Welcome to Homestead Elementary!
January 20, 2012
Our theme this year is Homestead Heroes—and this is a perfect theme for our students. It allows us the opportunity to think about what makes a hero, explore how we can improve on our own heroic qualities, and learn how to be a hero to others, both in our school community and to the world! Our students know that making positive choices based on the six pillars of character—trustworthiness, responsibility, caring, respect, fairness, and citizenship—will help us be better students now and more successful adults later.
Our students continue to meet our high expectations for their behavior and academic achievement. Homestead continues to thrive as a positive learning environment because of our motivated students, supportive families, and dedicated staff. When a student is in need of additional support, we are there to support him or her as a team, focused on success for each child. Our Parent Teacher Organization is outstanding as their focus is supporting Homestead through positive experiences for our students and educational resources for our staff. It is our shared commitment to our students that allows Homestead to excel! Check out their website at http://www.homesteadpta.org/ .
As good as we are, we continue to seek ways to help our students think more effectively and deeply, to build solid social-emotional skills, and to enjoy coming to school. Specifically, we are working on better understanding the connection between reading and writing and noticing how authors use elaboration when writing and how we can, too! We are offering opportunities in class and through the Husky Math Challenge to expand our mathematical thinking. Our students overwhelmingly meet Illinois math standards, so we seek to exceed standards! With the roll out of new Illinois Learning Standards (check these out by visiting http://www.isbe.net/common_core/default.htm) we are examining our teaching and learning strategies to be prepared to meet these new, more rigorous expectations. We are fortunate to know that our whole school community will rally together to help our students succeed.
We are HOMESTEAD ELEMENTARY and we are proud to be Heroes, proud to be Huskies!
Go Huskies!
Mrs. Renier