and can be downloaded from the site.
REVIEW:
Students, teachers or anyone interested in increasing their typing skills will find this site helpful. The site is self described as a place for "beginning typists and frustrated hunt-and-peckers who want to move from four-finger typing to full-blown touch typing." Users will want to begin with the "preliminaries" that provide information on how to use the course, typing ergonomics and principles of typing. The lessons begin with the basics of home row, top row or QWERT, bottom row and numbers row. The final section deals with exercises to train the fingers and improve accuracy and speed."
Thinkfinity.org has developed many activities and resources for summer enrichment in math, science, reading and more. Go to the Parent page and scroll down to Highlights!
Technology Integration Workshops
Take some time to review our after school workshops in Technology Rich Teaching, Thirteen Ed Online, Integrating Technology with Marzano's Nine Instructional Stategies, Google for Educations, Web 2.0 Digital Imaging. Click here.
April 18 Community of Caring In-Service Agenda
Click here for the in-service agenda for April 18, 2008.
In this workshop staff members meet to examine the goals and components of Community of Caring. At this program, participants come to understand the importance of character education and the role that each person will play in the development of character in their schools and communities. The following topics will also be explored: Integrating Values In and Across the Curriculum; Service Learning; Student Leadership and Forums, and Anti-Bullying Strategies. For more information on Community of Caring, go to www.communityofcaring.com.
Growing up Online
Parents and Teachers - What kind of Cyber Guide are you? Take this PBS online quiz.
Frontline has developed a series entitled Growing Up Online that discusses all of the dimensions of student internet use (social networking sites, trying on identities, cyber safety, cyber bullying). The series is extremely informative.
On Monday, February 4, NCS 5th-8th grade students will vote in a special primary election! This event caps off a month of Election Review integrated into the curriculum! In Language Arts, every middle school student (5-8) has been busy writing a persuasive letter to their favorite presidential candidates on issues that are important to us at NCS - environment and poverty (homelessness). They have invited candidates to come speak to us on these issues. All 550+ letters have been mailed and emailed! Wow! They also learned about the candidates through websites that we provided (announcement below).
Attention Presidential Candidates!
1/28/08 - Will they come? In Language Arts, every middle school student has been busy writing a letter to their favorite presidential candidates on issues that are important to us at NCS - environment and poverty (homelessness). They have invited candidates to come speak to us on these issues. All 550+ letters have been mailed and emailed! Wow. They also learned about the candidate through websites that I provided (see Lesson Plan) and also Mr. Vain found a great "Pick you Candidate" survey for our students. He is first polling students for their choice, asking them to go the Candidates website, taking the quiz (discussing the topics) and then polling the students again for their choice. Did it change? Let's wait to find out!
NCS Curriculum and Techology Project Page
I have added a new NCS Curriculum and Technology Project web page that feature our current projects such as the Math Curriculum Committee and our upcoming Visual Literacy Fair. In addition, workshop content is on this page! Click here to check it out! (http://NCS.district.googlepages.com/ )
Technology Rich Teaching Workshop
12/19/07 and 1/03/08
If you missed our workshop with loads of technology integration material, please visit our online workshop and resources for Technology Rich Teaching!
Also see Summer Curriculum Newsletter. Also Please review the dates for each link on the right - they are constantly updated! Make sure you review educational resources and PD opportunities (for brief overview of PD opportunities - see calendar!)
Family Involvement at Middle and HS Level
A new brief from the Harvard Family Research Project stresses the importance of parent involvement in their middle and high school students' education. See article for more details: http://tinyurl.com/35p7rn
Summer Fun - Teacher Resources to review when you have the time!
This is a great website to review over the summer! It is everything you ever wanted to know about blogs - with an amazing amount of resources: http://www3.essdack.org/socialstudies/blogs.htm
Learning Planet - a wealth of online activities and games for students, lesson plans - searchable by grade, subject area, teacher tools and much, much more!!!
Please note: some of the links on this website will let you leave our site. These linked sites are not under the control of our school district. The district therefore is not responsible for the contents of any such site, or any link contained in those sites, or any changes or updates to those sites. The district is providing these links to you as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement of the site by the district.
Federal Resources
