The Westgate Wire

It has been a busy week at Westgate! Our teachers and students continue to hone their remote learning skills, navigating new tech tools, and connecting in different ways.

We hope you were able to join Monday night's virtual Curriculum Night and found it informational. Teachers should have shared their presentations, and if you missed it, please take a minute to view Mr. Walton and Mrs. Buch's Welcome Back Video. You will need to enter the following passcode: *31VE#7D. You can also click this link to view the Specials presentations from Curriculum Night.

Next Friday, we will celebrate our Wolverine pride by wearing our Westgate spirit wear! Feel free to snap a few photos and email them to Mrs. Buch, at abuch@sd25.org. We would love to add them to the upcoming newsletters!

We wish you a healthy and happy weekend!

Each year, District 25 administers several state and local assessments to our students. This fall, the information obtained from these assessments will help our teachers design differentiated instruction and determine who may need academic intervention. All fall assessments will be administered remotely. District 25’s guiding principles for our fall assessment plan were to assess students safely, obtain a general snapshot of students’ reading and math strengths and needs, and be mindful of the students’ and teachers’ instructional time. The fall assessment data collected by the district will not be used in isolation to make any high stakes decisions, including eligibility for specialized instruction or advanced learning classes. However, the fall data will be considered in combination with additional past and present classroom and district data. We will begin some of our assessments next week. Classroom teachers will be sharing specific schedules with you. Click below to access more information about fall testing. Please note we have decided to postpone the MAP test until October to ensure a smoother administration for our teachers and families.

iPad and Chromebook for Parents and Students: This link will bring you to a page with videos helping you to navigate Clever, Seesaw, Zoom, caring for your Chromebook and iPads.

Reboot to Refresh!
Video conferencing takes a tremendous amount of resources for computers. Our District Tech department recommends that you encourage your children to restart their devices at least once a day, during an off period or each morning/evening. This helps to reset the computer usage and make it available for the next set of tasks. You can also improve performance by limiting the amount of tabs and windows open at the same time as they are constantly reloading in the background. These steps can help reset and hopefully improve the experience each day.

Chromebooks
To turn off your Chromebook completely, try one of these options:

• At the bottom right, select the time. Select Power .
• At the bottom right, select the time. Select Sign out and then Shut down.
• Press and hold the Power key for 3 seconds.
• Press and hold the Power button until you see a menu to Power off or Sign out

iPads
To Power Down Your iPad press and hold the On/Off/Sleep button at the upper-right corner of the iPad. Slide the bar to Power off.