THES hosted a school-wide Storybook Character Parade on Friday, October 31st. Students dressed up as a book character such as Mrs Frizzle, Red Riding Hood, Thing 1 or Thing 2 from Cat and The Hat and stuff like that. Our Dress-Up Day was on October 31st (on Halloween). If you didn’t want to dress up, that’s okay. If you wanted to, you could as long as it was not too scary. Doing this Dress-Up day is new to Travis Heights Elementary. It’s the first year they decided to have this fun opportunity!
Lights, camera, action! The new tech crew has arrived! Every year at our school we welcome a new bunch of fifth graders to the esteemed Tech Crew. On the Tech Crew we have lots of job options to choose from. Here’s an example of a few of them: stage manager, floor manager, lights, dmx, best boy, main audio, camera, directors assistant, and voice. Our director, Mr. Hawes, is also the computer lab teacher. He teaches the new students the ways of the stage.
This year, the Tech Crew is made of 12 amazing fifth graders; Sabine, Isabelle, Lilah, Vi, Brandon, William, Nicholas, Tamarien, Mily, Lily, Robert, and Ashley. These students work hard to make sure our assembly’s run smoothly and beautiful. On Wednesdays, the tech crew meets to discuss their game plan and practices the show. (The T.H.E.S band practices at the end of the day.) On Fridays, the assemblies happen!.
To any fourth graders or future fourth graders out there, join the tech crew. It’s a blast and you will get lots of new experiences to use in the future!
Do you know why the 4th grade dual language class is so big? It’s because this year, there are only enough fourth grade students for three classes. Since there are fewer DL students than the non-DL, the two DL classes were combined in to one this year.
Ms.Alvarez-Simms is the teacher of the fourth grade dual language class. I interviewed her and she said that one advantage of having a bigger class is that there is more diversity for groups. She also said that some disadvantages are that there is not much classroom space, the voice level is hard to control and that it is hard for everyone to get a turn. She said that everything is going great and that she is lucky to have such strong students
I also interviewed four of the students in the fourth grade dual language class. Most of them said that a disadvantage is that it is really loud . One of them said that people take things more seriously, which creates more drama. They all agreed that an advantage is that they have almost all of their friends in their class. One of them said it is good that there are more people for games. I hope that explained it.
By guitarguy123 and darkshadow
We have two great counselors and today we’re going to tell you about one of them. Ms. Piedra has three dogs. She is married and has two children. Ms. Piedra has been an SEL teacher for 6 years, but not all at this school. (SEL stands for Social Emotional Learning.) Ms. Piedra wants all of the teachers and students to work together. She is happy that so far everybody is being kind to each other here at THES. Ms Piedra loves this school and she hopes that you will love it too.
Mr. Skadson is a new fifth grade teacher at Travis Heights Elementary School. He is a teacher for all subjects and he makes learning fun. We asked Mr. Skadson some questions and here are his responses.
fluffypuppycat: How long have you been a teacher for?
Skadson: This is my fourth year.
ava1234: Do you enjoy teaching students?
Skadson: of course I do.-0
ava1234: Why did you decide to become a teacher?
Skadson: Well when I was young, I grew up without a dad, and the teachers were good role models to me. I wanted to be just like them.
fluffypuppycat: What is your favorite subject to teach?
Skadson: Geography.
ava1234: Why is that your favorite subject to teach?
Skadson: I like to teach geography because I like traveling around the world and getting students excited to learn about geography.
That was the questions that we asked Mr. Skadson. Hope you got to learn more about him and thanks for reading our article!
-This article was written by two fifth grade students: fluffypuppycat and ava1234
At Travis Heights Elementary School, there are many after-school programs and one of them is Creative Action. I am in creative action, so I have first-hand experience with the teachers and activities there. We have points that we can earn called Dojo points, we can get them by being the 4C’s which are: Creative Artists, Courageous Allies, Critical Thinkers, and Confident leaders. Once we have 20 points we can get a prize like a little egg with putty inside.
I interviewed Ms.Chelsea Hockaday and asked her how to enroll in Creative Action and this is what she said: To sign up for Creative Action all you need to do is follow these simple steps:
1. Go to creativeaction.org.
2. Click the button on the top that says: ENROLL IN AFTER SCHOOL
(or if you’re looking for a summer activity click the button that says ENROLL IN SUMMER CAMP).
3.If you have a child in Pre-K then you can enroll them in the Pre-K story book adventures.
You can also apply for financial aid once you go to ENROLL IN AFTER SCHOOL.
There are three groups of kids that have different ages, the first group are the kids in Pre-K and Kinder, the second group is 1st and 2nd grade, and the third group is 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Each group gets a new teacher every year so we have stuff like dancing, art, movie-making and puppet shows so we get to try new things every year and… it’s a surprise what we get!
All in all, I think Creative Action is a good after school program to enroll your child in.
Do you live in Travis Heights neighborhood? If so, did you get the “Life in Travis Heights” magazine? Well, I have bad news. There are not printing them anymore. “Life in Travis Heights” is a way to tell the TH area what’s going on.
In each magazine there is a family that they interview. The family makes the cover. They also have pages were they put the story that came out of the interview. There’s also a junior writer. I’ve even been the junior writer. It was so fun! I got to tour a historical landmark mansion. (The people that lived there were so nice.) That article is also on the web sight, so go check it out. There’s also a dog of the month. Dog of the month is so cute!. There is a story of the dog, and how it ended up with its owner.
“Life in Travis Heights” is a wonderful thing and I hate to see it go.
When I interviewed Sarah, the magazine’s former editor, she talked about how this magazine brought people together just like she hoped.
5th grade is like a roller coaster! We have our ups and downs. We have got our biggest up coming our way. We’re going to McKinney Roughs! McKinney Roughs is an overnight camp in Cedar Creek. We’re going to be rafting, hiking, and were doing ropes courses. We’re also going to be looking at carnivore skulls and do lots of fun hikes.
Visitors claim that McKinney Roughs is a breath of fresh air from the city.
People visit for all kinds of fun trips like family reunions to educational trips.
5th grade is so pumped to be going on this trip! On behalf of all 5th grade, thank you to everyone that helped us get here: our teachers, PTA, Ms. De la torre, Ms. Navarro, and all the Guero’s VIP sponsors. But most importantly, thank you McKinney Roughs. Shout out to the McKinney Roughs staff for helping us get where we are going to be.
Ms. King is the music teacher for Travis Heights Elementary School. She has taught at THES for 14 years. Before that she taught at a school in Dallas. She wanted to be a music teacher because she loves music and wants to inspire the love of music in others. She started playing the piano and singing in choir when she was 4 years old. She loves to sing and was in an all-district choir in 6th grade. She can play the flute, piano, guitar and bass guitar. She played in a Middle School band, a band in college and a band in Austin after she graduated. Ms. King has three cats named Frodo, Joey and Dede, and one dog named Stevie. She was born in Georgia and moved to Texas while she was 6 weeks old. Ms. King is a great music teacher
