ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from B E Jordan Elementary Eva Sodano, Academic Coach

National Word Nerd Day was Saturday, January 9th! To celebrate our love of great vocabulary words, students and staff at B. Everett Jordan Elementary participated in fun activities to promote vocabulary development at ALL grade levels last Friday, January 8th.

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Each grade level planned special vocabulary-rich activities for their students and ALL staff members dressed up as different vocabulary words. It was a great way to help our kids learn some new words in a very memorable way!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from South Graham Elementary Amanda Almodovar, School Social Worker

South Graham Elementary students and families would like to send a huge thanks once again to our community partner, First United Methodist Church of Graham. We contacted them about getting a few small sized winter coats for pre-K students who were too cold to play outside. They have delivered over 50 winter coats for students in all grades who did not have a warm coat! Stay tuned because their youth group will soon be delivering winter accessories for our students to wear outside with their warm coats. A special thanks is extended to FUMC member Meredith Thornton who reached out to Tapco Insurance, Glen Raven Fabrics and Center of Performing Arts to collect and deliver the coats pictured!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from CTE Lindsey Criss, CTE Special Populations Coordinator For December, Brodie Taylor was named the ABSS CTE Special Populations Teacher of the Month! Brodie teaches Computer Programming courses at CTEC, including Computer Programming, Computer Science Principles Honors and AP Computer Science (which also counts as a math course)! Brodie does an excellent job in recruiting and retaining special populations students in his program, including nontraditional females. In these courses, students learn about various programming languages and even create their own games! Students learn how to create programs for the computer and problem solving, which is a great life skill. ABSS CTE is proud to have Brodie Taylor!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out to Western High NJROTC Rod Butler, Master Chief USN (ret)

2016 NJROTC ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIP Western Alamance’s NJROTC Orienteering Team recently participated in the 2016 North and South Carolina NJROTC Orienteering Championship held in Oconee Park in Mountain Rest, SC. Orienteering is a competitive race of navigational skills, quick decisions and physical speed, which involves the mind and body. With the aid of a map and compass you find your way across the countryside from checkpoint to check point. Your imagination and skills help you to choose the best route. The person with the fastest time wins the race where tenths of a second can determine the winner. 170 cadets from 16 high schools participated in the meet! There were four types of orienteering courses:

yellow, orange, brown, and green with each course varying in level of difficulty. The yellow course is usually two miles long and is considered the beginner’s course. Orange and brown courses are intermediate courses from 2 to 3 miles in length. The hardest of the courses is the green course, typically 3 to 4 miles long. Western cadets are required to complete two courses in each level before moving up to the next level. The eight cadets

representing

Western Warriors

were cadets (front row L to R) Joseph Halacheff, Jonathan Solorzano, Yuuki Butler, Jacob Halacheff and (back

row L to R) Hayleigh Poteat, Joshua Sellars, Joseph Roy, Dominic Troche. Teams consisted of a maximum of

five members and each of the top 10 finishers overall in each course level earned points toward their team

scores. Team Captain Yuuki Butler finished 10th out of 57 individual runners on the green course. Cadet

Solorzano finish third out of 73 individual cadets on the orange course and won an individual medal and scored

enough points where he was able to was able to help the team finish fourth place overall! Cadet Roy and

Troche finished 5th and 7th respectively on the yellow course with enough combined points which contributed to

their team finishing third place overall!

This was the first time many of these cadets competed at this high level of competition. Although orienteering challenges both the mind and body the cadets’ ability to think under pressure and make wise decisions is sometimes more important than speed or endurance. Congratulations to Team Captain Yuuki Butler and all of these fine cadets!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from Western Middle School

Remember last week’s Shout Out about Trey Henley, 7th grader at Western Middle? Trey and his dance partner Lizzie Batten from North Myrtle Beach, SC are the reigning 2015 US Open Young America Junior Shag Dancing Champions! WGHP Fox 8 interviewed Trey and his sister Kayla, a former Western Middle and Western High student, this week for a story about their success with shagging. Here’s the Fox 8 story: http://myfox8.com/2016/01/12/elon-siblings-are-us-swing-dance-champions/

Don’t miss this next video that includes Trey’s sister Kayla, WAHS alumnus and current Elon University student. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfe3tkAtBXo

At the same event in Burbank California where Trey and Lizzie were crowned junior champions, Kayla’s junior shag team from Burlington won the 2015 U S Open team title! Kayla references this competition in the Fox 8 interview above

Congratulations to our national champions!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from B E Jordan Elementary Eva Sodano, Academic Coach

