001good evening that was a very loud microphone creak wasn't it welcome welcome we'll get started in a couple of minutes i just wanted to give you the two second warning that we'll get started i see a lot of people smiling and greeting each other even through the masks i can see it so welcome and let's have everyone come in and we'll uh we'll begin our program but i'm so thrilled to see you all so just a couple seconds and then we'll we'll get started there are plenty of seeds down in front right this is the all right well i extend to all of you a heartfelt cheshire high school welcome you are now in the home of the rams so we are delighted to see all of you here i'm mary gadd i'm the principal
002of the high school and i'm going to introduce our administrative team and our head of school counseling in just a moment but i just wanted to let you know um tonight really it should be no pressure you're here to get a sense of what's available to your children as they make this extraordinary transition to high school and as i said to some folks already it goes very quickly not to make you anxious but it does and it's knowing that it's so important to savor your experience here and to take advantage of every opportunity but the last piece is don't try to cram it all into your freshman year you have four years so we'll be talking through our requirements our expectations some of which you will forget as you leave here but what i want
003you to come away with is a sense of the incredible faculty that is here to support each and every one of you to ensure you have the absolute best experience you can have through your high school years so let me introduce and i also want to extend a welcome to any of our st bridget's bridget families that are here with us this evening welcome to you as well and let me just introduce our administrative team so dr maureen reed she's our assistant principal for curriculum and instruction thank you mrs kristin pells she's one of our assistant principals mr dan tartarelli our other assistant principal and he will be our ninth grade principal so for all of you he is the person that will be in charge of your grade so you'll get to know him
004through our all of us actually through your first year at high school mr steve trefone who is our athletic director and mr phone and mr tartarelli you may have already met them if you watched the video that we sent you about our activities uh that you can join our clubs and athletics that you can join and if you didn't see that you can take a look and this this evening please feel free to talk to either one of them about all of the things that you can get involved in at the high school and last but absolutely not least is mrs michelle katusi she is our director of school counseling and some of you may have already seen her if she came to visit you at dodd yes all right so you already know her
005so we're good okay so if we can move forward so tonight i'll just talk to you a little bit about and i'm sure you've already seen this our vision of the graduate you know what that is already many of you already do we'll talk sorry i'm just going to do this so i can see behind me here we'll also talk about our graduation requirements so you understand what the what the pathway is when you get to high school and what you need to do each year to ensure you're on track for graduation what the course offerings are and there are a lot of requirements the mastery-based performance assessment which is another requirement don't worry we'll talk you through it and then you'll learn from after our little session you will all head upstairs so you'll
006be if if you can look behind you see those kids in the greens t-shirts there wave please thank you these are our link crew leaders and it's a wonderful program there that is the crew that's going to be working with you as you transition to high school they're going to be working with you in freshman orientation and tonight they will help you to find your way up to the second floor down the business hallway and into all of the areas where we have our academic department heads and teachers ready to talk with you about all of our programs so they'll be able to answer a ton of your questions tonight and you'll get to meet some teachers okay so if you just take a look at our vision of the graduate and look at the
007language that's bolded in red right we want you to be first of all lifelong learners if you're a lifelong learner you're excited about what's in front of you and you remain curious and that is exactly how we shape our global society both locally in the state and brought more broadly than that and we want you to develop those skills and knowledge to become really engaged learners and to start to figure out what you love and your path forward we also know that you need to complete the content of each course that's vitally important so that you really get a solid foundation and last but not least apply what you know in the real world we have internship offerings as you get a little bit older in your high school experience and ways for you to
008connect with interests and experiences outside of the high school and these are our performance standards how many of you have seen these before yeah okay our cheshire performance standards this is what we want you to cultivate right to be a complex thinker to really be able to analyze right to be a creative thinker creative problem solving to be self-directed that means to be able to take some initiative when you're doing your work when you're learning in your class raising that hand taking a little bit of a risk and participating we want you to communicate effectively we want you to be a cooperative learner that means to be able to work with your peers in a collaborative and cooperative way to learn from and with each other and then finally to contribute to our community both
009our school community and the larger community [Music] so i am going to hand the microphone over to mrs katusi and she's going to talk you through the credits at cheshire high school hello welcome um so these are the the state graduation requirements if you look at the column that's on the left is kind of how the state specified it and then on the right it talks about what that looks like at cheshire high school so the one class um or so it's divided into the humanities the one class in humanities that you have four credits so you have to take all four years of high school is english and then it divides out in the other humanities areas three credits in social studies which includes a credit in world history and at least a half
