Rankin plans AR celebration

More Rankin news from Tammi Coggins: I wanted to invite you to join us THIS Friday, November 2 ! It’s our Accelerated Reader Celebration - a “Rankin Reading Pep Rally”! We’re celebrating our 1st 9 weeks of AR with a fun tailgating party and a festive pep rally recognizing those students who met their AR goal for the 1st 9 weeks. This year, students not only had to meet their point goal as set by their teacher, but they also had to have at least 85% correct on the AR tests they took. We are soo excited because 130 students reached their goal for the 1st 9 weeks! It’s our hope that all our students will be encouraged to work even harder and read more books to reach their personal AR goal this next 9 weeks!The THS cheerleaders and football players will join us to lead the rally!! The students will run thru a big paper sign as they head for the stage for their certificate and recognition! The reading rally begins at 1:30!

Rankin: In the groove and on the move

Tammi Coggins of Rankin Elementary reports that third-graders recently took a field trip “Touring Tupelo.” This was their cumulative activity for a unit on community.

“We visited such places as the automobile museum, Elvis’s birthplace, the Oren Dunn Museum, and Ballard Park,” Coggins said. “The students enjoyed seeing many places that highlight why our community is such a wonderful place to live. As students have studied about how communities are different, they have realized that what makes our community significant is Tupelo is a town rich in history and innovative in new ideas.”

As a closing event to the community study, on Oct. 11 third-grade students presented an original musical entitled “Tupelo: In the Groove and On the Move.” Coggins shared these snapshots from the event.

It really is rocket science!

I had a story in today’s Daily Journal about honors physics students from the Monroe County Advanced Learning Center. These 13 gifted teens are trying to qualify for next spring’s Team America Rocketry Challenge. Just one of photographer Todd Sherman’s photos made it into the paper, but I’ve posted the others here for your enjoyment. Thanks to ALC Principal Tim Dickerson and honors physics instructor Ester Potts for their hospitality when we visited the school last week.

Tupelo schools reorganization plan OK’d

Tupelo Public School District trustees approved on Tuesday a reorganization plan for the city’s elementaries.
Tupelo has seven K-3 schools and three upper elementaries for students in grades 4-6. Under the new facilities plan, which district officials first began discussing in November 2005, the city would have five K-2 schools that feed four 3-5 grade schools in the same attendance zone so that students will stay with the same peers throughout elementary school.
Changes, including converting Milam Elementary into a single school for sixth-graders, were approved Oct. 17 by a community-based facilities use team and were presented to the district’s Board of Trustees at its Oct. 23 meeting. Read more in Wednesday’s Daily Journal.

Happy Mole Day!

Today, Oct. 23, Tupelo High School students commemorated chemistry’s basic measuring unit, the mole. Beginning at 6:02 this morning, THS chemistry students celebrated Mole Day with a parade, pledges, poetry and posters, all in honor of Amadeo Avogadro, the first person to propose the concepts of molecules. The famous chemist came up with the number 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd power, one of the most used numbers in chemistry.

Mole Day was created as a way to foster interest in chemistry. Schools throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Avogadro’s number from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m. each Oct. 23.

I’ve posted some of Daily Journal photographer Deste Lee’s pictures from one of Dee Cooper’s chemistry classes, and students who took their own photos are welcome to submit them and comment on the blog too (for extra credit). Also be sure to read my story on Mole Day in this Sunday’s Education section of the Daily Journal.

5,000-mile friendship

Shona Jordan, the counselor over at South Pontotoc Elementary School, e-mailed me last week with a cool story idea. Seems that when she was a senior at South Pontotoc High School, her family hosted a foreign exchange student. Marika Aartio, from Finland, lived with Shona’s family for about a year. The girls graduated high school together in the spring of ‘88 but have kept in touch ever since, even seeing each other about nine years ago. This past week, Marika came back to Pontotoc and spoke to a couple of classes. The complete story will be in Sunday’s Daily Journal, but in the meantime check out some photos of Shona and Marika from then and now.

