Como Park Elementary
November/December 2023
A Note from Principal Ewald
I can't believe that we have been in school for three months already.
Our students are working so hard every day to learn new skills in all content areas. It brings me so much joy walking around Como hearing our students talking about how to solve a math problem or sounding out a word or advocating for themselves asking to take a break.
Although we have not seen the snow yet, we know that it will be coming. Please make sure to send winter clothing every day with your child. Per SPPS guidelines, "Schools will keep students inside if the wind chill is expected to be colder than -10 degrees below zero. Regardless of the wind chill, students who do not have the appropriate winter clothing will not be able to participate in outdoor recess." If you need any assistance with winter clothing, please reach out.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Jennifer Ewald, Principal
651-744-6055
A Note from AP Patel
Hello Families,
At Como Park Elementary, we had a wonderful Fall conference season! Over 90% of our students and families in PreK through 5th grade attended conferences this Fall at Como either virtually or in person. It always brings me so much joy to hear staff and families share student strengths and areas of growth they are focusing on towards the end of the school year. It truly does take a village for a child to grow in their learning and at Como Park Elementary, we value the support from all staff and families everyday.
A sincere thank you to all staff who interpreted for families and welcomed families at the Como during Fall Conferences.
Meera Patel
Assistant Principal
Como Park Elementary
Upcoming Events
School Events
- December 8 School Spirit Day - Pajama Day!
- December 13 - Virtual Family Meeting at 8:30 am
- December 20 Winter Concert K/1 at 8:30 am
- December 22 All School Assembly - 8:30 am
- December 25-January 5: Winter Break - No School
Visitors
After 7:45 am, all visitors are required to sign in at the front office and wear a visitor badge while in the building. When you leave, we ask you stop by to drop off the badge and sign out. Staff will bring visitors back to the main office to get a badge if we do not see you wearing one. This is for the safety and security of everyone at Como Elementary.
Since our teachers are teaching all day, please arrange a time to talk or meet with your child's teacher or visit the classroom.
EXCITING THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN OUR CLASSROOMS
Ms. Natalie's ECSE self-contained half day parents/families are invited to join their child to do an art activity at school! When: Thursday December 14th. For students who attend the Morning session the activity will be from 9:15-10:00am. For students who attend the Afternoon session the activity will be from 1:15-2:00pm. Invitations have gone home in backpacks, please RSVP. We look forward to seeing you there!
PreK
In the month of November, our Area of Study was Change in Our World. We have learned about the changes that are happening at this time of the year. This included learning about the changes happening outside, leaves changing colors, how people start wearing warmer clothes, and about animals that may hibernate.
Kindergarten
Kindergartners are working hard to learn their letter names and sounds during phonics and small groups. We are using the sounds to build words and to read!
First Grade
The first graders have been working on identifying fact and opinion. They have been using the sentence starters I like or I do not like. They practiced verbally giving opinions on the stories we read including the word because to explain why. Now students are using their opinions to create book reviews to share with others.
Second Grade
Second graders are busy in math. They are building arrays to find the total number of objects in equal groups shown in many ways.
Third Grade
3rd grade has been busy this month! One of our most exciting projects is happening in writing. Our 3rd graders have become quite the nonfiction writers and are working on their own expository nonfiction books. It has been amazing to watch these students grow as writers in the few short months that we have been working on this project.
In math, we have been learning about multiplication. Students have learned so many different strategies to solve multiplication problems. These strategies include number lines, bar models, arrays, the ‘cookie strategy’, and their own invented problem solving strategies.
We are excited to lead the school at the end of the month in the Como Park pledge, and to have some familiar faces share some ways that they are trustworthy at school.
Fourth Grade
4th Grade got to visit Como High School to explore the inside and learn about an Air Force helicopter from active service military members.
Fifth Grade
This month’s focus in math has been learning about fractions, finding equivalent fractions, adding and subtracting fractions as well as adding and subtracting mixed numbers. We continue to work on our other math skills such as division, multiplication and place-value.
