Cooper Elementary School

Good afternoon, Cooper families! I hope each of you is doing well and having a great Thanksgiving break. I am so thankful to be a part of Cooper Elementary. It is a special place because of the work of our incredible team, our parents, and our students. Thank you for being a part of our school! Cooper has become a second family for me, and I hope it has for you and your family, too. Happy Thanksgiving!--Josh https://tinyurl.com/CESthanksgiving

Today, our 3rd grade team incorporated another Thanksgiving tradition: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Students created and paraded balloon floats throughout the school. Prior to today’s parade, 3rd graders read nonfiction passages about the history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. They also read Balloons Over Broadway, a biography about Tony Sarg. Sarg was a puppeteer who created the giant balloons used in the parade. Students discussed his character traits and how his actions led to an invention in 1927 that is still used today. A big shoutout to the 3rd grade team for their creativity in designing this project! We hope you have a great weekend, and a happy, restful Thanksgiving. Take care! --Josh

Today was day two of Cooper Thanksgiving, and like day one, it was awesome. We served well over one thousand Thanksgiving meals to our students and families this week. Students and parents, thank you for being a part of our school!

Good afternoon, Cooper families! Today was the first day of Cooper Thanksgiving. We enjoyed hosting families of kindergarten, 2nd, and 4th grade students. We had a huge turnout! I want to thank our cafeteria team for their hard work. They planned, prepared, cooked, and served a great meal for all of us to share. Joan, our cafeteria manager, does a fantastic job each and every day. We are thankful for her leadership and her team. I also want to thank our custodial staff and PTO. PTO volunteers assisted Mr. C and Mr. Richard to ensure tables and chairs were ready to go this morning, and they made sure our space was clean after each grade level’s Thanksgiving. Lastly, I want to thank our parents for sharing a meal with us today. We are thankful to have you in our building, and we hope to continue traditions like today and more create opportunities for you to be an active part of our school. Thank you!--Josh

Today was a great day. Our 4th grade students helped our school and community celebrate Veterans Day. They started off by performing several songs to parents and veterans at Cooper this morning. Dozens of students also took the mic to share personal messages of thankfulness to veterans. I want to thank Mrs. Cowart, our music teacher, for organizing and orchestrating this event. It was spectacular! After this morning’s Veterans Day performance, the 4th grade team took their talents on the road and visited several local nursing and rehabilitation facilities. The residents were thrilled to have our kids visit and perform for them. I was able to pop in for one of the visits, and it was so great to see our students giving back to the community through song. They represented our school so well. We are proud of them. I’ll put together a video for next week’s Bronco Breakdown showcasing today’s performance. In the meantime, I hope you and your family have a great weekend!--Josh

We want to take a moment to thank the Bella Vista Fire Department. They recently visited Cooper students to talk about fire safety. We are so lucky to be a part of the Bella Vista community. We have the resources, support, and high expectations of Bentonville Schools, but we have the local support of the entire Bella Vista community. Our community, including our police and fire departments, has an incredible partnership with us. We are thankful for their support and service to our greater community. Thank you, Bella Vista Fire Department for teaching our students about fire safety and community service. You are great mentors and role models for Cooper kids. Click the link below to view a few highlights from the fire department’s visit. Have a great evening!--Josh https://tinyurl.com/bellavistafd

November Round Up is this Friday. Like last month’s Rocktober Round Up, we will have to limit the number of guests to award recipients and Round Up performers. Teachers will contact parents if their student is being awarded at Round Up. This month’s Round Up theme is Movember, so it will be a fan-stache-tic celebration to kick start November. We are looking forward to it! https://tinyurl.com/CESmovember

Today was a busy day with our normal routines as well as costumes and classroom parties. The last week has been great because there have been several opportunities for our parents to be in the building and involved with their school: two days of parent teacher conferences, fall carnival, and today’s celebrations. Parents, we have enjoyed having you in our classrooms, and in many cases, in full costume. I want to thank our PTO for Friday’s Fall Carnival. It was a huge success thanks to the PTO’s hard work. Our students had a great time (and so did our staff). I also want to thank all of the parents, students, and staff who stayed late to help clean up. The extra help was greatly appreciated by Mr. Richard and Mr. C. Click the link below for a few videos and images from the Fall Carnival and Halloween. I apologize for not taking more pictures. There were so many great costumes--I wish I had taken more. Have a great evening and a Happy Halloween!--Josh https://tinyurl.com/Cooperhalloween

