Please remind your children to visit the lost & found! In an effort to keep our lost and found efficient, any unclaimed items remaining when we leave for winter break will be donated to charity. The best way to make sure your child’s lost items are returned is to clearly label them with first and last names. 5th grade parents, please remind your students that their December leadership jobs will begin on Monday! You may visit our counseling website, bpesel.weebly.com, to up more information on leadership jobs. You can also find information on our classroom lessons, links, and other important reminders on our website.
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Last week we introduced November’s Life Skill: Perseverance. Each month, we are highlighting three tools to help us demonstrate our life skills. This month’s tools are Growth Mindset, Patience, and Persistence. In each class we are talking about these three tools, sharing examples of people who have persevered, particularly in the face of adversity, and asking students to reflect on their mindset during times they have struggled or felt challenged.
At home, you can reinforce the skill of perseverance, too! Big Life Journal suggests nine activities you can do at home to help build perseverance with your children. Two of our favorite activities from this list are conducting a “Grit Interview” and asking, “What’s the hard part?” In short, Grit Interviews, as explained by Ashley Cullins, are having your child interview grandparents, neighbors or other acquaintances who have worked hard toward a long term goal. Since many families utilize Thanksgiving break and winter break to spend time with extended family and grandparents, these breaks would be a great time to try out this activity. Asking “What’s the hard part?” involves identifying the difficult part when your child is feeling discouraged or ready to give up so they can more easily identify how to overcome it. To read more about these activities, as well as the complete list of activities and free printables, follow this link. It’s hard to believe it is already November! This week we wrapped up our classroom lesson on Cooperation. As we mentioned earlier this month, we worked on a school-wide quilt that has a quilt square to represent each student here at BPE! Later this month, the Bridge Point counselors will join the counselors at Valley View, Cedar Creek, Forest Trail, Eanes and Barton Creek to assemble all of our quilts together to make one district-wide quilt that represents every elementary student we serve. We are excited about this project and look forward to sharing more about it later on this month!
A new month also means fifth graders are starting new leadership jobs! We love providing fifth graders with this opportunity to grow their leadership skills and work on their independence. That being said, we know they still need some support keeping track of their jobs. Please take some time to visit our website, bpesel.weebly.com, with your fifth grader to take a look at their jobs in the 5th Grade Leadership section of our webpage. We are also working on a “Frequently Asked Questions” section for our fifth grade leadership, so keep an eye out for that in the next week! If you were a parent in Eanes last year, you are already familiar with the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) criteria on the report card, which was added last year. For some of you, this information may have provided welcomed reassurance, while others may have been left wondering how better to support your child’s social-emotional growth at home. One of our favorite resources is Parent Toolkit (http://www.parenttoolkit.com/). This website has a wealth of resources and information on topics ranging from academics to health & wellness- there’s even a section on financial literacy. As counselors, we are particularly fond of the social and emotional section! There you can find developmental milestones, strategies to support your child’s social and emotional growth and many great articles. We hope you will find this tool helpful whether you are in immediate need of support, or you want to bookmark the resource for future use.
With cooler temperatures looking like they may be here to stay, we are starting to see our lost and found collection growing. We want to remind you the importance of labeling your children’s coats/jackets, lunch boxes and water bottles! The more information you can include on an item (first and last name is most helpful), the better chance we have of getting it back to its rightful owner! We have fifth graders who help out three times a week to organize lost and found items, look for names, and return labeled items to their owners. We will donate unclaimed, unlabeled items that are left over winter break to help minimize clutter. Tips for Parent Teacher Conferences
Parent teacher conferences are coming up next week! Whether you’re a parent brand new to elementary school or you’re an old pro, we have some tips to help you make the most out of this brief, but valuable one-on-one time with your child’s teacher. Conferences are a great opportunity for you to get feedback from the teacher, but don’t forget about your child! Conferences are the perfect catalyst for conversations with your child and provide an opportunity to assess how your student feels about school, both academically and socially. Below are some ideas for topics to bring up with your child prior to the conference and how to prepare yourself for the conference:
Last week, we introduced our second Life Skill of the year: Cooperation! A group of 4th graders made a video to introduce the importance of cooperation. Teachers began passing out Paw Prints to recognize students demonstrating cooperation. The Life Skills Board is already filling up quickly! Students will continue to focus their efforts on showing Cooperation throughout the month of October. We also did our first life skills drawing last week! All students who earned a life skills badge (bobcat heads last month) were entered into a drawing for gift certificates from All Star Burger. Four students from each grade were awarded these gift certificates! We will repeat this process at the end of each month this school year, so there will be many opportunities to get a certificate!
We also began our second round of counselor led SEL lessons last week! In third, fourth and fifth grade we are reading the book Zero, by Kathryn Otoshi, which facilitates discussion on fitting in, having self worth and how we all have a place in our BPE community. As always, you can visit our Bridge Point SEL website at bpesel.weebly.com to see when we will be visiting your child’s classroom. This week, we wrapped up our classroom counselor lessons on respect. In each class we began by introducing our “tools” for showing respect: Manners, Consideration, and The Golden Rule. We highlighted these three tools as ways to show respect, but emphasized that these tools are only three of many. We then read the book Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller and looked for evidence of our tools in use. Finally, we spent time going over the Resolution of Respect and concluded our lesson by having each student sign the resolution of respect. We are excited to get the ball rolling on No Place for Hate again this year beginning with our Resolution of Respect and assembling our student council, members of which were announced today!
This week we had nearly 60 fourth and fifth graders apply to serve on our No Place for Hate Student Council. We were blown away by the enormous interest of students in helping BPE further our mission of becoming a No Place for Hate campus again. As part of the application process, students were tasked with explaining why they would like to serve on the NPFH Student Council and also presenting ideas they have for how to make BPE a more kind, respectful and accepting school. A committee of administrators, counselors and fourth and fifth grade teachers are in the process of going through all of the applications to select eight fourth grade students and twelve fifth grade students to be a part of our No Place for Hate Student Council. With so many impressive applicants, it is a truly challenging process for us! We look forward to announcing our selections next week.
This week we began the process of creating our No Place for Hate® Student Council for this school year. This Student Council is made up of eight fourth graders and twelve fifth graders. We are currently accepting applications. Applications can be picked up from the counselors and need to be completed, including a parent signature, and turned in by no later than 3pm on Friday, September 21.
To further build on our September Life Skill of Respect, all students are signing a Resolution of Respect during their Counselor-led Lessons this month. Signing the Resolution of Respect is one of the first steps to BPE becoming a No Place for Hate® recognized school again this year. The No Place for Hate® initiative through the ADL provides a framework for schools to build a positive and inclusive community where respect is the norm. You can read more about the ADL and the No Place for Hate initiative here. Finally, we had our New Student Social today in the library! Our New Student Social is a time for new students and their ambassadors to get to know each other better and have the opportunity to visit with other new students and ambassadors across grade levels. Sincerely, Addie Edwards & Jennifer Cheatham This week we introduced our first Life Skill of the year: Respect! We explained how to earn a Respect Bobcat Head cutout and what it means to show respect with the help of this video. Teachers began passing out Bobcat Heads to recognize students demonstrating respectful behavior. Students will continue to focus on showing Respect throughout the month of September. At the end of the month, all bobcat head cutouts will be entered into a drawing for gift certificates to All Star Burger!
This week we also began our counselor led lessons in some kindergarten and second grade classrooms. We read the book Do Unto Otters, by Laurie Keller, which facilitated discussion on respect and how to treat others. Please visit our Bridge Point SEL website at bpesel.weebly.com to see when we will be visiting your child’s classroom! |