Cooper Elementary School

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

The Cooper PTO has two fundraisers at the moment that will have big impacts on our students and staff. Here is how these fundraisers work:  Kindness Calendar: The Kindness Calendar wraps up tomorrow, so there is still time to participate and support Cooper. So far, PTO has reached nearly 70% of its goal. Mrs. Mayhew is in the lead on the class donations leaderboard, but Mrs. Willis is catching up! Click the link below to learn more about the Kindness Calendar. To donate, simply visit the aforementioned link and select “Donate.” All donations go directly to Cooper kids.  Kindness Calendar Link: https://app.memberhub.gives/kindnesscalendar/Campaign/Details Panda Express: If you place an online order tomorrow at Panda Express, Cooper receives 28% of the total. I repeat: 28% percent. All you have to do is place an order online for pickup or delivery for Friday, September 30th and enter our code 909983. This fundraiser is available at all Panda Express locations nationwide. Go to https://www.pandaexpress.com/order to start your Panda Express order. Remember: This is only for orders placed for tomorrow, September 30.  I want to thank the PTO for their creative fundraising efforts. Donations go straight to our students and staff. In the past, fundraisers have supported school events such as fall carnival and STREAM nights as well as instructional supports such as literacy tools, our outdoor classroom, Weekly Readers, the annual Bentonville Reads book orders, classroom materials for math and science, and so much more. Thank you, Cooper PTO!--Josh

Good afternoon! It is hard to believe, but October is just around the corner. In October, there are several important dates. Here are some important dates in October: Fall Break: October 17-19 End of the First Quarter: October 19 Parent Teacher Conferences: October 24 from 3-5 and October 27 from 3-7. Fall Carnival: October 28 For a full calendar of all district dates, click the link below. The linked PDF is also available at https://www.bentonvillek12.org/ in the top right corner. One of the menu options is “Calendar.” I hope you all have had a great Tuesday. Have a great evening! --Josh https://tinyurl.com/CooperDates

This morning’s Bronco Breakdown featured a quick review of our morning procedures here at Cooper. Our gate inside is closed from 7:00-7:20 so we can ensure our students are supervised and centrally located.  Our students have three options between 7:00 and 7:20:  1. Cafeteria- Breakfast 2. Gym- Music & Walking  3. Library- Reading Students are allowed to choose any of the above options in the morning, and they stay in their selected option until 7:20. The cafeteria is used primarily for eating breakfast, but there are places for students to gather and visit prior to the 7:20 bell. In the gym, students listen to music and walk the perimeter. In the library, students read.  At 7:20, our students make their way to their classrooms where they are greeted at the door by their teacher. I just want to keep you all informed about how your student starts his or her day once they walk through our doors. Click the link below to view the morning procedures video. Have a great evening!--Josh https://tinyurl.com/CESmorning 

In this week’s Counselor Connection, Mrs. Dumes revisited classroom safe places and trust, our core essential value for the month of September. She also shared a breathing technique, the balloon exercise. A link to this week’s Counselor Connection is below.  I want to take a moment to thank our counselor, Mrs. Dumes, for her work this year. This is her first year at Cooper Elementary, and she is hitting it out of the park. Mrs. Dumes has already built strong relationships with our students and staff, and she is continually finding ways to make our counseling program more accessible and dynamic. She has quickly become a critical member of our team. Plus, she is a joy to work with each and every day.  If you have not had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Dumes, I recommend taking a moment to find her in the morning or afternoon car line. She is awesome, and we are a better school because of her work.--Josh https://tinyurl.com/ces919counselor

Yesterday our school’s leadership team met. One of the items on our agenda was to review a new logo design. Cooper has several logos dating back to our opening in 2007. It was time for us to unite behind one logo. I’m excited to share our new logo with you. Here is our logo moving forward. We are excited about this design and will start incorporating it at Cooper Elementary. --Josh

Did you know that Cooper Elementary is an Arkansas School of Innovation (SOI)? Cooper has had SOI status since 2016. The state defines SOI schools as, "SOI-designated schools are engaged in practices that are intended to improve academic performance and learning for all students. Arkansas school administrators who aspire to lead a School of Innovation are encouraged to design new and creative alternatives to the existing instructional and administrative practices in their schools." If you spend a little time in our school, you’ll see why we are a SOI: We have a creative team from PE to the classroom and from intervention to our special services. However, it is sometimes forgotten that we are a SOI. The SOI status will be a bigger part of our school moving forward. It’s part of our identity. We want to showcase the work of our students and staff, and we want to intentionally seek practices and systems to foster and grow innovation at Cooper. Today’s Bronco Breakdown featured a segment about innovation at Cooper. Click the link below to watch the Innovation Spotlight segment. Have a great evening! --Josh https://tinyurl.com/CooperSOI

Good afternoon! It was another great day at Cooper Elementary. In 2nd grade, students were not students--they were doctors. They were not working in the classroom--they were transported to the Cooper Memorial Hospital for sentence surgery. Our 2nd grade team hit it out of the park with this project, creating an engaging way for students to learn about sentence parts such as subject, predicate, nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, and more. It was great to see kids getting off of the bus this morning in lab coats and stethoscopes. It was even better to see them work together to learn about sentences. Teachers were in full costume and even provided gloves, shoe covers, masks, and hair nets for the kids. I want to give a big shoutout to all of our young doctors and their excellent doctor sentence surgeons, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Clark, Mrs. High, Mrs. Walden, Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. Yearber. Sentence surgery was a great way to end a great week. Now, go have a great weekend, Cooper families! —Josh

The next time you see a member of the Bella Vista Police Department, please thank them for their service and support of our students. Their team goes above and beyond to help serve and support our Cooper kids. For example, last week they created an interactive experience for 4th grade students to share the importance of community service. This week, they were here biking with our PE students and helping teach students bike safety. They are continually present at our school, extending a helping hand and teaching kids the importance of community. They are role models for all of us, and we are thankful for their service at Cooper and within our community.

