Week at a Glance

A reminder that we will have an all staff School Improvement Wednesday activity at 10:00 on Wednesday. This meeting will be in the Media Center and can also be accessed via my Webex room.

This week we were able to hire an additional kindergarten teacher to help alleviate the class sizes that have been growing in kindergarten since the announcement of the return to in-person instruction. Hannah Johnson has been selected for this position and started today. Welcome back Hannah!

If you were in the building Friday you heard the bells ringing again! Here’s what you can anticipate next week: First Morning Bell: 8:25am; Second Morning Bell: 8:30am; Dismissal Bell at 3:00 (M, T, Th, F); Dismissal Bell at 1:30 on Wednesday. Note: K-2 teachers: There will not be a bell to dismiss your students 5 minutes early.

As part of the Bend-La Pine Schools Excellence in Equity work all families are being invited to complete a survey provided by the non-profit, Youth Truth. Lava Ridge families will receive a link to this survey late today and have until January 22nd to complete. Here is information about the survey.

Below are details for Specials next week:

K-3 – Jan. 19 -22  *Special orientation schedule for students coming to the building.   
*Students only get that one PE/Music in person that week *No WebEx or asynchronous music/PE lessons for the students at home  *Transition to the K-3 all in K-3 schedule on Jan. 25
4-5 – Jan. 19-22  *WebEx at normal 9:00 time  4-5 – Jan. 25-29 *Students in the building for their orientation day will come to PE/Music at their assigned time, all students at home will have asynchronous music/PE lessons posted on Google Classroom because we will be teaching K-3 all day.

Welcome to Sara Blanchard! Sara will be learning all about teaching and learning with Amanda Gylling for the remainder of the school year.

With in-person instruction starting Tuesday, January 19th this will also be the first day with all staff working on site. Our building work hours will be from 8:00-4:00; Office hours will also be from 8:00-4:00 for the remainder of the school year.

A repost of the report card information shared in December can be located here: TLC Update.

We will have a full Staff Meeting on Wednesday at 1:30. This will be in the Media Center and can also be accessed via my Webex room.

Here is a direct link to the Return to In-Person Instructional Plan

If you haven’t yet watched the bus evacuation video with your students please do this during a morning meeting next week. Thank you! Here again is the link.

Hybrid Informational Meeting Q & A for 4-5th hybrid instruction: Wednesday the 13th at 2:30pm in Lindsley Gehrig’s Webex room and Friday the 15th at 2:30pm in Lindsley Gehrig’s Webex room. https://bls.webex.com/meet/lindsley.gehrig

Answers from the 12/16 Wacky Wedesday question of what you discovered, learned, or will take with you as a positive from the past 12 months?

Our January Staff Meeting will be on Wednesday, January, 13th 2021 @ 1:30.

Thank you for being so careful and thoughtful of others and following the Bend-La Pine COVID health guidelines and not coming to school (even after hours or on weekends) if you are experiencing any high risk COVID related symptoms. You can find a link here to the information Michelle shared with us prior to Thanksgiving for more details. Please reach out to Nurse Michelle with any symptom questions you may have and let any of the office staff know if we can help locate materials from your classroom or area in the event you need to stay home.

Report card details can be located in the TLC Update.

From Kerry Morton…Math Book Club! – Are you interested in earning 2 graduate credits while you learn more about Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning?  Well, this is the book club for you!  It will start January 14th and end June 10th. Here is the syllabus. We will have two meetings over WebEx. The remainder of the assignments will be asynchronous in Canvas. Watch for more information about how to register on Performance Matters next week.

Limited In Person Instruction (LIPI) is going well. We are continuing to focus on serving students who are not able to or are not participating in CDL and have been adding students as needs arise and staff are available. If you have a student in your classroom that is not able to participate in CDL and you would like to host them in your classroom from 8:30-10:30 please let Lybe or I know.

Thank you for your time communicating the importance of Lexia to students and families. This is our main source of literacy data for this year and is an incredibly useful tool for providing feedback to move our students’ reading progress forward. Below are some ideas from TLC for encouraging Lexia usage:

Ideas for encouraging Lexia usage:

• Instead of focusing on time on Lexia, focus on units completed. The general rule is that students complete about 2 units for every 10 minutes. So a goal might be: My goal is to complete 4 units each day.
• Acknowledging students who have met usage in your live meetings
• Put students in breakout rooms to do Lexia and drop into each group to give feedback
• If you meet usage you can choose one assignment to not do
• Certificates 

Below are the favorite Disney characters of our staff. Some received multiple votes and the number of additional votes is listed in parentheses.

• Goofy (4)
• Minnie Mouse (3)
• Mulan  (2)
• Mickey Mouse (2)
• Tigger (2)
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Genie
• Cinderella
• Buzz Lightyear
• Ariel
• Olaf    
• Dory from Finding Nemo
• Dr. Stephen Strange
• Merida
• O’Malley the Alley Cat from The Aristocats
• Moana

Here again is the link to the emergency bus evacuation procedures video. Thank you for watching with your students by December 17th.

An update should be coming soon from the District team that has been working on the report card version we will send home in February. I will keep you posted as I receive more information.

The December PTO meeting is at 4:00 on Thursday.  I am planning again to share grade level reports at the meeting. Please send me brief details by Thursday at 9:00 of what students at your grade level are learning and I will share for all with the PTO. 

It has been a wild enrollment ride this school year and we are anticipating the seas to continue to be choppy! Thank you for your help encouraging families to contact Amber if they are planning to make any changes to their enrollment status (moving to Bend Online, moving out of state, etc). This helps us to keep Synergy up to date and provide consistent answers to the wide variety of school enrollment questions that have surfaced during the pandemic.

Our December Staff Meeting will be on Wednesday, December 2nd at 1:30 via Webex in my room.

