Beginning March 17th, 10 students in each 4th and 5th grade class will be on site learning from 8:30-11:15 on Wednesdays. The Bend-La Pine Schools are referring to this as the WINN Program. Transportation will be provided along with lunch. Fourth and Fifth grade families will receive the attached letter later today.
Welcome to Anna Zalewski who joined our staff this week as a 3.75 hour educational assistant.
Students will begin learning Safe Touch in the upcoming weeks. Sarah Dieker will be leading kindergarten and 1st graders through the curriculum, Lybe will be working with 2nd and 3rd grade, and I’ll be teaching 4th and 5th grade. We will send a letter home to families and offer the opportunity to preview the curriculum the week prior to beginning instruction.
Understanding that many will want to listen to the Doug Reeves presentation on equitable grading practices Wednesday at 2:30, we are postponing the Lexia seminar to Wednesday, March 17th in the Media Center
Happy Classified Employees Week! Thank you Support Staff for everything you do for our school and students everyday!
Read Across America Week begins Monday. Here again are the dress up days
Thank you for returning SLGGs to my mailbox by March 8th
Spring Conferences (16 hours) and a work day (8 hours) are scheduled for April 14-16. Please help us to decide our schedule for these day by completing this short survey.
At the ICCL Meeting this week we discussed schoolwide recognition and encouragement of students in Lexia and Dreambox. Here’s the plan-
Beginning Monday, we will be recognizing those students who have completed a Lexia level on the morning announcements.
Each Friday on the morning announcements, we will recognize those classes that have averaged 5 or more Dreambox lessons that week.
The March Staff Meeting will be on Wednesday at 2:00 via Webex (my room)
On March 10th from 2:00-3:00, K-3rd will be meeting in-person in the Media Center (socially distanced and grouped by grade level team) for a Lexia School Improvement Wednesday training. 4th-5th will be meeting at a different time TBD. The focus of the training will be on monitoring student progress and the use of skill builders.
The ODE is offering a new opportunity called the Promising Practices Idea Exchange. What is the Idea Exchange? A way to share promising practices and strategies that are engaging our students in learning. The next meeting of the Promising Practices Idea Exchange is on Wednesday, March 3rd with a focus on Building and Sustaining Student Relationships, with additional bi-weekly sessions through March. You will find a description of the other topics that will be covered, dates and a registration link on the flyer. It is free and open to all Oregon educators.
Thursday, March 4th is the next Book Club meeting in Christina’s classroom after school.
Read Across America Week is March 1st-5th. While we will not be selling hats this year, we are planning for dress up days this year. We will be sending details out to families next week in our weekly email to families.
It is exciting to see the growth some of our students are making in Dreambox. Dreambox will continue to be part of our students core math curriculum for the remainder of the school year and maybe into next. The minimum usage recommendation is 5 lessons or more per week. Keep up the great work!
The state of Oregon is requiring that students in each hybrid group experience an in-person fire drill monthly. We are planning accordingly and will now schedule multiple fire drills each month. The forecast high of 54 degrees on Monday is tempting for February drill #2. Stay tuned.
Schedule for Next Week:
Next week is an A week.
Wednesday EA support from 3:00-3:30-Discovery Falls
Thank you for continuing to check-in and check-out everyday when you arrive and leave campus (ie Using the QR code or your computer to access the doc) This is a must-do for each of us every day. This data base of information will be used for contact tracing in the event we have a confirmed case of COVID. Remember, when you leave for the day the only groups or individuals you need to list (by checking boxes or listing names in the other section) are those you were not able to maintain 6-feet of social distance from for 15 minutes or more over the course of the day. Feel free to also list students on this doc who you were not able to maintain 6-feet of social distance from for a total of 15 minutes in the other section if this is more convenient than maintaining a log of this information in your classroom or area.
Here are the most up-to-date Inclement Weather Guidelines from Human Resources. The doc explains the expectations for staff in District CDL, CDL related to quarantine, Hybrid, and All-In models. A less detailed letter will be shared with families. Please let me know if you have any follow up questions after reading through the information.
Below are some photo reminders from Alandra Johnson
Please be sure that the photos you share reflect the consistent safety practices you have in place in your buildings.
Mask up! All photos on campus should include students/staff wearing masks over the NOSE and MOUTH
Keep your distance. Make sure folks are spread out in any photo shared.
If you use a photo that is pre-pandemic, be sure to list the year it was taken when you share it.
The Lexia Training on Wednesday will be from 2:00-3:00 and can be accessed in person in the Media Center and via my Webex room.
Schedule for Next Week:
Next week is an B week.
