Cox Principal Brief

There are a few reminders I need to repeat:

• You will be doing MAP scavenger hunts in PLCs in the next few weeks! Please make sure to complete those and be ready to discuss as a team.
• If you need a "Learn Like a Champion today" sign - please come by the office. I have some!
• Don't forget to join Coyote Care and also the scholarship fund if you want to participate in "Work out Wednesdays"

• Please make sure you have emergency sub folders ready and let a neighbor know where it is located (include schedules, rosters, accommodations/health concerns, etc. in addition to plans
• Small groups or learning centers should be happening at this point Angela and I will be excited to see them in your classrooms
• Don't forget to be writing those pawsitive office referrals

Collaborative planning days will be occurring again this year. LeeAnna has already put in for your subs for those various days. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s6HUyHgpAAQKNvKMhjy8586L3kCab68s2vB92NfAOFA/edit?usp=sharing

I love this quote - it is such a good reminder for me! It is the slow, consistent push that grows kids. In reading with small group reading regularly and solid Tier I instruction kids can be expected to grow at least one reading level every 4-6 weeks. (at primary grades). We can't push for a sprint in April and May to get kids where they need to be. It starts now, and I see you starting and working consistently!

Thank you for your support of Apex!

Enjoy your long weekend!

Krista

The Wylie ISD Education Foundation is excited to announce the virtual Teacher Supply Closet is now open. This list was created with the help of over 600 staff who shared their top classroom supply needs. Please use this GOOGLE FORM to submit your classroom supply requests.

Key Details:

• Eligibility: The form is available to any staff member who works directly with students.

• Goal: Our objective is to build a supply closet to reduce the need for teachers and staff to spend their own money on classroom supplies and resources to support their students.

• Select: Choose items in order of priority.

• Ordering Process: Requested items will be shipped directly to each campus. We anticipate items will be delivered around the first week of October.

Last year, the Foundation funded $35,000 in school supplies. This year, we are pleased to increase our budget to $50,000 and look forward to growing this initiative even further.

The respiratory illness (Cold, Flu, and COVID) season has begun. Wylie ISD Health Services is tracking absences related to illness and working with our custodial department to ensure that infection control measures are in place.

Here are some simple ways to fight the respiratory illnesses:

1. Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.

2. Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.

3. Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.

4. Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

5. If you are sick with flu-like illness, the Texas Department of State Health Services recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Students must have a temperature below 100 for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication before returning to school)

6. While sick, limit contact with others as much as possible to keep from infecting them.

7. Visit the CDC’s WEBSITE for more information.

PTA Grandparent breakfast is happening first thing Monday morning. There are already 115 grandparents registered and the registration will remain open. Please arrive early and fill the back parking lot first, I anticipate that there will not be many parking spots open after 7am.

Teachers if you would like to help with the grandparent breakfast from 7:00 - 7:15 in the cafeteria PTA will be giving you a coupon for a free sonic drink. There is nothing fancy that you will need to do during this time, just mingle and monitor the breakfast area and make sure that visitors stay in the cafeteria and do not walk down the halls. We will have extra safety personnel on campus to help with crowd control and/or the parking lot.

Some points to remember are:

These should be the right academic level, so consider the purpose of the station:

New material: supports what you are doing right now in class

Review Material: extra practice on prior concepts

Preview Material : revealing concepts that are coming up

Work completion (not ideal, but occasional)

Independent work : SS or science assignment

Skill Building in lower grades : word work, writing , listening, patterns, letter ID

If you are having management issues during stations you will want to look at :

Rigor level: If stations are too easy or too difficult – students may be off task

Novelty of the stations: have you had the same station for weeks at a time? Y’all – this gets OLD!

Accountability: what is the follow through and accountability for completion what the assigned station task is? What are they being held accountable for? Ex. An exit ticket, a journal response, assignment completion etc.