You rock! Below are the artists and bands you would most like to see perform together at Les Schwab Amphitheater.

The Safety Team met on Tuesday, here are the notes

Some technological gremlins impacted the PBIS Responsibility Video we had planned to send out last week. With only one week until Thanksgiving break we have decided to wait to send it until the first week of December and are still planning to share it with families via the weekly family email.

Wednesday is our Lexia Core 5 SIW activity. For this training we will be meeting in two groups, K-3rd and 4th-5th beginning at 1:30. The training will last 60-90 minutes. We will send out the Webex links for the trainings early next week.

Who from history would the Lava Ridge Staff like to have dinner with?

Thank you for letting me know in advance if you are not able to lead the 2+ hour teacher-facilitated learning blocks or other regular instructional groups you may have on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. This is helpful in fielding questions from families and others connected with our classes.

A reminder of our Lexia live online professional learning on Nov.18, from 1:30pm-3:00pm. We will access this via Webex and will send out a link early the week of the training.

Teachers/staff getting charged overages on their home internet? Bend Broadband’s parent company, TDS is willing to credit back any overage charges for BLP teachers as long as they email TDS from their school email address. Any teacher that’s been impacted should send an email to [email protected], from their school email address with their name and account number, requesting credit for their “data usage allowance overage charge.

From Julie Walker….Hybrid Planning and Support We know hybrid is heavy on teachers’ minds as we continue on this uncharted journey.  We don’t have all of the answers for what it will look like but would love to support you as you start to think about what instruction might look like.  We are offering some drop-in sessions next week.  Please join us. The schedule will be:

-Monday, 11/9 @ 1:15 PM: How Do I Plan Instruction for Hybrid: Questions & Answers Join us in Lindsley’s Webex room (bls.webex.com/meet/lindsley.gehrig )

-Tuesday, 11/10 @ 1:15 PM: How Do I Plan Instruction for Hybrid: Questions & Answers Join us in Lindsley’s Webex room (bls.webex.com/meet/lindsley.gehrig)

-Thursday, 11/12 @ 1:15 PM: Tech and Math Join us in Kerry’s Webex room (bls.webex.com/meet/kerry.morton)

From Nutrition Services – We will be offering meals over the holiday breaks. They will include breakfast, lunch and supper grab ‘n’ go from 12pm-1pm on the following days:

USDA has extended the waivers for summer meals until June 30, 2021. The waivers will allow us to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to kids 18 and under for the rest of the 20-21 school year

Here is a list of books recommended by our staff for others. Enjoy!

At the Staff Meeting on Wednesday we discussed the work the ICCL Team is doing to filter through the information that is in the weekly update from Julie Walker. This can be located in the Where to Find things Doc Check out the grade level tabs too! 🙂

Save the date! Our first SIW of the year will be a Lexia Training via Webex on Wednesday, November 18 at 1:30. More details to follow.

A note from Amy Tarnow: Teachers of students in grades K-8 have the ability to individually approve YouTube videos. This allows teachers and students to more predictably access educational content that might live outside of our strict filter setting. With this power comes a great responsibility. The approving teacher’s name will be associated with videos that they approve, and these videos will be visible for all students in Kindergarten through 8th Grade, not just that teacher’s students. For that reason, teachers need to be careful NOT to approve a video unless it directly supports instruction and learning goals for students.  More information and directions on how to use this feature are contained in this blog post from our Instructional Technology Team

Does your team have a plan for when one of your team members is sick and not able to teach during CDL? Might you split up students and have them join another class for the day? While there is no requirement to do this, it does help out a teammate and continues learning for the students in that class. If your team (or individuals on the team) do this and the sick team member is not able to teach, please let me know so you can be time-sheeted. Here again is a copy of the email from HR about substitute guidelines for CDL. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Please continue to wait to coordinate any outside of school gatherings with students (play dates, meet at the park events) until we are given the green light to organize such events from Paul Dean or Lora Nordquist. Thank you!

Over the last several weeks the phone calls to the help desk for families (ext 8700) have reduced to 15 or less per day. Beginning November 2 the Tech Department is returning to the typical model where these calls go directly to the schools for support.  The phone number, 355-8700 will still be used by families and will forward for Lava Ridge families to Sarah Dieker in the Media Center.

Have you checked out myOn? myON is a student-centered tool that gives K-5 students access to more than 6,000 enhanced digital books. It provides a personalized reading experience and engages students of all reading abilities. Unlike programs such as Epic, myON will give students access 24 hours a day! Students will be able to find fiction and nonfiction books, and even kid-friendly news articles. myON also provides lots of options in Spanish! Here is a link for more information about myOn.

Upcoming myOn dates:

The district is moving to a new software system for Translation and Interpretation requests. I am told this new system will support improvements in efficiency and quality of our multilingual communication services, which should help our family engagement efforts. A handful of schools in the district have piloted the software for a year, and report that it is intuitive and easy to navigate. We are required to transition to this new software prior to January 2021. The training is designed to be asynchronous and takes less than 30 minutes. The training is available here (see document #5). Our goal is for all staff to complete this by December 1st.

From Nutrition Services…With so many schools having meal offerings each day, there has been interest by those working in the schools to be able to access the meals as well.  The cost for the meals is $4 for supper, $4 for lunch and $3 for breakfast. You can pay each time by cash or check for the meals you would like. We do not have change, so the exact amount would be necessary.  If you would like to use your meal account, we can offer that option.  If you need to add money to that account, you will need to pay online through BLPay https://blpay.bend.k12.or.us

As you may have seen, work began this week on the natural area outside the main entrance. Grass will be planted here as it is easier for the Outside Maintenance Department to maintain and also provides a place for students to wait for rides.

Some quick updates: