Week 26

 Dear Parents,

           This week in math we focused on three digit subtraction with and without regrouping. I was impressed with how quickly my students were able to change over from the three digit addition problems! They are so focused as they work. I even hear them talking to themselves to say the steps we learned together.

            In writing we worked on our rough drafts of our famous American biographies. Mrs. Stevens did an excellent job of researching with them and they had many interesting facts to use to write their individual papers on Helen Keller. We edited, then revised making sure we used time order transition words.

             In reading we listened to a story on 2-22-2022 called Two of Everything and wrote a response. On Wednesday we review the traits of a good citizen and wrote about how we can be a good citizen. On Friday we created a kite glyph that tells about ourselves- this will be shared at Open House. We also read a story about a kite independently and answered comprehension questions.

               In Science we wrote about our favorite season. We used a thermometer to measure the temperature of hot, cold and room temperature water. We recorded our findings in our science notebooks. On Friday we used a wind vane and rain gauge to find the wind direction and the rainfall in inches- and yes, it actually rained in our classroom! It was a short week, but still packed with lots of fun learning opportunities.

Week 25

 Dear Parents,

        Although I was not there this week I have been in touch nightly with Mrs. Stevens who had agreed to be with my class in my absence. She did an amazing job keeping the children on track. Thank you all for your loving messages that you sent to me. It means so much to know that I had an amazing retired teacher from my former team, who knows second grade and our content extremely well, taking care of my class and that I have supportive parents who understand life’s challenges. I look forward to returning to CRE on Tuesday. 

        A big shout out to Sabrina Wise for planning a wonderful Valentines party. She even sent me an e-mail with a picture of the class during the party. The smiles were a mile wide!

        I also had the honor of joining the class virtually on Wednesday for what I thought was a meeting, but instead was surprised by the new Superintendent, Lori Rapp, Mrs. Cervantes, my team and your children. I was named as one of the five finalists for elementary teacher of the year. I feel extremely honored, and plan on doing my best to represent CRE.

 

          Our student ambassadors developed some kindness challenges for students. We have also prepared a kindness calendar for each student to take home next week, to support their own continued kindness here at school and through spring break, with some kindness activities for at home. Our ambassadors have worked hard on these and are so excited to support with continued ACTS of Kindness.

Purchase a CRE Yearbook!

We are excited to let you know that you can now order your 2021-2022 CRE Yearbook!  The Yearbooks will be delivered to our campus in early May and will be distributed to all who have ordered!  There will also be an option to purchase a book then based on how many we have available.  You can get your Yearbook personalized for an additional $5.00.  Personalization of the Yearbook will be available to you until March, so place your order before March 2^nd to have a chance to have your child’s name engraved on the cover.  Please visit the website by clicking on the link below:

https://bit.ly/CREyearbook

 

Thank you from your Yearbook Advisors,

 

Mrs. Clements – clementsc@lisd.net

Mrs. Hernandez – hernandezv@lisd.net

 

Week 24

 Dear Parents,

           I am sad to inform you that my father has passed away. I flew home to Ohio to help care for my mother and settle things for both my parents. I will be gone all next week as well. Know that I have taken care of my classroom before leaving. I have called a retired second grade teacher, Mrs. Stevens,  who is now subbing taking my place while I am gone. She is an excellent teacher and was a teacher of the year while at CRE. Your children are in excellent care.

         This week in math we focused on different types of word problems. We represented them in number sentences, part/part/whole boxes as well as number lines. The children worked in partners to solve them after representing them.

         In Language, we learned about pronouns taking the place of nouns. We also began a writing unit on researching to write a biography. We began learning about Ben Franklin and soon we will transition to Helen Keller. We will learn to put the information in a time-line order and turn dry facts into interesting sentences. 

         In reading we learned about inferring as we read a story and continued on with our map skills focusing on The symbols on a map key.

         In science we continued learning about objects in the sky- the sun and the moon. We are continuing to fill in our moon phase chart each day.

 

 

Week 23

 Dear Parents,

      As you may have heard, school will be closed for both tomorrow Thursday Feb. 3^rd and Friday Feb. 4^th due to the winter storm advisory. You can check the LISD website for more information. LISD Weather Closure

 

     This week in math we finished up units 3 and 4 on ordering and comparing numbers to 1,200 and took our assessment. Next week we will be focusing on solving different types of addition and subtraction word problems.

     In writing we are working on finishing our poetry books and putting them together- we are almost all finished and can’t wait to share our original poems. Next week we will begin a unit on research. We will be writing biographies. We will learn how to collect important information and organize it in a timeline order. We will be using multiple sources to research our chosen person.

       In reading/ social studies we learned about how pictures on a map key stand for features on a map. We learned about the Lunar New Year as we read a Scholastic News, watched a Discovery Streaming video and even tried using chopsticks to eat Ramen Noodles. The children had fun reading their fortunes from the fortune cookie they also ate. They made a red banner and tried to copy different Chinese characters to write a message. Gung Hay Fat Choy!

         In science we began plotting the moon phases on Feb. 1^st. It was perfect timing as it was a New Moon which marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year Celebrations! Two weeks from now the moon should be a Full Moon according to the article we read. We can’t wait to see how our moon phase calendar comes out.

