Windermere Weekly Parent Update
12.10.21
Happy Friday, Windermere! This week, our awesome PE teachers, Mrs. Palmer and Mrs. Myers, reinstituted Frosy’s Playground. Our students LOVED their time in PE this week and had SO much fun. A special thank you to the many parents who volunteered to help make this a safe and fun experience for our students.
As I have shared a few times in previous updates, bi-weekly our students participate in Elementary Explorations. I hope your child(ren) is sharing with you about what they are doing when they get home. Our Explorations teachers are working so hard to make this a meaningful, fun time for our students to learn, collaborate with fellow students and enjoy their time. See below for information I shared earlier on the explanation of our Explorations time.
With staff over the past few weeks, we have talked about what brings us JOY in our life. The quote above resonated with me, and was such good food for thought. As a grounding in our meetings this week, we started with what we are grateful for in our personal and professional lives. I want our families to know so many of our staff, when sharing our professional gratitude, shared how grateful we are for YOU and for allowing us to have your children so many hours of our day. (In addition, we shared that we are SO grateful for our students, our colleagues, and new space.) Our Windermere families are so kind, supportive and such an important part of our team. So, thank you Windermere! We are truly grateful for you and thank you for helping to bring JOY into our lives. How are you recognizing daily what you are grateful for in your life? It does help bring joy into our lives!
Have a great weekend.
Julie
Friday, 12.17.21
Upcoming Dates
Dec. 20th - 31st - Winter Break
Jan. 3 - No school students - teacher work day
Jan. 6 - Zones of Regulation Lunch & Learn at 12 p.m. (see information below)
Jan. 11 - Family Culture and Traditions Night - 7:00
Jan. 17 - NO SCHOOL - MLK Jr. Day
Jan. 27 - Early Release 11:05
Jan. 27 - Family Wellness Night 6-8
What is Elementary Explorations?
Every letter day this awesome team works in a different elementary building to support students. Windermere has this team on B days throughout the year. Every other week your child will have approximately 70 minutes of exploration time. The purpose of Exploration Time is to support our students through exploring and enhancing grade level curriculum, social emotional learning, STEM learning, and much more. During this bi-weekly exploration time, our classroom teachers will be meeting with their grade level team, our MTSS lead and me to focus on our building focus to challenge and support every student, every step of the way. Through professional development and also collaboration and conversation, we are learning and delving into MTSS (multi-tiered system of supports). During these sessions we are learning and working to collect, organize and analyze student, class and building data to stretch, enrich and target areas of opportunity in the areas of academics, behavior and the social/emotional needs of our students. Ultimately, this is to ensure we are challenging and supporting the whole child.
Hour of Code: Monday, Dec. 6 Elementary and Middle School students had the chance to participate in Hour of Code. Students from UAHS visited classrooms to lead coding activities.
We live in a world surrounded by technology. And we know that whatever field our students choose to go into as adults, their ability to succeed will increasingly depend on understanding how technology works.
But only a fraction of us are learning how technology works. Only 51% of all high schools teach computer science.
That’s why our entire school district is joining in on the largest learning event in history: The Hour of Code, during Computer Science Education Week (December 6-12). More than 100 million students worldwide have already tried an Hour of Code. Our Hour of Code is making a statement that Upper Arlington Schools are ready to teach these foundational 21st-century skills.
See http://hourofcode.com/us/en for details, more activities, and to help spread the word.
Learn about helping children regulate their feelings - save the date!
The Zones of Regulation is an evidenced-based curriculum that helps children learn to regulate their emotions. It is used in elementary schools across the country, including all five Upper Arlington elementary schools. Learn more about this curriculum by joining Kathy Lawton, Ph.D., the director of Burbank Early Childhood School, for a special parent zoom on Thursday, January 6 from noon until 1 p.m. The Zoom link will be emailed to all elementary parents prior to the event. It will also be recorded and posted on the district’s YouTube channel.
