Really? October. . .Already??

A big thank you to all of you for coming out to the Fall Family Picnic on Friday and for being so welcoming to all of our families on Special Friend's Day!  

I can't believe we have already reached October this week!  Hopefully the weather will start cooling off soon, so we can really enjoy this start to our fall!

Week of: September 28th-

October 2nd, 2015

Educator Goal Setting Meetings- All Week

 
Monday -  3rd Grade Assessment Day

Tuesday -  4th Grade Assessment Day
Angie Out Admin. Mtg. (AM) 

Wednesday - 5th Grade Assessment Day

 
Thursday -   Have a Terrific Thursday!

Friday - 1st Texan Town - 7:50am-8:40am
  

Important Reminders and Updates

Texan Town Important!!

If you would all go in and please add your updated descriptor for your club/job for this year to the following Google Doc where you added your ideas.  The ideas look great!  This way we can get applications out to learners, so they can sign up ASAP!  I have talked with Casey Wagner and she is going to help us out with this again this year!  

Thank you Casey!

 Click Here to Add Descriptions of Clubs/Jobs!
 

Non-Negotiables

Don't forget to be working on your 5 non-negotiables as we will be having an activity in our October faculty meeting where you will need them!  

 Cultural Plunge 

I love how so many of you are already talking about ideas for your cultural plunges for this year!  Here are some goals and ideas for the plunge! 

• Any international student/adult organization
• Different race or cultures church service or ceremony
• A rally political, gay rights, etc.
• Organizations where people have disabilities or are elderly (hospitals, nursing homes, etc.) 
• Grocery stores or shopping areas where English is not the language spoken
• Restaurant of different culture, race, location in which you are the minority
  
•  Community sponsored event or festival by an ethnic population
• Interact with homeless (remain in safe location)
• Any other ideas are welcome! 

 Goals for Cultural Plunge: 

1.  to have direct contact with people who are culturally different from

oneself in a real-life setting which represents the target group
2.  to gain insights into circumstances and characteristics of the focal community
3.   to experience what it is to be very different from most of the people one is around
4.  to gain insight into one’s values, biases, and responses  to others

Final Product for Cultural Plunge: 

1.  A short writing piece (no longer than a page) describing your experience and how it affected you and made you reflect as an individual.

2.  A short presentation using some kind of technology to share out your experience (individual or with partner).  Could be something where you use pictures, quotes, expressions, thoughts, etc.  You may be creative in how you share out!  We will not start sharing out until Jan. or Feb.  

Shout Outs!

Shout out to Marly Natherson and Jennifer Martin for helping out with our morning duty!

Shout out to K-5 teachers for getting assessments and progress reports ready to go!

Shout out to everyone for getting their goals entered in for our goal setting this week!

Shout out to Alicia Montgomery for all of her help with the Book Fair this week!

Shout out to Marly Natherson, Kim Becker and Lisa Hansen for helping out to cover a class this week!

 

Engineer of the Week!

And next up. . .our Engineer of the Week:  

Becky Garrett

Resources for Differentiating in Instruction
The first pic is a link!

Final Quotes
I had the chance to watch the movie Wild with Reese Witherspoon late Saturday night. (couldn't go to sleep)  It was a really reflective movie on finding your inner self and challenging yourself in life.  Thought these might go well with this school year as we look into our own lives as well as those lives of others that we interact with each day.
 

Baseball, Football and Fall Festival Fun!

Hope all of you are able to have some fun this weekend!  Lots of good games going with baseball and football! Grapefest is this weekend over in Grapevine as an option for some fun for you as well as Oktoberfest in Addison!  Also, the Plano balloon festival is going on too!

 

Week of: September 21st-25th, 2015

Book Fair All Week

Monday -  Team Leader Meeting -3:15 (C106)

Tuesday - Have a  Terrific Tuesday! 

Wednesday - Progress Reports due for 4th and 5th

 TLC (Teacher Learning Committee) - 3:15 (Library)

 
Thursday -  Have a Tremendous Thursday!  

Friday - Special Friend's Day - All Day

Fall Family Picnic - 5:30-7:30pm

***Educator Goals Due into Eduphoria
  

Important Reminders and Updates

Texan Town

Thank you to those of you who have gone in and filled out the Google Doc for Clubs/Jobs for this year!  If you have not had an opportunity, please make sure you do so!  We will talk about finalizing jobs/clubs this week as a short part of our TLC meeting!

 Click Here to Add Ideas

Remember we need to have as many clubs as possible, so there will be very limited clubs that have two people helping to facilitate.  If you do have an idea for a club with someone, you will have to have to be able to take at least 20-25 kiddos for the club.

