Ms. Gabler's Scientists

Ms. Gabler's Conceptual Physics students were experimenting with Light and Optics today. They looked like a group of scientists as they explored refraction.

  

Congratulations to Cedar Ridge senior, Julie Hill, for being chosen to receive a $5,000 scholarship from the Williamson County A&M Foundation.  She was presented the scholarship at last weeks Aggie Muster. 

Graduation Ceremonies Information

Valedictorian and Salutatorian for Cedar Ridge Graduation 2016! Also, Qualifiers for Next Year's National Merit Program!

I'm so proud to introduce this year's Valedictorian, Lucas Stock, and Salutatorian, Josh Tidman. Our senior class has many outstanding and competitive students, so it is quite an accomplishment to end up 1st and 2nd in the class of 2016! Congratulations, Lucas and Josh!

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This year we had a record number of  19 juniors qualify for next year's National Merit Program.  We hope all of them make it to the finalist status, but just qualifying is a huge accomplishment. The National Merit Scholarship Program uses students' PSAT test scores as the qualifying test. From approximately 1.5 million program entrants, each of these students is among the 50,000 highest scoring participants who will be recognized in the fall.

From the 50,000 high scorers nationwide, about 16,000 will be named National Merit Program Semi-finalists next September, representing the top scores in each state, and approximately 34,000 will be commended for their performance. Semifinalist will be the only students in the running to compete for about 7,4000 National Merit Scholarships offered in the Spring of 2017. 

So, as you can see, these students performance has been outstanding. These students are all dedicated to success, not afraid to work hard and they believe in putting forth 100% effort. But those attributes alone did not create these results, those characteristics were accompanied by lots of love, encouragement, and support (plus perhaps occasional nudging) from parents, family, and teachers. Congratulations to each of you! We are incredibly proud of you all!

                                                                                                                This is their "silly" picture! :) 

The students receiving recognition for qualifying for the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program are:
 Florianne Binoya                                              Yasmeen Manzur
David Bradley                                                    Nicholas Martinez
Angela Cao                                                        Marissa Maxim
Devin Deanda                                                    Matthew Pabst
Nicolas Escobar                                                 Nicholas Pechlaner
Sangavai Ganesh Senthil Kumar                       Arvind Raghavan
Erica Guthan                                                      Rachel Schroeder
Thomas Hoang                                                   Carter Sugden
Sunitha Konatham                                              Harrison Winslow
Justin Liu

Cedar Ridge Spring National Letter of Intent Signing Day and HOSA Students Going to Nationals!

Cedar Ridge High School conducted their Spring National Letter of Intent Signing Day held Wednesday. The following athletes signed-

Boys Soccer

Jacob Collins - Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
Sean Bouzek - McMurry Abilene, TX

Girls Track

Sierra Cortez - Texas Lutheran University Track/Volleyball
Taylor Repa - UT Arlington Cross Country
Sarah Quinterro -- Arizona State Tri-athalon

Baseball
Peyton Becker - University of Texas at Dallas
Sam Campos - Tyler Junior College

Congratulations HOSA Students and Teachers!

Our HOSA students traveled to Galveston last week to compete in state competition. While we couldn't be more proud of all of the students who made it to state, there are 4 of them who qualified for nationals in June. Congratulations to them and their wonderful HOSA sponsors and Health Science teachers, Ms. Hamilton, Ms. Colclasure, Ms. Williams, and Ms. Stipe.

From Left to Right: Sunitha Konatham, Elizabeth Freeman, Yasmeen Manzur ,Veronica Remmert

Spring 2016 Final Exam Schedules

You will find the Spring 2016 final exam schedules at the links below:

9th - 11th Grade Students Final Exam Schedule
and
Seniors Final Exam Schedule

STAAR End-of-Course Testing First Week of May

STAAR End of Course testing will be the first week of May.

Tuesday, May 3rd -- Biology EOC - Freshmen
Wednesday, May 4th - Algebra 1 EOC - students taking Alg I
Thursday, May 5th -- US History EOC for Juniors

Please make sure your child gets plenty of sleep the night before the exams. Also, please do not plan any appointments for your child on a testing day. 

