Elm Road Express November 2020

I appreciate your flexibility during our recent transition to our virtual and in-person only classrooms. The students are quite resilient and have made the needed changes with ease. I also appreciate the hard work that has gone into the effort with the teacher work group. Many of our grade level teams continue to support instruction with their slide presentations in the classroom and share them with students in quarantine. I have talked with many staff and parents this year regarding the topic of safety and wellness. I appreciate the support of all families in following through with our safety guidelines put in place at this time. Where child care can be a challenge, all of us need to consider what we need to do, if we receive a call that a child needs to be in quarantine 10-24 days. Each situation is specific, but we are following the guidelines put in place to allow for the safety of all. Please review the many documents on the PHM website regarding COVID-19 and the precautions we are taking in the district and at Elm Road.

Our teachers look forward to the upcoming student, parent, teacher conferences. Please make certain you register for a time for your family to meet with your child's teacher. We look forward to all students participating in this conference.

Website: https://elmroad.phmschools.org/
Location: 54900 Elm Road, Mishawaka, IN 46544, USA
Phone: (574)259-3743
Twitter: @ElmroadES

Nov. 1: End of Daylight Savings Time

Nov. 2: PTO Chipotle Restaurant Night 5-9pm

Nov. 3: Recess Day (Election Day)

Nov. 2-15: PTO Virtual Book Fair

Nov. 6: School Picture Day

Nov 25-27: Thanksgiving Break (No School)

Nov 30: Virtual PTO Meeting 6-7pm

• HEALTH AND SAFETY FOR STUDENTS AND STAFF: Please click on the link to review the Return to Learn District Overview guidelines. Additional information can be found on the district website.

• Sick Child: Parents must call the attendance line and provide an explanation for their child's absence no later than 10:00 A.M. on the day of the absence. You can reach the attendance line by calling 574-259-3743. When calling the attendance line due to your student being sick, please include any symptoms your student is having. If an explanation is not given on the same day of the absence, the student will need a doctor’s note to return to school.

• Please remind your children to have their masks on as they arrive at their bus stop, get on the bus, and get out of their cars.

• Please wash masks often.

• Student and staff safety is important to us!
  
• When arriving at the school, please approach from the SOUTH off of Capital. Following this direction, allows our traffic to keep flowing and does not interfere with our buses that are waiting to enter our parking lot to drop off the students. Do not go around the buses. At any time they may move into the parking lot! Use your turn signal, when entering the parking lot, so cars exiting know that it is safe to go. Exit RIGHT turn only.
• Parents picking up or dropping off children are reminded to have students exit their cars curbside ONLY. Parents, please stay in your car.
• Pull up as far as safely possible to the next car before having students exit or enter your vehicle. Always follow the directions of the safety patrol assistants.
• Please help your child memorize their car rider number. This helps dismissal go a little quicker!
• Students have received a tag with their car rider number on it, once they notified us they will be picked up at the end of school. Please hang this from your rearview mirror to help us identify your car.

Congratulations to the following

“Eagles” for their wonderful

“SOAR” behavior

Barnes: Nolan Kozak & Shannon Jennings

Portolese: Lola Haab & Blake Miller

Renz: Hayes Bevis & Audri Pinkston

Bush: Eleanor Grimm & Reese Fair

Hinton: Tyler Czarnecki & Abigail Stewart

Taylor: Rocco DeCicco & Violet Cotton

Clark: Alaina Benson & Wilson Ely

Richard: Addison Woods & Peyton Luczkowski

Tornquist: Alana Ritter & Ryan Williams

Anderson: Natalie Haab & Kyle Sweezey

Miller: Tripp Demske & June Schmidt

Myers: Anna Gordenier & Dontae Hollingsworth

Pillow: Georgia Baker & Matthew Rogers

Cook: Micah Cummins & Abby Freeman

Freeman: Londynn Lanthier & Royce Niles

Keough: Erik Jaquay & Mahina Belaski

Newcomer: Emily Freeman & Garrett Werntz

Kertai: Maddox McClain & Keegan Parnell

Mellor: Kayla Chau & David Najera

Shreiner: Aden Penn, Hope Harter

Our students have been coming to the library one time a week and to the STEM Lab one time a week. They have enjoyed reading books on our Junior Library Guild ebook subscription. We are not able to check out books to take home. Coding, Weave Silk, Lego building, and more have been some of the activities they have been learning in the STEM Lab.

November is book fair time! November 2-15 is our virtual book fair. https://www.scholastic.com/bf/elmroadelementaryschool
The theme this year is “Time Machine-Reading can take you anywhere”.