Educator Goals

 Remember to please make sure you are thinking about your goals for this year and working on getting those entered into Eduphoria by September 25th.  You should have received a calendar invite from Brett for your meeting!

If you would like to discuss before you enter your goals to brainstorm, please let me or Brett know and we would be happy to meet with you! 

Book Fair 

Please help to remind our kiddos that they need to leave their backpacks neatly stacked in the halls instead of taking anything into the book fair when they shop.  You may want to do a reminder about how the book fair is like shopping in a store and we would never want to damage or take anything that is not our property.   

Special Friend's Day and Fall Family Picnic

Check last week's post for info!

Shout Outs! 

Shout out to Kelly Spears for helping to organize our new kiddos for a lunch bunch!  

Shout out to Alicia Montgomery for all of her help in getting our author visit taken care of and organizing the day!

Shout out to Jeff Minn for coming to present the latest and greatest with Behavior RtI!  

Shout out to Beck Rainbolt for coming to present the latest and greatest with Speech RtI!

Engineer of the Week!

And next up. . .our Engineer of the Week:  

Katy McKinney

Click here to see Katy!

Resources for Teaching Tolerance

Click on the pics to go to the links! 

 

Way to celebrate in the classroom, Acts of Kindness. . .

 Giving compliments to others or creating a way to document the kindness happening each day!

Final Quotes  

 Remember the importance of bringing kindness to the world.  It is easy to get frustrated with day to day happenings, but remember to always try to bring it back to why we do what we do as educators and how we can teach our kids the importance of being kind to others.  

Hopefully Movin' on Into Fall!

Well, the weather is a bit cooler. . .and we are going to hope it will continue cooling off in the next few weeks!  Definitely looking forward to some fall weather!

Week of: September 14th-18th, 2015

Monday - Fire Drill/Lock Down Drill 8:15

New Kiddos Luncheon w/Spears, Applegate and Shelby 

Tuesday -  Fall Pictures - Individual Staff and Kiddos

Principal Meeting-Angie (AM)

Wednesday - Vertical Meeting 3:15-5:00

 
Thursday -  Author Visit (PM)

Friday - Write a Check Ends
  

Important Reminders and Updates

Texan Town

Please click on the following link to start brainstorming ideas you have for a Texan Town Club for this fall session!  

 Click Here to Add Ideas

Remember we need to have as many clubs as possible, so there will be very limited clubs that have two people helping to facilitate.  If you do have an idea for a club with someone, you will have to have to be able to take at least 20-25 kiddos for the club. 

Educator Goals

 Remember to please make sure you are thinking about your goals for this year and working on getting those entered into Eduphoria by September 25th.  We will be starting our educator goal setting meetings the week of September 28th.  

Vertical Meetings

 Remember to please plan on blocking off from 3:15-5:00pm each time we have vertical meetings.  We will not always stay the full amount of time, but this time is for vertical alignment, professional learning and discussions including district information from our campus content specialists.  

We will be having an overarching topic like we did last year as a focus for each meeting.  This week the focus will be RtI and we will be all together in the library as we have Jeff Minn and Becky Rainbolt coming over to help train everyone on collecting data and appropriate interventions for helping with Behavior and Speech/Artic Lab.  

Book Fair

 We have new parents in charge of our Book Fair this year, so you should be getting more info this week for scheduling, etc.  Please be patient as our PTO helps to get them all ready to roll for the 1st Book Fair for the year!  

Special Friend's Day Schedule and 

Fall Family Picnic

4th- 8:30-9:30

Kinder- 9:30-10:30

3rd- 10:30-11:30

1st- 11:30-12:30

2nd- 12:30-1:30

5th- 1:30-2:30

Please remember to work with your room mom's on any activity or special happenings for this day.  Also, you may want any visitors to go by the Book Fair!  

Also, Brett, Kelly and me try to go around on this day to be a special friend for anyone that doesn't have someone on this day.  If you have a friend in your class who you know may need us to swing by, please let us know! 

Please remember that you need to attend our Fall Family Picnic for 45min-1 hour Friday evening.  If for some reason you are unable to attend, please make sure that you have spoken with me about your conflict.  

Progress Reports

I know it seems crazy, but it is already time for progress reports!  4th and 5th grade teachers, make sure you have your grades entered by Wednesday, September 23rd at 8:00am.  If you are a K-3rd grade teacher and have a learner struggling, you may want to touch base with parents so they aren't surprised or be ready to discuss during the parent conference date in October.   

Shout Outs!

Shout out to Kinder, 1st and 2nd grade for their amazing work during their Assessment Planning Days!  You all go so much accomplished and really made great plans for your learners!  

Shout out to Becky Garrett, Laci Garza and Ashley Martin for their STEM planning day!  They worked on getting everything laid out on the calendar for programs, running days and cool engineering challenges!  We appreciate your hard work!

