The end of the year already??

Dear PCE families,

It seems unreal that this school year is coming to a close in just a few weeks!  This second half of the year has gone by in the blink of an eye!

I want to update you on some of the things that are happening now and moving into next year.  As this year comes to a close, you will notice that we have quite a bit of movement in our school and in our classrooms.  We are fortunate to be able to ADD four new classrooms and teachers to our building next year.  This has been made possible in part, by opening a full day kindergarten classroom and the growth of our community.  In addition to these four teachers, we also have some teachers and staff members that have chosen to take advantage of other opportunities.  With all of this change and movement, I feel it would not be prudent to participate in the tradition of "meet the teacher" at the end of the year.  I would like ALL children to be able to benefit from this tradition and at this time I am not sure we will have our entire staff hired, assigned and present by the last day of school.

Prairie Crossing is growing!  We are already planning to begin our year with more students than we currently have.  With this said, it is very important for me to maintain a balance of class sizes.  As we continue to enroll children throughout the summer there is always a possibility of needing to open another section of a grade.  If this does happen, that particular grade level will be completely re-shifted into balanced class rooms, therefore some children will be moved from the originally created classes.   I feel that it is not beneficial to announce classes now and then have a change come in the middle of the summer. 

This year several factors will contribute to the possibility of change during the summer,-- new classrooms being opened, teacher turnover, and neighborhood growth.  For these reasons I have made the decision not to announce classes until the week before school opens.  Each parent will be notified by email when parent portal has been updated and each parent will be asked to sign up for a "Get to know you" Conference that will be held with you, your child and their teacher on August 11th or 12th. 

This year we will also have a yearbook signing party for the children on June 3rd during specials.  This will allow children to meet with kids from the entire grade level to have their special memories captured.  If a child has not purchased a yearbook they are welcome to bring an autograph book of their own or we will have some on hand so everyone will be able to join in the fun!

I  want to thank the community of PCE for their support and generosity during our Hardware Hustle Fundraiser.   Together we raised over $25,000 dollars to help us achieve purchasing enough Chrome Books to make grades 2nd  through 6th a one-to one environment!  What an accomplishment!!  Don't think we have left first and kindergarten out though.  We will continue to have Macbooks and IPads  available for them to use to enhance their learning experience also!  I would like to thank our technology teacher, Debbie Blair and all our classroom teachers for all the hard work they have put in to authentically integrating technology in our students learning environment!

This has been a wonderful year!  Dr. Malouff and I love being part of the PCE family and look forward to continuing a great relationship with our community!

Sincerely,

Carrie Rotherham
Principal
Prairie Crossing Elementary

Happy New Year!

What a wonderful start to a brand new year at PCE!

It was so wonderful to see so many smiling faces coming through the doors this past week!  The excitement and love for learning was evident on both the students' and teachers' faces!

Hiring Process:

I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the new Principal hiring process at PCE.  This Wednesday (January 15th, 6:30 pm) at our PCEA/SAC meeting, Patty Hanrahan, Director of Schools for the Parker area, will be in attendance to gather information about what the PCE community would like to see in their next Principal.  This is the first step in the process that will continue over the next few months. 

After Patty collects information from the community, she will also spend time talking with the staff.  Once enough information has been collected an interview team will be created from various stakeholders in the building and within the community.  The district will narrow down qualified candidates and then bring these to the school level interview to decide the best fit for Prairie Crossing.  It is a long process but one that is well worth it for our children.

I encourage you to come to the meeting and express your concerns, opinions and hopes for the future of Prairie Crossing.  Your participation and feedback is a significant factor in this decision and would be greatly appreciated.

Library Re-design:

We completed stage one of our library re-design!  Over break, our library bookcases were all put on casters to make them mobile.  This has given us the opportunity to create smaller, more flexible learning spaces in our Library Media Center.  Stage two entails updating furniture and creating kid- friendly areas where students can come to create and collaborate on classroom projects.  Stage three involves looking into different technology pieces that would benefit our students the most.

14-15 Enrollment:

We are currently accepting Kindergarten enrollment for next year.  If you have any friends or family members that would have children eligible for PCE Kindergarten, please remind them to come in to the front office.


I am looking forward to seeing many of you on Wednesday night!  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,


Carrie Rotherham
Interim Principal
Prairie Crossing Elementary.

Our Thanks...

Dear Parents,

We want to thank our entire PCE community and especially our PCEA for the love and support you have shown to our entire staff.  This week our teachers have received so many kind notes, comments and emails!  These are the type of gestures that remind us of why we all became educators.  We are all here to create a better future for our students!  Thank you for recognizing our teachers' hard work and determination through your kindness and dedication to our school, our staff and most importantly our children!