In social studies we are beginning a unit on exploration focusing on how and why Europeans explored, what they were looking for and where they landed as well as how they affected native populations. We will also begin looking at how the 13 colonies were settled in early
December.
Our reading focus is noticing character traits and finding evidence for them in our chapter books. We continue to work on developing our reading stamina and completing 210 pages each week in our books.
In writing, we are continuing our work on developing opinion
paragraphs, writing reading responses and working on creating our own poems.
We had the chance to see a helicopter at Como Senior High School for Veterans’ Day. It was very exciting!
Counselor's Corner - Ms. Lee
November's word of the month was Trustworthy. Telling the truth can be difficult. At Como Elementary, we encourage students to be honest, keep their promises, and show people that they can be trusted. December's cardinal character words are Caring and Empathy. It is a perfect time of the year to show people how much we care. Second-quarter counselor lessons focus on bullying prevention. Students learn to recognize bullying and gain strategies for resolving conflict with others.
As the weather gets colder and the holidays approach, this is a time when people may need more help. If you or your family needs resources at this time, Como staff is here to help.
If you would like assistance for insurance, clothing, holiday gifts, or bills, we can connect you to someone who can help. We also have resources to get free beds for students.
Como students can get access to counseling for specific skills and social-emotional support through our mental health partner: Lifestance. Let me know if you would like more info.
Please reach out to me if you or your child/ children need anything. Hope this time of year finds you happy, safe, and warm.
Take care and Be well!
Stephanie Lee
school counselor
651-744-3600
From Nurse Morgan
It's National Handwashing Week! Handwashing is one of the best ways to prevent the spread of germs and keep everyone healthy. Please help your students learn these 6 steps of handwashing:
Wet your hands
Add soap
Rub your hands together for 20 seconds
Rinse your hands
Dry your hands
Turn off water with paper towels
.
Technology Tips from Ms. McConley
What Are Some Basic Gaming and Social Media Rules for Elementary Schoolers?
Young kids may not be on social media yet, but at this age, they start to interact with others in online worlds. Such video games, apps, and websites (like Animal Crossing or Minecraft) are closed environments where kids can explore, meet friends, and let their imaginations run free.
One challenge for parents and caregivers is helping kids balance time spent playing in these online worlds -- which can draw them in for long periods -- and time spent offline. And, even though online worlds have rules about behavior, some kids find ways around them. It's important to talk with children when you first introduce these games about how to avoid and respond to harmful behavior.
Kids younger than 6 probably shouldn't play in virtual worlds. If your kids can't yet read or write, they'll be frustrated in online worlds. Instead, look for preschool games that were designed for children this age.
Set up accounts together. By creating usernames and passwords together, you can walk your kids through the basics of safe and appropriate online behavior.
Make sure your children never share their passwords. Kids often give other children their passwords for help in a game. Explain that giving away a password is not safe and can be harmful for your child.
If you wouldn't let your children have unsupervised play dates, don't let them go online by themselves. Remember, the social skills they bring to online worlds are the same ones they have (or don't have) in real life.
Keep the devices in a central place. This lets you or other family members guide your child as they play online.
Review the apps and sites yourself. Make sure you check out apps and sites before you let your kids use them. Don't settle for the most popular apps, games, and sites. Look around for ones that appeal to your kid's interests or have an educational angle.
Set time limits. Make sure online play is balanced with offline play and other activities that are good for your kid's physical, emotional, and mental health.
Talk about how to behave online. Teach your kids a good rule of thumb: If they wouldn't say something to someone's face, they shouldn't say it online.
Show kids how to report misbehavior. If kids ever see something that makes them feel uncomfortable, upset, sad, or worried, let them know they should tell you or a trusted adult. Show your kids how to report inappropriate content or block other users. Explain that this is a healthy way to keep games and apps safe and fun for everyone.
Talk about money and what it means to your family. Some sites rely on users to buy extras. Explain your family values around spending money online. Be clear about what you expect your child to do when they come across an in-game purchase.
Student Pick Up
Our new student pick up system is going very smoothly! If you regularly pick up your child from school, please remember:
- You must have your number with you.
