Chilly air, bees don’t care!

Greetings Parents and Community Members! As we roll into our third week back since holiday break, I am excited to celebrate some of the successes of our students, faculty and staff! Knowing that academic progress is important for our students from year to year, our hard-working instructional coach and fantastic teachers have created all sorts of acceleration and remediation plans tailored to meet the unique needs of each of our students. You obviously know by now about MyLexia, designed to cater remediation and acceleration to a student’s particular needs, but did you know that each grade level has now created intervention/acceleration plans for every student? Our teachers have been tasked with identifying areas where students need reinforcement or practice around a certain skill (writing/ reading/ math fluency etc.) or areas where students on grade level already can further accelerate their learning, and placing EVERY student on their grade level with a teacher, once a week, to get that extra help or push. It’s really cool to see the grade levels split their students up and move to locations around the building as they get even more help on standards that may need to be readdressed. Sometimes kids love learning from someone other than their teacher as they can provide a different style or delivery that they may not be used to. Aside from that, I am so happy for the work our Intervention teacher, Ms. Rubado, and Assistant Principal, Ms. Small, have done to get our Milestones Bootcamp up and running. For those who don’t know, The Georgia Milestones is a state assessment given to all students in grades 3, 4, and 5 at the elementary school level. Our goal is to have as many students as possible perform at the Proficient and Distinguished level for ELA and Math (3rd, 4th and 5th) and Science and SS (5th grade only). We always recognize that, while not every student may perform at that level, ALL STUDENTS can show academic growth, especially when compared to similar peers across the state. Ms. Rubado and her specific instructional strategies will make sure that all of our children have the chance to succeed!

Please feel free to join me at my next Principal Coffee Talk on March 1st in the Main Campus media center to learn more about our intervention and acceleration programs as well as the vast array of assessments your children will take during their time at Brandon. This is open to all parents of students in grades k-5.

Aside from that, I have some exciting student news to share!

• I am happy to announce that Brandon had two teams place in the district-wide Tech Fair! In Ms. Cramer’s 5th grade class, students Samantha A. and Jada Gaskill placed first in the category of Internet Application, and, in the category of Device Modification, both River Rumley and Tristan Willis in Ms. Maclachlan’s 4th grade class also won first place.WAY TO GO BEES!
• We also hosted our schoolwide Spelling Bee Tuesday morning. I was incredibly impressed by the poise and stamina of our students who participated and even the respectfulness and enthusiasm the rest of our 4th and 5th graders showed during the hour-long competition. In the end, Eden Mew in Ms. Anderson’s 5th grade homeroom won first place, with the runner-up being Tessa Rimer in Ms. Waters’s 5th grade class. Eden will go on to represent Brandon at the district-wide Spelling Bee – Good Luck!!
• I also want to give a special shout out to all of our students representing Brandon at the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl this Saturday. It was tough to qualify for this competition and I know they will do great. Represent us well!

As you know by now, there is something for everyone at Morris Brandon and it is our job to find out how to make learning relevant and meaningful to each child. This may be through simple math and science activities, an ELA curriculum that appeals to visual learners or even a multi-sensory approach to learning for our k-2 phonics. Some children need Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and some need intervention or acceleration activities, but all of our children need love and support from their parents and teachers alike!

Aside from that, I want to leave you with two important notes. The first one revolves around my mass communication protocol, Remind. As you may or may not have heard, Verizon is now charging the company 11 times what it normally would cost to send a text through Remind, leading to a discontinuation of services for Verizon Wireless users. Since a deal has not been reached yet, beginning on 1/28, Verizon will no longer be pushing out or receiving Remind alerts. If you are a Verizon customer and would still like to receive Remind texts from teachers or myself, please make sure you sign up for email alerts and double check your Infinite Campus records (phone numbers and emails) as I will begin using this form of communication as well. I also want to remind you that Go Team elections are around the corner, so, if school governance is something you are interested in, please fill out an application here.

Until next time!