Every decision we make keeps what is best for our students in mind.  Together we want to build a community of learners that are prepared to take on whatever the future brings their way!  With this in mind we are starting our library re-design to transform our library into a central hub of learning that includes kid friendly, flexible learning spaces, along with current resources in literature and technology.  This redesign will be done in several stages and will be a joint effort between PCEA and the school.  We are excited to move forward and implement prior plans and be able to expand upon those ideas to create a space where students will love to learn.

We are also continuing our professional learning in the area of meeting math needs for our children.  This is our second year of Math in Focus and we are finding that many of our children are up to a bigger challenge in math.  We are working to find the ways that best benefit our children without creating gaps for them in their learning and providing a deeper level of understanding in all mathematical concepts.

Another goal for PCE students and teachers is to make learning relevant and authentic by cross-connecting curricular concepts with real world problems that create a deeper understanding of the content and move away from the surface level learning.  We want children to know the content, understand the content and USE that knowledge and understanding in their everyday lives.


The features of Deep and Surface approaches can be summarized as:
 

Deep	Surface
Focus is on “what is signified”	Focus is on the “signs” (or on the learning as a signifier of something else)
Relates previous knowledge to new knowledge	Focus on unrelated parts of the task
Relates knowledge from different courses	Information for assessment is simply memorized
Relates theoretical ideas to everyday experience	Facts and concepts are associated un-reflectively
Relates and distinguishes evidence and argument	Principles are not distinguished from examples
Organizes and structures content into coherent whole	Task is treated as an external imposition
Emphasis is internal, from within the student	Emphasis is external, from demands of assessment

(based on Ramsden, 1988)

Read more: Deep and Surface learning http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/deepsurf.htm#ixzz2kAnlqxRA

I know it has been said many times but we really are preparing our students for a world that we can not truly define yet.  Career opportunities and demands change on a daily basis.  It is more important for us to teach our children "how to learn" than to just memorize facts.  Education is truly about the journey rather than the destination.  Our children need to understand how to make decisions and choices based on what they understand about themselves and their abilities, so they can reach their fullest potential-- there are no limits on what they can achieve!

Our hopes are to provide this solid foundation and opportunity to ALL students at PCE on a daily basis.

Sincerely,

Carrie Rotherham
Principal, PCE

Fall brings some great changes to PCE!

Dear Parents,

Fall break is approaching, bringing with it some cooler weather and some more new faces!!

As many of you know we will have a new music teacher with us after Fall break.  Maegan Petkash is joining our staff all the way from New York!  She is eager to get started and has already been meeting students and staff this week. 
We also have had a change in our Building Engineer position.  Marvin Martinez has left to explore an exciting opportunity in the real estate field!  We wish him the best of luck and will miss him greatly!  We have worked with the district to find a new building engineer that will start the week of Fall Break.  Jairo Avila comes to us from within the district and has most recently worked at Douglas County High School.
After fall break we will also Welcome Back--Mrs. Ashley Mooney who will return to PCE as a Technology Assistant.

Wolf Night was a huge success!  Thank you to everyone that came out to support our wonderful school and kids!  Our fabulous PCEA was able to raise close to 14,000 dollars to help with some teacher grants and library improvements we would like to make to enhance our students' learning!  More information on how the money will be spent will be shared on at the next PCEA meeting that is scheduled for Wednesday, November 13th at 6:30.  We are looking forward to seeing you so we share ideas and opinions together!!

We have made a change to our PCEA Meeting dates.  Due to conflicts with the DAC meetings we have changed our PCEA meeting to Wednesday nights.  The schedule dates coming up are November 13th -Grant Night allocations, No December Meeting, January 15th, February 12th, March 11th.  Please mark you calendars! We would love to have you join us!

We are also in need of a new SAC (School Accountability Committee) member if you are interested in fulfilling this role (or have more questions )please send your name a short paragraph about yourself to carrie.rotherham@dcsdk12.org by Friday and I will create a ballot for elections!

Dr. Malouff and I will be available during conferences if you have any questions, concerns or comments about PCE!

I hope you and your family enjoy the upcoming fall break!

Sincerely,

Carrie Rotherham
PCE, Principal

Music Program News

Dear Parents,

I know that many of of you have heard the new that our beloved Mrs. Holcombe will be soon leaving PCE.  Mrs. Holcombe has been such an important part of the PCE community and she will be sadly missed.  She will tell you that this is one of the hardest decisions she has had to make because she so dearly loves being a part of each and every child's music education! 

She will be very hard to replace! 

We have already started receiving applications for this position and will be very thoughtful in our selection of a new music teacher.  Once we have made that selection we will make an announcement to the community.

Mrs. Holcombe's last day will be the day before fall break.  We all wish her the best of luck with the great opportunity that she has been given!

Sincerely,

Carrie

September already?

Hello again PCE Parents!

