Wilson's Weekly

Core Beliefs

We believe all students can learn:

• Learning must have a clear purpose.
• All learners deserve a safe, respectful, and structured environment.
• Learners grow with mutual support, responsibility, and compassion.
• All learners have the ability to grow.

Vision
Shaping the future one child at a time

Mission

Blytheville Primary School fosters a safe and positive learning community. We educate students to be innovative thinkers today and productive leaders of tomorrow.

Behavior Expectations

We are...

• responsible.
• respectful.
• safe.
• positive.
• motivated.
  

Strategic Plan

Our school plan can be found here.

NOTE:
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my home base will be my primary office. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my home base will my kindergarten office.

This WEEK

• Monday -
  
• Tuesday - ADE Meeting (Wilson, Hepler out for afternoon)
• Wednesday - BLI (Wilson out until 1:30); Building Leadership Team Meeting 2:30
  
• Thursday -
  
• Friday - Homecoming Pep Rally 8:30 am (all grades)
  

Next WEEK

• Monday - Picture Day
  
• Tuesday - Wilson out (master principal institute); Staff Meeting (online)
  
• Wednesday - Wilson out (master principal institute); Building Leadership
  
• Thursday - Wilson out (master principal institute)
• Friday - Wilson out (master principal institute); First Quarter Ends
  

Upcoming Events

The school calendar can be found HERE.

We are celebrating homecoming this week. Teachers you may wear blue jeans each day IF you wear the corresponding color shirt for each day of the week.

1. CONGRATULATIONS to Mrs. Watson, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Hartgen!!! They collected the most food for our food drive. Each class will receive a 30 minute recess monitored by myself while the teacher uses that time for extra prep.

2. PBIS Behavior Matrix Focus: We are respectful (classroom)

• Monday - Reteach lesson plan and display poster from here.
  
• Tuesday - Focus on: Listen to others
  
• Wednesday - Focus on: Raise your hand
• Thursday - Focus on: Respect personal space
• Friday - Choose an activity from here to complete with your class.
  

3. FanTABulous Contest - Our goal is to save more than last year's total of 168 pounds. Turn your tabs into Mrs. Moriarty with your class name. The class in each grade level with the most tabs wins a prize.

• Kindergarten - Newsom (2 lbs.)
• 1st grade - There is a tight battle for first place...Jones and Jaques are going back and forth but Jones is ahead by 4 oz.
• 2nd grade - Bennett's class jumped past Murphy's by 10 oz.
  
• Special - Galbratih (13 oz.)
• TOTAL so far = 34 lbs. 14 oz.
  

4. Box Tops for Education - We are collecting box tops to help pay for our PBIS store. Please turn them into Ms. Newsom in kindergarten or put them in the box in the office.

5. Please take a minute to read over the procedures for entering attendance. The way attendance is entered at our K-5 schools allows you to enter attendance one time in the morning through the AM Primary Homeroom link in TAC. Once entered, the attendance code is automatically carried over into both the AM and PM attendance fields. In order to set this up, you will need to click the M for Multiple Periods within the attendance screen for your AM Primary Homeroom. Instructions for doing this are HERE. Once you save your attendance entries for the AM Primary Homeroom, you will see two check boxes on your My Classes screen for AM Primary Homeroom attendance and PM Primary Homeroom attendance.

Blytheville Primary School will participate in Main Street Blytheville's Trunk or Treat on October 31 from 4-6 pm on Main Street. We will be placed in a TBD place in front of one of the empty store fronts. We will decorate a couple of tables and hand out candy to the kids. The leadership team is organizing the event and we are looking for some volunteers. Michelle and Diane will get the table set up because it has to be ready by 3:45 pm. This will be a great way for us to connect with the community and see our kids in a different environment.

Volunteers:

• Setup: Hepler, Jenkins, Fox
  
• 4-5: Sawyer, Newsom, M. Rogers, Hopkins, Aldridge, Wilson, Garris, Bennett
  
• 5-6: Moriarty, McDowell, Wright, Sparks, Davis, Clark, Billups, Wilson, Garris, Bennett, Shepard
  

We are asking that each staff member donate a bag of candy for this event. For each staff member that brings a medium to large size bag of candy, a jeans pass will be given (up to two jeans passes). Candy must be individually wrapped. Please drop candy off in the offices with secretaries. They will have a sheet to keep track of who donates candy, so I know who to give jeans passes to after the event.