Big changes a comin’ to Tupelo public schools

Read all about it in Thursday’s Daily Journal, but here’s the gist of the Tupelo Public School District’s reorganization plan for its K-6 schools (which if approved by the school board would go into effect the fall of 2009):

• Reduce the number of lower elementaries from seven to five, with K-2 schools instead of K-3
• Change upper elementaries, currently for grades 4-6, to grades 3-5
• Create one sixth-grade school at Milam Elementary
• Create new classrooms at Parkway (12), Thomas Street (10), Rankin (4), Pierce Street (6) and Joyner (10)

School attendance zone pairings
• Parkway (K-2) will be paired with Lawndale (3-5)
• Thomas (K-2) will be paired with Pierce Street (3-5)
• Joyner (K-2) will be paired with Rankin (3-5)
• Church and Carver (K-2) will be paired with Lawhon (3-5)

From the Pumpkin Patch

Today I had the pleasure of chaperoning my daughter’s preK class from the Early Childhood Education Center in Tupelo to the Circle Y Pumpkin Patch in Corinth. I’m not sure how many students from the ECEC made the trip, but many moms caravanned with two school buses full of excited 4-year-olds! The day started out rainy and cool, and the mud prevented our passel of preschoolers from picking their own pumpkins from the patch. But this bunch had a grand time anyway, feeding hungry catfish, petting fuzzy goats, riding ponies AND a choo choo train, and munching on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While in Corinth, we saw children from the Lee County Schools as well as the first-grade classes from Tupelo’s Pierce Street Elementary. Like us, I think they had a great day!

Houston Sundancer team heads Down Under

From Friday, Oct. 12:

By Ginny Miller
Daily Journal
HOUSTON – At 6 p.m. Mississippi time today, the Houston Solar Race Team officially will be Australia bound.
“It’s going to be a unique experience,” said 16-year-old Zack Huffman, a junior at Houston High School who’ll fly out of Memphis tonight with his teammates headed for the World Solar Challenge. The 2,000-mile race across the Australian Outback begins Oct. 21.
“I’m not necessarily worried,” Zack said, but with kangaroos, dust storms and heavy truck traffic awaiting them, “It’s a little outside of the comfort zone.”
Team director Keith Reese and the solar-powered car, aptly named Sundancer, left the United States on Sept. 25. From Sydney, on the southeast coast of Australia, the crated car was loaded onto a flatbed truck Reese is driving more than 4,000 miles to the race’s starting line in Darwin, in the remote Northern Territory. The race will end in Adelaide in south Australia.
“I have actually heard from Keith and he has already started his 4,000-mile run through the Outback,” said Donna Turman, a Houston High School chemistry and biology teacher who will travel with the team to Australia.
If they didn’t already know it, the Australian Outback is a different world, Turman said. “Keith found a road house to stay in,” she said. “It has air conditioning and a broken window. There’s wireless Internet but there’s no shower.”
All of the team will rough it Down Under.
“It’s going to be kind of a challenge,” Turman said. “A lot of these kids haven’t camped.”
The course, too, will be difficult, and the competition will be fierce. According to the official race Web site, www.wsc.org.au, more than 40 teams from around the world are entered, and most of them are university and corporate-sponsored.
The Houston team, which raised about $150,000 to make the trip, is just looking to finish. But if they win?
“It’d be major, major bragging rights,” Zack said.

Where do the candidates stand on education?

Dear Ginny,

I am delighted to share with you the responses we have received to our candidate survey on education issues. Last month we asked all candidates for Lieutenant Governor and the Legislature to register their positions on the Quality Education Act of 2008. The Quality Education Act is an initiative proposed by the State Board of Education that we believe will move us toward significant improvement of our public education system.

Candidates were provided a description of the Quality Education Act and asked to choose among “Yes, I will support this initiative”; “No, I will not support this initiative”; and “Undecided “. They were also invited to make comments explaining their positions. We have received a very good response so far. Over half of candidates in contested races have responded, and the vast majority say they support the Quality Education Act of 2008.

You can find the candidates’ responses listed by district and by candidate name on our website at <http://www.msparentscampaign.org/mx/hm.asp?id=Legislators>. (Click cancel if prompted for user name and password.) If you do not know the number of your legislative district, you can find it at <http://www.msparentscampaign.org/mx/hm.asp?id=Legislators&t=emobilize>. This link will provide you the names of your incumbent legislators as well as your House and Senate district numbers. (State legislators are the last two listed.)

Please contact the candidates for your House and Senate districts and encourage their support of The Quality Education Act of 2008. You can find information about each of the initiatives included in the act at <http://www.msparentscampaign.org/mx/hm.asp?id=Resources>. Candidates’ phone numbers are provided on the response page.

Candidates who have not yet replied can download a response form from our website at <http://www.msparentscampaign.org/mx/hm.asp?id=Legislators>. We will continue to update the candidate responses on our website as they come in.

The upcoming election is an important one for public education. It is critical that we elect legislators who are committed to providing Mississippi children an adequate education every year and to improving the quality of education our children are offered. As public education supporters, we should insist that candidates seeking our votes give us honest representations of their positions on these issues. Mississippi’s future depends upon it.

Many thanks,

Nancy