Principal's Corner
Greetings Families,
I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful winter break and our first snow day Wednesday! We sent a reminder regarding our arrival and dismissal procedures last Friday. Please follow the procedures in order to ensure a safe arrival and dismissal for all our students. Thank you to our 3rd grade team for all their work to organize the “Health Expo”. Our 3rd grade students were able to practice Portrait of a Graduate skills through the Project Based Learning (PBL) unit.
I hope everyone enjoys the warm weekend weather!
Chris Smith
DRES Principal
Bingo Night- Friday, January 24…save the date!
You’ve been asking, and it’s coming…our annual Food 4 thought Bingo Night fundraiser.
Get ready to eat pizza, enter raffles and play some B-I-N-G-O! Our talented staff members and administrators will entertain you with their calling skills. Mark your calendar and play BINGO for a good cause. Questions? Contact the FRC: rebrown@fcps.edu or 703.279.8441
Portrait of a Graduate Spotlight
For our students to become future ready learners, we focus on five attributes that will help guide them to becoming productive citizens of a global community. The five attributes we focus on throughout the year are collaborator, communicator, creative and critical thinker, ethical and global citizen, and goal-directed and resilient individual. For this Portrait of a Graduate spotlight, we will be focusing on the collaborator skills your child works on here at Daniels Run!
FCPS has broken down the collaborator skills students need to be future ready based on grade level. Students in Kindergarten through third grade focus on one set of skills and fourth through sixth grade focus on a different set of skills. For example, K-3 will focus on the skills “I respectfully listen to the ideas of others” while 4-6 will focus on a similar skill, “I respectfully listen and ask questions to get others to share their ideas”. Both skills focus on the attribute collaborator and the expectation builds as the student gain more experiences in school. Below is a list of the K-3 and 4-6 skills your child is focusing on. These skills are not in any particular order.
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Kindergarten - Third Grade:
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Fourth - Sixth Grade:
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I respectfully listen to the ideas of others.
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I respectfully listen and ask questions to get others to share their ideas.
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I share my ideas.
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I share my ideas with my team.
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I encourage others to help the team
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I try to see things from other people’s side.
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I respectfully listen to other points of view.
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I help my team finish our work.
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I give helpful feedback to others.
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I use feedback from others to improve my work.
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I help my team not give up when things get hard.
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When problems arise, I help find solutions.
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The goal of Daniels Run is to provide opportunities for students to demonstrate learning in more authentic ways. Teachers at Daniels Run use POG skills to help enhance learning opportunities to include collaborator skills!
PBL Spotlight
Over the past few weeks, first graders at Daniels Run have been working on an important project. They are answering the questions: How can you, as a design engineer, create a new, innovative obstacle for the upcoming season of American Ninja Warrior? Through the project, students learn how to Identify, describe, and trace circles, triangles, squares and rectangles, and representations of circles, triangles, squares and rectangles, regardless of orientation, in different environments and explain reasoning. Students collaborated by planning and building their obstacles with a small group. Then they presented their obstacle to sixth graders and people around the building on why their obstacle should be chosen for the next season of American Ninja Warrior.
Student has the opportunity to build their obstacles in the Innovation Space using donated materials from the community! Below are a few pictures of what students created:
Music News!
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This weekend the Daniels Run Singers will be singing in the VOKE children’s choral festival with 150 other honor choir students. This is a 2 day event. They have been working on this advanced music for 4 months. The concert is on Sunday at 5pm. The concert is free and is at Potomac High School in Dumfries, VA. All are welcome to attend. Good luck to the Daniels Run Singers! They have worked so hard for this choral festival!
- Save the Date for the First Grade Musical: Love in Many Languages on Tuesday, February 25 at 9:30am in the Café
- The Daniels Run International Day Assemblies will be Friday, February 28. We are looking for parents, students & faculty to share their heritage at the daytime school assemblies. Dance, songs, and instrumental performances are welcome. Please contact Miss McCarten (mmmccarten@fcps.edu) if would like to perform. The deadline is Monday, February 10. Performers must be prepared to audition the act for Miss McCarten.
PAST EVENTS:
December ‘twas the season for concerts! Check out these videos and congratulate the Daniels Run musicians for the months of preparation and practice!
Advanced Academics at Daniels Run
Our Daniels Run Dragons have had a busy year so far full of challenging learning opportunities. Across every classroom, teachers are engaging students with high-level instructional experiences that develop their critical and creative thinking skills. Our staff is committed to providing access to rigor for all students using advanced thinking strategies and curriculum.
Students stretched their thinking in a variety of ways throughout the first quarter.
Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade students participated in lessons using Jacob’s Ladder curriculum, an AAP resource which guides students through an inquiry process with targeted texts to develop higher-level critical thinking skills.
3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students also had instructional opportunities with AAP resources including materials from various William & Mary Curriculum units. Students learned to analyze literary elements, symbols, and themes of different texts using a graphic organizer called a Literature Web. Classes also explored big ideas that connect across content areas during "Concept of Change" and "Concept of Systems" lessons.
At each grade level, students engaged with different Critical and Creative Thinking Skills (CCTS).
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Kindergarteners learned about visualization after viewing the pictures in the book Alphabet City and going on a letter hunt around their classroom.
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First Graders used the Color/Symbol/Image thinking routine to encapsulate their thinking and create flags to represent their families.
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Second Graders focused on asking "thick" open-ended, big-idea questions to help them think deeply about the story The Tap Dancer.
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Third Graders explored the strategy of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration as they brainstormed examples and organized their thinking around the concept of change.
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Fourth Graders discovered that mind mapping can be a great strategy to make connections and review units in their Virginia Studies.
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Fifth Graders considered various perspectives around the same topic and realized that a reader’s point of view can change the meaning of a text.
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Sixth Graders analyzed the essay A Sense of a Goose and used analogies to connect the natural instincts of geese to ideas about collaboration and community.
 On Time and On Target! Attendance Matters!
- This is the time of year when winter weather and children’s illnesses can take a toll on school attendance. But it’s important to get your children to school every day possible.
- If you are unsure whether to send your children to school, consult your doctor or this website for guidance: https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/policies-regulations-and-notices/attendance-policies/attendance-when-should-i-send-my. Our school nurse is also a terrific resource for chronic health conditions.
- Do what you can to keep your children healthy. Dress them warmly for the cold weather and make sure they’ve got hats and gloves. Encourage them to wash their hands regularly, and send them to school with a bottle of hand sanitizer.
- Help your child learn to persevere. Today, he learns to overcome a snowdrift. In the future, he will have the grit to triumph over even greater obstacles to his dreams.
- Please remember, schools are closed on January 20th for the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday and January 27th and 28th are student holidays. We are eager to welcome your children back in school on the following day. Teachers will be teaching, and students will be learning.
Kids share so much of themselves online -- you may wonder if they have too much courage. It's easy to be courageous when you get a lot of "likes" and other positive feedback. It takes real courage to risk friendships and approval when you're alone in your convictions. You can use media to help kids build the character strength of courage.
Read More Here
 Inclement Weather and Emergency Closing Plans; Make Arrangements Now in Case of an Unforeseen Schedule Change
Cold and wintry weather will soon be here! Due to inclement weather or other emergency situations, it may be necessary to close schools for the entire day, to open schools late, or to close early.
Parents are urged to make arrangements now for the care of their children when schedule changes are made (and to provide for the rare situation when it is necessary to close an individual school because of a power failure or other circumstances). Children should know where to go if a parent will not be home.
FCPS has several schedules set up to deal with inclement weather; these are put into effect when conditions threaten the safety of students and staff members:
- Keep schools closed.
- Open two hours late.
- Close two hours early.
When Fairfax County Public Schools has a schedule change (closing or delay) due to inclement weather or other emergencies, the information is communicated in several ways as soon as the decision is made.
Note: The official @FCPSnews Twitter account (with blue checkmark) is generally the first and fastest mode of communication during emergency weather closings. Other communication channels will be updated as quickly as possible including email, text, website, other social media, and news stations.
Please be aware, due to the large volume of emails sent, there will likely be a lag between the time a FCPS Twitter alert is posted and receipt of an email in your inbox.
Third Grade Health Expo Video
View the video to see how our third student developed a health expo using Project Based Learning (PBL)
PTA News
January Meeting
We hope you can join us as we kick off 2020 with our first general meeting on January 16th at 7pm. Following the meeting we will hear a presentation about Digital Citizenship. See you there!
Save the Date!
Join us on the evening of Friday, February 28th for our International Food & Music Festival. More info & sign-ups to come soon!
Boxtops For Education
Our second collection of the year for boxtops starts NOW. Send in those boxtops in to your child’s teacher through Friday, February 14th!
Looking to connect friends and parents at DRE?
The best way to find parent emails for playdates and birthdays is through our directory. This year we are using Member Hub. You must be a PTA member to access the directory. You can join here. Once you have joined the PTA, visit Member Hub to create an account!
Important Dates:
January 16-PTA Meeting-7:00pm
January 20-Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday
January 24-BINGO Night
January 27-Student Holiday
January 28-Student Holiday
Full 2019-20 FCPS School Calendar
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