Weekly Blog 9/28

Dear Wines Families,

 

I hope everyone is enjoying another soggy week…

 

First this week, a few reminders from the office:

If your child is not coming to school or is coming in late, please call the office to let us know. You can leave a message 24 hours a day. Also, if you are taking your child out of school early for any reason, don’t forget to sign him or her out at the front desk. Finally, if you are picking your child up early or dropping something off to him or her after school has started, please come to the office and we will call your child down. Please do not go to your child’s classroom without checking in. This is an important safety issue. While we love having parents in our building, we need to make sure we know who is in our school at all times.

 

The 2011 Science and Builders Fair will be held at Wines on Thursday, October 27 from 7-8 pm.  This is a non-competitive, family-friendly, fun event.  We invite all students to work on their own or with friends to build, create, invent, explore and experiment and then bring in the resulting project for display.  Last year there were over 80 incredible projects on display!  Students should please sign up by Friday, October 14.  If anyone has questions, they may contact Debbie Tirico at dtirico@comcast.net.

 

Next week October begins. We will again be celebrating “Walktober” all month and encouraging students to walk or ride their bikes to school as often as possible. Again this year we will host Walk to School events each Wednesday beginning next Wednesday, October 5^th in honor of National Walk to School Day. Attached to this week's email is a flyer listing various walking locations and a call for volunteers to help out. I am working with Transportation to again have our busses drop off at Forsythe on walking Wednesdays so that students who ride the bus can participate as well.

 

Attached to this week's email is a second flyer with important information about our upcoming Run/Walk-a-Thon. The event has changed considerably this year. Please see the flyer for more information. The date of the event is October 21^st during the school day.

 

Interested in working with our PTO on improving our technology at Wines? If so, I want to invite any interested Wines family to a meeting next Monday, October 3^rd at 4:00 in the Media Center. This meeting will include parents and staff members and we will discuss various possibilities that the PTO might fund. Please consider attending!

 

Sincerely,

 

David

 

Weekly Blog 9/21

Dear Wines Families. 

There were three attachments to this week's email message.First, there is a Run-Walk-a-Thon flyer. Our event is changing significantly this year and we need your help to make it a success!! The date of the event is Oct. 21st and it will take place during the school day. Please take a look at the flyer for more information.

Mrs. Evaldson has included her Media Center newsletter as well. Please take a look. 

Finally, a reminder that our spirt wear sale is still going on. The last day for orders is Monday, Sept. 26th. In our front lobby there are some t-shirts and sweatshirts that you can look at for sizing purposes. Attached to today's email is the order form. This was also sent out in last week's paper Wednesday Folder.

I want to thank our families for the tremendous turn out at Curriculum Night last evening. It was a pleasure to see everyone and to meet many of our new parents who I have not met yet. If you were not at Curriculum Night last night, please contact your child's teacher to sign up for a Parent/Teacher conference. Each teacher has multiple nights scheduled. For those of you who have more than one child at Wines, you may want to consider Nov. 3rd. That evening all teachers will be hosting conferences and so you can schedule times to meet with each of your children's teachers on the same evening. 

As always, do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. 

Best, 

David

Weekly Blog September 14

Dear Wines Families,

I will apologize in advance if this is a longer than normal entry, but now that we are in “full gear” this year, there are lots of announcements and reminders to pass along.

PTO Meeting

First, I want to remind everyone that TONIGHT at 7:00 we are hosting our first PTO meeting of the year. Childcare will be provided.

Curriculum Night

Next Tuesday evening is our annual Curriculum Night from 6:30-8:00. We have changed the format this year in order to better accommodate parents with multiple children at Wines and to give families a bit more flexibility during that evening. Teachers will be hosting two sessions in their classrooms. Parents may attend either session. The first will be from 6:30-7:00. At 7:00, I will be hosting our community in the multi-purpose room for a brief presentation. At 7:30, our teachers will be making a second presentation in their classrooms.

PBIS

On Friday we will be formally kicking of Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS). Last year our entire staff learned about PBIS and a strong group of dedicated teachers met with me regularly to plan the roll out this fall. Since school started, our students have been learning about the behavior expectations for all areas in the building. We do this with students every year, but PBIS allows us to be much more uniform and consistent. Our PBIS team has created short lessons that all teachers use in their classrooms to actively teach behavior. Now that our students have learned about behavior expectations across the building, starting next week we will begin recognizing students for exhibiting positive behavior at Wines. Teachers and staff will be passing out Wines Wildcat Power Paw tickets to students who are caught being good. Students will turn their tickets into their classroom teacher and each week we will hold a drawing and one student from each classroom will have their ticket pulled. These students will have their picture posted on our PBIS bulletin board for the following week and we will post their names on our website and in our monthly Wines Times.