Week 22

 Hello, Ms. Carpenter’s families, 

 

I want to ensure you received the following information from Lewisville ISD yesterday. The district was faced with a very difficult decision, so we thank you for continued support at Coyote Ridge. We appreciate our families so very much! 

 

All Lewisville ISD campuses and facilities will be closed beginning Wednesday, Jan. 26 through Sunday, Jan. 30. Classes will resume and all facilities will reopen Monday, Jan. 31. 

 

For additional details, refer to the email below that was shared with all LISD families yesterday evening from Interim Superintendent Gary Patterson. To stay up to date on the latest information, visit LISD.net.

 

For resources regarding free curbside meals Wednesday, Jan. 26 through Friday, Jan. 28, visit

LISD.net/freemeals.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

LISD Families, 

 

As I mentioned in my update to you this weekend, our staffing shortages have reached significant levels due to the latest COVID surge. We do not have enough staff members to cover the expected staff absences, despite our best efforts to find substitutes and coverage for classes. The numbers simply are not in our favor. 

 

After reviewing our most recent trends and data over the last two days, we have made the difficult decision to close the district beginning Wednesday, Jan. 26. Classes will resume Monday, Jan. 31. It is our hope this district-wide closure will stem this alarming trend and provide relief to both students and staff. 

 

The positive cases reported by middle school and high school students over the last 10 days have increased by almost 500%. Absences for on-campus staff are running between 7-800 daily, while district-wide staff absences have been over 900 and peaked at 1,048 last Friday. That is more than double the number we would expect during non-COVID years. It is important to understand, not all these absences are positive COVID cases in staff. Many may be COVID-related, but we are seeing extraordinarily high numbers with other illnesses, personal reasons, sick family members, family medical leave, and the list goes on. Regardless of the cause, these staff absences impact our ability to maintain our daily campus operations. 

 

We know you may wonder why we can’t offer virtual or remote learning for a period of time, and that is a reasonable question. The answer still comes back to the lack of staff availability to conduct those lessons. We are conscious of the lost instructional time, and are considering all options to address those concerns.

 

Student activities such as fine arts and athletics will continue at the high school level. Middle school athletics for this week will be canceled and rescheduled for a future date, while some optional fine arts practice sessions may be held virtually. Campus-specific information will be shared by campus administrators and program sponsors regarding practices or other important information.

 

We understand the impact this has on our more than 50,000 students and their families and our 6,500 staff, and we do not make this decision lightly. We have heard from concerned families on all sides of this issue. Some believe we should have closed the district earlier. Some believe we shouldn’t close schools at all. We know this is not a perfect solution, and certainly a measure we wish we didn’t have to take. I want to be clear - we have used every resource available over the last two weeks to keep the district open. 

 

I want to thank our teachers, campus support staff, campus administrators, along with the district’s central office staff, for covering classes in addition to their already full workloads. I want to thank our extended day staff members for coming in early to cover classes. And I want to thank all the substitute teachers for sticking with us, and our HR department for trying to recruit more substitutes to our system. We are doing everything we can to keep schools open, and we have simply reached the limit of tools at our disposal. 

 

We will continue to communicate with you as early as possible regarding the decisions we are considering and making. My sincere appreciation for your patience and support for our staff and students. I know the majority of our community understand and appreciate what hard-working and dedicated teachers, principals and staff we have. I ask that you treat these folks with kindness and give the benefit of the doubt that we are doing all we can to serve and support our students and families. 

 

My best wishes for the safety of your family.

Gary Patterson

Interim Superintendent

 

Week 21

 Dear Parents,

        This week in math we had many different skills utilized with numbers to 1,200. We read clues, used reasoning to identify a number, we compared numbers to see which was greater than, less than or equal to each other, and we ordered the numbers from greatest to least and least to greatest. I was really proud of my students as they picked up these skills easily.

         In writing we continued drafting poems and visualizing some to put in our poetry book. Reading also was focused on poetry as we read poems about weather, discussed them, talked about interesting words and what the poems were mainly about. We pointed out all the elements of poetry we saw in these poems and then we took a comprehension check over three poems.

          In social studies we are beginning our map skills and will focus on a different one each Monday. This week we learned about the differences between maps and globes.

           In science we worked on our performance task about using resources to build a very strong house that would keep even the Big Bad Wolf out. Not even he could blow our house down! We took a cloze procedure paper over the vocabulary we learned and took our assessment on Friday.

Week 20

 Dear Parents,

    In math this week  we focused on base ten relationships to 1,200. We also took our middle of the year math CBA. This test covers all the skills covered the first half of the school year. We use the information to reinforce skills that we feel need more practice. This assessment will not be used as a grade in the gradebook.

     In writing we began our unit on poetry and  we will continue this unit next week as we learn about the elements of poetry and draft a few poems as well. We will take one or more to the final copy stage and collect other pages to put in a poetry book. We will be reading poems during our reading block of time as it is also our reading focus. We will visualize as we read and draw our mind movies.

     In Social studies we read a Scholastic News about Martin Luther King, Jr. and made a project telling about each child’s dream for our world. 

      In science we continued learning about natural and man made resources as we found them inside and outside our school. We did a picture sorting activity and created a bumper sticker to help promote the conservation of a natural resource. We watched a brainpop jr. video, discussed the contents of it and took a quiz.