The best practice is NOT to make yourself a regular station, here is why:

Stations should be a heterogenous mix of students, however, when you pull a small group to your table, it will likely be a homogeneous group of students (that you need to reteach something to or do small group reading or math with)

If students all are in a station, then it will make it easy for you to pull them out for a few minutes from wherever they may be in the classroom.

Also, we need to make sure that we are intentional with technology stations. What are students working on? Do they have a plan?

Below is a great handout from Perdomo and Hoover with examples of station groups.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11a5VB2g8BQv8bw7uHb6mSV_VVwfYoovJ4HAx5LskEmQ/edit?usp=sharing

If you have questions, please reach out to Angela and me or your learning specialists - we are all here to help!

I was in Mrs. Pretus's classroom the other day and she was using a great resource! I wanted to make sure that everyone knew about it.

It is https://storylineonline.net/ - the books are read by actors which make the books fun.

There are teachers guides and different levels to choose from!

From Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Hardin's classes!

Anyone's heart skip a beat when those metal water bottles hit the floor or get spilled on everything?? Here is a great idea for you!

Supply Request Form

I would love to encourage you to try writing a grant if there are specific things that you want for your students. With funding decreasing next year, it will be important to try to get the "Big" stuff with other funds. I PROMISE it is not difficult to write a grant. Some of our peeps around here have been very successful in doing this! (Green, Palmer, Rogers, Segrest, 1st grade) and I am sure they would be happy to help, and I would be happy to also! Please discuss with your partner, teammates, etc Remember that this doesn't just have to be for "Stuff" - experiences can be great too . Ex. funding to bring in an author or hands on science etc.

The deadline is 9/27 to submit those!

The Wylie ISD Education Foundation’s grants for teachers’ program is open and accepting applications through Sept. 30 until 10 p.m. We have increased funding for grants and anticipate awarding $175,000 this school year. Teachers and staff may apply for up to $1,000 for a classroom grant, up to $3,000 for a team or campus grant and up to $5,000 for a district grant impacting multiple campuses.

Here is the LINK to the Foundation’s website with additional information on how to apply, as well as examples of previously funded grants.

Here is the LINK to the grant application.

Foundation staff is here to help answer your questions or brainstorm ideas. Feel free to call ext. 3025 or email our department Heather.Marra@wisdfoundation.org or Windi.Fuller@wisdfoundation.org for more information.

Here is a double-dose of PowerSchool tips for this week. The AMAZING folks in the Wylie ISD Tech department added all the different PowerSchool links to the WISD Links folder! You will see the RED 1, 2, 3 numbers in the screenshot below. Also, if you still need to set up your email notifications for Perform, the YELLOW 1, 2, 3 numbers in the SCREENSHOT will help you get that done. Questions? Contact Lee Hattaway.

September

4 - Joanna Alvarado

4 - Lauren Wright

12 - Bobbie Jo Roberts

15 - Jane Preston

19 - Leyla Dawoudi

30 - Denise Mendoza

Every Monday is PLC Day

Every Thursday is Think College Thursday

Every Friday is Cox Spirit Day

Please make sure to honor our professional time by protecting staff meeting time and PLC time. Please do not schedule other appointments during these times.

Staff Meetings are always on the second Wednesday of the month and PLCs are on Monday unless otherwise noted.

September

9 - PTA Grandparent Breakfast

10 - Kind Coyote Club (3rd Grade Only)

10 - Kinder Yellow Day

11 - Wylie Way Day

11 - Kona Ice Day

11 - Dress Like you did in High School

11 - Assembly with Miss Texas

11 - Team Leader Meeting

15 - UIL Tryouts (more info. coming)

17 - Cox PTA Family Movie Night - 5:30

18 - Sped. PLC in PLC Room

20 - Professional Goals Submitted in Powerschool

21 - PTA Back the Future 4- 7 in Old City Park

24 - Kindergarten wear "Blue" Day

25 - Hat Creek Spirit Night (PTA)

25 - Guiding Coalition Meeting (PLC and Team Leaders - PLC Room)

27 - Teacher Grants Due

27 - SLO Goals Due

27 - Western Day

30 - Professional Development Day - We will have parent conferences that day - No Students

30 - Staff Picture 8:30 - Wear Convocation Shirt

Lunch: 1st and 2nd grade students are taking a little longer to go through the lunch line than other grades. It seems that many of them do not remember their lunch number. Please take a moment to have them practice it. Here is a picture of a free lunch number practice keyboard from TPT. It would also be a good idea to send it home with your students to let them practice with their parents.

