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
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
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
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
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
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
Is your child old enough to start kindergarten? How do I find out about bus transportation? Lunches? Uniforms and supplies?
HISD’s ReCONNECT website offers guidance on all those questions and much more, to get families started smoothly on the 2014-2015 school year. Continue reading
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
Third-graders at 40 Houston ISD elementary schools will start off the new school year with brand new backpacks and school supplies, thanks to a generous donation from the NCAA.
Volunteers from Target spent Tuesday getting everything ready, and then on Wednesday volunteers from the beneficiary schools stuffed the backpacks full of notebooks, pencils, glue sticks and more.
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The elementary schools that will receive the backpacks include: Continue reading
Brookline Elementary School held a literacy challenge this summer to give 65 selected second- and third-grade English language learners a little extra help.
Teachers recommended students to invite to participate in the challenge. School officials said all the students had passed their grade level but needed some English language reinforcement.