Principal's Corner #4
Committee Schedule for this month.... a delayed addition.
As I said at the staff meeting, committees will meet on a monthly rotation. Committees will begin this month. Here is the schedule, and I will update this in the Principal’s Corner so you have it all in one place.
Sept. 5: A Committee Time
PBIS, Innovation Space
PST, Conference Room
Sept. 12: B Committee Time
Safety, Innovation Space
Guiding Coalition, Conference Room
Sept. 19: PAC Committee Time, Conference Room
Sept. 26: Staff Meeting, Innovation Space
Our first Cottonwood Creek Cougar Chronicle (CCCC)
Please take a moment to view it so you know what is being shared with our families. Thank you.
From the desk of Ashley Gray
In the event of a delayed dismissal due to the weather please follow the guidelines below:
- Keep your students in your classroom.
- Parents will be sent to you to sign out their students. Please use the sign out sheet given to you.
- Listen for the announcements. We will tell you when to bring your remaining children to the office. At this point, you will bring these kids to the gym and we will dismiss them from there.
- If you have walkers/ bike riders we will have them stay until we decide it’s safe for them to leave or their parents tell them a different way to get home.
If you are without a class, please come to the office to assist.
Duty Reminder
If you have a duty before or after school, please make sure you are there. If you are absent, please have your sub do the duty, or find coverage by another staff member. The updated duty schedule is available in Google Drive, and you can access it using this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nuJVYaG2VcllfszVL7Eo8aN446DUp2U9uVSsmr5goZw
Science Standards
Over the summer CDE approved the newly revised Colorado State Standards, and the state has adapted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These standards are 3 Dimensional which means they focus heavily on integrating Disciplinary Core Ideas/content (DCIs), Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs). CCSD is in the beginning stages of our science transition plan to ensure Cherry Creek Schools meets or exceeds these newly revised standards by school year 2020-2021. As part of this process, CCSD will be putting together a committee with members from across the district support of this transition plan. In the meantime, please continue to teach science with the guidance of our current prioritized standards, and continue to use FOSS as our science resource.
A Message for the Cottonwood Cares Service Committee
Dear Cottonwood Creek Teachers and Staff,
Hello and happy new school year from Mimi Skeehan and Jennie Preece, the Cottonwood Cares service committee leaders. We first want to thank you for all your support last year! It was such a privilege to see the kids so engaged and excited and enjoying playing a role in their communities. So thank you for allowing us the opportunity to carry on the wonderful tradition of service and caring at our school!
We hoped we succeeded in our goal to connect the service to grade-level curriculum and make the service more meaningful to students. From holiday "Helping Hands" to pet-food drives, our community has reached out in beautiful ways.
We also hope we kept our promise to you in not adding additional stress to your plates. Keeping this in mind again for this year, we would like to limit the community service initiatives for this year. Last year we had some amazing grade-level initiatives—Kindies understanding "needs" and "wants" by helping foster children; 2nd graders gathering "treats for troops" and writing cards to veterans, for example. We also know that as great as these projects were, it also can add more stress and chaos to an already busy calendar.
After talking with Katie Johnson and aligning our goals of 1) meaningful student-driven service that connects to curriculum AND 2) to simplify with "less-is-more," we want to propose to teachers and staff a new plan for this year's service learning:
FALL SERVICE (Hosted by 1,3,5 grades) +
HOLIDAY HELPING HANDS (committee led)+
SPRING SERVICE (Hosted by K, 2, 4 grades)=
MEANINGFUL, AWESOME SERVICE THAT DOESN'T PUSH ANYONE OVER THE EDGE!
We would do these projects in lieu of any other projects that typically happen, and as before, you can be as much or as little involved as you wish. The plan would be to get student and teacher input on what area of service would most interest them...then we, as the committee, would help promote, execute, and organize with the students (either during school or recess or whenever is preferred.)
In order to help make this meaningful and student-driven, we'd like to gauge some feedback from teachers and then ultimately survey the students to see what they want to do. Katie, Ashley and our team would love for you as teachers and staff to fill out the following google poll so we can figure out timing, interests, etc.
Important Dates
- Tuesday, September 4: Professional Learning Teams begin to meet as scheduled
- Wednesday, September 5: Picture Day
- Friday, September 7: Run4Fund$ Run - Wear your Run4Fund$ T-Shirt
- Tuesday, September 11: School Board Meeting, 7:00 Institute of Science and Technology
- Wednesday, September 12: Staff Meeting
- Friday, September 14: Broncos Home Game 9/16 - Wear your blue and orange, or not...the choice is yours :)
- Tuesday, September 18: Katie and Ashley out all day, ADCO
- Friday, September 21: School Spirit Day - Wear your green and blue
- Friday, September 21: Katie and Ashley out all day, EPC
- Wednesday, September 26: Staff Meeting
- Friday, September 28: School Spirit Day - Wear your green and blue