Time is flying by and we have now completed our first month of school!

This month will bring many adventures for us!  Hopefully it will also include some cooler weather!

We successfully completed our first fire drill of the year!  The students and staff did a fabulous job! We were out of the building and safe very quickly!

We also welcomed our 6th graders back from a very exciting Outdoor Ed Adventure!  All went well and the students had many stories to share!  We received many compliments on how great they were!

Looking forward we have some important events coming up soon!

• Our first PCEA meeting will be Tuesday September 10th at 6:30--This is a new year, with new administration and a new board--we would love to have your support!
• Friday, September 27th is our first staff development day --so students are off of school.
• Friday October 4th is our 2nd annual Wolf Night--we are looking forward to see everyone for this great event!

Drills and Safety:
This month we will practice two drills ---another Fire drill and a Lockdown drill.  Please let your child's teacher know if your child has any anxiety around these two drills.  We want our children to be prepared but we do not want to cause in undo stress.

Interim Testing:
Our other big event for the rest of the month is Interim testing.  We are assessing our student to obtain a baseline of learning.  This is important information so that we can accurately measure the growth of each student BUT this is only one data point.  We will work to make sure that testing is performed as quickly as possible so that our learning is not interrupted for long.  Our most important job is teaching and our students most important job is learning, we want to maximize these learning adventures every day! 

As always please let us know if you have any questions, we would be glad to hear from you!

Carrie
carrie.rotherham@dcsdk12.org
303-387-8200

Safety and Security at PCE

Dear Parents,

It has been such a busy start to the year!  In the midst of getting everything ready for the children academically, I forgot to update you on the security measures we have in place!

We will continue to keep our front door locked and you will have to be “buzzed” into the building.  We are asking that all parents please help us by ensuring that the door closes behind you when you enter or exit the building and be aware of allowing other adults entering the building with you.  Please also remember to check in with the office anytime you are in the building, we know that this is an extra step but the safety of our students is top priority for us!

We have also had some upgrades to our general security at PCE, including increased "visibility" of our supervising adults.  Adults that are outside supervising children will have a very bright orange vest on so children will know who to go to for help.  They will also be equipped with Walkie-Talkies that will call directly into the office if assistance is needed.

We will conduct at least one safety drill a month throughout the year.  Our drills consist of fire, severe weather, lock-down and lock-out drills.  

The difference between lock-out and lock-down drills:

Lock-out:  this takes place when there is a "threat" outside of the building.  For example: a gas leak, police activity or a wild animal sighting.  This will include all children coming inside and it will be business as normal until all is clear outside the building.

Lock-down: this takes place when there is a "threat" inside the building.  We will announce Locks, Lights, Out of Sight!  Teachers will lock their doors, turn out their lights, and all children will be gathered together away from doors and windows so they cannot be seen.

Teachers will be aware when we practice ANY drill.  They will review rules and procedures ahead of time and prepare the children for all types of drills.  When the actual drill takes place we will clearly state that it is time to practice the "type of" safety drill.  When we practice drills there will be no "reenactments" or "actors" pretending to be bad guys.  Our drills are not intended to scare our children but rather to prepare them for emergencies.  

Other safety procedures we want to remind everyone about are morning and afternoon drop-off and pick-up. 

·       There is NO SUPERVISION on the playground before school---PLEASE do not encourage your children to play on the playground before school.  Walkers, bike riders and car riders can go to either the front door or the "bus loop" door and wait for the bell.  Those doors will be opened at 8:30 for student arrival.

·       Morning Drop-Off:

o   Parents using the drop-off in the morning must drop their child off along the curb.  This area is two lanes wide so that parents can stop along the curb and then pull out into the left lane when exiting.  Students should only exit the car on the passenger side.  Parents using this area should always drive as far forward in the lane as possible before stopping. 

·       Afternoon Pick-Up:

o   When picking students up in this area, parents SHOULD NOT double park NOR leave the car unattended.  Students should, again, only enter the car on the passenger side from the curb.  There is to be NO PARKING in the drop off lane as it is an emergency vehicle access lane.

o   Please remember to pull all the way up in the drop-off zone to pick up your children.  It is a safety concern for our teachers and our students to cut in the line, or to pull in against traffic flow.  We know that the line can sometimes be long but the safety of our children is worth the wait!

·       We are also encouraging our students to only use the crosswalks when crossing from the parking lot; please do not walk across the rocks in order to take a “shortcut” to the main school sidewalk.  Please help us by setting this example when arriving or leaving the school parking lot.  We also do not want children crossing the parking lot by themselves, please make sure that an adult sees them and can cross them safely.

Keeping our children safe, healthy and happy is very important to every staff member of PCE!!  Please let us know if you ever have any questions or concerns!

Sincerely,

Carrie Rotherham

Principal, PCE