This is just a quick reminder that tomorrow is fall picture day. We look forward to seeing our students take their first official school picture of the year. Have a great evening! -Josh

The PTO recently kicked off a fundraiser called the Kindness Calendar. The Kindness Calendar will raise money to support both students and staff at Cooper Elementary. Here’s how it works: Students and families seek sponsors for specific days of the month. Once a day is sponsored, students complete the act of kindness associated with that specific day on the PTO’s Kindness Calendar. For example, a grandparent who sponsors September 14 will pay $14 and the student will complete the action associated with that specific day (bring a can of food to school). Another example: If an uncle sponsors September 24th, the uncle will pay $24 and the student would donate a gently used toy (since that is the act of kindness associated with the 24th). All money will be sent to the PTO safely and securely via memberhub. The PTO joined us this week during our Bronco Breakdown to spread the word about their Kindness Calendar. Click the link below to view their Kindness Calendar promo video. Parents, one of the best things about this fundraiser is that it could cover all of the PTOs fundraising needs if we have a high level of participation. If you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to contact Wendy and the PTO team at cooperbroncospto@gmail.com. Have a great evening! -Josh https://tinyurl.com/PTOcooper

Good afternoon, Cooper families! Thursday is Fall Picture Day. We will move through pictures quickly in the morning to prevent post-lunch and post-recess portraits. Information is available in the packets sent home by your student’s teacher. We look forward to seeing those fall pictures and comparing them with the spring. Below is a link for a picture promo shown in today’s Bronco Breakdown. Take care, and have a great week! -Josh https://tinyurl.com/CESfallpics

Each month, our counseling team focuses on one core essential value. Cooper’s core essential value for the month of September is trust. Trust will be explored throughout the month of September in our Bronco Breakdown’s and daily morning announcements. This month, we are also exploring classroom safe places. These areas provide students with a space for social emotional learning (SEL) support. Each classroom at Cooper Elementary has a safe place for students. Click the link below to view this week’s Counselor Connection with Mrs. Dumes and to learn about trust and safe places. Have a great evening! -Josh https://tinyurl.com/CES96counselor

Good afternoon, Cooper families! I hope you had a restful three-day weekend. Earlier in the year, I sent some information about Bentonville’s new transportation software, Transportant. Transportant streamlines bus safety, security, and logistics. In the near future, parents will be able to check an app to see when their student gets on and off of the bus. It also updates our routing logistics and camera software. At this point in the year, Transportation is working to use the software to identify and correct bugs in the system. The process students use while on the bus is pretty simple: Students scan a student ID when entering and leaving the bus. That’s it. Most of our students have IDs, so bus riders are bringing them home each evening. Please help make sure these IDs are not lost. I recommend snapping them to your student’s backpack each evening. This keeps IDs available for morning pickup. Students also use their IDs to login to their Chromebook’s via the QR code on the back of the ID, so they will need them at school, too. Click the link below to view a quick Cooper tutorial, “How to Use Your ID on the Bus.” Have a great week! -Josh https://tinyurl.com/CooperBUSid

Tomorrow is our first Round Up of the year. We will host a Round Up celebration the first Friday of each month. Parents are welcome to attend. If you would like to attend, here are some important pieces of information: -All visitors must scan their ID and receive a visitor sticker. -We will start allowing parents into the building at 7:30 when students report to class and leave the cafeteria. -You may pick up your visitor sticker before 7:30. -If you arrive before 7:30 to pick up your visitor sticker, retrieve it and then line up on the sidewalk outside of our front doors. We want to create a welcome wagon for our students. We have to wait until the cafeteria is empty before allowing the influx of visitors in the building, so this would be a fun way for us to use this time and to start the Round Up Friday for our students. -Round Up will likely start a little after 7:40 tomorrow and end after 8:40 (outside of the previously announced times). It’s our first Round Up with parents since before the pandemic, so I am assuming our timing will be a little delayed. Lastly, this week’s Bronco Breakdown featured another Counselor Connection segment with our counselor, Mrs. Dumes (who is rocking it). Visit https://tinyurl.com/BBcounselor829 to view Mrs. Dumes’s message for this week. Have a great evening! -Josh

Good afternoon, Cooper families! Today was another great day at Cooper Elementary. Every year, Cooper has a Student Council, a team of 3rd and 4th grade students who help lead our school. We want to be a student-centered school, and this creates a great pathway for students to have a voice in our decisions and build leadership skills. Mrs. Willis will be sending out applications right after Labor Day. Click the link below for a quick video breakdown of student council. Have a great evening! -Josh https://tinyurl.com/CooperSTUCO

Good afternoon, Cooper families! Mark your calendars: Fall Picture Day is September 15. Packets will go home next week. Also, Mrs. Manus kick started this week’s Bronco Breakdown. Click the link below to view her Bronco Breakdown introduction. -Josh https://tinyurl.com/BBManus