Sumner Elementary
"Learning takes your places!"
February 2020 English Edition
Message from the Principal
It is so hard to believe we are already halfway through the 2019-20 school year! I am so proud of the hard work our teachers and staff have put in to prepare your student for success.
iStation Student Summary Reports for all K-3 students will be coming home with students, please check their book bags.. As you know, iStation is a new statewide platform for measuring student's literacy skills. Below, I am linking a video that will help you understand this report better. Please reach out to your child's teacher with specific questions about your child's progress and they will be happy to help!
Thank you for sending in winter weather items for our Kindness with King challenge!
We look forward to another great month with students!
Parent Conferences
If you want to meet with your child's teacher, please call the front office or email your child's teacher directly to schedule an appointment. Teachers cannot be interrupted during the instructional day as this disrupts teaching and learning. Please do not walk students to class in the morning to speak with teachers unless you have an appointment. If your child is arriving to school late, please come inside the main office and sign them in. Students are unable to sign themselves in.
Morning Carrider Procedures
As a reminder, the morning car rider line ends promptly at 7:40 am. At this time, students are considered tardy and you will need to park and sign your child in. Please help us keep all our students safe by not dropping your child off in the parking lot. This is becoming a major safety concern, as we have a lot of traffic in the parking lot in the morning. Dropping your child off in the parking lot is dangerous and it’s unsafe. Staff are not available to supervise students being dropped off in the parking lot. Please utilize the car line or park your vehicle and bring your child inside the building when they are tardy. Please help us keep our students safe by following our parking lot procedures. The cones are placed to separate entering and exiting and they create one lane one each side for entering and exiting. Please do not try to pass the cars that are in line and please do not back down the exit side to park in a space. This is dangerous and unsafe for students and staff.
Parents, a big thank you for supporting our drop off and pick up procedures in the morning and afternoon. This has been a real team effort!
Afternoon Transportation Changes
Parents, dismissal is one of the most important moments of our day. We work hard to ensure that our students get to where they need to be.
As a reminder, for safety reasons, we cannot a change in last minute changes to bus or car rider transportation. Once students have boarded the bus or entered the car rider pick up location, we cannot make changes to their transportation. Please call the main office no later than 1pm to make transportation changes for the day.
Early Dismissal
As a reminder, the office requires seeing identification with early checkouts so we can confirm that your child is going home only with people you've identified. Please be prepared to present your identification to the front office when checking students our early or visiting classrooms. Thank you for your help in making this happen!
Classroom Visits
To ensure the safety and security of our students and staff and the orderly operation of our school, all visitors during the school day are required to follow the check in at the main office and sign in on the computer. Please do not go directly to the classroom. As a GCS policy, visitors will not be allowed to distract the teacher from instruction or interrupt the instructional process. Please communicate with your child’s teacher at least 24 hours in advance if you are planning on visiting.
Read to Soar Stories
Parents, every Monday night we post a new book read aloud by a Sumner Seahawk. Please encourage your child to listen and respond to the discussion prompt at the end of the story. Students who participate are entered to win a book. Research indicates that students who were given a book as a reward were more motivated to engage in subsequent reading than other students. At Sumner, we read to soar!
Please Read: Important Announcements
Here are a few important school announcements:
· Feb 3-7
National School Counseling Week
· Feb 5
World Read Aloud Day
5th Graders attend the Opera
· Feb 6
100th Day of School!
· Feb 7
Last day for canned food drive
· Feb 11
Love the Bus Week - Bus Driver Appreciation (Feb 10-Feb 14)
· Feb 14
Happy Valentine's Day!
· WIDA ACCESS assessment testing window (for English proficiency) Monday, 1/27/20 to Friday, 3/6/20
· Our character education word of the month is Courage. Courage looks like doing the right thing even when it's difficult...
· Parents, the students are excited, and we need your support! In an effort to increase student attendance here at Sumner Elementary, we’ve challenged ALL students to “Be here to get there” by attending school each day. The class with 100% daily attendance is recognized each day during afternoon announcements and at the end of each week, the class that has 100% daily attendance will receive a blue ribbon placed outside their door. The class that has 100% daily attendance will earn the rights to display the monthly attendance trophy in their room until a new winner is announced the next month. We had 3 class earn 100% perfect attendance last week.
· Check out our Facebook page for a new Read to Soar story and discussion question each Monday.
Looking Ahead
Please check out our monthly student newsletter on our school website under the "Parent" link for a calendar of these important dates, additional announcements. You can find all school news located on our school calendar. Please review this information each week to stay updated on all the activities at Sumner!
Attendance
We need all students to "be here to get there" because learning takes you places! Good school attendance often starts with smaller steps, such as arriving and leaving on time. The school day begins at 7:40 a.m. and ends at 2:25 p.m. One of the most valuable life skills a student can learn is taking the responsibility of arriving and eding at school every day on time. This skill can easily be accomplished and will transfer as an asset for the future. Please help support your children in learning habits that will help them be successful at school and throughout life. At Sumner, important learning opportunities for our students occur all throughout the instructional day.
Chronic absence is issing 10% or 18 days of the school year. These 18 days also include when students are late to school or leave early and can have dramatic results on the future education of a student. These students are missing valuable instructional time. This not affects teaching and learning for your child but the entire class. We hope to see everyone at school all day, every day!
Positive Behavior Support
We review our positive behavior expectations and character attributes everyday with students. Please review our SOAR acronym with your child at home to help support our program. Our character education word of the month is respect. Respect means:
Caring for ourselves, community, family and school
Sumner Seahawks SOAR! They:
Show a positive attitude.
Own it and take responsibility.
Always do their best.
Respect themselves and others.
Character Counts!
As a national school of character, we work to implement and embed into our school culture an intentional focus on teaching students the importance of having and maintaining a positive character. Teaching character traits are important to teaching the "whole" child at Sumner. Every adult on campus regularly reinforces and models our character motto of “by SOARING together we can be the best we can be!”
One way we teach character traits is through our “character attribute of the month” morning announcements. During morning announcements, the school principal, staff and students in all grades K-5, engage in what each character “trait looks like, sounds like, acts like and feels like” for the month, every day. Students are taught what it means to have respect, responsibility, kindness, courage, gratitude, integrity, self-discipline, and perseverance.
Throughout the day students are provided with opportunities to engage in meaningful reflective actions, challenging academic curriculum, establishing a respect for all diversity and developing their character. This creates a caring community, grows student character and ensures for a healthy transition into our global world.
Each month this year, we will recognize two students per class at our monthly awards breakfast for demonstrating these traits at school. Help us to congratulate our Character Award recipients! We invite and encourage our families and the community to participate in these celebrations as we are all partners in this initiative. Help us encourage our students to have great character today and every day! By SOARING together, we can be the best we can be!
Curriculum Corner
Counselor’s Corner
All of Sumner’s classes are seen twice monthly for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lessons with our school counselors. To date, we have learned about social isolation and how to help (Start With Hello) as well as bullying and the importance of being an upstander. In December and January we will be discussing the importance of kindness, culminating in nationally celebrated Random Acts of Kindness week starting February 11th.
Guilford Parent Academy News
To learn more about GPA, sign up monthly updates or register for free classes, click here, email parentacademy@gcsnc.com or call 336-279-4924.
Dr. Kimberly Jones Goods
Principal
Sumner Elementary
By SOARING together we can be the best we can be!
Connect with us!
Website: https://www.gcsnc.com/Sumner_Elementary
Location: 1915 Harris Drive, Greensboro, NC, USA
Phone: 336-316-5888
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sumner-Elementary-470691953730692/
Twitter: @sumnerseahawks