Cool Pic of Jet

Mrs. Shelley Hughes of LHS sent this really neat pic to me yesterday stating that someone had sent this to WSFA.  Can you see more than one jet in picture?

Keeping Spirits High

As we travel about Crenshaw County on any given Friday night, we find stadiums full of support and enthusiasm for our young people. Realize that not all communities support schools as does ours.  

This past weekend, all 3 varsity teams won big! Kudos to all who participated.  Please take an opportunity to support our students this Friday night.  Highland Home travels to Brantley and Luverne plays host to Pike County.  All games start at 7 PM.  

Here are a few pics of Fridays in Crenshaw County.

Teams and cheerleaders were recognized at halftime of the #10 (2A) Luverne vs.
Central-Hayneville Game .  Luverne won by a score of 54-22.

HHS Flying High After Defeating Zion Chapel 48-6.
Picture was taken leaving the game, note the flags, full moon and aircraft. 

BHS Faculty demonstrates at the Pep Rally that they still have it!
#3 (1A)  BHS defeated Georgiana 44-12

Keeping It Clean!

I found this on the internet, so you know it must be true and it is certainly something that needs to be noted.

National Custodial Workers Day is October 2. Give your custodian a big thanks. At your school, church, place of employment, and a variety of other places, your custodial support are silently at work all year long. They are the workers who clean and keep in good repair, the facility that you enjoy. They seldom get recognition. They are usually in the background or "behind" the scene.

Take a minute to seek out custodial workers at your school. Give them a big "TY" for all that they do to keep the facility sparkling and running like a top.

LHS High School Hall

   

BHS Hosts ELA Night

This past Monday night, Brantley School hosted its English Language Arts night.  The standing room only audience was treated to a Parade of Characters.  Winners were: 1st Place- Elli Knighten "Fancy Nancy", 2nd Place- Justin Renfroe "Peter Pan", 3rd Place- Libby Knighten "Pink-a-licous", 4th Place- Stoney Odom "Little Bo Peep".  The audience then heard from Mrs. Donna Ash who spoke of the evolution and rigor of the College and Career Ready Standards.  Attendees traversed to the classrooms for demonstrations and later returned to the cafeteria for refreshments.

Much thanks to all who attended and participated.  Special thanks to instructional coach Mrs. Jeananne Branum for her efforts.

Goshen Coach Remembered For Her Impact on Lives

Many of us know Coach Dee Hughes of Goshen.  Please remember her family during this time.  Here is an article from the Dothan Eagle.

Amy Warrick was trying to find the words Wednesday to sum up friend Dee Hughes, longtime coach and educator at Goshen High School, when she came up with what she felt described her best.

“She was always about key words to inspire players and one of those words one time was impact and that is a good word to describe her – impact,” Warrick said of Hughes, who passed away in the early morning hours Wednesday at her home in Troy after a lengthy battle with cancer. She was 43.

To Read More Click Here.

HHS Holds ELA Night

In an effort to communicate information about CCRS, HHS held its first ever "Reading Extravaganza" on September 19, 2013. The night began with a delicious spaghetti supper prepared by the HHS lunchroom staff.  A Regular Meeting of the PTA followed. At the conclusion of the PTA meeting, instructional coach, Mrs. Melanie Matthews, explained to parents why the Alabama State Department of Education decided to make a change with state standards. Parents were then dismissed to the grade level of their choice.  During the break-out sessions, parents:

• engaged in an effective literacy based activity through the use of the carousel strategy,  
• TWIRLed,
• focused on acceleration activities,
• were given information on the reading process,
• were instructed as to how they can build comprehension by effective questioning during read aloud story time, specifically through using graphic sources to help students infer answers when they are not directly given,
• were instructed that 50% of what their students are expected to read comes in the form of high-frequency or sight words,
• were given a set of  high-frequency word flash cards, 
• received instructional strategies regarding the sortment of words into sets,
• participated in a "Make and Take" activity by cutting out sight words already introduced to begin using this resource at home immediately.  

With over 100 signatures on sign-in sheets HHS is considering the night a success! Much thanks to Mrs. Melanie Matthews, instructional coach, for bringing this awareness to our parents. Also, kudos to the administration and teachers who participated.

BHS and HHS- See You at the Flagpole

Brantley School and Highland Home School students participated in "See You at the Flagpole" this past Wednesday, prior to school.
Due to inclement weather, BHS students conducted the observance in the gymnasium.  HHS was able to hold its meeting outside. 

See You at the Pole, the global day of student prayer, began in 1990 as a grass roots movement with ten students praying at their school. Twenty years later, millions pray on their campuses on the fourth Wednesday in September.