Thanks for your help in connecting with our community!

How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills

Learn to read with this New York Times-bestselling picture book, starring an irresistible dog named Rocket and his teacher, a little yellow bird. Follow along as Rocket masters the alphabet, sounds out words, and finally . . . learns to read all on his own!

With a story that makes reading fun—and will even help listeners learn to read—this book is ideal for kindergarten classrooms and story hour or as a gift for that beginning reader. Fresh, charming art by Tad Hills, the New York Times bestselling author/illustrator of Duck & Goose, will make this a favorite.

Resources

1. Variety of activities
2. Activities for each subject plus discussion questions for before/during/after
3. Discussion questions
   

Questioning is an important skill emerging readers need to grasp as they make their way to proficient readers. Miss DeCarbo has an excellent breakdown of why questioning is important and gives you some concrete ways to help your students begin to understand this reading strategy.

"Questioning is an important skill in the real world. It also holds high importance to readers: Questioning helps deepen our understanding. Asking questions helps us clarify our own thinking and the text. It sets up a dialogue between the reader and the author. A reader who asks questions about the text is engaged. Questioning turns a passive reader into an active reader. As teachers, our own question for our comprehension lesson plans is simple, yet daunting. 'How do I teach the skill of questioning to my primary readers in an engaging manner that brings this reading strategy to life for them?'"

Read this post for different ways to help your readers. If you would like the product mentioned in the post, send me an email and I will get it for you.

"The Story of Mark Eklund" by Sister Helen Mrosla
from Heart of a Teacher by Paula J. Fox

He was in the first third grade class I taught at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minnesota. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, he had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful.

Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving. “Thank you for correcting me, Sister!” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.

One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice teacher’s mistake. I looked at Mark and said, "If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!” It wasn't ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, “Mark is talking again.” I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it. I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened my drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape, and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Sister.”

At the end of the year, I was asked to teach junior-high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it, Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instruction in the “new math,” he did not talk as much in ninth grade as he had in third. One Friday, things just didn’t feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves and edgy with one another. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish the assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed me the papers. Charlie smiled. Mark said, “Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend.”

That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday, I gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. “Really?” I heard whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone!” “I didn’t know others liked me so much.” No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.

That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked me the usual questions about the trip, the weather, my experiences in general. There was a lull in the conversation. Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply said, “Dad?” My father cleared his throat as he usually did before saying something important.

“The Eklunds called last night,” he began. “Really?” I said. “I haven’t heard from them in years. I wonder how Mark is.” Dad responded quietly. “Mark was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend.” To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark.

I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, “Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you would talk to me.” The church was packed with Mark’s friends. Chuck’s sister sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Why did it have to rain on the day of the funeral? It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water. I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to me. “Were you Mark’s math teacher?” he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked about you a lot,” he said.

After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chuck’s farmhouse for lunch. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. “We want to show you something,” his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.” Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that,” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.”

Mark’s classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk at home.” Chuck’s wife said, “Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.” “I have mine too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.” Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. “I carry this with me at all times,” Vicki said without batting an eyelash. “I think we all saved our lists.”

This is the list (with links) of all of the newsletters for the year.

August - Back to School, One, Two, Three
September - Four, Five, Six, Seven
October - Eight
November -
December -
January -
February -
March -
April -
May -

I am proud to be entering my second year as the principal at Blytheville Primary School. I love what I do and the community I work in. I enjoy spending time with my family, reading books, and going to the zoo, especially the Memphis Zoo.

Email: jwilson@blythevilleschools.net
Website: http://www.blythevilleschools.com/o/bps
Location: 1103 Byrum Road, Blytheville, AR, United States
Phone: 870-763-6916
Facebook: facebook.com/cimeronejana
Twitter: @cimeronejana