From Jennifer Hauth: Wayfinder has some great resources for Community Connection. Click on this link to get the directions on how to access the resources in Wayfinder’s Collections and the direct links.
We are planning to send our next newsletter to families this upcoming week. Here is a sneak peak.
Welcome to Virginia Earwicker. Virginia is the newest addition to our fabulous educational assistant team.
Upload SLGGs to UKG: For this activity, please arrive at SIW with a copy of your goals saved to your desktop. Steps to do this: Using the copy machine, scan a copy of your goal sheet to your email, then open the doc from your email and and save it to your desktop. You may wish to rename the doc to something such as, “SLGGs 2023-24” to make it easier to locate.Let Laci, Kim or I know if you need assistance.
Remainder of SIW: Time for teams to continue math planning, entering field trips into the Google Doc, or planning for Wayfinder.
From the Safety Team: A reminder that the parking lot can be super-slick! While we haven’t had any snow yet, it’s time to consider doing the ol’ penguin-shuffle in the morning as you walk into school.
On Thursday afternoon, we are planning to practice a secure drill. Here is a Standard Response Protocol (RSP) Secure video to discuss with your students beforehand.
Here are is a list of the things on the top of our bucket lists from the most recent Quick Check-In:
Certified Staff: This week you likely received an email from UKG about goal setting. At this point no action is needed for this, we will upload goals together during SIW on November 29.
Thursday: 2:30 Meetings: 2nd Grade MTSS; 1st Prep for MTSS; Other grades: PLC
Friday: Veteran’s Day: No School
We are planning to send the next newsletter home by Wednesday. Here it is.
Congratulations to Matthew Crawmer who was awarded an Ed Foundation Impact Grant to purchase more marimbas
Congratulations to Avery Burger who interviewed and was selected to join the Special Programs team. Avery’s 3 hour EA position has been posted and we plan to interview soon.
Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day is November 14th. Here is a link with more information. We are including information about this event in our next newsletter.
From the Tech Department: When to use the IT Help Ticket System: There are several ways to communicate with IT support staff, the most effective is our ticket system. If you have a quick question, call the Help Desk (extension 1200) or shoot an email to your Client Service tech. But if you have an expectation, or a request that will require action, you should ONLY use the Help Ticket system. Why?
A ticket directs your request to one of 30 IT staff that is best suited to answer your question
It is the only communication method that will alert IT support if it remains unanswered
There’s an easy URL to get to our ticket system: bls.fyi/help. You can also find a shortcut right on your Mac: click the little circular “life preserver” icon in your top toolbar near your date & time and choose IT Help Ticket.
Congratulations to Madeline Fulkerson who was awarded an Ed Foundation Impact Grant to purchase resources for students
When Signing into Synergy mobile applications be sure you choose “Sign In with BLS” whenever the option is provided. The regular Username and Password fields will no longer provide access and the change will take effect on the following applications: HealthVue, AdminVue, and TeacherVue (The change will not impact StudentVue or ParentVUE)
Wednesday: Dental Screening in A3; SIW School Design Goals + SLGG Goal Setting Meetings @ 1:45
Thursday: Dental Screening in A3; Lion Pride Drawings @ Lunch; 3rd MTSS @ 2:30; PTO Meeting @ 2:30 in the Media Center
This year, the PTO is planning to have meetings in the Media Center from 2:30-3:15 on November 1 and March 7. The team is not planning for grade level reports and are hopeful that a teacher from each grade will attend (except for those involved with MTSS). Thank you!
The week of November 6th we are planning to begin saying the Pledge of Allegiance as a school during the morning announcements each Monday. If your classroom does not have a flag, please let Haley know so we can order one for you.
BLS and BEA recently reached an agreement to modify the certified evaluation process for 2023/24. This document has all of the details. At the ICCL Meeting on Monday, we discussed SLGGs and goal setting meetings and will have details to share at SIW on November 1st.
Wednesday: 7:15-3:15 Work In Classrooms; 3:15-7:15 Conferences; Dinner provided by PTO @ 3:00 in the Staff Room.
Thursday: 7:15-7:15 Conferences; Pizza for dinner! @ 3:00 in the Staff Room
Friday: Enjoy!
At Conferences, families will have the opportunity to preview the Language Arts curriculum at the Main Entrance of Lava.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Laci or I will be stopping by classrooms after 7:15 pm with a friendly reminder that conferences are finished for the day. The goal of this visit is to get you home! To assist with this, please turn off your lights when you leave after your last conference. Thank you!
As we shared at the Staff Meeting on Tuesday, feel free to have more than one volunteer for Harvest Parties. In the event there are other times throughout the year that you need additional volunteers, just let Kim and Haley know in advance so we are ready to greet them and can double check they have been cleared to volunteer.
We are not planning to have visitorson Halloween.
With PTO, Discretionary, and Student Body funds allocated for this year, keep in mind that Haley can be a great resource in computing projected costs for field trips to assist with budgeting.
PTO has started to fundraise for the 2024-25 school year. Here is a letter families will be recieving with details on the new strategy PTO will be using to generate funds.
