The Gator Gazette
Aue Elementary School
Where Gators are setting their sights on reaching new heights.
Volume 1 Number 1
Vision
Gators...Live, Love,
Learn, Lead. The future starts with us.
Mission
Learning today,
leading tomorrow
Hands on the
present...Eyes on
the future.
Motto
We are Gators!
Learning today...Leading
tomorrow
September 2, 2014
Aue Gators are Soaring to New Heights
Another summer gone and a new school year underway. It was terrific seeing old and new faces during “Meet
Your Teacher” evening and then again on Monday morning.
For the second year in a row, we lost some familiar faces and
families due to the opening of Bonnie Ellison Elementary
School. We will miss them and wish them luck in their new
schools.
There are currently 641 students enrolled at Aue. The
first day was smooth flying, and we want to thank our parents
for aiding in that endeavor. The staff here has been planning
and preparing for the new school year by attending professional development opportunities both on and off-campus
throughout the summer. Your children are in good hands and
should expect to have a meaningful, exciting school year.
Parents, we welcome you to the 2014-2015 school
year. We look forward to sharing this year’s school experience with you and your children. Remember, statistics prove
year in and year out that children whose parents are engaged
in their education show increased academic achievement.
There are multiple ways to be involved and we welcome that.
In this first newsletter, we will review some campus and
District policies. Ensuing issues will focus more on what our
students are up to in their classrooms and throughout the
school.
Julia Newton Aue Elementary School
24750 Baywater Stage
San Antonio, TX 78255-9534
Phone: 210-397-6750
Fax: 210-698-4422
www.nisd.net
Dates to Remember
Sept. 4
Back to School
Night/PTA General
Meeting
Sept. 4 ALPHA orientation
Session 1 4:45 PM
Session 2 6:00 PM
Sept. 15 Celebrate Freedom Wk
Sept. 16 Counselor Coffee/
ALPHA Awareness
Sept. 19 Early Release Day
Sept. 22 Autumn begins
Sept. 23-25 CogAT 3rd grade
Sept. 30 Morning Gator Buddy
tutoring begins
Oct. 3
Bike Rodeo
Oct. 7
S.A.T. meeting
Oct. 10 Declaration of Respect signing day
Back to School Night
Aue’s parent orientation (Back to School Night) will be
held on Thursday, September 4, 2014. The purpose of these
presentations is to give you information about curriculum and
grade-level policies and procedures. We ask that you keep
your children home that night.
We will hold our first general P.T.A. meeting from 5:306:00 PM in the cafeteria. The first orientation will start at 6:00
PM in the classrooms. The second orientation, for those of
you with multiple children, will start at 6:45 and end at 7:30.
Ms. Sanchez will meet with ALPHA parents at 4:45 PM
and again at 6:00 PM in the library.
The office staff will be selling planners and school spirit
shirts. Each item costs $10.00 in cash or check. Planners are
required for 3rd through 5th grades.
We look forward to seeing you. These are informative
sessions, and we hope you plan on attending.
If you plan on picking up your children from school, and
Arrival and Dismissal
A teacher’s purpose is not to
create students in his own
image, but to develop students who can create their
own image.
~Author Unknown
you do not have a green car sign with your family name on it,
please send a note to the teacher so that one can be prepared.
We love our students and
want them to feel safe at school
each and every day. Please help
us to achieve this goal. We know
that the local construction has
brought extra time on the road and
is causing delays in traffic. Please
be patient in the parking lots. Make
sure to look around you before driving and walking across parking lots
or crosswalks. Do not drop your
children off in active driving lanes in the parking lots. They
should be dropped off against the curbs. The staff is here to
help get our children into school in the safest possible manner
each morning.
News from the Library
Welcome back Aue Gators! The library will be open for checkout beginning
September 2, 2014. The library hours will
be from 8:00am - 3:00pm, Tuesday through
Friday. However, please keep in mind that
there may be times when the library will be
closed for special functions.
As an Aue parent/guardian, we want
to encourage you to come to the library and
check out additional books for your child/
children to read at home. To find out more
about the library, I will be having two Library
Orientation meetings: Thursday, September
4, from 5:00pm-5:30pm and from 6:00pm6:30pm. During the meeting I will be answering any questions you have about our
Reading Incentive program, as well showing
you how you can access our Northside Digital Library and other databases from home.
If you wish to be a library helper this
year and assist with special functions in the
library such as book fair, guest authors, box
tops, etc., please drop me an email at [email protected], or stop by the library
at any time.
The first Box Tops for Education collection will be on October 3, 2014. Thank
you for supporting our library.