The cafeteria is offering free breakfast to all students on test days. If you've got teenagers who are eating you out of house & home, this is a great way for them to eat breakfast at home and re-fuel for free at school. 

Ms. Jipp and Student Reps at the Texas Association of Student Councils Annual High School State Conference

Ms. Jipp and two Cedar Ridge Student Council Officers at the Texas Association of Student Councils 80th Annual High School State Conference in Arlington this week.. This is the largest student leadership gathering in the world! There are over 6000 students in attendance. Pictured with Ms. Jipp is Wesley Matingou- Student Body Treasurer and Oliver Jipp, Sophomore Class Representative.

Celebrating Custodian Appreciation Week!

Cedar Ridge has the best custodial staff in the district! They have done a wonderful job of keeping a huge building clean and shiny! They are led by our wonderful Head Custodian, Max Vela. They are always ready to help and jump to do whatever is needed. One of the ways we showed our appreciation during Custodian Appreciation  Week this past week, was by providing the day crew with a special lunch and the night crew with a special dinner.

However, our Spanish National Honor Society (SNHS), really did an outstanding job making our custodians feel loved and appreciated! They provided a special breakfast for them, which included breakfast tacos, muffins, fruit, juice, coffee, bagels, and lots more goodies! Then, on Wednesday,  Spanish National Honor Students volunteered to help clean the cafeteria at during lunches. According to their sponsor, Spanish teacher, Keiry Lone, the students were very surprised to find out how hard the custodians work each day. I want to thank the Spanish National Honor Society students and sponsors for making this such a special week for our custodians!

Enjoy the pictures that were shared with me showing the breakfast the SNHS students provided the custodians, as well as some of the SNHS students  working in the cafeteria.

Cedar Ridge Student Qualifies for National Chemistry Exam & Computer Science Team Successfully Competes!

AP chemistry student, Nicholas Escobar, has qualified to represent Cedar Ridge at the National Chemistry Exam at Southwestern University on April 23. He will be one of ten Central Texas students to take the qualifying exam for the U.S. National team. Congratulations, Nicholas!! Good luck!

Shared by Joy Windell, Cedar Ridge Computer Science Teacher-

Cedar Ridge's Computer Science team competed in district this week and placed 3rd overall. They have participated in many invitationals throughout the year and will be competing in Lockheed Martin's Code Quest in Fort Worth at the end of the month. I am very proud of their hard work!

Left to Right: Arvind Raghavan, Matthew Pabst, David Bradley, and Kai Fleischman

A Plug for Dance and Media Communications Courses by Karen Searles

Shared by Karen Searles, Cedar Ridge Dance Teacher:

Cedar Ridge is known for so many wonderful things, two of which are innovation thinking and an amazing Visual and Performing Arts Academy. We are lucky to be one of the few high schools in Texas that offer the Dance and Media Communication I-II courses. 

Dance and Media Communications provides rigorous and relevant experiential study of dance history, dance technique, and choreography along with student learning in media literacy and technology applications. Students will learn how to integrate traditional movement and choreographic skills with current technology applications to create new media such as animations, digital images, multimedia presentation, digital video, websites, and interactive performances. 

At Cedar Ridge, this course takes place in an RRISD NextGen Classroom with a class set of iPads, along with additional technology from a Texas Cultural Trust Arts & Digital Literacy grant, including still cameras, video cameras, Go Pros, photography lighting, stage lighting, and iPad accessories. Some of our dancers were the first Dance & Media students in the state to perform on stage in an original interactive dance piece. To see more examples of what has come from this course, you can see them featured as one of the classes on this blog: http://ngdcdance.blogspot.com Students interested in dance, but that prefer technology and choreography over traditional dance technique classes would find Dance and Media to be a course designed with them in mind. They can add course #7149 to their course sheet today or contact Karen_Searles@roundrockisd.org for more information.