Patrick C. Daly, Superintendent

The concept of personalized learning is not new but it is emerging as a trend in education due to several factors.  The students we meet in today’s classrooms need to be engaged and the learning needs to be relevant in order for them to transfer the knowledge beyond the classroom and to apply it to the real world situations that await them in the future.  The industrial model of education, where one-size-fits-all, is no longer appropriate for today’s learner.  With increased access to technology students can learn in self-paced, personalized spaces and at times that are conducive to the most productive learning.    For several years the North Reading Public Schools have been exploring the concept of 1:1 devices for our students.  Our first task involved providing a digital learning team to support our educators in answering this essential question: “What are the opportunities for improving instruction that are made possible through the 1:1 initiative f...

One of the proudest achievements for our district this year is our status as a catalyst district in the Massachusetts Personalized Learning Edtech (MAPLE) Consortium.  According to the MAPLE website, “MAPLE is a public-private partnership between the LearnLaunch Institute and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to catalyze personalized learning in the Commonwealth with the purpose of better preparing students for their future” whose vision is “to catalyze personalized learning enabled by technology in K-12 public education.” The concept of personalized learning is not new but it is emerging as a trend in education due to several factors.  The students we meet in today’s classrooms need to be engaged and the learning needs to be relevant in order for them to transfer the knowledge beyond the classroom and to apply it to the real world situations that await them in the future.  The industrial model of education, where one-size-fits-all, i...

In my role as Title I Director I help to oversee our important work with our students in mathematics and literacy.   We spend hours identifying the students who need interventions, collecting data to help us best serve their needs, and then assessing their growth based upon these interventions in order to measure our own success in helping our students learn.   Students are offered strategies for close-reading and writing and they practice answering questions and searching for context clues.   But what about the pure joy of reading? I recently attended a keynote presentation that featured a topic that mesmerized me.   Lester L. Laminack, Professor Emeritus from Western Carolina University, presented on his book, The Ultimate Read-Aloud Resource .   Professor Laminack shared many ideas throughout his presentation.   He cited the research.   He suggested new strategies.   But the most important thing that he did for us was sharing a simple stor...

One of the most pressing concerns for the well being of our students is the lack of sleep that many of our teenagers are receiving.   The National Sleep Foundation has recently presented information following a two-year world-class study that our teenagers need between 8 and 10 hours of sleep per night.   Studies have shown that, on average, teenagers receive about 7.5 hours each night. The reasons for these sleep needs are rooted in biology.   According to the coalition group School Start Later ( http://www.startschoollater.net ): Sleep research shows that adolescents have a different—and later—sleep cycle than younger children and adults.   This is not a matter of habit, lifestyle, or stubbornness. It’s a matter of biology and natural circadian rhythms. The hormones that regulate sleep make it difficult for a typical teenager to fall asleep until after 11 pm and to wake up and be alert before around 8 am. Making them get up as early as 5:30 a.m. to catch the b...

Educator Effectiveness One of the aspects of my role as Assistant Superintendent is overseeing what the Department of Education refers to as Educator Effectiveness.  This includes everything from educator licensure, to mentoring, to educator evaluation and professional development.  There have been many great achievements in North Reading during the 2015-16 school year in these areas that I am am happy to share with the community. Licensure All of the educators in North Reading are highly qualified and have content area licenses in their primary area of teaching.  Educators work diligently to maintain their licenses by participating in workshops, taking courses, and working to develop curriculum.  There have been great many efforts made at the state level to simplify and clarify the process for educators to obtain and maintain licensure.  Our office also maintains a database, called My Learning Plan (MLP), that tracks all of the professional developm...

If you’ve been on social media lately you’ve probably seen posts from parents who are frustrated while helping their children with their mathematics homework.  It appears that there is a “new way” of doing math that is different from the “old way” that many parents learned when they were in school.  In reality, the changes are not as extreme as is often portrayed but it is still important that we take time to learn together as a community about some new approaches and how this is helping our students to learn. On the evenings of April 27th, May 25th and June 16th from 5:30pm-6:30pm our goal is to have a series of Mathematics Family Nights for parents to learn more about the shifts in teaching of Mathematics, the reasons for these shifts, and most importantly, how understanding these shifts will help us to better support our students. These workshops will take place at North Reading High School and will feature classroom teachers and Title 1 Math support teachers at all ...

On November 17, 2015 the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education made the decision to support the recommendation of the Commissioner of Education to move forward with a next generation MCAS test for all students, MCAS 2.0. For the past two years Massachusetts has been “test-driving” a new assessment called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) which measures student performance on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  These are the standards on which Massachusetts modeled its 2011 Frameworks in Mathematics and English Language Arts.  This next-generation assessment allows the state to retain control over the content of the questions and many elements of the test while also utilizing much of the PARCC tool that a Massachusetts team of PARCC fellows helped to build.  The decision calls for online testing for all students in 2019 with a plan to help schools and districts improve their technology infrastru...