GATORFEST '14!
Mark your calendar for Gatorfest, Friday, October 17th from 3:30 to
7pm. Gatorfest is our school carnival and
silent auction to raise funds for our
school. Please plan on attending with your
family and friends! More information will be
coming in your child's backpack. If you are
interested in helping plan Gatorfest, please
contact Kelly Holtzinger at
[email protected].
ALPHA Orientation
Parent Orientation for parents of students
currently identified as GT is scheduled
for September 4, 2014. There will be two sessions. Parents only need to attend one session. The first session will be from 4:45 5:30 and the second session will be from 6:00 6:45. Both sessions will be located in the ALPHA classroom, room D206.
Ms. Sanchez will be offering a Parent
Awareness Session on Tuesday, September 16,
from 7:45 AM - 9:00 AM in the library. This information session is for families who are interested
in learning about the Gifted and Talented Programs in Northside and the NISD GT identification process.
We Need Your John Hancock
Please make sure to sign and return the
multiple forms sent home in a white envelope on
the first day of school. The information you provide to us assists us in operating soundly.
Most students have “take home” folders.
Please utilize these throughout the year to return and send in documents and communication
to the teacher or the office.
Please remember to fill out both sides of
the Medical and Emergency Information Card.
List every single person who is allowed to pick
up your child/ren from the school in the event of
an illness or emergency. You may attach additional sheets of paper to the card if you need
more space. Remember, we will only release
your child/ren to someone listed on this
card.
Join PTA
Please support Aue’s PTA by becoming a member. Look for the PTA information package
coming home with your students. There will
also be a PTA table at Back to School Night.
Parent Connection
Early Release Days
Parent Connection is a parent portal
which keeps parents up-to-date on grades
and daily attendance. It is an invaluable tool
available for your use.
To access Parent Connection, go to
www.nisd.net and select schools along the
top banner. Create a log in for yourself. You
will need your child’s school identification
number and the last four digits of his/her social security number to complete the process.
From this site, you can also manage
your contact information for the School Messenger System, which sends out remote
phone calls as reminders for upcoming
events and alerts you to your child’s
absences.
There are five Early Release Days this
school year. Those dates are Sept. 19, Nov. 7,
Feb. 6, March 27, and May 8th.
Students are dismissed at 11:45 AM.
The school will provide aftercare for students
until 2:45 PM. It is the parent’s responsibility to
pick up his/her child/ren by 2:45 PM. PPCD has
a different schedule which the teachers will
share with you. Students will be fed lunch prior
to dismissal.
For each Early Release Day, you will receive a dismissal instruction sheet. This is how
you will let us know how your child will be going
home that day.
Fewer Buses
We are down to three large buses
and one special needs bus this year. What
a difference this has made. If you cross the
street and enter through the bus loop doors,
then you have probably met Mr. Perez at
the crosswalk. Directing traffic is Ms. Anderson and Mrs. Carroll.
If there are any changes to how your
child will be going home, the school will require a written note from the parent/
guardian. For example, if two friends are
going home together, each parent must
write a note. If a student is getting off at a
different bus stop, we will need a note. Administration has to approve these changes.
Only students eligible to ride an NISD
school bus may ride home on another bus
with a friend.
Please take a few minutes to discuss
acceptable bus behavior and review the bus
rules listed in the NISD Student-Parent
Handbook located at www.nisd.net.
Our first Early Release Day is
Friday, September 19, 2014.
Counselors Coffee
Join us on September 16, 2014, from
7:45-9:00 AM for our September Counselors’
Coffee. This month’s topic is a Gifted and
Talented Awareness session to be presented
by our ALPA teacher, Ms. Jessica Sanchez.
Bike Rodeo
The Bike Rodeo is coming soon. It will be
held on Friday, October 3, 2014. More information will be coming home from school.
Coach Magee is managing the event this
year. If anyone would like to assist her,
please contact her at [email protected].
Gator Buddy Tutoring
A look ahead from Carol Anderson, Aue’s
Reading Specialist . . .
In a couple of weeks, your Third, Fourth or
Fifth Grade child will bring home an invitation to be a reading buddy for a younger Aue
reader. This is a position of leadership and
your child will be trained and supported in
his/her role. Many parents have told me, over
the years, that their child has matured and
developed because of tutoring a young reader through the Gator Buddy Tutoring program.
First and Second Grade children will
receive an invitation to come to GBT starting
September 30. This free, school-wide program runs September through May, Tuesday
through Friday from 7:15 – 7:40 AM. It is a
chance for young gators to ‘catch’ the love of
reading or to further develop current reading
skills, with an older buddy.