BEJ Author Visit: Upon the recommendation of E.M. Yoder, B. Everett Jordan Elementary invited local author and storyteller, Chrystyna Edwards, and illustrator, Meagan Edwards, to share their book "Little Tree" with all of our K-5 students. The mother-and-daughter team met with each grade level and shared lessons about life and the finer points of the creative process. The students really enjoyed the opportunity to meet an author and illustrator in person and see that publishing a book is an attainable goal if you dream big and do the work! Chrystyna and Meagan did a great job presenting to our students and said that they want to inspire students to KEEP Reading KEEP Writing KEEP Drawing and KEEP Dreaming

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

We want to thank these two talented women for a fantastic learning experience!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Board of Education Public Forum

Mark your calendars. The Alamance-Burlington Board of Education

will hold a public forum on Tuesday, February 2 beginning at 6:00

p.m. in the Cummings High School auditorium. This meeting is set

to follow 3 public forums at Grove Park (Jan. 14), Smith (Jan 21)

and Hillcrest (Feb 1) elementary schools about the proposed

redistricting plan.

In addition, members of the public may address the Board regarding any subject appropriate for open session meetings of the Board of Education. Cummings High is located at 2200 North Mebane Street in Burlington.

Shout Out from Hawfields Middle Rachel Clark, 8th Grade ELA

Thursday evening, two eighth grade students from Hawfields Middle School were honored as this year's VFW Essay contest winners! Lauren Briggs and Samarra McAlister were chosen as co-winners for their essays "What Freedom Means to Me". With over six middle schools having entries and more than eighty essays, theirs was chosen as the top two! The Mebane VFW post served them dinner, had the girls read their winning essays aloud, and presented them with a certificate and a monetary prize. This is a wonderful achievement for these ladies! Their essays will now be entered into the district competition. Congratulations to Samarra and Lauren! Pictured L to R: Samarra McAlister and Lauren Briggs

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from Southern Middle Stephanie Ray, SMS Finance Secretary

Congratulations to SMS 8th grader Ellie Murray for making the 2015-2016 All-District Concert Band on flute! This band is highly competitive, as the district stretches from the east side of Raleigh to the west side of Guilford County. In addition to proudly representing Southern Middle musicians and students, Ellie will be representing all of the band students in Alamance-Burlington Schools! Great job, Ellie! We are very proud of you!

Shout Out from ABSS Testing Amy Richardson, Lead Teacher for Formative Assessment

Shout Out to Todd Fitch from ABSS Testing! Todd spent much of this past weekend at central office. He worked tirelessly to get an outside vendor to provide ABSS with a better and more efficient firewall so that access speeds (especially for high school testing) would be not only sufficient but outstanding! As a result, online testing at the high schools was seamless, and the district is so appreciative of better speeds overall!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from Sylvan Elementary Kayleigh Ohrin, First Grade Teacher

To finish up our opinion writing unit, our first grade Blue Jays put on a Book Review Museum. They chose their favorite book to write a review on. Then, each child made a model of their book to present. We invited the whole school to come see our museum.

The kids were so excited to share their writing with the other students and staff.

They did an awesome job!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Look closely---what an inventive way to recycle cereal boxes into books!

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out to Andrews Elementary RoadRunners Dr. Jean Maness

Check out the RoadRunners Unicycle Club at last night’s Elon University vs UNC -Wilmington basketball game! Here’s a tweet from Elon U with a short video clip:

Now that's entertainment! Thanks to the Andrews Elementary School Unicycle Club for the halftime show. #ElonvUNCW

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Ladies and gentlemen, don’t try this at home—these are skilled stunt riders!

Photos

provided

courtesy of

Jerry Wolford,

Perfecta

Visuals

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from Andrews Elementary Laverta McMillan, School Counselor

I would like to give a shout out to our wonderful Kindergarten class! The Kindergarten classes dressed in their pajamas and brought their favorite stuffed animal as a way of making a connection "Text to Self" to the book, Ira Sleeps Over.

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

ALAMANCE-BURLINGTON SCHOOLS AROUND OUR SCHOOLS SHOUT OUTS Jan. 15, 2016

Shout Out from Grove Park Elementary Devlin Adams, School Librarian

Shout out to Grove Park Elementary Families, Staff and Community, and the Burlington Sonic! We would like to send a Shout Out to the Grove Park PTA who hosted a Grove Park fundraising night event at the Burlington Sonic restaurant. Thursday night the place was hopping with staff, families and friends of the community in an effort to raise money for the school. There were smiles and happy bellies all around! The total raised was $165. Thanks Burlington Sonic and to all who came out to support us!