News & Notices
At Parkway Elementary, we appreciate our involved parents and community members. We also enjoy broadcasting our latest news and information here on our News page, where we will chronicle school activities and student achievements and publish announcements. We’ll also offer helpful resources and information.
On Wednesday, March 13, the Parkway School kindergarten teachers surprised their students by switching classrooms and reading a favorite story to new faces. It was a fun springtime surprise!
The Paramus Public Schools and the Littogether Learning Communities proudly present community learning workshop days. On January 18 the workshop, led by author Hannah Schneewind, was entitled “Teaching Readers and Teaching Reading: Strategies for Centering Students While Supporting Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension.”
Teachers of grades k–5 inside and outside the Paramus district attended the full day workshop at Memorial Elementary School. Schneewind is co-author of a book called Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading which focuses on integrating reading skills into instruction that teaches the whole child. The workshop explored how to introduce strategies for getting to know readers, specific language to use while giving them feedback, and how to balance focusing on the reader with focusing on the skills associated with reading.
Mr. Tom Marshall, principal of Paramus’ Stony Lane Elementary School and founder of Littogether Learning and the New Jersey Literacy Leaders’ Network, explained, “Sometimes we think that being a good teacher of reading means paying attention to the nuts and bolts of the language, and sometimes we think it’s about the meaning-making that happens when reader meets text. It’s really not one or the other. Being an effective teacher means being able to teach both the reader and reading. We need to be prepared to give feedback about metacognition and attribution as well as to give feedback about decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills.”
