GSRP STAFF NEWS

Thanks to all of you for making parent teacher conferences a success. As Carrie manned the district surveys on the Chrome Books, and I shared tuition information, we had a chance to speak with our families as they arrived and waited for conferences. Please know that there were many positive remarks made regarding your students enjoying school, being excited about coming to school, and how much parents can already see that their child is making progress both socially and academically. We heard several remarks from parents regarding their child's love for their teachers and the overall warm environment that we have in our preschool building. Kudos to all of you for making the best out of a couple of very long days. We often refer to these long days as our marathon days, or the days that we 'live' at the school, but in the end I saw everyone still sporting warm smiles and making positive remarks about feeling accomplished, and how it was good to spend time with families. We had a great turnout! Please make sure to turn in your sign in/attendance sheets to the office Monday morning so we can get an exact count.

Our Early Childhood Specialists, Heather Williamson will be with us this week visiting classrooms. Heather will be doing baseline PQA visits. Please take a moment to review your PQA form A - (classroom) booklet. I will be at GISD Monday morning for a PQA form B (program management) review. We know that following the PQA guidelines ensure that we are offering a quality preschool program based on best practice. Our program funding and priority for allocating additional GSRP slots depends on the quality of our scores. Our star rating on the Great Start Connect website and TQRIS accreditation rating also rely heavily on this process. Thank you for your efforts as we continue to strive towards a five start rating!

We already have a great start to our Cool to Care collection. Just a reminder that our goal is to meet or exceed last year's collection. Please continue to remind your students and families that we are collecting non-perishable food items until December 8th. This is a great help to the community. Let's do our part to help stock the shelves at Outreach East. Make sure to check the chart for your class donation progress and to see how close we are to our building goal.

This week I will begin my weekly visits to Cardinal's Nest. One of the new things that I will be introducing to students this year will be the Cardinal Code lessons. As part of the district's PBSS initiative, we will begin using the lessons and following the schedule with all of our district's preschool programs.

Please remember to communicate the Cardinal Code lesson being taught in your classroom each week to parents in your weekly newsletter. It is important to make the home-school connection so that these lessons can we reinforced at home, and parents are aware of how important keeping the code is. I heard a couple families at conferences last week ask their child what the Cardinal Code was as they were filling out the district survey.

After meeting with the Thomson PBSS team last week, I became aware of additional lessons that are available in addition to the lessons we have scheduled through December. We will need to tweak the lessons in order for them to be appropriate for our younger students. We will move forward with this at our next staff meeting. Our next staff meeting will be the first Friday after we return from Thanksgiving break.

Monday, November 16th- PQA Form B training at GISD - Susan a.m.

Tuesday, November 17th- PQA visit for Robin and Haley a.m. Susan at Cardinal's Nest

PQA visit for Lindsey and Erin in p.m.

Wednesday, November 18th- PBIS @ GISD GSRP team, Card Nest, Thomson

PQA visit for Lindsey and Michelle a.m.

Thursday, November 19th- Creative Curriculum Training @ GISD- new staff

Friday, November 20th- Creative Curriculum Training @ GISD- new staff

• Heather, Natalie, and myself will be planning dates for our parent advisory meetings. These will take place in January and early March. Dates will be shared as soon as possible.
  
• If you are in need of any special supplies for your classroom Thanksgiving "feast" please let me know by this Friday, November 20th.
• I am still waiting on an update regarding the playground. I believe fixes were made and I will get the playground inspector back out to give us approval as soon as I get word.
• Literacy library items will be ordered this week along with your 2nd classroom supply order. I am excited for us to get the books and start using them with students. I was able to order mid-first to second grade level additional titles for the students that we need to challenge.

Have a wonderful week!!