Patrick Henry Post

This week, we celebrated the end of the month of September and welcomed the new season of Autumn. There were so many incredible things that happened in our second month of school, and we are so thankful for all of the hard work from our students and staff to make this a fantastic start to the school year. As we look forward to the month of October, we are preparing for so many changes...the weather will turn colder, the fruits at the grocery store will change as we see more apples and less citrus, and here at Patrick Henry our academic focus deepens into guided reading and guided math groups. We cannot wait to see what Autumn will bring for our students! Take a look below for highlights from our last week of September!

Ms. Smith's preschool students were hard at work sorting shapes. Students got to sing a song, play a game, and complete an art project all related to shape sorting. Students don't even know how much they're learning and growing because they're having so much fun in their classroom during their academic day!

Ms. Jami's second graders enthusiastically completed a math lesson where they had to figure out what math terms meant for operations. They were LOUD AND PROUD when they were talking about their addition and subtraction words. Whole group lessons like that are an important part of the lesson to see math models and learn from the teacher and from peers in the classroom.

We also witnessed a lot of small group and individualized instruction this week. Ms. Evans worked with her reading groups to challenge them at every level. Students in lower elementary got to connect with their Reading Buddy through our community partner, HomeWorks!, and they got one-on-one reading support.

Several teachers have instituted a great practice called the "bragging pass," where students who have accomplished great things get to take their work to their favorite staff members and show off! Anthony from Ms. Jackson's class and Cherish from Ms. Jami's class received their bragging passes for their accomplishments in math class.

Ms. Jami's students got to hang out with Dr. Rogers as they went on a garden scavenger hunt this week. Students had to read the listed item, find it in the garden, draw the item, and write a description of it. They got lucky and had a beautiful day of weather for the fun!

Active Hallways are simple floor stickers that provide an easy opportunity to incorporate extra movement into our students' days. It is a fun way to keep the class moving in a line down the hallway and provides a fun enrichment activity where students have to read the direction words, follow the pattern, and use their gross motor skills to meet the challenges of the active hallway activities. Even our staff get into it as they pass by!

Each month, we are celebrating our students with excellent attendance. On September 30th, we recognized our students with perfect attendance as well as our students with 90% attendance or higher. Students with 100% attendance got to take a treasure dive in our treasure chests and received a wristband and a photo of themselves on the Attendance Wall of Fame. Students with 90% or higher received their wrist band and their name on the Wall of Fame. Help your student get to school every day on time so that we can celebrate them as well!

On October 15th, we will celebrate our Attendance Super Stars for the first quarter. If students have 95% or higher for the whole first quarter, they will receive an attendance t-shirt with the Patrick Henry logo. 100% attendance for the whole quarter will earn students a pizza party!

Congratulations to our individual students AND our whole class winners for this week's S.T.A.R. awards from the Related Arts team! Our Art, Music, and P.E. teachers are building a consistent set of expectations in their classrooms so that students can dig deep into the content of every lesson rather than worry about behavior. This week we celebrated not only our individual winners, but we also celebrated the S.T.A.R. classes of the month. Well done to every student who won their S.T.A.R. tickets this week!

Spooky is an amazing little puppy who found her way to Patrick Henry two weeks ago during second grade recess. You can read her original story by clicking here, and you can read Part 2 of her second visit to Patrick Henry by clicking here. This week, Spooky came to visit her favorite school in St. Louis and got to greet all of the students as they came in at 7:45am to start their school day.

As soon as Spooky saw the Patrick Henry students start arriving for their school day, her tail started wagging and her body started wiggling. She was so happy to see everyone again! She stayed outside on a leash with Dr. Rogers as student after student came to give her a nice pat on the head or a belly rub.

Spooky was so happy to see all of the students that she tried to follow them into the building! This visit, Spooky couldn't join the classrooms because she had a very important doctor's appointment at the vet. She tried very hard to get into Patrick Henry to stay at school with her friends, but it couldn't happen this time around!

Spooky had an important appointment this week with her veterinarian. A veterinarian, or more commonly known as a vet, is a doctor who treats animals. The vet can help animals who are sick or hurt, but they can also do things that help keep a healthy animal staying healthy. That is called preventative medicine and it is a really important part of what vets and human doctors do! Preventative medicine includes things like vaccines that fight off infections before they even happen. Spooky needed her last vaccine this week so that she can be adopted by a permanent family. Sometimes dogs can be very scared at the vet, but Spooky was very brave and walked right into the office for her vaccine shot. What a champion!

After her vet appointment, Spooky officially went up for adoption. For the last two weeks, Spooky has been living with Dr. Rogers at her house as a foster dog. This means that Dr. Rogers is taking care of Spooky for short time, but not for forever. Sometimes kids can go into foster care too when their moms and dads cannot take care of them, and someone else steps in as a temporary parent. Dr. Rogers has been a dog foster mom for the past four years, but she normally fosters tiny little puppies. Spooky is a year and a half old, making her the oldest dog Dr. Rogers has ever fostered. She has become very good friends with Dr. Rogers' permanent dog, Hank, her nieces, Natalie and Lindsay, and her fiance, Mr. Rob. Now that Spooky has her full vaccinations, she can be adopted by a permanent family. She is listed on the Stray Rescue adoption website (click below if you want to read her whole profile), and now Dr. Rogers gets to meet every person who wants to adopt Spooky to make sure they are a good family and a good fit for this special little pup. Let's keep our fingers crossed that Spooky's forever family adopts her soon!