Anna Reynolds Elementary School - Newington, CT

Anna M. Reynolds elementary school is located in Newington, CT. We teach about 480 students from Pre-kindergarten through Grade 4. Newington is a suburb of Hartford, CT, with a population just over 30,000.

At Anna Reynolds, our staff has focused over the past few years on providing students with rigorous learning experiences that require students to solve problems, work collaboratively, and apply what they have learned to new situations. Such experiences have included our trimester math problem-solving initiative, school-wide writing contest, and anchor experiences in our recently revised language arts curriculum. Further, students in Grades K-2 use iPads , while students in Grades 3 and 4 have a Chromebook for use at school and home.

Professional development is very important to us. For example, we conduct collegial visits, where teachers, coaches, and administrators view a host teacher's instruction. We then debrief afterward to learn and discuss implications for practice. This practice is used to explore new teaching strategies of interest selected by our Strategic Planning Committee.

In addition to our strong academic focus, we have used our school improvement process to meet the social and emotional needs of our students. For the past three school years, we have focused on how students treat one another, attempting to increase the number of kind comments, while reducing the number of mean comments. To accomplish our goals, we have implemented our Positive Behavioral Supports structure, which has included sharing our strategies with parents, providing incentives for students, and meeting our Superhero-in-Residence, Captain Kindness.