Cat Tracks
Spring Shadows Elementary Wildcats Staff Newsletter
February 18-24, 2019
TEAM WILDCATS UNSTOPPABLE
Congratulations Ms. Urrutia- Teacher of the Year!
Mobile Lab
Friendship Day
Friendship Day
Our Vision
Our Mission
Core Beliefs
- Each student has unique intellectual, emotional, social, and physical qualities.
- We embrace a child’s individual values, interests, and personalities.
- Parents are confident in their child’s social and intellectual educational growth.
- Educators lead their craft by preparing learners in our fast changing world
Living our Core Beliefs!
We run as ONE!
2nd Grade Presenters!
2nd Grade Buddy Readers
2nd Grade Buddy Readers
Principal's Message
Dust off your boots and your cowboy hats, we are heading into rodeo season here at Spring Shadows! We have a special schedule of activities for this Friday. Make sure you see and have prepared an activity for your parents to enjoy while they are in your classroom during "open house" time. Remember, this day is a memorable day for kids and parents! Let's make sure to demonstrate that welcoming spirit.
Also, I want to celebrate our wonderful 4th and 5th grade teachers for hustling with our students to continue to make gains. They took the practice STAAR last week and as you saw in my previous email, our students have made some big gains!
Gentle reminder, this is the time to tighten our student feedback.
Giving explicit feedback during small group instruction and independent practice is essential.
In Get Better Faster by Brambrick-Santoyo, it is advised that you can take a quick action step to make this more powerful to catch all students. Knowing how pressed you all are for time, this action step will be much quicker and simpler system for giving student feedback on the spot. This easy solution is simply to assign symbols to the most important feedback you can give students.
Action Step: Pen in hand (any color except red), mark up student work as you circulate or work directly with students in small group.
- Use a coding system to affirm correct answers.
- Cue students to revise answers, using minimal verbal intervention. (Name the error, ask them to fix it, tell them you'll follow up.)
Annotating guided or independent practice allows you to provide equally manageable feedback for content. Giving feedback on literacy analysis is one of the harder things to do briefly, Brambrick-Santoyo offers an example of a simple system to use to annotate student writing in literacy:
RACCE: Restate answer, Answer question with a complete inference, Cite evidence, Give Context for that evidence, Explain thee new insight and it's relevance to your argument.
I challenge you to create a feedback code: simple cues you can use to write on student work to spur student self-correction this coming month.
We will be visiting classrooms to see evidence of feedback in action!
With love, respect, and admiration,
Rachel Martinez
Calendar
Monday, February 18, 2019
- Flex Day
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
3rd Grade Extended Planning
Group 2
- 5th Grade Math Training All Day
- 3:00-4:00 Afterschool
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
4th Grade Extended Planning
Group 3
- 2:45 - 4:00 Faculty PLC: TELPAS Calibration
Thursday, February 21, 2019
PLC Thursday
Group 4
- 3:00-4:00 Afterschool
Friday, February 22, 2019
- Spiral Day
- Go Texan Day
Saturday, February 23, 2019
- Tutoring 8-11 a.m.- Building open
Library News
Reading minutes for Rockets Read Nation Challenge are needed! I will continue to get them until Wednesday. Teachers - if your children have been reading, print out the calendar for them and have them to fill in then give it to me! PLEASE put the teacher name on your student calendars. I am trying to figure which class students are from as I have pile without teacher names.
Ms Moreno, Ms Alvarez & Ms. Urrutia have most of their class minutes in for the contest - each have over 10,000 minutes. Congrats!! Hopefully most classes will be like theirs so we can win!!
It is a process to record minutes as I am looking at student's Reading Rewards minutes and comparing that to the calendar minutes I have received. I want to be sure I am not double counting minutes... especially if we win and they want to see records.
I will have a sub Thursday & Friday and Friday's schedule is being transferred to other days so my sub can help with Go Texan Day!
Thanks again for your support!
Ann : )
Shout Outs
- Shout out to the 4th and 5th grade teams for administering the PSTAARs!
- Welcome Mr. Rodrick, our new crossing guard!
- Shout out to small group administrators for working with kids during testing!
- Hooray for 4th bilingual teachers for giving back to back testing last week.
- Many thanks to front office for welcoming and coordinating an area for parents during conferences.
- Yeehaw!! Thank you Ms. Rizk for displaying student art work in the front office!
- Thank you Ms. Luna for supporting your team and taking over conferences!
- Great job 2nd grade for conducting interviews last week!
- Olga rocks for creating schedules and calling subs!
- Wow-5th grade you planned with Cathy & Penny the day after your PSTAAR testing- fast turn around! Great job!
- Look at 4th with their flexible planning for reading!
4th Bilingual Write about Nutrition
4th Flexible Planning!
4th Flexible Planning!
Remember to Sign Up for Sunshine and PTA!
Join Sunshine & PTA for $30 (certified staff) & $25 (non-certified staff). You can pay cash or check to Mrs. Berryman or Mrs. Gentry. Checks can be made out to Spring Shadows Elementary.
We are trying to get 100% participation in Sunshine & PTA!
When you join, you get an SSE Unstoppable T-Shirt, 5 Jeans Passes, 4 Late Arrival Passes, and 4 Leave Early Passes.
Please review the PDF attachment to see our SSE Sunshine Bylaws that the team revised and agreed upon at our last meeting. This will give you more information about Sunshine and what your dues are used for.
Sunshine SEMESTER JEANS PASS for $30
The one caveat is that your jeans are to be worn with a nice shirt and shoes (not a t-shirt).
See Mrs. Berryman or Mrs. Gentry to pay for your pass!
Spring Shadows Elementary
Email: rachel.martinez@springbranchisd.com
Website: https://cms.springbranchisd.com/sse2/
Location: 9725 Kempwood Drive, Houston, TX, United States
Phone: (713) 251-7100
Twitter: @twitter_rachelmartinez4