Category Archives: Elementary Schools

Surprise! Shearn ES students find new program, meet the superintendent

Shearn Elementary School is one of 14 HISD schools launching the school year today as a dual-language campus, with instruction in both English and Spanish, and students had a special visitor this morning.

Dr. Terry Grier dropped in as the school day began to greet students and parents, and to pump up their enthusiasm for dual-language. “I sure wish we had this when I was in school,” Grier told a trio of fifth-grade school leaders who guided him on a tour of Shearn.

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Marques Foster was delighted to hear about the new program. “I really want to learn Spanish,” she said. “I know it’s important to have more than one language.” Continue reading →

State makes big change to Grades 5, 8 STAAR math

The Texas Education Agency has made a big change to STAAR testing for the 2014-2015 school year.

The agency said Friday that the math assessments for grades 5 and 8 will be given just once this year. The Student Success Initiative requirement that those students pass the math portion of STAAR has been suspended for the year. Continue reading →

Your back-to-school questions answered

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year! We know you may have questions about everything from registration to transportation to dress codes, so we’ve compiled a list of the most commonly requested information. If you have other questions, please let us know in the comments section below and we’ll look into them. Continue reading →

Pilot program using technology and virtual volunteers to help students become better readers

Today, video games and digital devices, such as phones and tablets, are as much a part of a child’s life as playing jacks or jump-rope or hopscotch was to a previous generation. It’s not uncommon to find a child who can navigate an iPhone or iPod better than adults. Starting this school year, HISD will leverage the fascination and skillset today’s youth have with technology to help some of the district’s youngest students become better readers.

Eighty kindergarten and first grade teachers from throughout the district are undergoing training on a program called TeacherMate®, which uses technology to support and help teachers provide differentiated literacy instruction. “It’s an exciting experience to learn this, because kids are fluent with the technology,” said Horn Elementary kindergarten teacher Nancy McDonald. “The games relate to what they’ll learn in class.” Continue reading →

Countdown to 2014-2015: What’s new in HISD #4 — Construction set to start on all Group 1 bond schools

This is the seventh in a series of stories counting down to the start of school, spotlighting what is new in HISD in the coming year.

As campuses head into the new school year, expect to see lots of work going on in HISD, with simultaneous work on two bond programs. Over the next several months, contractors will be busy at several campuses finishing up a variety of projects under the $805 million 2007 bond program, including new air conditioning, mechanical and electrical systems for Hogg Middle School and new classroom lighting at Pugh Elementary.

As those projects are completed, work on the $1.89 billion 2012 bond program is ramping up, with construction set to begin on all the schools in the first group of the program by the end of the year. Those schools include: Continue reading →

Teachers get tips on maximizing resources at Personalized Learning Institute

The first day of school is right around the corner, but teachers are still busily preparing for its arrival, learning about the many new resources available to them and their students at the Personalized Learning Institute (PLI).

The annual event, which concludes this week, provides content-specific training to teachers at each grade level in advance of the new school year. The 2014 Institute also featured an overview of the district’s Literacy By 3 initiative, a new approach to reading instruction. Continue reading →

Learn the roads traveled by HISD’s newest leaders to reach our campuses

Did you know that one of HISD’s newest principals has actually met the queen of England? Or that another once jumped out of an airplane? How about the one who took 17 years to finally propose to his girlfriend? Or the one whose grandfather was in the circus?

Almost two dozen new campus leaders will take the driver’s seat for the first time this fall at various HISD schools, and to help parents, students, and their new colleagues get to know them a bit better, we asked each to tell us a little about their background, pick three adjectives to describe themselves, and reveal something people might not know just by looking at them. Continue reading →

The art of engaging parents through ‘old-fashioned, grass-roots organizing’

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More than 500 teachers and principals from 30 HISD campuses are learning how to get greater numbers of parents involved in their children’s education this year during a series of two-day trainings being offered by the district’s Family and Community Engagement (FACE) department.

The topic of the training is the district’s Academic Parent Teacher Teams (APTT), whose expansion from the nine pilot schools was approved by the Board of Education earlier this year. The mission of those teams is even more critical now, with the district’s focus on Literacy By 3. Continue reading →