010credit in a civics course one credit in fine arts and one humanity elective so in that there's a hard copy of the program of studies which has all of the courses listed that we um offer at cheshire high school not just for ninth grade but for all four years of high school students got a hard copy of that at dodd when i go over to st bridget they'll get a hard copy as well and then it's available online but these state requirements cheshire requirements are in the program of studies and then when it comes down to that humanities elective and then you'll see there's a stem elective what qualifies in those categories is listed in there as well i believe it's on page 15 and 16. um but will at least help you identify what
011classes fall into humanities and what fall into stem in that stem category you'll have three credits in math three credits in science two credits in business or uh career and technical education and a half credit of that needs to be in personal finance and then one stem elective most students especially in the area of math will very easily meet that math requirement within their first few years of high school because you can transfer some of your middle school math credit to the high school the that written out in the statute is also in the program of studies the grad requirements but some students will come here already completing algebra 1 so they'll get that credit and they'll start in geometry here a full credit in pe and a full credit in health a full credit
012in world language and again that can be earned at the middle school level math and world language are the two subject areas where we can transfer some credit from middle school because it's parallel to the high school class the mastery-based performance assessment is one credit which dr reid will talk more about in a bit and then there are three other credits that can be in any subject area of your choosing what you're most interested in for a total of 25 credits and all students are scheduled for at least six and a half credits every year so as long as you do the minimum six and a half pass all your courses you'll actually leave here with more credits than you need for graduation according to the state you go to the next one okay so
013that's what i was just saying about the six and a half credits what is important to remember about credits is that is awarded on if you pass the course and then also that you're in the course enough that you're attending regularly so credit can be taken away if you fail a course or if you don't go to that class enough to really earn the credit for being in that class even if your grade was in passing range um it does specify there that if a student does not pass a course they'll have an opportunity to make up that credit if they have above a 50 that could be done in summer school um if if not you may have to retake the course again at cheshire high school so it's very important from the beginning
014that you're taking your credit seriously but as uh dr gad was saying we have lots of supports that are going to be in place for you to make sure you can meet those goals so i think that goes to dr reed now right no who's doing thank labs thank you soon you pop up the supports oh these are the okay those are the some of the specific that's okay the specific academics that you will you'll be taking pretty much your freshman year when you walk through the door you'll have it obviously in english modern world history science depends on what you did at dot and what your teacher recommendation is the same with math some students take earth science some students take biology some students take algebra 1 some take geometry some take algebra 2.
015so that's dependent on where you are in your coursework at dodd and then physical education of course and your elective choice that will work in your schedule and so you'll work very closely with your school counselor to ensure you have all of your requirements obviously but then that we can fit in some of those courses that you're excited about trying out in the elective world okay so incoming students like we already said you received a hard copy of the program of studies and many of you have already received a one page of page three there were a few little errors in the page numbers in our hard copy so that single page and our link crew leaders have it those are the corrected page numbers for each of the sections in the course guide so
016you can just slip that in and it will be corrected online after after this evening okay i think we've covered it so supports you come to the high school it's a big place what do you do if you're struggling a little bit in a class these supports are designed to be available in every department area is often if not every period through the day some of these supports are scheduled and some of these supports are what we call drop-in support so there's a live link to the student portal which we don't need to link to this is going to be sent out to all of you following this presentation but our student portal if you're looking at looking for a drop for drop in support say you just need a little bit of help with
017your with conjugating verbs in your world language class you would fill out a form and say what you were struggling with in the period you had free and you can go and get some assistance so if we flip to the next slide we also have something called learning lab support so we have departmental course specific support or department specific support we have learning lab support which if you're struggling to organize you have six and a half credits you have a paper due on thursday you have a test the following monday oh my gosh how do i organize myself to study we can help you with that and that's what learning lab is for for some executive functioning and organizational support i see some heads nodding you can drop in and some students you can be
