Perspective Matters

Often times we are caught up in the day-to-day routine and need to be reminded of a different perspective. If you are like me the day-to-day can cause me to be bogged down losing sight of the bigger picture. As I sat and paused, enjoying the beautiful spring weather I could not help but be reminded of the big picture.

A different perspective... 

11 school days until the end of the 3rd nine weeks 

25 school days until spring break

57 school days until the end of the school year

The beautiful thing about a different perspective is that you get to hold it and let it determine direction. So my question to you is what are you going to do with the next 11, 25, and even great, 57 school days? Each one of those days matters for each one of our students. Let's embrace that perspective and let it define our actions. 

Things to Celebrate at PVES:

Welcome Mr. Matt to PVES! He and these sweet friends in Ms. Barber's class had a great time with some Reinsance fun a couple of Fridays ago! We love their passion and excitement to make learning fun for all. We are so blessed by the smiles of these sweet friends and grateful for these adults who show up each day ready to love them! 

Several of our homeroom teachers participated in a conference notebook workshop with Mrs. Horn and Mrs. McGaha. Teachers learned about ways to organize reading conference materials, notes, and more! Thank you to these ladies for working hard to support our teachers. Thank you teacher who participated in this optional PD. We hope you had fun and took away some great learning and resources! 

Wednesday we celebrated Read Across America day this past week and some classrooms welcomed a guest reader from the district office. We were excited to host Mrs. Susan Ashley. Thank you teachers for celebrating this day. A huge thank you to Mrs. Grant and Mrs. McGaha for working to incorporate this into our SEL lesson. 

Mrs. Nix worked hard to create this beautiful display of PVES third graders' artwork. This display is at the district office and has received many compliments! We are so proud of our students and our incredible art program. Our art show will be in April. We are looking forward to seeing artwork from all of our PVES students!

Thank you to Ms. Black and Mrs. McGaha for hosting our first Battle of the Books practice for this school year. These readers were quite impressive! We are looking forward to seeing them compete on Monday, March 21st.

Fifth Grade showered AJ and Kim this past week as they are counting down the days until their wedding. Thank you to our PVES family for sharing on this special day. We wish them all the best!

Important Information for PVES:

March of Dimes: We will be raising money for March of Dimes over the next several weeks. Patty Ellison sent out an email about ways we will be doing this and how you can take part. Each Friday for the month of March and the first two weeks of April we will have themed Fridays that students can bring in $1 to participate and all proceeds will go towards March of Dimes. There are also opportunities to pay to wear jeans with this money also going to March of Dimes. Email Patty with any questions about the jeans weeks/days. Thank you in advance for your help! 

Report Cards: The end of the third nine weeks is Tuesday, March 22nd. Grades are due on Thursday, March 24th at 4:00 p.m. Electronic verifications will be sent out on Friday, March 25th. Please review these and make sure that your grade book matches what is sent. Grades will be stored on Monday, March 28th at 8:00 a.m. Changes do not need to be made after this date. The third nine weeks report cards will be emailed out to parents on Tuesday, March 29th at 4:30 p.m.

Math Madness Competition: Continuing through March, all DreamBox lessons, Reflex math facts, and Reflex Green Lights completed will be added up for each class. Ms. Durham will be tracking this on her end using a spreadsheet and updating the leaderboard outside of her room with the rankings. The competition lasts the entire month of March. Everything completed here at school and at home will count. There will be a winner for each grade level and an overall winning class from the whole school. The prizes will be the same as last year. You can view this Math Madness Announcement slide for further information. 

We are excited about having our students push themselves in math. Just a reminder that incentives for any competition should not impact or adjust their grades. We want to ensure that our students' grades reflect their ability to master their grade-level standards.  

March Book Madness: Mrs. McGaha has sent information in regards to the calendar of read alouds. You will use the March Madness Presentation that has links to the book for the day and voting.  The read alouds will be Tuesday and Thursday each week. On Tuesday, you will only have a read aloud. On Thursday, you will have a read aloud and then you will vote for the favorite book for that week. When you vote, you will submit 1 class vote for the class favorite. 

MAP Goal Setting: MAP is coming to a classroom near you, soon! Reading MAP will be administered on March 22nd and math on March 23rd. Now is a great time to get your goal-setting sheets back out and start goal-setting with your students. You can work to give them specific goals over the next couple of weeks to help them meet their goal. If you need extra copies of the sheet, feel free to print one from here. Remember when goal setting to use the fall to winter growth projections. The number of weeks between fall and spring administration is fairly close so you do not need to make an adjustment. 

Upcoming PD: We want to also remind you that we will have a Professional Development day on March 14th. This will be held in our building. Mr. McAuliff will be starting our morning off with a session on using Edulastic for CFAs and other formal assessments. We will then complete some work with our professional learning communities. We will email out specifics later this week. Our last PD day was very productive and we hope this one will be the same! 

Important Dates for PVES: 

March 7th- Battle of the Books Practice

March 7th- Bus Evacuation Drill (PM Busses)

March 9th- Bookfair Begins

March 9th- Tornado Drill at 9:00 a.m. 

March 10th- Wendy's Spirit Night

March 11th- Hat Day $1 (March of Dimes) 

March 14th- PD Day (No school for students)

March 15th- Induction Teacher lunch and TOY speaking (Career and Technology Center) 

March 15th- PTSO Provides breakfast for staff 

March 16th- PVMS Band Demonstration for 5th Grade (During related arts)

March 18th- PVMS Band Demonstration for 5th Grade (During related arts) 

April 18th - No School (Was an inclement weather day)