Empowering our Parents/Guardians as Partners in their Students' Learning- NEW & EXCITING
The Upper Arlington City School District Technology Department would like to partner with our families to improve communication between school and home, and empower parents and guardians to help keep students safe online. We have just completed the setup of the Lightspeed Relay Parent Portal which will give parents and guardians added visibility into internet activity and provide browsing controls for their students during after school hours. This is a simple tool so that parents and guardians can be more informed about the browsing habits of their student(s) and have a way to control internet access to the student’s iPad.
Features include:
Weekly Parent-Guardian Report sent to your email - sent once a week on Sunday.
Parent-Guardian Portal Dashboard that provides a summary of your student’s most recent browsing activity.
Ability to switch between multiple students in your family from the same dashboard.
The ability to establish healthy screen time limits while at home by limiting internet access on the device to 1 hour, 3 hours, or overnight. When browsing access is paused by a parent, students will see an alert page indicating that the parental pause is active.
Up to two custodial parents or guardians will be automatically enrolled based on the contact information provided in PowerSchool. In your first weekly emailed report, there will be instructions on how to create your portal account. These reports will be auto generated beginning the first week of January.
The report will come from the following email address: [email protected]. Make sure you add this address to your approved contact list or it may go to your junk folder. Additional details and support will be available in January. Please watch for communication from your school.
Student iPads/Zoom: During the week of December 20th K-8 students will have the Zoom app removed from their iPads with the exception of students who may have a specific need to retain the app. Those needs may include enrollment in the online academy, remote counseling, quarantine, other unique educational circumstances as decided by families and building principals.
Belonging Through Books - WOSU Digital Read Alouds
A few months ago, this WOSU introduced subscribers to their Belonging Through Books Project, an ODE grant-funded project they are undertaking with local non-profit Harper's Corner to provide diverse and inclusive storybooks to local elementary schools. In our efforts to make these types of books accessible to students everywhere, they have teamed up with some authors from the book list to record a series of digital read alouds for use in school and at home! Visit wosu.org/belonging for the link to their YouTube playlist and please share this resource in your community.
AirDrop Advice for All
The technology department advises staff and students to disable Airdrop on devices unless you are actively using that feature. This will prevent unwanted images/files to be sent to your devices. Tracking malicious senders is extremely difficult and most times impossible. It is easy to turn off and on: Settings>General>AirDrop. Switch to Receiving Off.
UPDATED INFO PowerSchool Will Be Online This Weekend
Powerschool was scheduled to go offline for an Oracle update. That update has been cancelled. Full access will remain with all PowerSchool portals.
PTO Update
Thank you to all of our parent volunteers who are working hard to make sure our Hawks have lots of fun activities for upcoming class parties and support our amazing Windermere teachers and staff all year long.
SQUARE 1 Art is on its way - the shipment should arrive next week and will be distributed to classrooms and sent home next week!
WINTER PARTIES - Planning for the winter classroom parties has begun so be on the lookout for an email from your room parent if any help or party items are needed.
FROSTY’S PLAYGROUND! Thank you PTO members, with your support, Frosty’s Playground was in P.E. all week. Ask your Hawk and I’m sure they will tell you all about the FUN. I even witnessed a staff member in the inflatable. Mr. Kerstetter may or may not have raced a few hawks.
Thinking about your 2022 Goals! How about PTO…email us to get involved. PTO would love to be one of your goals. :-)
OUTREACH - If your family is experiencing financial hardship, the PTO outreach fund is available to assist. Just contact our school’s counselor, Katie O’Keefe, at [email protected]. ***All information will remain confidential*** Also, donations to this fund are ALWAYS welcome, especially this time of year if your family is looking to specifically help others in our Windermere community!
This is a great time of year to give back to our school community. If you would like to join the PTO in assisting members of our Windermere community through outreach, please visit http://uawindermerepto.org to donate, or email [email protected].
GO HAWKS!
Stephanie Tozbikian & Jen Mascho
PTO Co-Presidents