- If you do not have your number, we will ask you to go to the office to show ID. This is for the safety of our students.
- If you need another number, please let someone at pick up know so we can get one made for you.
- If you walk up to get your student, the line now forms on the sidewalk. Please do not stand in front of the door in the parking lot.
- Please pick your student up before 2:10. After 2:10, students will be waiting in the office to be picked up.
U of M - Lime Project
This year Como Park is lucky to collaborate with the University of Minnesota to focus on student mental health through a federally funded grant. We have four school psychology graduate students working with us under the supervision of Wendy Lyman-Buttler School Psychologist. They will be on site on various days and times. From the students, “As school psychology practicum students, we are able to serve the school in multiple ways. Areas that we can provide support for GenEd include collaboration with teachers to provide consultation about universal classwide strategies to improve student outcomes. We will participate in SST and SAT processes to assist with individual student problem solving, and can engage in academic and social-emotional-behavioral interventions with students. We will also be assisting special education services and eligibility evaluations.”
Quick Links
ENGLISH
Prefer a language other than English? You can open the newsletter link and click a button on the right (on a computer) or at the bottom (on a mobile device) to have it translated into many different languages. Please know that the translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete. If you have any questions, please call us at 651-293-8820.
KAREN
ကျိာ်ဂုၤဂၤတခါလၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးအီၤ လၢအတမ့ၢ် အဲကလံးကျိာ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဧါ. နအိးထီၣ်ကွၢ်လံာ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်ပှာ်ဘျးစဲ ဒီးစံၢ်လီၤဖဲ ပှာ်ဘျးစဲအဖီခိၣ်ဖဲစုထွဲတကပၤ(လၢခီၣ်ဖၠူထၢၣ်ဖီခိၣ်) မ့တမ့ၢ် စံၢ်လီၤဖဲတၢ်ဖီလာ် (လၢနလီတဲစိ ဖီခိၣ်) ဒ်သိး တၢ်ကကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤလၢကျိာ်အဂုၤအဂၤအဂီၢ်သ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ လံာ်လၢ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အကမၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်တလၢတပှဲၤသ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဝံသးစူၤကိးပှၤဖဲ 651-293-8820 န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
SOMALI
Ma waxaad doorbideysaa luuqad aan aheyn af-Ingiriis? Waxaad furi kartaa lifaaqa wargeysyada oo guji batoonka midigta (ee kumbiyuutarkaaga) ama xagga hoose (ee taleefankaaga gacanta) si aad wargeyska ugu tarjuntid luuqado badan oo kala duwan. Fadlan ogow in natiijada turjumaaddu ay noqon karto mid aan sax ahayn ama aan dhammaystirnayn. Haddii aad wax su'aalo ah qabtid, fadlan naga soo wac 651-293-8820.
HMONG
Puas xav tau ua lwm hom lus? Nej qhib txoj kab mus rau hauv daim ntawv xov xwm thiab nias lub pob ntawm sab xis hauv lub koos pis tawj, los sis yog lwm hom twj no ces nyob hauv qab, ces yuav muaj txhais ua ntau hom lus. Nco ntsoov tias cov lus txhais no yuav tsis raug txhua lo los sis txhais tiav tiav. Yog nej muaj lus nug, thov hu rau peb ntawm 651-293-8820.
SPANISH
¿Prefiere un idioma que no sea inglés? Puede abrir el enlace del boletín y hacer clic en el botón a la derecha (en una computadora) o en la parte inferior (en un dispositivo móvil) para traducirlo a muchos idiomas diferentes. Tenga en cuenta que la función de traducción puede ser inexacta o incompleta. Si tiene alguna pregunta, llámenos al 651-293-8820.
Como Park Elementary School
Website: https://www.spps.org/comoel
Location: 780 West Wheelock Parkway, Saint Paul, MN, USA
Phone: 651-293-8820
Twitter: @ComoElementary
Translations of required school-related communications can be made available upon request. Our school can also provide translators. Please contact the office or your student’s teacher if you are in need of these services.