Good afternoon, Cooper families! I hope you have had a great week. This Friday night is our fall carnival, and we hope to see you and your family there. Our PTO has consistently hit it out of the park this year, so I have no doubt that this year’s carnival is going to be a great time. In November, there are several important dates: November 4th-11th: Cooper Book Fair November 9: Choose Love Event on the Bentonville Square from 5-7 November 15: Fall Picture Retakes November 16-17: Thanksgiving Lunch with Students and Families November 21-25: Thanksgiving Break We’ll send out additional information about the above dates in the near future--we just wanted you all to have a heads-up about next month’s activities. For Choose Love, the district has some spirit days scheduled for next week. See the attached graphic for additional information. We’ve enjoyed seeing our families this week for fall conferences, and we look forward to seeing you all Friday. Take care! Fall Carnival Reminder https://tinyurl.com/cescarnival

Good afternoon! Next week is a busy week at Cooper due to the following events: -Parent Teacher Conferences: October 24 from 3-5 and October 27 from 3-7. -Fall Carnival: October 28 -Strong Choices Week Please see the attached images for Fall Carnival and Strong Choices Week details. In addition, this week’s Bronco Breakdown featured a fashion show to break down the Strong Choices Week spirit days. It is available via the link below. Have a great weekend, Cooper families! We look forward to seeing you next week at conferences and the carnival! -Josh https://tinyurl.com/CESstrongchoices

Good afternoon, Cooper families! It was great to welcome students back to our school. Kindergarten students kicked off this morning by visiting a pumpkin patch, and the rest of our students celebrated Future Careers Day. Our halls and classrooms were full of future nurses, doctors, firefighters, policemen, teachers, and various professions. Our office was full of staff dressed as future retirees. Kindergarten backpacks left our school filled with pumpkins. It was a great day. As students look to the future for careers and pathways, we would like to look back at our first quarter and identify areas we need to improve. At the beginning of the year, I sent out a quick 3 & Out Survey to pull feedback from the first week of the school year. Now, I want to pull your feedback for the first quarter. This information is valuable to our team. The survey is the same as the 3 & Out in August and will only take a minute or two to complete. Moreover, it is anonymous. The link to the survey is in your email. Thank you in advance for completing this survey. Have a great evening, Broncos!-Josh

Hello Cooper Fam! I hope you and your family enjoyed Fall Break! Next week starts Strong Choices Week! Strong Choices Week is an alternative to Red Ribbon Week that is geared more towards making positive choices for your body rather than just focusing on what not to put in your body. It's an elementary friendly approach with the same goal in mind. Each day is a dress up day that we would love to have your child/children participate in. The flyer is attached along with the Strong Choice Week Fashion Show clip from this week's Bronco Breakdown. We are looking forward to a great week! Elandrea Dumes, M.Ed. Professional School Counselor

Good afternoon, Cooper families! It was a great week at Cooper, and a handful of us had a great experience learning about intervention at the RTI at Work conference in Rogers. I want to give a shout out to Stephenie Dean, Abby Brown, Shannon Tweedy, Jennifer Toms, and Brittany Williams. I enjoyed learning alongside them at the conference this week, and more importantly, I enjoyed their response to the conference: Each brought fantastic ideas and actions to the table that will help us improve our school. We are fortunate to have great staff leaders at Cooper. Our team is lucky to have teacher leaders like Stephanie, Abby, Shannon, Jennifer, and Brittany. Also, today I am celebrating my birthday. I would typically not share something like this with our full school community, but I want to thank our staff, our kids, and our parents for all of the birthday wishes. I have a desk full of incredible homemade cards, a day's ear full of happy birthdays (and that I’m old), and a team that rocked Vest vests all day. I quickly knew Cooper was a family when I started here at the end of July. I’m so thankful to have this job with this team and these kids. Thank you, parents, for all the wishes from the morning car line, the calls, and the emails. I appreciate you all! Have a great fall break!--Josh

Good afternoon, Cooper families! This week’s Counselor Connection in the Bronco Breakdown highlights a couple of October focus areas from our counseling team. These areas include bullying prevention and this month’s core essential value, grit. Throughout October, we will be discussing bullying prevention and helping students better identify and report bullying incidents. Moreover, Mrs. Dumes and Mrs. Sutton will be exploring “grit” and the importance of perseverance as a valuable skill at school and outside of our school’s walls. Click the link below to view this week’s Counselor Connection. Have a great evening!--Josh https://tinyurl.com/10CEScounselor

