Morning Messages

Each day at school teachers write a Morning Message and use the message to teach various concepts.  I write a daily morning message as well, but the purpose of mine is to get students to start to read.

Here is a sample of a classroom morning message:

Ms. Doll's class

You can see that Ms. Doll is teaching the parts of a letter through the morning message.  Ms. Doll will go over the parts of a letter many times through her morning message.  My morning message follows this format as well, so that the students see a connection between what they learn and what the rest does.  You can help at home by writing your notes using this format.  Wouldn't that be great for the students to see that the friendly letter still lives on?

Summer on the Island!

At the end of the school year students were encouraged to continue using Study Island to help them stay on grade level in math and communication arts.  These two students used Study Island and one of them completed the 40 hour requirement.  Both students received coupons for free food at Sonic and at McDonalds.

Summer at the Island students!

Word Work

An important part of learning to read is to learn about words.  Each grade level spends a part of their reading time working and learning about words.  As principal, I want to encourage word work in the classroom.  One way that I do that is by having a root word that I teach over the intercom to the classes.  Then the classes come up with words that follow the meaning of the root and send them up on post it notes.  We display the notes for the week.  Teachers stop by the poster and read the words with their students.

Here is the poster.  It is located by the piano.  This is the first time we have tried this!

Our PTO

We have the world's finest Parent Teacher Organization.  Our PTO is very responsive to our needs.  Recently our PTO got our school playground equipment installed and one piece repaired for us.  We also got a brand new outdoor shed to store our playground equipment in. 


Here are scenes from the first membership meeting of the 2010-2011 school year:

Welcome to the 2010-2011 School Year!

We are so busy getting ready for you at school!  The floors have been waxed, the walls painted, the front doors painted, new furniture built and put in classrooms, and new technology are in the classrooms.

We have new things to share with you...

Mrs. Goans Skills Classroom will be in the Gifted Room with Mrs. Loring
Mrs. (Kelli) Williams will be teaching 5th grade
Mrs. Billings will be teaching 2nd grade
Mrs. Honeywell will be teaching 2nd grade
Ms. Siebeneck will be teaching 4th grade
Mrs. Higgins will be teaching 2nd grade again
Mrs. Gray will be teaching Kindergarten
Mrs. Hall will be teaching Kindergarten
Mrs. Taggart will be teaching PE.

We will be having spirit assemblies once a month (usually the last Friday of the month, but not always!) I am very excited about those and hope that from time to time parents will join us for these.  Our first one is scheduled for Friday, August 27 at 2:15.

Art News!

Our art students, under the direction of Mrs. Lee, did very well at the art show at the Fair, including a People's Choice, Best of Show!

Best of show winner: Taylor Barns!

People's Choice: Taylor Barnes and Jonathan Gadd

Kg: #rd, Madisyn McCord and HM Ellyana Claluse

1st: 1st Gwen Yarnell and HM Emma Walters

2nd: 2nd Tyler Morris and 3rd Zoe Zimmerman

3rd: 3rd Nicholas Althoff, 4th Jonathan Gadd, 5th Scott Staton, 6th Pasqual Escodedo

4th: 2nd Halle Oliver and HM Bobby Bryant

5th: 4th Amber Barnes and HM Dylan Silvey

Art from the Farm: HM Brooklyn VanLoo

Back to School Night!

Back to School Night is always a huge success at our school!  It is an opportunity to meet your teacher and see where your desk is before the first day of school.

Welcome Back Teachers!

Today is the first official day for teachers!  Welcome back to school!

Dedication!

Teachers are all over the building getting rooms ready for students.  There are bulletin boards being made, closets organized, and as you can see here, furniture being painted!  Add to this a tempermental air conditioner and you have super dedicated teachers!

Can you guess...

Where this is located?

Isn't it cute?

New Literacy Closet

The third, fourth and fifth grade teachers have worked very hard (over 100+ woman hours) to create a closet filled with literature sets for the students.  Each set has been "lexiled" (given a number that shows the difficulty of the text), put into a basket or bag, and entered into the library system.  This closet will give our teachers a wide variety of literature to chose from.  There are over 700+ titles stored here.

This literacy closet is a source of pride for our school.  We visited schools last year and were in awe of the amount of titles they had to choose from.  With the help of our Title 1 teachers, this dream became a reality.

I am so proud of the work these teachers did, mostly on their own time, to get this resource ready.

New Playground Shed

Our PTO purchased a new shed to house our playground equipment and perhaps a few PTO items from time to time.  We love our PTO!!

Professional Learning Communities

Professional Learning Communities are coming to the district!  This summer each building sent a team of teachers and their administration to training in Columbia provided by the Heart of Missouri Regional Professional Development Center.  Vicki Robb and Rob Gordon provided the training.

The Elementary Leadership Team consists of Mrs. Ash, Mrs. Butts, Mrs. Goans, Mrs. Hogan, Mrs. Brauner and Mrs. Steffes. 

Professional Learning Communities, otherwise known as PLCs, are a way for teachers to work together to find out what we need to know as a school to best serve our students using data, action research, and each other.  Most of what we do as a Leadership Team is to give our teachers information about setting goals, working toward a common vision, providing information about various teaching strategies and other items as the staff finds out what they need. 

More information will be posted as the school year progresses!