This fall, St. Louis Public Schools adopted a new English Language Arts curriculum for elementary grade levels. Our teachers have been hard at work bringing in new materials, new resources, and new books, and preparing for their lesson plans with our students. Adopting a curriculum takes an incredible amount of planning and preparation, but the results are already worth it! Watching our students take on their academic challenges shows us that the curriculum is working and our teachers are putting in time and effort that gets results!

In our Art, Music, and PE classes, students have the opportunity to win raffle tickets for meeting the high expectations of the classroom. They have to really be a S.T.A.R. in order to earn a ticket in each class! Each Related Arts teacher has expectations for their content area. For example, in music S stands for "Sing and perform your best," T stands for "Take care of our instruments and materials," A stands for "Actively listen and participate," and R stands for "Respect yourself and others." When students meet those expectations, they receive their STAR ticket and it goes into the bucket. At the end of the week, Dr. Rogers pulls two raffle tickets from the PE, Art, and Music bucket of names. Students are announced over the intercom so the whole school can cheer for them, and then they get to come to the office to take a dive in the treasure box of prizes! Last week's winners are pictured below with their prize choices. Congratulations to all six of our students, and thank you for doing an amazing job in your Related Arts classes!

Our goal is to give students a consistent set of expectations throughout all of Patrick Henry so they always know how to stay safe, comfortable, and focused on learning. Mrs. Ralphs, Ms. Gonzalez, and Ms. Godfrey have done a fantastic job as our newest staff members, and they are working hard to get our students moving and expressing themselves creatively!

This week, our very own Patrick Henry puppy came to visit the students who saved her from a life on the streets. Spooky is a small pitbull puppy who was found by Ms. Jami's second grade class while they were out at recess last week. You can read all about how they found her by clicking here. After Spooky settled into Dr. Rogers' house with Dr. Rogers, Mr. Rob, and Hank, she was ready to come back to Patrick Henry to visit her friends!

On her way out for the day, Spooky got to see Ms. Ivory's class out on the playground. It was a huge compliment to Spooky that the students immediately stopped playing on the playground in order to hang out with her. She wiggled and wriggled with happiness being back on the very spot where she was originally found by our students. What a lucky puppy!