Principally SpeakingBy Patricia Alexander & Derrick Hartley

“A man who leads the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd” Max Lucado

Scoreboard-Updating the scoreboards in the front hall have been exciting for staff and students. A quick reflection on where we currently are in some scoreboards and goals for the building.

Our Leader in Me online binder is currently at 51% documented. This is a vital process in our becoming a Lighthouse school

Our math board in the front hall shows that 5% of our students have reached their end of the year building math goal.

The Reading goal board is just over 20% of our students having reached their end of the year goal.

Our newest board posted in the front hall is showing building attendance by month. August we were at 97.82% and in September we were at 96.96%

Grandparents and special friends will take place on November 24 from 5:30-6:30. Please encourage your students to invite their guests to join us for pictures in the gym and an ice cream social in the cafeteria.

Optimist Award Winners:

Our Goal for September, these students have been selected because they use Habit 1 in their approach to a new school year. Pro-active students are responsible for their actions. They are in charge of themselves and make good choices regarding school work and interactions with adults and peers. The winners for the month of September are:

Kindergarten-Emma Decker, 1st grade-Ben Ullery, 2nd grade-Graham Elbert, 3rd grade-Jordy Urbina-Guardado, 4th grade-

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November 2014Issue 27

Inside this Issue

Principal’s Message Pg. 1-5

Calendar of Events Pg. 2

2nd Grade News Pg. 6

Business Boosters Pg. 7-9

Pleasant Lea Elementary700 W Persels Road

Lee’s Summit, MO 64081(816) 986-1230

ple.leesummit.k12.mo.us

Newsletter Contact:Jen McCormick

04mccormicks@gmail.com

Arslaan Bhatti, 5th grade-Jonathan Haileselassie, 6th grade-Jordan Wood.

Principal (Cont’d on page 2)Principal (cont’d from page 1)

Goal for October, these students have been selected because they use Habit 7 and practice healthy habits. Balance is best! These students recognize the importance of taking time to renew the four parts of who they are: body, heart, mind and soul.

Kindergarten-Evie Moore, 1st grade-Owen Smith, 2nd grade-Brylee Johnson, 3rd grade-Aubrey King, 4th grade-Makya Clayton, 5th grade-Corinne Shackelford, 6th grade-Thais Ortiz-Reyes

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Calendar of Events

NovemberNov. 3

6th grade Field Trip ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 4No School

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Late Start Wednesday ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 6Group Picture Day

             Papa John's Pizza Night ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 11Tiger Nation Meeting 8:00 a.m.

                Tiger Choir Performance @ PLMS 7:00 p.m.

----------------------------------------------Nov. 12

Late Start Wednesday ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 17Spirit Week

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4th grade program PE event @PLMS 6:30 p.m.                 PTA Planning Meeting-LMC 6:30 p.m.

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Late Start Wednesday ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 21PLE Family-Tiger Nation Team Dance-Gym

6:00-8:00 p.m. ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 24Grandparents/Special Friends Night 5:30-6:30

p.m. ----------------------------------------------

Nov. 26-28No School-Thanksgiving Break

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“Pawsitive Leadership” When students demonstrate Positive Leadership Traits that are based on the 7 Habits they are recognized with a Pawsitive Leadership certificate. Each of these students will then be in the running to be recognized by our Partner in Education, Raytown-Lee’s Summit Community Credit Union. The students who have been nominated so far are: Ahmed Salous, Melana Scharfen, Allison Findlay, Derebe Carr, Andrew Yang, Elle Seck, Katelyn Johnson, Andrew Sawyer, Mara Bannister, Lily Ullery, Adnan Bhatti, and Logan Hopson.

Grade Level Goals: When you visit the school, please take a moment to notice the colorful grade level goal boards located in the back hallway of the school, just outside the gymnasium. On these board, each grade level selected goals that every student would work towards and began to record progress. You can feel the pride and excitement as students place their mark in regards to the rest of their classmates.

Principal (Cont’d on page 3)Principal (cont’d from page 2)

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Putting First Things First-The third habit in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people that are students are learning and practicing through our Leader In Me process. When people first look at this habit and this step they nearly always want to begin to get organized and prioritize what is going on in their lives. For many, this is somewhat of a business approach to everything and in a way they overlook what is most important in their lives, their family, their friends and their relationships.

Principal (Cont’d on page 4)Principal (cont’d from page 3)

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Begin to look at this habit with a different set of eyes. Start by listing the five most important things in your life. Use this habit to help you organize to keep the important things important and yet not lose sight of the small things that can sneak up on you and cause you stressors or problems. Doing this will enable you to be in charge of your life and not reactionary to what happens to you.

How to read to help your child

If reading fiction stories:Before the story: What to do or ask?

Preview, look at the picturesWhat do you think the story is about?Who is the main character?Do you think this is a fiction story/book?Do you think this is a non-fiction book?

What is the setting of the story?Does it take place in the past, present or future?Where does the story take place?

Who are the main characters in the story?What is the problem in the story?What is the solution in this story?What happened at the beginning, middle, and the end of the story?Would you recommend this book to someone else? Why?

Principal (Cont’d on page 5)

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Principal (cont’d from page 4)If the story is Non-fiction:

Create a KWL chartWhat do you know? What do you want to know? What did you learn?

Did you learn anything from reading this story? I call this my Ah-Ha moment-I think to myself, “Ah-ha I did not know that!”Are there any words that you came across in this story that you did not understand? Let’s go back in the story and see if we can use CONTEXT CLUES to figure out what the word means. If we cannot figure out the meaning by reading around the word, what should we do? (Look it up in the dictionary)

We enjoyed seeing parents with their children during conferences celebrating successes and setting goals for future successes!

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We’ve had an exciting first quarter in second grade. In addition to getting used to a new school year and meeting new friends, we have been hard at work learning and practicing the seven habits.

We have begun our year of learning by setting goals in reading fluency (106 words per minute) and in math computation(40 problems in 8 minutes). We have been hard at work practicing these and some students have already met the end-of-the -year goals! Tracking our progress in these two areas is easy as the data is posted in our data notebooks.

This year we are continuing to implement Pathways, a program to assist us in building stronger phonemic awareness skills. This should help us with our reading, writing and spelling. Our vocabulary is being enhanced by a program to introduce high-quality read aloud books that aid in language and literacy development. Words that students are introduced to in these books are often found in books that we check out from the library. There is a level of excitement when those newly learned words appear in books that the students have chosen. In addition to reading aloud, we are also working hard in Reader’s Workshop to further develop our reading fluency and comprehension skills.

In writing we are currently reviewing the writing process and are practicing expressing our ideas in writing. We have worked on writing personal narratives with stories from our lives.

In Math, we have studied names of shapes, place value up to 3 digits, and counting by 2’s,5’s,10’s, 25’s, and 100’s. Right now, we are working on collecting data and making bar graphs.

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2 nd

Grade News:

We began Social Studies by learning about communities and how citizens work for the common good and in Science we learned many interesting facts about life cycles of various living creatures.

It is proving to be an eventful year so far in second grade and the upcoming quarters promise to bring even more excitement, fun, and knowledge.

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