We are looking forward to another great week of teaching and learning at Hereford Elementary! As a reminder, it is important that your scholar attends school daily when well and arrives on time. Scholars arriving after 8:00 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian to be checked in. Please be on the look out for all of the wonderful events coming up at Hereford Elementary!
Have a Great Week!
Principal Williams
Encourage Your Child’s Positive Behavior and School Success:
Creating a Home Plan with Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports Parents play an important role in helping their child be successful in school. Whether they are providing a safe home that encourages learning and appropriate behavior, or working with the school on specific learning goals for their child, it is important for parents to support their child’s education. When schools and parents work together as partners, students reach a higher level of achievement and school success.
How Some Schools Support Success School-wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS) is one strategy that some schools use to teach appropriate social behavior and skills. Research has shown that this approach also improves school climate and learning. SW-PBIS is based on the idea that schools: • Define core social expectations (e.g., be safe, respectful, and responsible). Staff and students in the school are expected to model the associated behaviors. • Teach the behaviors and skills that are associated with those expectations. • Reward the use of those behaviors and skills with a system of reinforcement.
How Parents Can Support Success As a parent, you can be part of this formula for school success by using the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) strategy at home and making a PBIS home plan. When you teach your child the same behaviors that are taught at school and reinforce them at home, you are encouraging your child’s social and academic growth. You can begin by: • Comparing your home rules and expectations with the school’s core expectations for behaviors. • Deciding how you can apply the use of those appropriate behaviors in your home and the community. • Identifying a way to set up predictable routines at home (see example on next page). • Modeling the behavior you want to see and reinforcing it consistently.
Tips for Making a Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) Home Plan Developing a PBIS Home Plan can help you teach appropriate behaviors and social skills.
Phonics is at the heart of how children learn to read. If you have a young reader, you might remember how exciting it was when he or she started learning letters, or how proud your child felt the first time he or she sounded out a word. It’s like watching a whole new world open up for your child. Once children know the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they stand for, they’re ready to use those building blocks to read words and simple sentences. Building strong phonics skills in the early years of school is the key to your child becoming a strong, independent reader. What is Phonics? Letters stand for sounds in spoken language. If you think of words and sentences as a code, then when you read, you’re breaking the code. You’re matching letters to sounds so that you can sound out words. That’s de-coding, and it is what phonics is all about. For example, the letter t stands for the sound /t/. Your child can blend these sounds together — /t/ /ŏ/ /p/ — and read the word top. Most words young kids come across are decodable, from simple words like top to more challenging ones like peach or raccoon.
Phonics - Everything Parents Need to Know
Math Talk: Measurement at Home
Tips: Measuring With and Without a Ruler
- Ask your child to help you measure things in different rooms, like windows or lamps, to compare them. How do you do it when you cannot see the objects at the same time? Help your child use a string or even their own body, like arm lengths, to measure the objects and compare them.
- Have your child measure the same object with different units. When they measure an object with pennies, then nickels, then quarters, they will get different measurements. Ask her to explain why the measurements are different and what happens when she measures using a bigger unit versus a smaller unit.
- When your child starts using a ruler, have him use the ruler in different ways. For example, ask your child to measure something that is not lined up with the end of the ruler, or turn the ruler so the object is lined up with the high end and count down. This helps children think about the purpose of the ruler for showing units and not just for looking at the number where the object ends.
- After counting, try counting again, but count parts of objects. If you just counted trucks, now count truck wheels. Though counting parts of objects can be confusing, helping children do this builds up their ideas about how the choice of unit affects the total measurement. Repeat the unit after counting. There are 3 trucks but there are 12 truck wheels.
Have fun measuring at home!
If you have a child attending school, getting involved in his or her learning is a must. Research by various groups over the past 3 decades points to the positive impact a parent’s relationship with school has on a child. From research groups, including the National Coalition for Parent Involvement (NCPI), to various levels of government, there is agreement: Parents need to become involved in their children’s education.
Why get involved?
Research indicates involvement in a student’s schoolwork and life results in positive benefits. Studies indicate the following positive effects:
- Improvement in school learning and better attendance
- Students are more likely to earn higher test scores, grades and attend higher education
- More positive attitudes and behavior
- Parents have a sense of empowerment and are better able to help their children learn at home
- The morale of teachers actually improves
Here are a few ways parents and other family members can be a part of a student’s success:
- Generally, create a positive learning environment at home and communicate the importance of school. This is something all parents, even those who do not have time to attend school meetings, can do.
- Communicate with a student’s teacher about his or her performance and ask about strategies or effective ways to help with homework at home
- Attend a school meeting or school event
- Take part in a parent-teacher conference
Are there any topics you would like to see a Parent Focus Meeting on? Please feel free to give me suggestions/feedback at ann.elkins@hsv-k12.org.
Thank you!
Hello Parents,
ACAP Testing is going well. Please continue to ensure that your child has a good night's rest. Please also make sure that your child is not going to bed with their devices and staying up past their bedtime. We have noticed that some scholars are coming to school extremely tired due to lack of sleep. It is important that all scholars are in the right frame of mind such as being in a good mood, eating a healthy breakfast, and sleeping well the night before. Parents, we appreciate your working with us to help better prepare our scholars for these important exams.
Guidance Class: This week in Guidance Counseling class, your child will learn “My Feelings and Me”. This week we are going to learn about feelings. Feelings are something we feel from within. They are from inside, from our hearts. Feelings change. One morning we may be happy and the next morning we may feel sad. Feelings never remain the same for very long. We experience different feelings based on what is happening around us. It’s important we learn about our feelings so we can share our feelings with others and relate to them. We also want to learn to recognize our feelings and express them in a good, positive, and healthy way. We want to be in charge of our feelings, not our feelings in charge of us! Our goal is to learn new feelings words today, explore how we express (show) our feelings, and learn how to handle the hard feelings in a good and positive way. Another great thing about learning about feelings is, it helps us build stronger friendships with our friends and relationships with our family because we begin to understand, appreciate, and respect their feelings Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month: Developmental disabilities are a group of conditions due to an impairment in physical, learning, language, or behavior areas. These conditions begin during the developmental period, may impact day-to-day functioning, and usually last throughout a person’s lifetime.
J.Jewel Johnson-Thorne
School Guidance Counselor
Sonnie Hereford Elementary School
Kelli Eaton- Assistant Principal
Excellence is the Expectation as we Journey to Success!
Email: kelli.eaton@hsv-k12.org
Website: https://www.huntsvillecityschools.org/schools/sonnie-hereford-elementary
Phone: 256-428-7440
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sonnieherefordelementary