Pre-kindergarten children sign and say their messages.
Principal Daena Davis demonstrates the "swivel" unit on the computer
Betty Tovar leads her students in their presentations
Photos and article by Margaret Hopper
The Cobre school board met at Bayard Elementary on October 10, with all five board members present: Frank Gomez, Robert Montoya, Frances Kelly, Frank Cordova and Toy Sepulveda. The closed session had begun at 6:04 p.m. where they discussed student identifiable information and limited personnel issues, but no decisions were made, according to Sepulveda, president. The public session began at 7:20 with many parents present to watch their children perform.
A large number of students from Misty Pugmire's pre-kindergarten, Betty Tovar's kindergarten, James Rosa's fourth grade and Lucinda Escobar's fifth grade were in the school presentation. Languages were the focus; children of all grades were using sign language to say Gǣgood morning,Gǥ in many national languages, and many other phrases a child might need. Little ones signed and counted to twenty in English, Spanish, and German.
Rosa told the board about the mindset concept, and how research and analysts were attempting to turn a false or negative mindset into a positive perception, urging students to keep trying, to persevere until they succeeded. The book he used as an example was about Math Mindsets, filled with optimism and encouragements that all children could succeed to some degree.
Another interesting tool, the Gǣswivel,Gǥ a small electronic unit that could focus and track the movement of a person imprinted by voice on the device, connected to computer directed videos for a class, was described as an aid to help students see themselves and improve their own presentations. Rosa and Daena Davis, Bayard principal, demonstrated it for the board.
Davis then turned the information effort to showing how data collected from a number of tests could be entered in a program and studied to pinpoint how students had missed a certain concept and study it again for future mastering. She gave an example of a math idea, showing how one geometric question could be selected and retaught. Her statement was that this process could help greatly to improve future test scores.
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