Please support the book fair and build your student's personal library - it's great to have physical books to own.

Fall into a book and READ!

-Mrs. Knapp

We have had several exciting things going on in music class! All grades are working on new rhythms. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades have been playing fall songs and movement games. The 4th and 5th grades have been reviewing and singing rounds, working with a music composition software, and we recently introduced a new instrument here at Elm Road, Boomwhackers! We recently were actually able to make a fairly large purchase for the music room, so we have updated a lot of our hand percussion instruments. I am excited to start to implement these new instruments into our music!

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful fall break!

Literacy interventions are continuing to expand and grow as we work to provide small group learning experiences for all students. Teachers are providing Tier 1 support in the classroom, while students may also participate in Tier 2 interventions with our grade level TAs. This experience is occurring for both our face to face learners as well as our students in the virtual setting. This instructional model provides students with the opportunity to review work that they need to revisit as they strive to achieve standards based mastery. When I walk through our hallways and check in on virtual classrooms, the excitement is contagious! Our students are learning and growing together and it is a beautiful sight to observe.

I am thankful that I am in a position where I have the opportunity to work with students in all grade levels. Please know that I am grateful to work with the staff, students, and families of this wonderful school community and thank you for welcoming me over the past few months!

Please take the time to review our Title I Parent Information Night slide deck and complete the attached Google form to confirm your virtual attendance.

Remember, we are here to provide assistance for you and your family so please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions. I look forward to supporting our Eagles as they SOAR into another fun-filled month of school!

Miss Peluso

Title I Reading Specialist

fpeluso@phm.k12.in.us

574-259-3743

In need of holiday assistance? Please reach out because there are community resources that can assist you and your family!

As the cold winter approaches, winter coats, hats and mittens will be necessary. If you need a referral for Christ Child, please contact Andrea Shell at 259-3743. All requests are confidential.

If interested in any assistance please contact Mrs. Shell to get more information.

Happy Autumn! From Miss Hope:

During my last few weeks at Elm Road I had the opportunity to lead each class in many different activities. Because of the upcoming holiday in October, I taught the third through fifth grade students a dance to the song “Thriller” where they put up their monster claws and moved to the beat of the song. The first and second grade students learned that our skeleton is not just a spooky halloween decoration, it's a very important part of our body. After locating our bones and understanding their importance, we danced to a skeleton song called, “Dem Bones.” All students practiced the skill of dribbling, passing, and trapping in our soccer unit. This last week, I’ve had the awesome opportunity to teach all grade levels the sport of lacrosse. I am a senior on Bethel University’s Women’s Lacrosse team, so it has been great teaching these students about using an implement as an extension of your body and covering safety rules when holding the stick. I have been at Elm Road for nine weeks now and I move onto my placement at Schmucker Middle School for another 6 weeks. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience in student teaching; The students and staff here have been so welcoming and helpful! I am beyond grateful for this placement. Go Eagles!

K-2 parents, please check Seesaw messages. Mrs. Parisi and Mrs. Sime sent an announcement with ideas for perceptual motor movements as well as the skills progress report we use in gym class to assess these skills.

Please be sure to send your child with tennis shoes, water bottles and sweatshirt/jacket on his/her gym day!

Here is our updated PE schedule:
Kindergarten Tuesday and Friday

1st Monday and Wednesday

2nd Tuesday and Thursday

3rd Wednesday and Friday

4th Newcomer - Monday and Wednesday

Cook - Monday and Wednesday

Freeman - Monday and Friday

5th Executive Branch - Monday and Thursday

Judicial Branch - Tuesday and Thursday

Legislative Branch - Tuesday and Thursday

Sincerely,

Mrs. Parisi dparisi@phm.k12.in.us

Mrs. Sime ssime@phm.k12.in.us

Miss Hope hvanproyen@phm.k12.in.us

• Please review the COVID-19 guidelines for PHM on their website.
• https://elmroad.phmschools.org/2020/09/23/covid-19-school-attendance-quick-reference/
  
• If your student is 11 years old you may get their 6th grade vaccines now.
• It is flu season please consider getting your flu shots.

We have been working on coding with all of the students.

What is coding?

Coding is the process of using a programming language to get a computer to behave how you want it to. Every line of code tells the computer to do something, and a document full of lines of code is called a script. Each script is designed to carry out a job. This job might be to take an image and change its size. It could be to move an object around the screen, make it jump, dance or say something.