Waggoner’s Word October 3rd, 2014
Dear Parents,
Calendar of Events for the Week of October 6th – 10th:
Monday, October 6, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Description: Community Event celebrating the desegregation of Hopewell Middle School. The Hopewell MS Show Choir will be the featured entertainment at this event.
Where: Texas State University - Round Rock Campus, 1555 University Blvd, Round Rock, TX, United States (map)
Tuesday, October 7th: 7th FB vs. Chisholm Trail @ Dragon Stadium
Wednesday, October 8th: 8th FB vs. Chisholm Trail @ Chisholm Trail
Thursday, October 9th: 5:30pm :Volleyball vs. C.D. Fulkes, 8th Home 7th @ C.D. Fulkes
Friday and ALL DAY Saturday, October 10th and 11th Region Orchestra Auditions @ Hopewell MS
Saturday, October 11th: Hopewell Cross Country @ Georgetown Invitational at San Gabriel Park
Monday, October 13th: NO SCHOOL-RRISD Staff In-Service and Professional Learning Day
Last weekend, the Hopewell Lady Hornets 7th grade A volleyball team made history by winning 2nd place in their tournament. The success in the tournament performance came after a 0-3 start to district play. Coach Sanders feels that the team has improved tremendously, and is coming together. She looks forward to a strong finish in their remaining district games. Congratulations Lady Hornets on a great performance!
Beginning Monday, October 6th, we will start a Hopewell school wide Reading Initiative for all our students. They will be required to bring a book to all their classes to read when finished with any class work. Students may check out books or novels from the incredible Hopewell library or bring a book or novel from home. We will not be allowing magazines at this point in the initiative. Our students spend an incredible amount of time on their phones, texting, using social media, surfing the internet and are moving away from actually reading books or novels. Reading will improve their comprehension, vocabulary development, and fluency. These are all essential skills to be successful in high school, college, and in life. Please support our efforts here at Hopewell with this Reading Initiative by talking it up at home. Take your children this weekend to get a good book at a favorite book store, at the library or from your home. Thanks!
Please make sure that you are on time to pick up your students from the school dance Friday night. The 6th grade dance is from 6:00-7:30 and the 7th/8th dance is from 7:30-9:00. We do not want our students to be hanging around the school after the dance is over so please help us by picking them up by 7:30 or 9:00. Thanks!
I have posted on our school website our Hopewell mission for how we are approaching instruction: RIGOR, RELEVANCE, and RELATIONSHIPS. We are taking professional learning time with our Instructional Coaches, Department Chairs and Department Grade Level Teachers to ensure that we are adequately covering the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge Skills) and basic fundamentals while increasing the amount of rigor through higher order thinking strategies. We are going to review our questioning strategies, daily lessons and tests to ensure that a higher percentage of these include higher order thinking such as applying what students have learned and applying to a real world situation or by creating a new product. None of this can be accomplished until we have created a positive, nurturing, caring learning environment for our students. The school climate at Hopewell is very special and we will continue to increase our positive behavior supports for our students throughout this school year. We are planning many fun events for students in all grade levels to tighten their connection to Hopewell. Hopewell is a middle school where everyone belongs. We are working hard in our professional learning to ensure that goal is achieved. Students may not always remember what they learned, but they will always remember how we made them feel.
We will no longer honor student schedule change request effective October 1st. We are too deep into the first semester to make schedule changes, as six weeks of curriculum and instruction have already been completed. I also encourage you to have your child advocate for themselves if they have a problem in a class or with a teacher. Encourage them to talk with the teacher first and if the problem has not been resolved then you should contact the teacher to get the scoop. Thanks!
We are planning our Hopewell Homecoming for Tuesday, November 4th at Dragon Stadium. We will be not doing mums for our students this year, but will instead hold a tailgate party for our 6th graders at our last 8th grade football game of the season. We’re starting a new tradition at Hopewell. We will be cooking hotdogs, playing music, be led by our Hopewell Cheerleaders in cheers, and will then walk over to the game. The Tailgate Party will be sponsored by our incredible PTA led by our PTA President, Amy Hinds. The army of moms and dads will be providing a fun event for our 6th graders that normally are not included in after school events or are allowed to participate in UIL athletic events until 7th grade. More information on this HUGE 6th grade event will be coming in the next couple of weeks.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Enjoy the cooler weather!
Karl
