BRAG TAGS
Central Elementary School utilizes Brag Tags as a Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) system. This building-wide incentive system focuses on your child’s positive behavior, academic, and social successes! A few examples of what your child can earn brag tags for are: Being a sweet friend, Counting to 100, Being a rockin’ reader, Respectful Raider, Terrific Thinking, Manners Master, Handy Helper, Reading 40 Sight Words, and MORE! Once earned, your child receives positive praise from their teacher, paras, the counselor, and the principal while they hang up their brag tag in the gym for everyone to see and celebrate! At the end of the year, each child brings home their brag tags on a ring along with their picture. Students generally have hundreds of brag tags celebrating all of their hard work! This individual reward system is also a school wide reward system through the use of goal setting. We set goals to reach 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 brag tags as a school. At each milestone, we celebrate with a school wide party!
WINTER AND SPRING SINGS
We invite families to join us for two opportunities throughout the year to celebrate and enjoy the hard work their student does in music. The winter sing, during December, shows off the first semester’s skills that have been learned. Students sing a variety of songs that display beat, rhythm, pitch, and dance. The spring sing, during May, is another concert that shows off the additional learning that has taken place during the second semester. Fun is had by everyone in attendance! There is nothing better than seeing our littlest learners sing and dance!
FAMILY ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES
Family is incredibly important to the growth and development of a child. At Central, we believe in encouraging families to join us in our learning and growing here at school! We offer many opportunities throughout the year for families to come together with us and participate in fun activities! Some of these activities include: Open House, Pumpkin Volcanoes, STEAM Night, Disguise a Turkey, Snow Globes, Pastries with Parents, Popcorn with Peeps, Timeline Activity, and PreK Graduation. Students love when they get to share their experiences with family!
CENTRAL ELEMENTARY
SOUTH ELEMENTARY
RAIDER BADGES
Students at South have the opportunity to earn Raider Badges. The Raider Badges program is based on gamification which is taking elements from video games into non-game environments. Students can earn a badge for just about everything they accomplish at South. Badges are broken up into different categories such as social skills, problem solving, academic progress, etc. When students earn a badge they can level up by earning it again. Badges are made in the principal’s office and given to students right after they earn them. To earn a badge, they need to earn five tallies. A tally is earned when a teacher recognizes the behavior or skill, or when they reach a specific milestone. Students can earn unlimited badges and a leaderboard is kept to show off top earners and allow students to see specific milestones such as 10 badges earned. Students keep track of tallies and badges on their own and the school has celebrations when big milestones are made.
RAIDER CLUBS
Raider Clubs are a quarterly activity with a STEM focus at South Elementary. All students participate and choose clubs or activities provided by teachers. We utilize all teachers so numbers can be lower, each club has about 10-12 kids in it. The focus is on STEM activities, past clubs have included Minecraft, paper airplanes, soap sculpting, slime making, block building (and breaking), digital game creation, various art projects, making lemonade, and many more. Clubs are chosen the week of the activity and are usually done on a Friday at the end of the day.
NORTH ELEMENTARY
RAIDER CLUBS
Students at South and North Elementary Schools participate in Raider Clubs. This is a unique school experience where students have the opportunity to select their learning opportunity from a variety of engaging activities. Each teacher offers a specific activity which is related to language arts or STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math). Sidney Public Schools first through fourth graders look forward to this exciting time!
STUDENTS OF THE WEEK
Students who have demonstrated positive behavior and/or exceptional effort in academics are rewarded with a Friday celebration, being able to sign their name on the “Wall of Fame”receive a Student of the Week picture on their locker, and more. They get to wear North All Star T-Shirts for the day and also have the opportunity to participate in the Monday Morning Show, which is shared to North families and on the North website.
Third graders learn about Veterans, Veterans’ Day, and American History through songs. This culminates in an annual Veterans’ Day Program in which famiies and the public are invited to attend. Fourth graders learn to play a recorder. They participate in an annual Recorder concert, where families are invited to attend.
Fourth graders learn about Nebraska history and attend a special field trip to Flowerfield, where students dress up as pioneers and attend a pioneer school.
WEST ELEMENTARY
At West Elementary we have a variety of positive incentive opportunities for all of our students to take part in. Two of our most used programs are our Raider Respect Rewards and our Powerful Learner Awards.
RAIDER RESPECT TICKETS
All students have a great opportunity to earn rewards for showing respect in all forms. This may be to a teacher, student, or other staff member which does not relate to curriculum, but rather showing respect, grit, risk-taking, or ownership. When observed by an adult, these students receive a ticket that they get to put into their Raider Respect ticket box in their homeroom. Best part is there is no limit to how many students earn in a week!! At the end of the week each class will draw a student ticket and the winning student will choose from a book of rewards. This has been an amazing program which has built a great culture and student excitement for each other. So much so that students more often than not choose a reward that benefits others rather than themselves and then the next winner continues to “pay it forward” when they are drawn as a winner.
At the end of each week, ALL tickets are brought to the office and put in our “Raider Gear” bucket, where we draw a winner at the end of the month for a student from both 5th and 6th grade to win Raider gear!
POWERFUL LEARNER AWARDS
Each week teachers nominate students based on their academic performance to be one of our Powerful Learners for the week. Each week we recognize up to four students for this award. These students receive a gift certificate and an award, all while recognized in front of their peers. Students are always excited to see the reward presented and do a fantastic job of being excited and recognizing each other!