Speaking of PBIS and our new ticket system, we are in need of parent volunteers to help us copy and cut out tickets. If you are available on Thursday or Friday, please let me know and we will put you to work!

NWEA

The Ann Arbor Public Schools will be assessing all students in grades K-5 starting September 19 and ending September 30 on the North West Evaluation Association (NWEA) assessment. This is a web-based program and there is no written portion to this assessment. This test will be given 3 times a year. As educators we are looking for student growth and will be using these assessment to focus on areas of strength and growth opportunities for each student. There is nothing students or parents need to do to prepare your child for NWEA. Just send them to school ready to learn like you do each day! I will be speaking briefly about NWEA at Curriculum Night next week.

ThinkStretch

First let me thank our families for the overwhelming support we received for our summer learning ThinkStretch program. The students seem very excited! If your child has not turned in his or her ThinkStretch workbook, please do so right away. Even if your child completed just a little bit, we are recognizing everyone who did something. Next Friday, we will have be passing out medals. 

Wines School Directory
Do you own or work for a local business? Let the Wines community know by advertising in the Wines directory.  We are aiming to get the directory out as soon as possible so if you are interested, please contact Frances Carlson at fslcarlson@me.com or (248) 761-8310 (e-mail preferred).

Run-a-Thon
Get Ready for the Wines Runathon on Friday, October 21!
Mark your calendars for this spirit-filled, healthy fundraiser! We will need a lot of volunteers to help this event run smoothly. More information will be sent home later this month.

Newport Road

For the many Wines families who use Newport Road, please note that the current speed limit on Newport is 25MPH. This is a high foot/bike/car traffic area—particularly during morning drop off and afternoon pick up for Wines and Forsythe schools. The City of Ann Arbor is proposing to increase the speed limit on Newport. City officials including two city council members would like to meet with the residents of our neighborhoods to discuss raising the speed limit on Newport Road. Unfortunately, the meeting takes place during our Curriculum Night. However, if you have interest in this issue, you may be able to talk to friends or neighbors who no longer have children at Wines to see if they can attend the meeting.  
DATE:     Tuesday, Sept. 20
TIME:     7:00 p.m.
PLACE:    Ann Arbor Free Methodist Church, 1951 Newport Rd.

Warm the Children

Warm the Children is an AnnArbor.com program that buys new winter clothing for children in need. Children who receive free lunch or who receive some sort of public assistance would qualify for the program.  Each child will receive $90 in new clothing. Families shop for these items with a shopping coordinator at area Target locations. The program will be accepting applications from now until October 28, 2011. Shopping begins in October and is on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications for the program are now available in the office at Wines (994-1973). Referral forms are due by October 28, 2011.

Please see the attachment to this weekly email from our local Cub Scout Troop.

Sincerely,

David

No picnic tonight

Due to the rainy weather, we have cancelled tonight's Welcome Back Picnic and it has been rescheduled to next Monday, September 12th at 6:00. Please bring a dish to share, a blanket, and beverages for your family. We suggest that K-2 families bring a dessert or side dish and 3-5 families bring a main dish or side dish.

Stay dry!

David

Weekly Blog 9/7

Dear Wines Families,

 

Please take a moment to look at this week's Weekly Email as there were three attachments of note. Included was our first Wines Times newsletter of the year. This is our monthly newsletter and this month there is a lot of back to school information, so please take some time to read it. In addition to the Wines Times, there is an Art Room volunteer form attached as well as a Media Center volunteer form attached. If you are interested in volunteering in the Media Center or the Art Room, please have a look at these forms.

 

Since we have a newsletter this week, I will just include a few items with this message. First, I again want to thank everyone for a great start to the year. We are off and running and things are going well.

 

Now that the first couple days of school are finished, I’m sure our parking lot will start to settle down as families get into regular routines. Please refer to the information I’ve sent out previously about our pick up and drop off system. The areas for active pick up and drop off are at the front of the building and in front of the Kindergarten entrance in the Cooley lot. The curbs in this area are painted red. There are also signs in this area marking the zone. The signs are a bit misleading, however. They read “Student Drop off Only, No Parking or Standing.” Please note that this area is for pick up as well as drop off and if you are picking up in the PM, you can “stand” as long as you pull as far ahead as possible and remain in your car. If you are leaving you car, please do not park in this area. Again, the Forsythe overflow lot near the Newport entrance is a great option if you are parking your car.

 

If your child has not turned in his or her ThinkStretch Summer learning workbook, please have them turn in it by Friday to their classroom teacher.

 

Finally, I want to remind everyone that our PTO Family Picnic is tomorrow evening at 6:00. The weather is not looking too good, unfortunately. In the event of rain, we will need to cancel the event—there is not an indoor option for the picnic. I will work with the PTO and make a decision about the event during the day on Thursday. So think sunny thoughts!!

 

David