Last Days of the Book Fair, Don’t Miss out!

Greetings Parents and Community Members! We’ve reached February!! While January didn’t seem as long a month for me as it did for some people, the month did get the New Year started right! We rolled right back into school with little time lost due to the holidays, with exciting activities, celebrations, programs and, of course, solid instruction taking place. This last week saw the kick-off of our Scholastic Book Fair at both Main and Primary Campus. I love seeing students perusing books and learning materials, using their Bee Bucks any chance they can get. Thanks to a generous grant from NFL Play 60, we celebrated the Super Bowl by taking our ENTIRE 4th grade to the GWCC fan experience! Also, the American Red Cross brought their program Pint-Size Heroes to our Main Campus, sponsored by our 4th grade gifted class- ALL IN ONE WEEK. But that’s not all:

• Mr. Carr’s 2nd grade students had fun creating warm and cool color paper weavings, painting first and then weaving paper throughout their compositions to add dimensions. So cool!
• To compliment that, Ms. Dumont’s 3rd grade students finished glazing their utilitarian slump mold ceramic trays. I had to see them in person – they are beautiful and are definitely going to be put to good use.
• Ms. Klibanoff’s 1st grade DLI class is preparing for Valentine’s Day early by creating themed math centers for the month of February.
• Ms. Ingram’s Primary Center media classes are rolling with Common Sense Media certification. If you don’t know what this is, look it up! Our students will soon be safe, confident explorers of the online world.
• One of our AMAZING readers, Ayushi Kirtane in Ms. McKinley’s 4th grade homeroom, read the most minutes of ANY APS student so far in the Race2Read challenge. She won two tickets to the NFL Super Bowl experience and, for those counting, she read more than over 52,000 other students and over 60 hours! Continue to log your reading minutes on BeanStack as our goal has increased!
• Our amazing faculty and staff continued their multi-sensory approach to learning in the form of a 30 hr. Orton-Gillingham course at Brandon. We have 20 teachers currently getting this certification, with 20 more set to begin this summer! This is a great training to have in a teacher tool belt when assisting with struggling readers who also face challenges like dyslexia and dysgraphia.

I also had the opportunity to present our final strategic plan, edited for the 19/20 school year. This plan is what’s going to help drive our work over the next 3-5 years. Our focus continues to be increasing English Language Arts proficiency on the Georgia Milestones, but this can only happen if we scaffold from Kindergarten up. The plan allows for money and resources to be allotted to our Wit and Wisdom curriculum, an increase in guided reading in all classes – with resources to boot – and, of course, staff professional development around Orton Gillingham and the Complete Reading Series. Math and Science will never fall by the wayside as we will continue to focus on increasing our proficient and distinguished scores on GMAS for all subjects as well. Aside from some of our other priorities (re-adjusting our schedule to create intervention and acceleration blocks and professional development aligned to DLI, Gifted certification and IB), our other top priority is focused around our Gallup Poll and increasing staff engagement through a Q12 survey. I’m excited to see this process continue as our Go Team and I continue to look at our funding options for the 19/20 school year at our next meeting.

And, last but not least, Read-a-Thon will be kicking off this Friday! I’m excited to see all of the excitement around this great fundraiser at Brandon. We have kick-off assemblies planned for this Friday at both campuses and visiting illustrator Michael White will be here, spending time with students at each building and doing live art demonstrations! Please continue to support our students and school as you have always done, as these exciting programs, student incentives and innovative curriculum cannot be possible without you!

Until next time,
j