LCES Panther Cub Communication #20

by mamartinez · January 11, 2024

Week of January 15- January 19, 2024

Para traducir al español, desplácese hasta el final y haga clic en la bandera .

Hello Families,

Welcome back! We have jumped right back into learning this week at LCES. Our ELD students started their ACCESS testing this week and have started strong.

We are excited to introduce to you our new front office PK-2 Bilingual Secretary. Please feel free to reach out to Zee with any of your questions or needs.

Hi, my name is Zitlalic (aka Zee). I will be working as the Bilingual Secretary for LCES. I was born in Frisco Colorado but have spent a majority of my time in Leadville. As a student, I attended Pitts, West Park, LCIS, and LCHS so I am very familiar with our district. I currently attend CMC for Bookkeeping/Accounting. I enjoy hanging out with my dog, Zyon, and I love to watch basketball. I am very excited to be working at LCES!

DIBELS testing:

K-2 families, starting Monday-Thursday, all students K-2 will take their Middle of Year DIBELS test. This helps us see where your child is at with reading and literacy and helps us determine next steps for instruction. As this is a very important test, we encourage you to please have your child in school this week and to send them well rested. We will share the results of this assessment in detail during our spring conferences. Please see below for more details on all the assessments that we do in January.

Cold Weather/Going Outside:

Please send your child with snow clothes and boots on a daily basis. For students in K-2 if the temperature is 10 or above, with a windchill factor of 0 or above, we send students outside during recess time. For students in PK, if the windchill factor is above 10, we go outside. Research shows that recess and outside time are vital for student success and we don’t want kids to miss out on this if the temperatures are high enough. Thanks so much!

Thank you from Student Senate:

Lake County Student Senate ran a toy drive from December 11th through December 21st. On the first Friday of winter break, December 22nd, the toys were brought down to Denver and donated to the Children’s Hospital Colorado South Campus in Highlands Ranch. The hospital staff were incredibly grateful for all of the new toys. The toys will be given to all children around the hospital (inpatients, outpatients, and any other kids or parents who need toys). The total of the donations was estimated to be over $2,000. The toy drive was an amazing experience and was a huge success! Lake County High School Student Senate would like to express our gratitude to all the principals of the district who quickly got on board with the toy drive and helped to get the donation boxes up and running. We would also like to say how grateful we are for everyone who donated toys.

Thank you all for sharing your kiddos with us everyday! Please reach out at any time if you have celebrations, questions, or concerns.

Katie Pongrekun

Principal, LCES

kpongrekun@lakecountyschools.net

Staff of the Week Highlight!

Each week this year in family communication, we will be highlighting a staff member in the building. If you want, please feel free to send emails, handwritten notes, or letters of encouragement to that staff member.

Mrs. Regan- 2nd Grade Teacher

Mrs. Regan grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. She is currently on our 2nd grade team. Formally, she was a vice president at a bank, has worked in pharmaceutical sales, as a baker, and her favorite career to date is being a teacher. Mrs. Regan enjoys riding dirt bikes, playing tennis & pickleball, biking, and spending time with her grandson and family. She is inspired by the rewarding work environment and seeing growth in our students. Her dream vacation would be to see the Northern Lights from a glass igloo. Thank you for all you do, Mrs. Regan!

Send an encouraging note to Mrs. Regan at kregan@lakecountyschools.net

K-2 Specifics

January is a very important month for attendance! We do a lot of mid-year assessments throughout the month to help us know where your student is at with specific skills. Please help your child with these assessments by ensuring that they are in school and rested. We will be having an attendance challenge for the month of January where the crew with the highest attendance percentage from each grade will receive a popcorn and movie party at the end of the month. We hope to see your child here each and every day! Here are the details of each assessment:

ACCESS testing for all K-2 ELD students will begin the week of January 8th. This is a test that helps us determine what language services are needed for students in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Results of the assessment will be shared with families in the Spring.
DIBELS 8 Middle of Year assessments are scheduled for the week of January 15th. This will help us see what growth your student has made throughout the first part of school in literacy. Results of this assessment will be shared with families with a report sent home after testing and at conferences in March.
NWEA Math assessments will happen in classrooms the week of January 29th. This will help us determine where your student is at with their math skills. Results of this assessment will be shared with families through a report sent home and gone over at conferences in March.

Preschool Specifics

Curriculum:

Preschool Room – The animal domain is designed to teach young children appropriate nonfiction content about the animal kingdom.

