Every single week I visit classrooms, and every single time I walk into a classroom, our students are actively reading. It is a beautiful thing to see how dedicated our staff and students are to their reading growth. We continue to see positive trends in reading from every grade level, and we know it is because our students are committed to their own development! Take a look below for some resources on how to continue the learning even at home!

How can parents help their child grow in reading?

• Read with your child every night before bedtime
• Let your child choose books that interest them - choice is very important to make sure that children actually want to read
• Ask your child's teacher what they are reading in class and how you can continue the learning at home
• Practice sight words at home with your child - these are words students cannot sound out, they just need to know them by sight and should be able to recognize them without working through the word (click here for a list of sight words by grade level)
• Click here for tips from the NWEA on what parents can do at home to improve reading and writing
• Click here for A Parents' Guide to Reading and Writing at Home
• Click here for 10 Ways Parents Can Support Reading at Home
• Visit the public library frequently to get new books into your child's hands (click here to see how close the Central Public Library is to Patrick Henry and see the map below - it's only a 17 minute walk!)

This week, Valentine's Day brought a pink treat for students to try - strawberry milk! Ms. Ivory's class was extremely excited about the new product, and it also came with fresh strawberries on their trays! It was awesome to see our students excited about healthy foods and trying new things in their lunches.

We love receiving news of new additions to our students' families! This week, we were able to celebrate with Kymberley and Olivia on their new baby brother, Noah Alexsander. Congratulations to the whole family, and welcome to the world, Baby Noah!

Our students are hard at work preparing for the February 25th Black History Month Talent Show and we cannot WAIT to see what they have come up with! Please join us on Microsoft Teams at 1:00pm for our school show that will allow every class 10 minutes to show off their talents and the knowledge they have learned through research over the past several months.

In PE this week, the jumprope unit went to an all new level as students paired up and had to learn how to coordinate jumping rope together! Students were captured during their first attempt already finding success!

In Art this week, fifth graders got to experience the magic of clay! Ms. Godfrey's lesson centered on "scoring" the clay to allow students the ability to build a structure that will stay up and harden into a statue that will last. Ms. Butler's students were engaged in their hands-on learning and had fun personalizing their projects!

Ms. Jami sent me one of her second graders to brag about his incredible growth in math this week on the Star Assessment! Dallas has been working so hard to get here every day and to apply himself every minute of the day. His hard work really paid off when he took his latest Star assessment and showed such an incredible amount of growth!

Gateway to the Great Outdoors is a non-profit organization based in St. Louis that seeks to expose all students to the magic of the outdoor experience. GGO has partnered with us for two years, and this week they got to visit us in-person! In addition to outdoors experiences, this week's session included taste tests!