Busy Days Ahead For Our Bees!
Greetings Parents and Community Members, can you believe that we are over two months into the new year? I can’t believe how fast we are moving. I’ve always said that teaching is like a train – it’s going to move fast, regardless of whether you are on it! Before we know it, it will be spring break and then downhill for a short two months until summer. Rest assured that, as always, there are no days off for our students and our instructional staff. It’s time to hunker down, dig into this last quarter of the school year and finish strong! Since we last spoke, so many great things have been happening at our wonderful neighborhood school.
- Our Specials teachers continue to rock and roll with meaningful lessons that truly engage the whole child. An example is Ms. McCarren’s 1st graders who studied staccato and legato articulation as part of a new song. Fantastic work!
- Ms. Anderson’s 5th graders kicked off a text study during guided reading (yes, this happens in 5th grade too!). They made connections to IB as they read about real life hunger and starvation issues that affect our global community. Student reading and responses were out of this world!
- As with Ms. Anderson’s class, Ms. Rinkowski (who is right across the hall) had her students continue to create and add into their vocabulary flipbook. It helps students use different words in their writing and builds upon their vocab as they learn about Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes.
- Our Morris Brandon grades 3-5 gifted students had the opportunity to attend an APS STEAM Carnival. Students participated in science, technology, engineering and math activities all day as they extended their learning around these important subjects.
- I loved seeing Ms. Little’s 3rd grade class share their alternate endings to The 3 Little Pigs (my son’s favorite book!). Ms. Little was careful to isolate parts of the student-created story as she highlighted the use of dialogue in the student-created work.
- Ms. Lucky’s Kindergarten class began to focus on text features around their new book “Transportation, Here and Now.” It’s amazing to see what our Kindergartners are doing around Wit and Wisdom’s newly-adopted ELA curriculum. They’re even writing informational essays. So impressive!
And aside from all of the exciting instructional happenings around our two campuses (but one school community!), our gifted team attended (and even presented) at the GAGC2019 conference, we wrapped up Read Across America week (you have to check out the crazy hair day pics), and our amazing admin, Kindergarten teachers and a parent presented at the DLI prospective parent meeting at Garden Hills!
There is not a day that goes by where I am not impressed with what I see from our teachers and students and I’m excited for what is to come – not just this year, but next year as well. I’m all about removing barriers for our staff and students and making learning enjoyable, fun and, of course, challenging! Don’t forget to join me for my next Principal Coffee Talk this Friday at 10am in the MC Media Center, where our focus will be around assessments and tests that our students take, from Kindergarten all the way to 5th grade. This will build upon my last data-centered talk and will hopefully be engaging and entertaining! Also, the GO Team office has extended their declaration deadline to this Friday, so, if you are interested in school governance, please declare and join my team. Apply here!
As always, please feel free to reach out to me or a member of my team with any questions you may have.
Until next time!
j