What?! A Full week of school?!

I hope you all have survived this full week of school! A lot of great work is being done by your elected leaders in the School Improvement Team/Leadership Team. I want to thank all of them for their hard work and dedication.

There are two main indicators that we are focusing on for this year.

• Parent Engagement
• Aligning units of instruction to the standards

We have had a great start in unpacking standards last year,  and had an introduction to some of the changes in the standards this year. Continue to focus on those verbs and what they are asking of students.

As we use these to drive our work, think about the students in your class who struggle.

• What accommodations are they using to access curriculum? 
• How are you planning with them in mind? 

• Remember that, in most cases,  their work with special education teacher is only a small part of their day. How are you connecting them to your classroom the rest of the day as they access their grade level curriculum? 

• What scaffolds are you able to put in place to help ward off possible misconceptions or stumbling blocks for them?  

• We are so very fortunate to have the skills and talents we do across this entire staff. Please utilize that or share your expertise with someone else. The Hurricane days have robbed us of our September and October Early Releases necessitating some additional meeting days in October.  I sincerely appreciate your patience and flexibility with that. However, some of the richest professional development can come in the form of conversations and planning with your colleagues in your PLTS or across grade levels. Please know that Steve and I are also available to help you troubleshoot particular students or to find strategies that might work in a lesson.

Hall of Fame: 

Thank you for coming out and helping to scoop ice cream at a very successful Ice Cream Social last Friday. I know it makes for a long day, but you did it with smiling faces and the kids and parents love seeing you there!

Thank you to Ms. D'Amico for organizing an effort to support a school hit hard by Hurricane Florence. (more info to come on that soon).

Thank you to all of you for your patience and hard work as we continue to serve students and families. 

Thanks to Coach G and all of our wonderful substitute teachers for holding things together in the gym! We will be glad to welcome our new PE teacher, Mr. Michael Hosterman on Monday, October 8th! He comes to us from Baucom Elementary School.

Congratulations to Caitlin McKee, who became Caitlin Wilson last weekend! Because a school can never have too many Wilsons! 😄

Ms. Perez and Ms. Hampton taking their jobs as scoopers very seriously!

Ms. Gehrett and Ms. Layman helping to scoop ice cream.

 

Boosterthon having more fun than anyone!

Mr. and Mrs. Henderson helping out scooping ice cream social.

Katherine made this nice sign that now sits right next to the substitute teacher sign in. You might want to leave a similar reminder at the top of your plans. 

Ms. Zimmerman's class uses what they have learned about volume to create a city and calculate its volume. It even has a Target!

Reminders:

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If you are due to be observed in the first round and have not done so, please sign up for a time for your pre, observation, and post on the Observation Google Calendar. 

• Please remember that the Book Fair begins on October 8th and will run through October 22nd.
• October 10th is Family Night at the Book Fair. This is the time to have conferences and a great thing to add to your weather make- up time. 

• Also make sure your beginning of the year PDPs are complete. If you need assistance, please ask Steve or myself and we can help you navigate the system.

• Note Interims will be going home October 5th. They will include Home Connect letters. Please let us know if you will not be able to complete mClass by Wednesday of next week.

Grateful after Florence

I am so glad we have all come through Florence, mostly unscathed.   I know it is tempting to become frustrated that this interruption creates some challenges with getting up and running with the year and that we may have hours to make up, etc.  Take heart- we'll get there.  My heart goes out to those still dealing with the aftermath. Let it make us grateful for what we have.

As we are still working to align instruction with standards and standards have changed this year, we need to  continue our work unpacking, and notice the verbs in the standards.
Thank you for all of your work utilizing the talent of our CIAs. Thank you for your work in helping them feel a part of your classrooms, and helping them to feel informed about their role in what you are teaching. Below you will see a great example of how Ms. Zimmerman prepares Mrs. Loeffler each Monday for her work in the classroom during the week.

Walker's Birthday Club
Since we have asked parents not to bring in food related birthday items, I am adding to the birthday celebrations by having students who have had a birthday come to the office directly following announcements to have their picture taken with Mrs. Walker or Mr. Lombardo. Thank you to Heather Swift and PTA for providing us with a printer to enable printing these pictures right off for students to take home. We will begin this next Friday and little by little we will call those who have already had birthdays to have their pictures taken as well.

Ice Cream Social/ Parent Info Session tonight:
Hopefully you received the sign up for the Ice Cream Social. Even if you have not signed up, please consider joining with PTA and families as we scoop and enjoy some ice cream with students. It is always a very fun time.

Updates on Dismissal:
Thank you for sending your carpoolers to the cafeteria at 3:40 in order to ensure a timely dismissal. Thank you to our awesome carpool team for creating what I think is the most efficient afternoon carpool. We have parents of some or our Blue and Red tag walkers who are concerned that their students are being dismissed after carpool. We have had our Security Officer, Carliss Williams out to offer any suggestions and to see how our dismissal runs. Area Superintendent Dr. Mark Savage will actually not be able to come out today. However, I would anticipate that he will come out sometime in the near future.

Calibrating Observations
As requested in some of the feedback, Steve and I are working to calibrate our observation data so that we are more consistent and effective in our feedback to you. If you see both of us walking into your classrooms, that is what we are doing.

Mrs. Cho helping Ms. D'Amico's students seeing which strategies will work to find volume

Ms. Layman's class matched up their math vocabulary with another student's definition.

Ms. Bree's students illustrate their thinking in math.

Ms. Zimmerman provides a document like this one for Mrs. Loeffler every Monday.

Never a Dull Moment at GHE!

Happy Friday Y'all,

Great job rolling with the punches! Great response time and you did a terrific job with your classes even though this was an unexpected fire drill. Thank you for all of your efforts in creating a wonderful Back to School Night! You are Rock Stars!

I know EL is a big undertaking, and I appreciate how hard our third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers are working to digest all of the material and make it their own. We are here to help or just to listen. We are not expecting that you are going to be perfectly implementing EL when we come in to classrooms. You are still getting to know your students, learning to work with new schedules, etc. Please know that we understand that and are grateful for all of the efforts you have made.
Please continue to let students share things about themselves with you and celebrate who they are as people.

Reminders:

September 10th

• Monday morning is our first School Improvement Team Meeting and we are meeting at 8:00 am in the Media Center. If you are on the team, you should have received an email and materials to review before the meeting.
• Positivity Project begins on Monday morning! We are super excited to start this. In resources search for OPM 2. This will be a five day intro to the program. If anything doesn't work- reach out to Angie Tew.
• Regular duties begin next week. CIAs will be in the cafeteria per the schedule.

September 11th- BOG Testing for third graders.

September 18th Faculty Meeting: 8:00 am in the Media Center

September 19th Holiday (No School) 😊

September 21st- Ice Cream Social (5:00-7:00).

September 28th- Early Release - Meeting 1:45 in the Media Center





Remember to never stop having fun!

Hall of Fame

Thanks to all who helped to make the Kindergarten entry go smoothly, and to the many who have helped out a new person to the staff or covered carpool or helped a colleague through a busy time.

Big shout out to Suzanne D'Amico for providing a resource to the whole county for reference in EL and to the whole fifth grade team for being flexible with a last minute change.

Mr. Henderson's class uses QR codes to link to their Book Talks

It is all about the Beautiful Oops!

Mrs. Hoffman welcomes a new Kindergartener

Love seeing all of the beautiful hallways!