Back Gate: Please remember to close and lock with back gate with our master lock and chain. This is really important for the safety of some of our special needs students.

The district coordinator of testing created some handy click sheet for assigning district assessments or CFA's to students. As well as directions for how students take a test on the Performance Matters site.

How to Assign a Test - Teacher Directions

How to Take a Test - Student Directions

How to Assign Accommodations (accommodations are still loading in PM... there might be instances where you need to assign the proper accommodations)

From Krista W. :

Preston, Ellis, Buenger, Ramirez, and Bell : We have a student that has some services, but needs some extra support and this team has stepped in and made sure that he is getting EXTRA to help him! I appreciate them!

The first team to turn in ALL dues for Coyote Care was...

PACK team! I will deliver your Hat Creek $5 coupon! Enjoy!

• Safe ideas for rewards involving food-- use of NUT-FREE candy; use of candy made in a NUT-FREE facility; when using hard candy, use of candy with a hole in the center or small candy.
• Modes of communication for emergencies: district radio (state your name, type of emergency, and your location), class phone to clinic, or class phone to office. In the event of no response, then runner to clinic, or runner to office is also appropriate.
• Please continue to review hand hygiene with your class and remind students to bring a water bottle daily.
• Health screen requests- please indicate if the screen is for RTI or other purpose.

We are excited that circles are back into full swing. Coming back is the staff that do not have a homeroom class will be joining a "homeroom class." 3rd Grade will be having their circles Fridays due to Coyote Time - so if you are joining a 3rd grade class come Friday. Any other adjustments that you need to make please communicate with your circle partner.

Wylie ISD has been working towards standardizing the field trip process across the district to increase safety and efficiency. All field trips will need to be submitted through the FIELD TRIP REQUEST LINK at least 14 days prior to the trip. To submit a field trip request, you will need to have a list of students and their ID numbers. Here is a SAMPLE SPREADSHEET.

All Fountas and Pinnell Resources Under 1 LOGIN! Yeah!

https://resources.fountasandpinnell.com/login

User login is: wylieisd@heinemann.com

PW is: welcome (all lower case)

This login does not give access to the community. To access the community, you must create your own login.

https://live.myvrspot.com/iframe?v=fNTlhZGI5ZDBhOTYzNDMwM2UwYWVlMmViZDBiMzAwOGQ

With all that is going on in society right now, there are many hot topics. Also, the fact that it is an election year adds to the discussion.

Please remember that we as educators cannot use our influence to persuade. Some of you do that citizenship and elections in your curriculum. Please be sure to stick to just the facts. You may be asked, "Mrs. Wilson, who are you voting for?"

A good response might be, "I am so glad that you are paying attention to the elections, it is really interesting. I don't want to share who I am voting for because that is a personal choice, but you should discuss it with your parents."

or if you are in a hurry you might say, "I haven't decided yet, but I am so glad that you are interested in the election"

Focus on:

Why citizens vote

What the election process looks like

Electoral College, etc.

vocabulary regarding elections

Also, be careful on Copyright.

Remember: We want to stay in the Green Zone. If you aren't sure about something please check with your team, Angela, or me.

GUIDE TO HELP TEACHERS PREPARE for parent conferences.

Staff Lists (birthdays, Enneagram, etc)

Cox Staff Handbook

Story Works Codes

Cox Essentials Documents on Google Drive

Google Classroom Cheat Sheet

Educational Websites

Literacy Handbook

Assessment and Accountability Department

Mapping Your Future Monday

Fountas and Pinnell Resources

- Log on with my email and coxcoyotes

Special Education Google Site