Kinder children generally receive invitations in January. If you feel your kinder
child is exceptionally mature and would do
well earlier than Jan. in this before school
program, please let his or her teacher know,
and I’ll send home an invitation.
Parent Identification and
Visitor's Badges
Northside uses the Raptor System to
create visitor passes/badges when parents
come to campus. It is a requirement that a
visitor show his/her driver’s license or government identification each time he comes to
school. We will ask you each time to show it.
It is not that we have short-term memory
loss, it is just policy. A visitors badge will
then be printed which must be worn while in
the school. Badges are not necessary when
dropping off or picking up students at arrival
and dismissal time. However, when picking
up a student outside of dismissal time, identification must be provided to the school staff.
This is also the case if a parent tries to remove a student from a bus.
Attendance
More will be published in the next newsletter concerning state attendance requirements.
The law says that students must be in school for
the entire day. If students are tardy, they are not
in school for a full day. Because of the construction and resulting traffic issues, please leave
plenty of time to get your child to school. The
first bell rings at 7:40 AM, and all students must
be in their seats by 7:45 AM. If they are not,
they must stop in the office for a tardy slip. Extensive tardiness will result in a NISD Attendance Warning Notice. Please help your child get
off on the right foot each day by getting them
here on time. The day will be much better for a
student if they are not having to rush to catch up
with the rest of his/her classmates.
STAAR Testing Dates
Please mark your calendars for this
school year’s state testing days. On March 30
and 31, 2015, the 4th graders will take the
STAAR Writing Test. On March 30, 2015, the
5th graders will take the STAAR Math Test. On
March 31, 2015, they will take the STAAR Reading Test. Aue will be a closed campus on these
two days.
On April 21, 2015, 3rd and 4th graders
will take the STAAR Math Test. On April 22,
2015, 3rd and 4th graders will take the STAAR
Reading Test. On April 22, 2015, the 5th graders will take the STAAR Science Test. Aue will
again be a closed campus on these days.
Fifth graders are only required to pass
the reading test this year to meet the promotion
requirements. The Texas Education Agency has
waived the 5th grade math promotion requirement for the 2014-2015 school year.
What’s the Big Deal about Reading?
One reason for school is to build knowledge, and a time-tested way to do so is through wide
reading - reading a wealth of materials across a variety of genres. Daniel Willingham, Cognitive
Psychologist, Professor at The University of Virginia, and author of a number of books on education, says, “Building pupils’ knowledge is crucial, because a memory replete with facts learns better than one without. Having factual knowledge in the long-term memory makes it easier to acquire still more factual knowledge . . .”
But we live in a video and computer age, so is it still necessary for children to learn to
read well in order to succeed? In another article, Willingham gives us good insight into this question:
“Written materials—books, newspapers, magazines—provide richer sources of information than
what one generally finds on television, in movies, or on the sort of Internet sites most frequented
by students such as gaming and social networking sites. There are two ways that we know this.
First, it’s straightforward (if time-consuming) to assess the breadth of vocabulary from a source.
Believe it or not, there is richer vocabulary in the average preschool book than in the average television show aimed at adults. Second, other studies show that people who read a lot know a lot.
This effect holds true even when experimenters statistically remove other factors that might confound the results. (For example, perhaps people who are wealthy read a lot and they also happen to know a lot.) There seems to be a causal relationship between reading and having a broad
base of knowledge.
People who know a lot are good thinkers. And you get to be a person who knows a lot by reading. But not all children read a lot. The differences in out-of-school reading among children are
extreme. If we line up children according to how much they read outside of school, the child in
the 90th percentile reads as much in two days as the child in the 10th percentile reads in an entire year. As we consider ways to improve school outcomes, encouraging all children to read
more ought to emerge as a top priority. No other measure could pay such large dividends at such
modest cost.”
Watch this space! Future editions of our newsletter will offer more hints and helps for reading at home with your child from Aue’s Reading Specialist, Carol Anderson.
Attribution: Daniel Willingham, University of Virginia.: Permission for reprint granted 8-262013 via email. Website: http://www.danielwillingham.com/index.html
http://teachersites.schoolworld.com/webpages/JNewtonP1/parents_page.cfm?subpage=915472
Also, from a reading specialist at the same web-site: Reading At Home
Reading at Home
Reading and Comprehension with your Child
How to Read to Your Child
Here are some strategies that you can use while reading together to enhance comprehension
and fluency (reading speed and smoothness).