Children will be learning the following nursery rhymes:

2 ½ Years Old Room – Children will start studying about clothes. Clothes come in a variety of colors, textures, materials, and patterns, which provide a wide range of observable features for children to explore. Supporting children how to zip, button, and snap their own clothing helps support independent learning and strengthen their fingers and hands.

Letter to families about clothing study: English and Spanish

We are taking a little pause with Second Step till January 18, 2024. During this lesson pause, we will be learning more about the Pyramid Model and the different components of it to best support children on managing emotions, problem solving, and making friends.

January Activity Bingo and In-kind Form: English and Spanish

Reminders:

With current staffing shortages, there is a chance that your child’s class will be split into other rooms and closed on any given day. This may occur after your child has already been dropped off.
Reminder school doors open at 9:00 am each day, we ask that you wait until you schedule hours listed on your signed tuition agreement. Any time that is outside these hours are billable to you.
Be sure to put your student’s yellow folder in their backpack to return on Monday so that we can fill them back up with important information. Thanks for helping with this.

As you may know, in addition to having a Head Start preschool program for children ages 3 to 5, there is also an Early Head Start program providing individualized, in-home services promoting early education and connection to families with children from birth to age 3 and pregnant moms.

The Center is currently involved in a Full Enrollment Initiative with the Office of Head Start designed to boost enrollment in this program to the total enrollment of 12 children or families.

Efforts have been centering on recruitment, that is reaching out and finding families who are interested in these kinds of services and who are eligible for services based on Head Start criteria. We also realized that having bilingual staff would enhance the effectiveness of both recruitment of families and offering meaningful services to the entire community.

We reached out to the existing Family Connector program, hoping that their established networks and connections to families would be helpful in finding families who might be interested in our program. The Connectors had great suggestions for rebranding the program to better reflect the benefits it actually provides to families. They also already knew of families who had expressed interest in making a connection to school for their very young children and were very happy to now have something to offer them.

As conversations continued about the Early Head Start mission, everyone realized how closely the goals of Head Start and the existing work of the Family Connectors matched up. When the Connectors indicated they would be interested in actually delivering services to Early Head Start families and getting the training they would need to do this effectively, the idea took root that this would be a great way to both fulfill the Early Head Start mission in a way that would benefit our particular community and also to expand the work connectors were doing to families with children younger than had previously been able to work with.

Work is currently being done to complete applications with families who are interested in the program, enroll families who meet Head Start eligibility requirements, train the Family Connectors in the type and scope of services required by Head Start, acquire materials for services to be provided on the Mobile Learning Center, the EHS classroom at the Center, and family homes, and create a schedule and budget for the additional time commitment for the Family Connector staff.

We are very excited about this transition. When the Early Head Start program was started, we knew how valuable it could be for our community. We are grateful to have the opportunity to adapt this program to our diverse and unique community in a way that will also foster meaningful relationships between families and the school district to support the learning of the youngest members of this community.

Important Dates PK-2

January 8	ACCESS Testing Begins
January 15-18	DIBELS 8 middle of year reading assessment
January 18	January K-2 Dollar Day (flier below)
January 25	K-2 Community Meeting the Gym at 8:00, HOWL of the month is Craftsmanship and the meeting will be led by 2nd gradePanther Day during Specials: “Winter Wonderland”
January 29	NWEA math assessment testing

Public Library Schedule:

January 16, 2024	10:40-11:10	Trisha & Dulce
January 17th, 2024	8:50-9:20	Regan
	10:05-10:35	Duncan
	1:40-2:10	Kissell
January 23, 2024	10:40-11:10	Lisa & Leonella
January 24th 2024	8:20-8:50	Saunders
	10:40-11:10	Rapke
	1:40-2:10	Lenhard
January 30,2024	10:40-11:10	Steph & Sheryl
January 31st, 2024	8:20-8:50	Frattolin
	10:10-10:40	Kuehl
	2:15-2:45	Compean

LCES Menus:

Project Dream Information

Please be on the lookout for a text/email with information for spring programs. Your student’s days in Project Dream will remain the same unless you request otherwise. There will be some edits to our transportation route which will be sent out next week.

You can find the full Project Dream calendar here.

If you ever have any questions or concerns about Project Dream, please reach out to Raquel Contreras, our LCES Site Supervisor (719-293-5363 or rcontreras@lakecountyschools.net).

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