December 2023
Primary Education Center Newsletter
One Purpose. Your Pathway. Our Promise.
Dear Lewiston-Porter Primary Education Center Families,
Our faculty is looking forward to meeting with each parent/guardian this month to discuss the progress that your child has made during the first trimester of the 2023-2024 school year. December 8th has been designated as a full day for these important conversations. This year you may conference with teachers in three ways: in person, virtual or via phone. Although you may set up conferences throughout the school year, we strongly encourage a meeting this month to dialogue about your child’s strengths and opportunities for growth.
We will be sending your child’s report card home on December 6th. The purpose of the PEC Report Card is to provide current feedback to parents regarding the progress their child is making toward specific learning standards and skills at their grade level. Our report card is designed to deliver student assessment data based on what they are currently learning at this point in the year and where they are in relation to the current expectations. In other words, a child who is performing proficiently with the work that is currently assigned should score a 3 even though the child is not yet demonstrating the end of year expectations (which they haven’t been taught yet). If the child is showing proficiency with skills/knowledge that has not been taught yet, then the child can earn a 4. In general, a child who requires teacher support to be successful with grade level work earns a 2. A child who, even with teacher support, is unable to do grade level work earns a 1. Our job is to assess students on their current progress on what they are currently learning.
Our current approach to grading allows parents and students to understand more clearly what is expected of students now and for parents to receive timely information on how they can help their child be successful in every aspect of our program. A report card action team (including parents, teachers and administrators) surveyed the PEC parents in the spring of 2019 to assess their current needs in how we report their child’s progress. We learned four important needs of our parent stakeholder group.
Parents want an academic achievement key that indicates how their child is progressing towards expected standards at the conclusion of each trimester.
Parents want a decrease in the number of Standards/Skills that are reported for their child.
Parents place a high value on teacher comments.
Parents place a high value on the habits of a successful learner.
These priorities were embedded into the fabric of our report card design and assessment process. We have created a parent guide to support you when reviewing your child’s progress: PEC Report Card Parent Guide
Thank you for your continued support of our program. We appreciate your continuous feedback. Please check out our Winter Spirit Days on the December calendar and help us spread some cheer this holiday season. Happy Holidays & may the New Year bring happiness and good health to all!
Respectfully yours,
Mrs. Tamara Larson
Principal, Primary Education Center
The holidays are upon us and I understand how busy this time of year can be, so let me keep it short and simple and offer several ideas for some holiday gift ideas for your children … with a math focus, of course!
First, card games like Uno or Blink make excellent stocking stuffers. Children often find it novel to get a set of regular playing cards that are either oversized (I have seen that at the dollar stores), or quite small, which I have found online. The link below takes you to a site that provides ideas for 28 card games geared toward building math skills in our young students.
Card Games for Kids Note: I love these ideas!
If you have the time, the means and the desire to go a bit further you will find a link below with some suggestions for toys that incorporate math concepts. This online article offers ideas by age, from 4 up through teenage years.
For those of you who love electronics, a highly recommended toy is Educational Insights MathShark. This particular toy is focused on math fact practice. A simpler version is Educational Insights Math Slam focuses mostly on addition and subtraction.
If you have suggestions for math topics that will help support you and your child at home, please reach out to me at rorsi@lew-port.com. Until then, remember MATH ROCKS and have a safe and healthy holiday season.
Students in K-2 enrichment groups have been participating in The Global Read Aloud. The GRA is is a project started in 2010 with a simple goal in mind: one book to connect the world.
This year, the picture book author is Jacqueline Woodson:
Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were NY Times Bestsellers. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Students enjoyed reading her books and connecting with other classrooms across the country, the continent, and even the world! We created a newsletter to send to all connected classrooms and sent it out via mail along with our thoughts in words and pictures on each of her books. We also connected to classrooms digitally, using Padlet, to share our many kindnesses in response to the book Each Kindness. We are anxiously awaiting each return correspondence so we can document its origins on our map!
Nora Hurst
Aris Hurtgam
Brinley Wedge
Emma Cramer
Leader In Me Family Connections
The PEC continues its important work with the 8 Habits. Students are learning and practicing these habits in their school work and relationships. We can see the positive impact that these 8 habits have already had on all of our PEC Leaders. Here are a couple links to use as you reinforce and use these Habits at home.
This is a fun set of question and answer cards:
https://www.leaderinme.com/resources/how-well-do-you-know-me-parent-caregiver
Habit 1: Be Proactive
https://www.leaderinme.com/resources/i-m-in-charge-of-me-family-worksheet
Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind
https://www.leaderinme.com/resources/have-a-plan
Habit 3: Work First Then Play
Getting Started with Parent Portal
If you are a parent/guardian that has not yet had an opportunity to set up your parent portal, please take some time to do so as soon as possible. Having access to parent portal and using the app can be a helpful way to receive important information regarding your child's grades, missing assignments, and other important updates. This is especially true for parents of students in grades 3-12. It can also be used to verify your contact information, as you'll see in the next section. Parent Portal also gives you access to Porfolio + which is a data warehouse that we use to distribute report cards, Aimsweb reports and NYS testing data. To access the parent portal, visit our website and click on the icon that looks like the image you see pictured here on the right.
If you are trying to reset your username or password, there is a link on the sign-in page. Follow the prompts and check your email. Sometimes it may find its way into your spam box. Once you get the email you should be able to reset your account.
If you are new to Parent Portal, you should have received a letter that would give you access codes to get connected. If you did not get that letter, or if you experience difficulty getting signed up, you may call your child's school for assistance.
Click this link to visit the Parent Portal Resource Page on our website. Here you will find everything you need. I have also included some resources for you here:
1. Links to the apps:
PowerSchool App (Google Play Store)
PowerSchool App (Apple Store)
2. Video on how to get set up with PowerSchool (see below).
3. Written instructions are also available here.
*Parents will need a working email address, and a PowerSchool Access Code. This is provided by the school at the start of the year. If you need that information, please contact the main office of your child's school. For the app, you will also need the district code CSXQ.
Updating Contact Information in Parent Portal
Mobile Hotspot
Dear Families:
At Lewiston-Porter we have made a strong effort to ensure that all students have equitable access to digital materials while they're at school and while they're at home. To that end, we have partnered with T-Mobile to offer free mobile hotspots to families that are in need.
If you would like to request a hotspot please complete the form below.