018assigned as well we also have math support you can drop in every period and if you're stuck on a sunday night trying to get that homework done we have online support that you can tune into write your questions and a teacher will get on live and help you out next slide we also have some supports that can be scheduled so if you really are struggling with certain concepts that are foundational for a course you can be assigned into any of these areas for support math workshop reading writing and structured study hall it would be a more consistent place to go to get that support and the next slide and these are all the course specific areas where we provide teacher support from certified teachers throughout the school day okay and now we will turn it
019over to dr reed who's going to talk about the mastery-based performance assessment welcome to the high school it's really nice to have you all with us tonight so the mastery-based performance assessment is a graduation requirement per the state of connecticut which actually began with the current juniors the class of 2023 so you'll be the third or fourth class that will be working on this so it's a pass fail credit it's only one credit that's required to graduate the experience is completed either junior or senior year there um are it's reflective of the chs performance standards through a rubric it will be assessed and all experiences have include a student present presentation the students presenting and a reflection piece afterward there is a manual that you'll receive the beginning of freshman year it'll be emailed to
020parents and students so that you'll all be aware and throughout the years through advisory we will work to kind of help you come to the realization of what project you want to do and there are many paths that you can choose to do an independent project there's an ap capstone course you can take in your junior year and then we just added ap seminar class senior year or you could do it through activities that you participate in extracurricular sports clubs so there's many different options for you to fulfill the project and we're really excited to see what comes out this year and into next year with our first group that's doing it and then for future years for you just passing it on thank you and so you can see with the mastery based project
021we not only want you to learn in each of your courses but we want you to think about what really interests you and how you might want to go a little bit further to demonstrate that that's that that's the key of that mastery-based performance assessment and here are some of the ways in which you can engage with other with your peers and with other folks at the high school through our extracurriculars and activities i have to say i defy any new student walking through these doors not to find at least one club that is of some interest to you we have so many and if a student decides you know what there really isn't anything that i like we have kids who start clubs themselves so it's wide open for you to find avenues of
022expression and ways to really connect with your peers and with the faculty and staff at cheshire high school in the letter that we sent home to you you received these links that indicate what the pathways are for each of our course areas so i just wanted to re-show that that's in your letter and it will be sent to you as well through this presentation and last but not least what is in your near future mrs pells is going to come up and talk a little bit about the next steps for all of you to get even further acquainted with cheshire high school after this evening good evening everybody so we have a very intentional transition program which helps at all our freshmen transition to the high school so the first one is checked because that's
023curriculum night and this is that's tonight and you're here you're where you need to be tonight tonight we won't be doing tours of the building today is just about the curriculum areas but the eighth graders will be welcome to come back in the spring in april you'll be coming over here if you're a dot it's divided by teams and if you're at other schools you're welcome to join us on those particular days which are getting scheduled and so first you listen to a panel who that is made up of our peer advocates some of our student leaders who talk about different um aspects of being at the high school and things you want to be prepared for and know before you walk in the doors and then you divide up into small groups for some
024tours of the building so you'll get to see all the areas and you'll be able to ask our student leaders questions about anything you want that has to do with the high school and then the most important day your actual first day is our freshman orientation day with link crew which is scheduled for wednesday august 24th and it runs from 7 45 to 1 o'clock bus transportation is provided so you get to practice the bus being at your bus stop if you take the bus the ride in it's a very high energy day it's a very it's an extremely fun day led by our link crew and so we start off in large groups you meet a lot of different people who will be here at the high school then you break off into small
025groups in your advisory groups and you get to know um you get to spend some time knowing each other in those small groups you practice the building you'll go on several different walks around the building you'll get to navigate the lunchrooms find out where your lockers are practice your schedule a lot of um we'll have some fun games and activities so it's a really exciting day so we want everybody to be there in preparation for the for the real first day of school which happens in the next week um so we look forward to having you experience all these these events and then even in august if you're inclined to want to come into the school you're more than welcome to come in and take a walk around before school starts okay look out for
026the link leaders because as you leave here if you're going to go out these doors and hit the stairs to go upstairs our link leaders will give you guys directions also okay and you'll be able to meet with different departments in three locations on the second floor so we thank you on behalf of the administrative team and our faculty and staff at the high school welcome we are so excited to have you i love it that we're in person hooray and i hope you enjoy your evening and thank you for coming [Applause]