The holiday season is quickly approaching! As we work to grow a sense of belonging for each Lion, thank you for your thoughtful planning of the activities students might experience during this upcoming time of the year and beyond. Lava Ridge students celebrate a variety of holidays throughout the year, some do not, and some are not able to. Your consideration of every student is appreciated. Here is a reflection tool created the Bend-La Pine Equity Team you may find helpful in your planning.
Looking for a new show to stream? Below are the recommendations from our staff:
Next week, families will receive the latest edition of the newsletter.
Congratulations to Jessica Baker! Jessica has been hired as a Special Programs educational assistant at Pine Ridge Elementary School. Jessica’s children attend Pine Ridge so this will be an extra fun and exciting change for their family. We have posted this position and plan to interview in the next couple of weeks.
On Nov. 1st and 2nd we will have Advantage Dental from DentaQuest’s Everybody Brush! program visit Lava Ridge for the annual oral health screening. Permission forms will be in teacher mailboxes on Monday for home. Thank you for collecting the returned forms.
As you begin to think through Harvest Party logistics, it is ok to have more than one volunteer for these events.
In the event you use a walkie-talkie, thank you for saying your name when you begin your call.
Wednesday: Sibling Conference Scheduling @ 1:00 in the Media Center, SIW-Educator Network Day (K-5 classroom teachers will meet in the Media Center @ 1:45; focus ares: Foundational Skills, Wayfinder)
*We are planning that the Fire Department will deliver the Fire Buster worksheets on Monday. There will be a basket in the office for completed activity pages.
Thank you for arriving at Sibling Conference scheduling on Wednesday with only ELL conferences scheduled. Coordinating consecutive conferences (i.e. back-to-back time slots) for families with multiple Lions is a priority and this makes scheduling these most efficient. Jessica is planning to list ELL Conferences on teacher conference Google Docs prior to the meeting on Wednesday.
We continue to see dividends from the lost and found tub system. Thank you for bringing in your lost and found tub at the end of the day and being ready with your tub placement for the rainy and snowy days ahead.
Wednesday: Walk, Ride or Roll to School Day; SIW: MTSS Doc Preview and Seesaw PD @ 1:45 in the Media Center
Thursday: 5th MTSS @ 2:30 in A3 (Discovery Falls)
Next week is the first MTSS meeting of the year. MTSS will again be on Thursdays beginning at 2:30 and will take place in A3 (Discovery Falls). With Lava Team meetings also occurring on Thursdays, next week we will be sharing a schedule with you that also makes Thursdays our PLC meeting day. In a sense, Thursdays will be a day when we can all plan to be either be meeting in MTSS, Lava Teams, or in PLCs (similar to when Tuesday after school was when we met as PLCs or had a Staff Meeting). This common time will hopefully add some simplicity to all of our calendars. More details to come!
A note From Tech Services: IT made a change over the summer that now requires students to use MFA (multi-factor authentication) when signing in to BLS services from a personally owned device. An area of impact for our elementary schools is families that want to use Clever services such as Lexia and DreamBox on a home device. Families will not be able to do that unless their student has setup MFA. Complicating matters, MFA needs to be setup from a known secure network. For Bend-La Pine Schools, that means MFA needs to be setup either at a school (using BLS BYOD or BLS Visitor) or using the student’s iPad at home (which is always connected to the BLS network with VPN). Of these options, setting up MFA from the student’s iPad is going to be the easiest. If you have families that want to setup MFA so they can use services from a personal device, please send the student’s iPad home for 1 day along with either a 1 page printout of our student MFA instructions or share this link: https://bls.fyi/mfa-student Parents should be able to use the instructions along with the student iPad to get MFA setup. Once setup, the iPad can go back to school and stay there.
The Language Arts Curriculum Team met yesterday (Thank you Rachel for representing Lava Ridge!) and reached strong consensus to move forward with EL Education from Imagine Learning as our finalist for K-5 Language Arts Curriculum. Here are more details
This year Kids Inc. is incorporating STEM activities into the daily routine for attendees from 2:50-4:00 each day in the Rainbow Valley and Friendship Mountain Commons and in the gym.
Coming soon to your inbox…an email from the UKG Performance Evaluation Module. This year, certified goal setting and evaluations will be connected to UKG and we can expect more information about this later in October.
Wednesday: Lockdown Drill; SIW-Walk to Skill Focus
Thursday: *Tammy Doty/Lisa Burk Site Visit-AM; Lava Teams @ 2:30
Welcome to Avery Burger! Avery joined our team this week as an educational assistant and will be at Lava daily from 11:30-2:30.
*This year Laci and I have twice monthly meetings with Tammy Doty (Executive Director of Elementary Programs) and Lisa Birk (joins for one meeting a month; also an Executive Director of Elementary Programs). During these visits we will spend time in classrooms and also meeting.
Thank you for your input into the schedule we will use for Conferences this year. We will plan for: Wednesday: Work In Classrooms 7:15-11:15; Conference 11:15-7:15 Thursday: Work in Classrooms 7:15-11:15; Conference 11:15-7:15 Friday: Trade Time (Day Off)
Welcome to Tatum McDaniel! Tatum joined our staff this week and will be supporting students in the Ocean and Learning Lab.