 Before reading
Find books about subjects your child is interested in or is studying in school. If a child is interested
in the subject matter, he or she will attempt to read books of almost any difficulty about that subject. Help your child search for and choose high-interest reading matter or books that supplement
what is going on in class. Our Lexile “Find a Book” search can help!
Mix easy books with hard books. Read books both above and below your child’s Lexile measure.
read the harder books. Look through the pictures. Familiarize yourself with the pictures to have a
sense of the story.
 While reading Have your child read aloud to you. Encourage your child to try to sound out
words he or she doesn’t know, but offer help. Pronounce the difficult word, provide a definition,
and ask your child to repeat the word aloud. Slow and steady wins the race. Try not to break the
flow of reading too much. Help your child with tough words but otherwise let your child read at his
or her pace. Take turns reading pages. You read the left pages and your child reads the right pages. This helps him or her get into longer stories without being intimidated by the sheer number of
words. Act out the story. Use different voices for the characters in a story. Use gestures, and touch
the pictures to dramatize action. Ask questions. Pause in the middle of the book to guess at what
will happen next in the story.
After reading Talk about the book. Ask questions about what interested your child, or about his or
her favorite part of the story. Help your child summarize the book or talk about its moral. Ask “Why
do you think the author wrote this book?” Re-read your child’s favorites. Re-reading reinforces the
new vocabulary and helps your child “own” those words. Combine art projects with reading. Draw
pictures of your favorite scenes from a book. Write an original story or play with a book’s characters. Have a themed birthday party based on a favorite book, and design all the decorations together. Track your child’s progress. Put your child’s Lexile BookBag on the refrigerator and mark
the books as her or she reads them.
Copyright © 2007 MetaMetrics, Inc. All rights reserved.
When Reading at Home
When reading at home with your child it is beneficial for them to be reading appropriate books.
This happens when they read at their independent level, decoding 97% of the words in the book
correctly. For more information on the different reading levels, please see the excerpt below. Also
be sure that your child is comprehending the story beyond the literal level, which is the who, the
when, and the what. These are basic details that come directly from the story. In second grade, we
begin to promote comprehension at the inferential level. This is when students have to read
"between the lines" to make connections with what is being read. This is often the "why" behind
the details.
FINDING THE READING LEVEL
Most authorities define three reading levels.
1. Independent Reading Level. Easy reading. In oral reading, a child would have one or less word
calling errors in 100 words of text, with 100 percent accuracy on comprehension questions about
the story. A student could read it alone with ease.
2. Instructional Reading Level. This is the best level for learning new vocabulary. It requires the
assistance of a teacher or tutor. The word error range allowed while reading orally to the teacher is
from 2 to 5 word calling errors per 100 words of text (95% accuracy or better), with at least 80 percent comprehension on simple recall questions about the story. This is where the best progress is
made in reading. Children who are forced or permitted to attempt reading beyond the 5-word error
limit soon begin to feel frustration when in an instructional setting.
3. Frustration Reading Level. This is too hard for the reader. Word errors are over 5 per 100 words
of text. Comprehension questions are below 70 percent accuracy. Unfortunately, teachers some
Sometimes teachers allow this to happen, especially when the words missed are basic vocabulary
sight words, such as "was" for "saw" and "what/that." The practice of having young children work in
frustration level reading materials is not professionally sound.
Improving Your Child's Comprehension While Reading at Home
The Three Levels of Comprehension
A Guide for Writing Comprehension Questions
The Literal Level
The literal level focuses on reading the passages, hearing the words or viewing the images. It involves identifying the important and essential information. With guidance, students can distinguish
between the important and less important ideas.
Question: What did the author say?
Example: Where did Henry’s family go on vacation?
The Interpretive Level
At the interpretive level, the focus shifts to reading between the lines, looking at what is implied by
the material under study. It requires students to combine pieces of information in order to make inferences about the author's intent and message. Guiding students to recognize these perceived
relationships promotes understanding and decreases the risk of being overwhelmed by the complexities of the text being viewed, heard or read.
Question: What was meant by what was said?
Example: Why did Henry roll his eyes when his dad started to play
the guitar?
The Applied Level
Understandings at the literal and interpretive levels are combined, reorganized and restructured at
the applied level to express opinions, draw new insights and develop fresh ideas. Guiding students through the applied level shows them how to synthesize information, to read between the
lines and to develop a deeper understanding of the concepts, principles and implications presented
in the text.
Question: How would the author’s message apply to other situations given what you memorized and understood at the other two levels?
Example: If Henry’s friend Tom was the one playing the guitar, do you
think Henry would have rolled his eyes? Why or why not?