By Pandababy and Thesrocks
It is sad news to say that our beloved Ms. Robertson has left Travis Heights Elementary School. She enjoys seeing us kids all around the school. She knows everybody’s name in the whole school. She has served as a principal for about 18 years. She loves the school and us, but it is time for retirement.
We will miss you!
by Goldenmonkey and Fuzzylobster
We learned that 1st grade was learning through a project involving butterflies. Here’s what we found out.
How does camouflage work ?
Camouflage is two different things hide from predators and hunt for prey.
What did you learn?
We interviewed a student named Penelope. She told us about the life cycle of a butterfly (and the stages of its life cycle). First is the little tiny egg. Next the egg hatches into a caterpillar. It eats all the leaves around him or her, then forms a chrysalis. After about four weeks, the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. Then there is a beautiful butterfly. The butterfly finds a mate, then has eggs, and the life cycle starts again. Finally, and sadly, the butterfly dies.
One of the extra-curricular activities that we have here at Travis Heights is prime time. Prime time is a variety of after school activities that kids can participate in, from grades K – 5 and most run from 3:15 to 4:15. Many of the prime times are run by school teachers and it is cool to have a perspective of the teachers outside of school.
I enjoy the active prime times because I get good after school physical activity while having fun. One of the prime times I go to our Class to 5k run by Luz Alvarez . Class to 5k is a running club after school where we do different exercises and drills to help train for a 5k. We train for the Jingle Bell Run 5k in December, the first season of prime time and 5k. For the second season we run the Ash Dash Bunny Run in celebration of Easter. Class to 5k is really fun and I advise it for your next prime time pick
The second active prime time class I participate in is called Ultimate Frisbee run by Denison. It is an exciting prime time where we do many fun and different frisbee drills that focus on throwing, catching, and making cuts. I’ve seen a lot of new faces come and go since third grade when I started. All semester we train for a tournament which is five hours long and we compete against different schools. I also advise you to take this fun and active prime time class for next year. I hope you enjoyed my advice and hope I see you soon in one of those prime times.
This is a mural students created during one of our Prime Time classes!
If you’re a student at Travis Heights and have not met these furry friends, then make sure you do! When someone first hears that are art teacher has rats they might freak out. But once you get close to these cute, lovable, creatures there will be no turning your back.
Badger and Moca first arrived at Travis Heights on Valentines Day. Some of the kids had been waiting for months just to meet the so called new pets. Ms. Isoline has a rat named Roo. Roo has gotten to the edge of a rat’s life span (2 years.) So Ms.Isoline wanted to get new pets. Earlier in the year her 29 year old snake named Vincent died of old age. Ms. Isoline saw an opportunity to use the old cage. She wanted the company of new rats, plus she had the space for two! So on the day of Valentines she brought them to their new home. The twin sisters both the color of black and white needed a name. So she called on some fifth graders to name them. After a couple of hours the two sweet rats had names. Moca and Badger, Badger and Moca. Over time the cute animals have gotten nicknames. Like Moca Loca, And Mocha Latte. Badger is known as the Climber and Moca is the Tunneler. But the two rats have always been inseparable.
So if your a student or parent a Travis Heights feel free to visit the rambunctious rats. You don’t need to be scared just overcome your fears by visiting these cute cuddly creatures.
(These pictures are not of the real Moca and Loca, obviously!)
Market Day is fun because 3rd graders donate things and create their own stores. The students get prizes and much, much more. You can buy prizes with T-bills with faces of our 3rd grade teachers: Mr. Myers, Ms.Esquivel, and Ms. Mefford. I hope you get you prizes like when I was in 3rd grade. I still remember that paper hot wheels car and my mom got a squeezy stress ball with clay inside for her desk. My store had a bowling set with prize rings. It was hard to set up the pins because they fell a lot of times! I learned how to buy products and how to run a business!
This year, I stopped by the classrooms to see what it looked like. I saw kids jewelry stores and a nail spa, toy stores, and other cool stuff where kids can spend their T bills. The kids looked happy because they loved Market Day!
In Travis Heights this year a guest artist cam. He came to Ms. Freeman’s room. The room number was 409. He is going to be drawing something and inspiring other kids to draw. This is the first year he has come. It’s one of the other students dad. He was sketching. In my opinion I think he’s a very good artist. It’s cool that a great artist is right here at our school.
At the end they had a challenge, the artist had to draw a picture to go with a poem that they read. Then the kids got to draw a picture too but it took a lot longer to draw for them.
Travis Heights Elementary has its own library with almost every book in the world poems, including nonfiction, fiction, graphic novel, scary, Korean, Spanish, Texas 2 by 2 books, bluebonnets and fairy tales. There is even a kiva where our library’s stuffed dog Bankes has books in his doghouse. The librarian, Mrs.Underwood, picks a book and reads it to us until the end of library time.
In October 2017, Cafe Monet had a festival or party where we got to paint little clay pumpkins. It was really fun. They gave you little clay pumpkins and you would sit at a table and they would give you paint and brushes. There was a snack table with donut hole spiders and fruit. There were not very many people there, though.
There were a lot of different designs. I made an orange pumpkin with swirly black designs. My brother made one and it was orange. Someone even made a blue one.
At the end, they did a drawing. At the beginning, they pass out little raffle tickets. Then, at the end, they said random numbers and if the number is on your little card, you got a raffle prize.
Hello, we go to math with Ms. Mefford, and we study perimeter. We measure the sides and add all of the sides to find the perimeter. To find the area, we get square centimeter cubes and line all of them up inside of the shape and then count them. How many cubes you have is the area. We also do arrays, where you can multiply rows times columns, to find the area.
We have been practicing for the STAAR and actually did the 2011 STAAR test. It has some pretty weird questions. That’s basically what we have been doing, but it’s very fun.
4th grade is reading the book One and Only Ivan. The book is about a gorilla that lives in the zoo with his friends. Everyday we respond to questions in our reading response journal in Spanish. Our class is enjoying it very much. Dual-language is reading it in Spanish.
Here are some words from kids: “The One and Only Ivan is in a unique point view”, “I think it is a really sad heart-touching book”, “It is a really funny and sad book”, and “Kind of sad kind of happy”.
It’s bright, colorful, and fun!
On March 10th there was a wild, crazy Spirit Day at Travis Heights Elementary. On that day, kids grades Kinder to 5th celebrated by wearing crazy neon outfits. Everywhere you looked there were hundreds of kids in bright, exuberant colors. Student council organized this event and many others. Three cheers for Mrs. Robertson for this amazing day and many others!
