HURON — The Huron Board of Education held its regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 27, in the Instructional Planning Center meeting room in Huron Arena.

Much of the brief meeting was dedicated to a oral and video presentation by first grade teachers from the Buchanan K-1 Center about SIPPS.

SIPPS is Systematic Instruction in Phoneme awareness Phonics and Sight words, which assists students begin to read.

According to the presentation, students work with SIPPS for 30 minutes per day, learning Phonemes (individual sounds that make up the smallest parts of language) Phonics (putting the sounds together to create words) and also Sight words - the words that may not typically follow phonetic spelling, so students are encouraged to memorize them.

Students are placed in Beginner Level SIPPS or Extension Level SIPPS, with multiple levels within the two groups to help students. Beginner Level focuses on the simple letter sounds and decoding basic words. The difficulty of the words and reading patterns increases as the students progress through the levels toward Extension Level.

Video of the different levels was included for the school board presentation.

In other business, the board:
• Approved 11 new hires and three resignations; one service contract (Cornerstones Career Learning Center, $2,640 per students for work skills with students with disabilities) and one open enrollment via the Consent Agenda.
• Recognized para-educator and Braillist Casey Trowbridge as the school district’s Classified Employee of the Month.
• Learned from Superintendent Dr. Kraig Steinhoff that the position of Activities Director will be open for applications, with the goal of narrowing the field, interviewing and presenting his choice of candidate after the first of the year.

The next school board meeting is set for 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 11, back in the IPC room.