Rocktober Round Up was fantastic. It was great to see students and teachers wearing their rockstar gear and celebrating each other and our school. Our staff and students work hard each and every day, so it is so nice to see everyone have fun at Round up and to be recognized for hard work and exemplary behavior. This month, 2nd grade won the Golden Lunch Tray award and Coach Lewis was named Staff Member of the Month (which is well-deserved). A big shoutout goes out to all of our Big 3 Award recipients and to our classes that were recognized by our Activities Team. Here's a staff Rocktober pic and the link below is yours truly playing the “The Star-Spangled Banner.”  Have a great weekend, Cooper Broncos! --Josh https://tinyurl.com/CESstarsb 

Cooper is an Arkansas School of Innovation and one area that is innovative at our school is our PE 4 Life program. PE 4 Life creates the opportunity for students to have PE every single day. Our kids learn biking, archery, soccer, climbing, and so much more. In addition, our PE team works with classroom teachers to connect their activities to relevant classroom topics and units of study. Coach Lewis, Coach Lunsford, and Coach Glover do an incredible job with our PE program. Moreover, PE 4 Life is an important part of our intervention program. It allows us to have systematic intervention every single day to help kids at all grade levels and at all academic levels. Each grade level has a PE/Intervention block for 60 minutes. Half of the grade level goes to PE while the other half is in small group intervention with our teachers and interventionists. After 30 minutes, these groups switch, creating daily targeted intervention and PE. Intervention helps us close student gaps in learning and extend and enrich learning for all students. It doesn’t matter if a student is currently high achieving or struggling--both are getting the support they need to grow and improve their learning. During Monday’s Bronco Breakdown, PE 4 Life was our innovation spotlight. A link to the piece is below. Have a great day!--Josh https://tinyurl.com/cooperpe4life Josh Vest, Ed.S. Principal, Cooper Elementary

Each Friday, we recognize students who have leveled up in Lexia, a program we use to improve literacy skills. Lexia provides students with literacy support that is individualized for each student. It helps support student strengths and growth areas. It’s an important part of our literacy program due to its ability to differentiate instruction for all 650 of our students. Our Lexia recognition on Fridays is called “Lexia Superstars,” and we announce the names of all students who leveled up that week. Since the start of “Lexia Superstars” a couple of weeks ago, we have seen an 88% increase in students leveling up in Lexia. That is pretty impressive and showcases the work of our students to improve their reading skills. Please encourage your student(s) to become Lexia Superstars throughout the year. We will continue this practice each Friday to celebrate their learning and growth. The goal of most schools is typically to be a high achieving school. We want to be a high growth school and to improve learning and achievement of all students.--Josh

This Friday, October 7, is our October Round Up. This month’s theme is Rocktober, and students are welcome to wear their rockstar and band gear. Last month, we had an incredible turnout, and because of that turnout, we have to limit parent attendance this month to stay within fire code regulations. I wish we could invite all of you, but we have to limit parent attendance to the following: Parents of emcees, parents of performers, and parents of Big 3 award recipients. We will live stream the Rocktober Round Up via Google Meet Friday morning to create a way for all of our Cooper families to be included. That link will go out by 7:40 Friday. If you join the link, please turn your camera off when you enter the Google Meet. There will be quite a few people on the same meet, and cameras consume a large amount of bandwidth. We are excited about Round Up and celebrating our students with our students.--Josh https://tinyurl.com/cesrocktober

Coach Lewis would like for you to come join us for our third annual Cooper RUN3rd 5K and fun run. The last time we had a 5K and a duathlon, it was a blast. This time, Coach Lewis and her team are keeping it simple by having a chip timed 5K and an untimed fun run. All participants will receive a t-shirt and a finishing medal while supplies last! Click the link below to register. Thank you all for supporting our running club! https://app.regwiz.io/register/coop/949

This week, Mrs. Dumes closed out our September counseling focus by reiterating the month’s key concepts for students. This included revising trust, safe places, and breathing techniques. She also introduced the pretzel technique to help students calm down and build coping skills when upset or anxious. Click the link below to view the Counselor Connection from this week’s Bronco Breakdown. https://tinyurl.com/926CEScouns