Shout out to Brad Cook and Alicia Montgomery for being rock stars in getting all of our technology and our iPad rollout going strong for our 4th graders!  Their constant dedication to helping our staff and our learners stand out in everything they do! 

Shout out to Kate Seifert, Mary Kennington, and Kelly Burks for helping Brett and I out during the Homecoming Parade!  We appreciate your spirit and for volunteering your time to help in this hometown tradition!  

Shout out to Kelly Spears for dropping the Homecoming group off at Cottonwood Creek for the parade!  

Shout out to Brett Shelby for going above and beyond this afternoon by changing Alicia's tire for her! Shelby to the rescue!!!  

Shout out to Laura Fairchild who has been trained on entirely every district system possible within the last few weeks!  We appreciate your efforts and the constant smile you keep on your face during this crazy learning time!  You are fabulous!

Engineer of the Week!

And next up. . .our Engineer of the Week:  

Kristan Hruby

Click Here to See Kristan!

Final Quotes 

As we are going through this year, please remember that it is far to easy judge others. . .we must learn to sit back and reflect, try to be understanding of others points of views, perceptions and realities.  

Our goal should not only be to support all of our educators, learners and families here at TCE, but also to help all of our learners understand the importance of empathy and how this may help them to become a better, stronger and more compassionate individual in this every changing world.

Happy Labor Day!

Week of: September 7th-11th, 2015

Monday -Have a wonderful Labor Day!  

Tuesday - 2nd Grade Assessment Day - Room A201 

Wednesday - 1st Grade Assessment Day- Room A201

Specials STEM Planning Day - Literacy Library

Faculty Meeting 3:15-5:00pm 

Coppell Homecoming Parade

 
Thursday - Kinder Assessment Day - Room A201

PTO Meeting - 9:15am

Brett AP Meeting - 1:00-3:00pm (Admin bldg.)

Friday - Counselor Meeting - 8:30-11:30am

Coppell Homecoming Game
  

Important Reminders and Updates

Assessment Planning and STEM Days
Brett and I will be meeting with you during these days in order to get you started each day.  We will have an agenda for you on what we will try to cover during these times.  

Please make sure that your sub knows that you are not to be disturbed during these planning days.  If they need something, they need to contact the office.  They should not be calling, texting or trying to locate you to ask questions during the day.  

Also, please make sure your sub folder is up to date with any info needed for learners as well as safety/emergency info and procedures for the day.  There are times when we have a sub who has never been in our building before, so you cannot count on someone knowing the everyday routine.  Everything needs to be spelled out clearly for them. 
 
Faculty, Vertical and TLC Meetings
Just a reminder to please not schedule any doctor or other appointments on Wednesdays during the school year.  These will be our afternoon meeting days and we need to do our best to be in attendance at all times for professional learning and information being covered.

Copiers and Office Needs

Please make sure that everyone is taking care of our copier machines by not slamming doors and using them appropriately when installing paper.  Remember if there is an issue, please check with Laura or Sherri to help resolve.  This also includes the laminator.  I am fine with you laminating your own materials at this time, but if we have issues we will need to go back to having one person use the machine.

We will be placing an order to Office Depot this week, so if you have needs, please make sure you let Laura know as soon as possible!

Lesson/Unit UbD Plans

I will be meeting with team leaders to discuss how we will be housing our plans for this year.  Until then, please make sure that you are keeping up with your lesson plans and that you are utilizing the TCE UbD Template for your planning. 

September Birthdays
Alicia Montgomery - 2nd
Sue Kane - 5th

Shout Outs!

Shout to everyone for an amazing curriculum night!  I appreciate the hard work that went into presenting and your communication with parents!  

Shout out to Alicia Montgomery for filling in for Candace as team leader while she is gone and for taking on learning about KTEX in the morning!  We appreciate your dedication!

Shout out to Marly Natherson for getting our announcement schedule ready to go for this year!   

Shout out to Brett Shelby and the 5th grade teachers for helping to get our kiddos ready to start our TCE Safety Patrol!

Engineer of the Week!

Gonna try a little something different this year with our Engineer of the Week!  We will have short video clips to hear a little about you and then will have some fun questions for you to answer!  Thank you Alicia for being our 1st engineer!

Here's Alicia!

Curriculum Resources
Continue thinking about how we are instilling a growth mindset in ourselves and all of our learners.  As we begin getting ready for beginning of the year goal setting for you and for you kiddos, think about this question. . .

How can one's mindset make a difference in accomplishing  goals and being/feeling successful?

 

Click here to check out article!

Final Quotes

As we are going through this year, make sure you are taking time for yourself and spending time with friends and family as you appreciate all the world has to offer.