NEES News
April 3, 2016
Mission & Vision Statements:
Our vision is to ensure that students SOAR to the highest level of success because "college and career readiness" begins with a strong academic foundation.
Lyle's Loving Logic
"Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great."
-Orison Swett Marden
Congratulations to Ms. Holla!
-Dr. Johnson
"Shout-Outs!"
"A huge shout out to Lisa for organizing and putting the fun run together again this year. It was great!"
-Shelly Jamison
"I would like to give a shout out to Office DeRose and some of our local 911 staff for helping get the Cell Phone Sally safety presentation to visit NEES. The program was informative and useful for our students. The students learned a lot!"
-Kimberly Beals
A huge shout-out to our custodial and cafeteria staff on our recent health inspection.
"We got a 99 schoolwide. The cafeteria had a perfect score of 100."
-Duane Baggett
"I would like to give a BIG thank you for the prompt response from Ms. L. Smith, Ms. Dominique, Ms. Smalling, Ms. Beals, Ms. Moffet, Ms. Finley, Ms. Wilford, and Ms. Bryant. These ladies are required to complete additional weekly paperwork for IEPs. I really appreciate their extra efforts."
-Ryan Rainey
NEES Annual Family Fun Run
TO DO...
1. Welcome Back from Spring Break!! Remember to practice and be consistent with rules and procedures this last nine weeks!
2. Little Caesar's Pizza PTO Fundraiser - Pick up for orders is April 7th! Please put in your newsletter this week.
3. Bowl for Kid's Sake - April 9th! We currently have two teams.
4. Spring Picture parent letters - Any student that has an “Opt Out” for the yearbook will need a permission letter signed by their parent/guardian to take the group picture on April 27th. See Mrs. Kemmer for this.
5. DCT Banquet - Money is due to Kim Flint by April 12th if you plan on attending. Cost is $25. Building winners: DCT - Jason Jackson, Green Apple Award - Anna Hu
10 Day Forecast of Upcoming Events
4/5-7/16 - WIDA testing
4/5/16 - Spelling Bee at 1:30 in the Library
4/6-7/16 - Dominoes Pizza Spirit Nights4/6/16 - Wear your favorite Team clothing
4/6/16 - Boxtops for Education Collection day
4/11/16 - Math Benchmark testing
4/12/16 - ELA Benchmark testing
4/13/16 - Last day After School Program
4/14/16 - RTI Data Chats
4/15/16 - Last day Before School Program
4/18/16 - Progress Reports go home
Ryan Rainey
Cedar Bluff, AL
What’s the most rewarding thing about what you do?
Progress on individual students towards his/her goals.
Why did you choose this profession?
I really like working with children.
What is one thing people might not know about you?
I have a very tender heart and I am very sensitive.
What profession other than your own would you most like to attempt?
Home stager.
What is top on your bucket list?
Visit Europe.
If you could have one super power, what would it be and why?
Flight; so, I could avoid traffic.
Is there anything else you would like us to know about you?
My favorite book is "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss.
Tech Corner
QR Codes
QR Codes
Scan a Little Picture, Take Students Anywhere.
Difficulty Level: Medium
Prerequisites: Teacher needs to download a free QR creator; students need hand-held devices (phones or tablets) with free QR readers. Can work even if class has a limited number of devices.
QR codes — short for quick response codes — are those funny little black-and-white pictures that have popped up everywhere in the last few years. I saw my first one in a real estate magazine about three years ago. The agent in the picture told me to scan it. I had no idea what she was talking about.
I do now. I actually just made my first QR code shortly after. It took about five seconds to make it on my laptop; I used this QR Code Generator. Then I installed the QR Code Reader onto my phone. I held my phone up to my laptop screen, scanned the QR code, and instantly, my phone was sent right to the site I had assigned to the QR code. I was so surprised I jumped up out of my chair.
Technology does that to me sometimes.
This article from Getting Smart describes some really practical educational uses for QR codes. For a thorough list of code creation tools and readers, plus a long list of ideas for using them, take a look at Kathy Shrock’s Guide to QR codes in the classroom.
Suggested Uses:
- Have students create their own QR codes to add multimedia to essays, flippables, or poster assignments.
- Post QR codes around your classroom or school, linked to videos or text instructions for using specific classroom equipment or following classroom procedures.
- Provide feedback or grades to students via QR codes, which allow the feedback to stay private between you and the student.
- Give parents your contact information on back-to-school night with a QR code: By scanning the code, the information goes right into their phones.
Paper-Li
Paper.li
Turn Hand-Picked Content into Your Own Online Newspaper
Difficulty Level: Medium
Prerequisites: It helps to be familiar with Twitter.
Teaching students to curate — to carefully select content and build a collection around a particular theme — engages some of the high-level thinking skills and standards that are hardest to get at: Consider the Analyze and Evaluate levels of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, or the Common Core’s Reading Anchor Standard 7, which asks students to “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.”
Curation digs into all of this. Plus, it’s a real-world skill that takes your students far, far away from multiple-choice land. But it’s a skill most teachers rarely bother with.
A tool like Paper.li is a fun, visually appealing, tech-savvy way to teach curation. It lets the user choose online content around a specific theme, then place it into their own online “newspaper,” displaying individual items as stories. The newspaper then gets its own unique link which can be shared with others.
Suggested Uses:
- For a lesson on research skills, assign students to produce their own Paper.li newspaper on a topic related to your content area.
- If your students are on Twitter, assign a unique hashtag that connects to a whole-class newspaper. Individual students’ tweets (which could be given deadlines and grades) would be selected for each edition.
- Teachers or whole schools could create a school-wide Paper.li on a weekly or monthly basis to share with students and families.
Here’s a quick demonstration of how this tool works: