Friday, August 02, 2019

Welcome back!!

It’s a great vibe around the elementary as we greet our friends, old and new, and return to our routines.  There’s a lot of excitement in the air as we get ready to explore new things like Seesaw portfolios, Vision Project and Phonics.  Let’s all keep supporting each other to do this important, exciting, and sometimes challenging work. We look forward to a great year together.

We also welcome the following new faculty and staff members to the elementary school:

 

Aurelie Thibeaudeau  - French teacher (maternity leave)

Barbara Bowman - Elementary and Middle School Librarian

John Sandman - Associate PE Teacher

Rebecca Semrick - Grade 5 Associate Teacher

Ryan Fletcher - Grade 3 Homeroom

Weekly Notes

Our weekly notes will be sent out via this blog every week. We will aim to get these out to you Friday afternoon before the upcoming week. It is critical that you please take the time to read these as they contain important information items, reminders and sign ups that you don’t want to miss out on. If any of you have items you would like included, please let us know by Thursday p.m at the latest, and send the blurb or information via email. Please note the additional tabs on top of the blog page for Daily Bulletin, Teacher Resources, Student Support, and on the side for School related links.

Thank you’s & Shout outs!

Anyone you’d like to thank or send a shout out too? Pass on a note to Keryn, Dave, & Calley for next week.

Thank you to 

• Buddies, GTLs and coaches who joined us early to help to welcome the Newbie
• Alex and Mary Kelly for leading sessions on Phonics and Seesaw, respectively
• All our Seesaw “geniuses” for hosting the Seesaw rotations
• Ross and Anita for making promo videos for your vision inspiration projects
• Clinton, Padma and Natalia for your help with NFO childcare! Kids had tons of fun!
• Anita, Joseph, Priya, Jane, Sarah and Finny for their patience with new spaces
• Priya V and the IT team for the great preparation for our first Seesaw session

Grade Team Leaders this year are

Early Years - Vigna C

KG - Bindu Krishnamurthy

Gr 1 - Kay Clarke

Gr 2 - Fer Latorre

Gr 3 - Tara Gray

Gr 4 - Ross Connelly

Gr 5 - Julia Davis

New Student Orientation - Wednesday 7th August

All new students have been invited to enter from the Elementary gate next Wednesday from 9:00am, however, going from past experience, we often have early arrivers so please be ready in your classrooms from 8:30.  

Everyone except homeroom teachers will need to be on hand down in the ES plaza from 8:30 a.m to meet and greet new students and deliver them to their homerooms.  TAs will be invited to join us there or be ready in the main reception should families enter there also.

At 10:30 all new students need to be taken to the FAC Atrium area to meet back with their families after their orientation session.

Class Lists

Today homeroom teachers received the hard copy student information cards; viewing full class lists in powerschool will be ready for homeroom teachers on Monday, specialist class lists by Tuesday. Please remember this is confidential to parents/families for now and that they will have access to view class lists next Wednesday (7th) afternoon on powerschool.

Communicating to families via Seesaw

As mentioned, Tech Team will be opening PowerSchool, and the information it holds, on Wednesday 7th afternoon at 4pm. 

Tech Team will be sending all of the information and registration steps for SeeSaw to parents on Thursday 8th afternoon.

Tech Team has suggested that the first weekly newsletter on Friday 9th should be sent both in SeeSaw, and via an email, as parents may need more than a single day to get signed up. You can use PowerSchool to send an email to your new class parents very simply. Follow the instructions in this short clip to make and send a message to your new parent group by email.

As parents get connected to SeeSaw, you will be notified on your SeeSaw dashboard, and can approve them to join your class as they connect. Anticipate sending all further weekly newsletters only via SeeSaw, from Friday 16th August. 

First Day of School 

Please can all Grade 2-5 teachers, including specialists, come to the pick-up area a few minutes prior to the 8:25 bell on Thursday and assist with students lining up in class lines.

Hazel and Padma will give you a sign with your name so that new students can identify you. Everyone please also wear the ID badge which was given to you during the AFO.

Morning Attendance

Please enter your attendance into PowerSchool no later than 8.45 am each morning. Students arriving after 8:30 am in the morning will be issued a late pass at the gate.

End of Day Handover

We want to be tight about our end of day handover, being intentional to pass each child over to:

• a parent
• a sibling in 6th grade or older
• the ASA program
• the bus monitor
• the Japanese school teacher

TAs are asked to please accompany students to the gate; they will wait with the children until the driver has arrived.

Any children not picked up by 3:40 PM can be escorted to the ES Reception; Cheryl will contact the parent/driver. She also monitors students who are chronically late being picked up. NO students are to remain unsupervised on campus.  

Keryn, Dave, and Calley