See You at the Pole is a prayer rally where students meet at the school flagpole before school to lift up their friends, families, teachers, school, and nation to God. It is a student-initiated, student-organized, and student-led event. 

BHS Students

HHS Students Meet

iLearn Update

Yours truly attempts to be in the schools no less than twice per week.  The point of emphasis of late has been the high school classroom and the implementation of iLearn.  There is so much good, it would be difficult to list it all but here is my feeble attempt.

Apps and Such

• Edmodo allows teachers to connect to students via network. All assignments, grades and badges assigned or awarded through Edmodo are stored and easily accessible.
• Google Drive allows students and teachers store and access your files anywhere on the web, on the hard drive, or on the go. Google Drive is a cloud storage service. Teachers and students can store your documents, photos, music, videos, etc. all in one place. It syncs with mobile devices and the computer, so if changes are made on one gadget, it will automatically show up if you access it elsewhere. It tracks your changes too, so if you make an edit to the document and hit save, you can still look back at all your revisions from the past 30 days. It allows one to create Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google Drive lets you choose exactly who – friends, family, colleagues – gets your files. You don’t need email attachments anymore. Just share your file, folder, or Google Doc from any device.

• Educreate turns the iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Creating a great video of homework is as simple as touching, tapping and talking. Explain a math formula... Create an animated lesson... Add commentary to photos... Diagram a sports play...
• AirServer - There are times when a teacher needs to show content to the class to engage the audience, using an iPad. With AirServer teachers can wirelessly beam their iPad display to the Mac or PC and from there to the projector. This gives the teacher the freedom to move around the class with their iPad in hand. AirServer also supports multiple simultaneous connections, so one or more students could mirror their iPads to share their ideas and their work with the rest of the class.
• Free Graphing Calculator-  A new TI 83 graphing calculator from Radio Shack costs $109.  Per our minis, the app is free.  The iPad app is less pixelated and has color options as opposed to the TI 83. Neat! Neat! Neat!  The drawback is that the mini cannot be used to take the ACT.
  

Updates and Infrastructure

• The IOS 7 update has prevented a few opportunities for our IT department.  Within a week, most students have completed their updates and iPads with the all-new design and features are working as they should.  
• The infrastructure is of some concern, especially when an entire class attempts to download an entire unit at once.  In the future, especially as we add grades 9 and 10 to the infrastructure, we may have to free up some band width by disabling digital phone access to the schools' internet.

Books

• It is not easy to impress students with digital content, but we have.  The interactive books contain embedded videos, links and photos.  When text is cut, book information such as page location is automatically pasted.
• Books in pdf format are being used.  The advantage over traditional text is that there is no wear-and-tear. The only drawback is that the pages are numbered differently than the textbook.

Battery Life

• Students say that they need to charge the mini every other day, pending their settings.  As to date, I have only seen 3 on charge in the classroom.

Damage and Inappropriate Use

• Yes, we have more than one cracked screen. Most of the screens, though cracked, are still useable.  
• Yes, we will check your history.   Yes, we will check your settings.  Yes, yes, and yes.

ARMT+ Highest Ever

It makes little difference in how you look at the 2013 ARMT+ scores, Crenshaw County showed improvement.  Keep in mind, that this year's test was more rigorous than ever before.  The charts below demonstrate the percent of students who scored at the highest possible level- Level IV.  The highlighted cells represent grade level achievement of highest scores ever.  Great job Crenshaw County!

Most Improved in the last 5 years-
6th Grade Reading from 46% in 2010 to 78% in 2013
for a 32% increase.

Most Improved in the last 5 years-
5th Grade Math from 31% in 2009 to 74% in 2011
for a 43% increase. 

Grandparents Turn Out in Large Numbers

Turn-Out

Crenshaw County Public Schools had a tremendous attendance on Grandparents Day this past Tuesday, September 18.  Child Nutrition reports the following meal totals for guests:  BHS – 177, HHS – 215, and LHS – 238.  It is safe to say that more than 600 attended as more attended and did not eat.   Please see the pictures below of Brantley and Highland Home Schools' grandparents.

Founder of Grandparents' Day

Marian Lucille Herndon McQuade of West Virginia is credited as the founder of National Granparents Day. Throughout the 1970s McQuade worked to educate the public as to the important contributions of senior citizens. She also urged people to adopt a grandparent, not for one day a year and not for material giving, but for a lifetime of experience.

National Grandparents Day was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. A presidential proclamation on September 6, 1979, made this day official – it designated Sunday, September 9, 1979, (being the “first Sunday of September following Labor Day”) as National Grandparents Day.

BHS Grandparents Day

Grandparents at HHS