High Ability Introduction

Hello and Welcome to our High Ability (HA) Blog!

This is where you can go weekly to get a peek into our classroom and see all the wonderful things your child/children are doing. I will send out a weekly email letting you know when the blog is up and ready to read. I do my best to get it up by Fridays each week. You can access the blog through a link at the bottom of all my emails or through Brummitt’s homepage under classrooms. This is my second year blogging and I missed it over the summer. I am looking forward to writing about how the classes are going each week and everything we will be learning this year.


I would like to take this opportunity to let you know a little about myself and the program.


My name is Amy Ott-Lutterman. Your child will know me as Mrs. Lutterman. I am very happy to be returning to Brummitt this year as the High Ability Instructor.


I grew up here in Indiana and graduated from La Porte High School. I moved to Chicago to complete college where I earned my undergrad degree in Television Production at Columbia College. Later, I received my Master’s Degree from Governors State University in Media Communications and Training. I worked at a university in Chicago for seven years. After I had children I decided to go back to complete the transition to teaching program at Indiana Wesleyan where I earned my elementary education teaching certificate. I completed my student teaching in Duneland at Jackson Elementary last fall where I worked with the first grade.

I am married and have two sons. My oldest son Wolfgang is in second grade now at Jackson and my son Vladimir is finally in kindergarten at Jackson. This summer was filled with so many great things. I took my boys to swimming lessons for the first month of vacation at the middle school where they had the best high school swimming instructors here in Chesterton. I got to see a lot of my high ability students learning and practicing swimming while I watched my kids.

 

We also spent so much time this summer at the Michigan City Park Zoo. We love the zoo and the staff there is so friendly. The kids went to zoo camp and we attended many of the zoo summer events. We all got to meet the new wolves and meet many other awesome animals this summer.

We also took a yearly summer trip to visit my husband’s family in Minnesota where we enjoyed lots of activities. We got see lots of family and go the local water park.

We also got to see lots of friend and students at Seven Peaks water park too. Wolfe conquered all the water slides this year. He loved it. Vlad also decided he was ready to try the small slides and rocked it.

I will be at Liberty Elementary for the first few weeks finalizing lists, preparing lessons and getting things in order. I will begin with students on Monday, September 14th. Permission slips will be going home before then and need to be returned before your child may participate.

This year we will be using the High Ability Language Arts Curriculum Project developed by the Indiana Department of Education. We will be using several of the trade books suggested by the state as a part of the curriculum. I'm very excited about this!

How did your child get into the program? It is based on test scores from the previous year. There's a list of specific test scores we use for language arts and a list for math. They need to score in the high end for two out of three tests or three out of five. Some students I will see for only language arts or math and others I may see for both.

Once classes begin, I will be at Brummitt Monday through Thursday. Monday’s and Tuesday’s are for Language Arts. Wednesday’s and Thursday’s are for Math. On Fridays I will go back to Liberty to meet with our High Ability team and make plans for the following week.

The first week the students and I will be doing a lot of team building activities to get everybody comfortable with their classmates and me as their instructor. I will also post some pictures of your children working and showing their completed work from time to time.


Please feel free to email me with any questions or concerns. If your child is new to my class, please stop me and introduce yourself . . . I love to connect the faces to the students. I am looking forward to another excellent year here at Brummitt!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Lutterman