Wednesday EA support from 3:00-3:30-Friendship Mountain
Thank you for teaching your students all of our building safety protocols. Things have gone very smoothly the past three weeks and your instruction and continuous coaching has made a difference.
Some safety notes below:
As you fine tune student routines and transitions outside of class, thank you for continuing to do your best to limit the amount of time students spend standing in line. Students not arriving early to recess, lunch and specials and being picked-up on time has really helped with this. Thank you!
Each school is required to have an anonymous sytem for reporting COVID concerns. The Safety Team discussed this requirement and at this point anyone wishing to make an anonymous report should see me to make this report. I will keep this information confidential and will work to resolve the issue.
Thank you for only sending students to the office after calling via phone or walkie-talkie. This helps to prevent cross-contamination from students who may be in the office with potential COVID symptoms.
A couple of staffing updates:
Congratulations to Laurie Perez who has been hired to the Bend-La Pine certified substitute floating pool.
Suzi Galvin (welcome back!) and Brandon Powers (formerly of Team Up) have been hired to our educational assistant team.
Spring Conferences have been adjusted by a week to April 15-16 and will be done via Webex. More details to come.
Schedule for Next Week:
Next week is an A week.
Wednesday EA support from 3:00-3:30-Rainbow Valley
Our first 5 day week with students is in the books! Wow, nothing compares to the first week(s) of school. It is an exciting and fun time that can be physically and emotionally draining. We experience the joy of seeing students and the excitement of the new school year, yet must also navigate (both the good and the bad) of new schedules and new routines. The things that are out of our control can present some of the greatest challenges- late buses, snow (when you begin a school year in January), the need to have inside recess the first week of school, and this year, experiencing the realities of the student physical distancing guidelines we must follow and how it impacts us. It can be a test of patience. Thank you for all your hard work, being flexible, and giving others grace.
The number of substitutes available this year is extremely limited. If you know of a date in the future you will need to be gone, please arrange for your sub ASAP.
The February PTO Meeting is on Thursday, February 4th via Zoom. Thank you for sending me your grade level report of what students in your grade are learning in reading, math, and writing by Wednesday at 4:00. Feel free to keep it brief and I will share at the meeting on Thursday.
Communicating with each other. Thank you for continuing to be thoughtful in your communication and considerate of the volume of email that lands daily in others mailboxes. Below are some key ideas to keep in mind:
If you have a question and you don’t know where to direct it, send it to Lybe or I rather than sending it out into the email stratosphere (ie. sending it to all Lava Ridge Staff)
If you receive an email from a colleague and you have a question, clarification, disagreement, etc. Please DO NOT “REPLY ALL.” Reply only to the sender.
If you are sending a long email with anything but information (emotion, arguments, etc.) delete the email. Then make the time to discuss the issues you addressed in the email in person.
We are getting closer to Valentine’s Day! This year Valentine cards should follow the same safe handling rules as we do for other materials. As you work on plans, encourage students to bring their Valentines to school and distribute them to individual boxes by Tuesday, 2/9. Valentine’s boxes can then sit until Friday, February 12th, when students can open them at Valentine parties. •Any candies brought need to be sealed airtight – i.e., foil-wrapped Hershey Kisses are not airtight. •If students bring their Valentine cards with less than 72 hours to sit, their cards can be laid out on a table and misted with the electrostatic machines.
Thank you for all of your efforts assisting students in locating their classrooms in the morning this week. We are anticipating this need to continue as we welcome back 4th and 5th graders next week and our younger students continue to learn their way around campus.
The inclement weather guidelines for staff can be located here. With Lava Ridge K-3 students all-in and 4th-5th grade beginning hybrid, the information in the section about CDL does not apply to our staff.
Lexia and Dreambox will continue to be part of the elementary core curriculum for the remainder of the year. Next week, the Teaching and Learning weekly update will have ideas for how to incorporate this into daily schedules.
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.
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?
I have become a lot more tech savvy!
How special family is and how we work well as a team.
It’s been fun to learn how to connect in different ways virtually with family and friends.
This year was a Beautiful Hard. With this mindset, I can always find joy even in the midst of hard.
Getting to know my kids on a deeper level thanks to less commitments
Learning to be more content at home and not always wanting to be on the go.
Dr. Anthony Fauci
Being with my kids more during these last 9 months has been a gift of time that I wouldn’t of had if we weren’t in this pandemic.
Resilience
The importance of faith, family, and close friends
The joy of swimming in the Deschutes when Juniper is closed and riding my bike to school
Each obstacle has made me stronger!
Just keep going…
That family time is so important and valuable. That each one of our kids have incredible gifts to share with the world. That spending time with them is precious. That we can work together to help one another and others.
Try to find joy in something, each day, even if very small.
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.
