Wasco Weekly

The month of November culminates with the celebration of Thanksgiving. When I think of expressing gratitude, my mind always lingers on influential people who enrich or seek to benefit others. I am grateful for their contributions to my spirit and I am inspired to reach out and impact others in the same meaningful ways.

Our school contains many different people groups whose work benefits the whole, and they help us build a supportive network to facilitate the students’ school day. These groups of people work with every student in the school every day or meet with every student during the course of the week. When they interact with students, they make a large contribution to our school culture by actively building relationships and investing in their character development. This week I am highlighting our school lunch, office, and custodial staff. The very best education facilitates student self-sufficiency. The members of these teams organize and teach students systems in our school. Students learn the value of cooperation in order to achieve important functions: eating lunch, processing school attendance and communication, and maintaining a clean and orderly school environment.

I am grateful for this team of people at Wasco! Your reliability, character quality is the highest! We are thankful for you.

Kind regards,

Principal Brennan

331-228-6294

Stephanie.brennan@d303.org

Nurse Tina Ahrens, Administrative Assistants Heather Kudabeck and Candace Thoke,

Lunch room Kelly Nelms, Fiona Galvan, Lucy Caraba, Jennifer Selvik, Faiza Memo

Custodian Rafael Sanchez

Not Pictured: Jennifer Selvik, Annie DeLapaz

Report Card Dates:

The end of our first trimester is Friday, November 13 and grades will be available to parents via HAC in December. I will send the exact date of Report Cards in a future Wasco Weekly.

Upcoming dates:

November 3 No School-Election day.

November 9 No School-Teacher Planning Day

November 23-27 No School Thanksgiving week

Monday, November 9, 2020 is a Remote Learning Planning Day for staff. During the time that District 303 staff members are engaged in their learning, students have the opportunity to use this day to work on assignments or to engage in optional learning experiences that the district has created.

Please visit the website D303 Optional Remote Learning For Students to access this resource. The website houses a variety of optional learning experiences in the areas of math, digital citizenship, English Language Arts, college and career, virtual field trips, STEM, and social emotional learning. Although these optional learning experiences were designed for use on Remote Learning Planning Days, students are welcome to engage in the learning experiences on the website at any time.

We honor others by sharing knowledge of their stories or importance with others. Here is your opportunity to share history about your family member's connection to the military or you can share why Veterans Day is important to you.

We created this Flipgrid to share our Veterans Day stories and tributes. For more information about Flip Grid you can use Flipgrid Guide for Families. D303 also provides web access to our Digital Tools for Instruction. Here is a link to the site. Digital Tools for Instruction

All D303 students utilize the iReady tool to practice skills at their individual level. The chart below shows you the progress of the whole school. Each student has a weekly 45 minute goal of practice in each content area: reading and mathematics. We will provide parents updates on goal progress in future Wasco Weeklies. If you have a question about your child's individual progress, please contact your classroom teacher.

Spirit Club is Celebrating National Kindness Day on Friday, November 13th. Throughout the week the classes will be "Kinding" other classrooms with random acts of kindness and compliments. On Friday each class will vote for a classroom Kindness Representative- Winners will be announced on Monday the 16th. Also on Friday, November 13th Spirit Club is celebrating Kindness by wearing their Pajamas to School! Don't forget to show your Wasco Spirit! (Insert Zoom picture of Wasco Spirit Club if you want!)

Starting November 10th, Organic Life will be offering breakfast at all Elementary Schools. Breakfast meals are free for all students just like the lunches.

Students will have the option to order breakfast in the morning as they already do for lunch. Organic Life will prep the breakfast bags and deliver them to the classrooms by 1:20pm each day for students. This helps to support students eating a breakfast before coming to school the next day.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact our office.

Recently our school building was inspected for safety. It is a yearly inspection done by the Regional Office of Education in partnership with community safety officials such as the fire department. This team visits schools throughout the county during a school year. The inspector's appointment coincided with the arrival of our students and they had an opportunity to view students approaching and entering Wasco school. The inspectors admired how orderly our students approached and entered the building respecting the space of others. It was a fine compliment, because this is something that the students do ON THEIR OWN. Aren't all adults happy when the kids demonstrate the skills of cooperation and self sufficiency?

-”Quality is everyone’s responsibility.” W. Edwards Deming

Thank you to the PTO for hosting a Pumpkin Decorating contest! Our Wasco Wolves are a creative bunch and I think you are all winners! Did you see the Ghostmallow? The Wasco Wolf pledge pumpkin really caught my attention- we say that pledge everyday! What a great way to connect our whole school community. The PTO is currently hosting a Butter Braid Fundraiser and orders are due by November 10th.

Here's an opportunity to admire the work of an entire grade level. Third grade is making the most of our schedule! These pictures show conferring, creative math word problems, and independent reading and writing. It's Spoooooktackular!

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce this year’s Wasco Spirit Club Members!

Abby Poss - 3P

Natalie Wilton - 3A

Daniel McCauley - 3G

Graham Showalter - 3K

Meryl Kaplan - 4D

Joseph Barton - 4M

Julia Grawender - 4He

Andrew Leigl - 4Ha

Abeile Edwards -4th Remote (Erin Smith)

Sierra Horniacek - 4th Remote (Kerri Furlong)

Reese Full - 5R

William Showalter - 5R

Sydney Steib - 5E

These students were chosen from over 40 applicants for their leadership qualities and their unique ideas for promoting Spirit within our school and community! Stay tuned for more news from our Spirit Club and be prepared to show your SPIRIT!

Co-Coordinators: Amy Corda and Rebecca Schroeder

This is just a reminder about sending your child(ren) to school because Covid-19 has altered the way we look at sniffles, coughs and sneezes this year. If Anyone in the household has any following symptoms please refrain from sending your child(ren) to school:

Fever of 100.4 degrees or higher, new onset of moderate to severe headache, shortness of breath, new cough, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain from unknown cause, new congestion/runny nose, new loss of sense of taste or smell, nausea, fatigue from unknown cause, muscle or body aches.

Medical Evaluation and Testing are Strongly Recommended for ALL person with Covid-like symptoms.

It is also very important to remind your child(ren) how important it is to wear their mask while in the school building at all times, unless specified, i.e. lunchtime.

I appreciate and Thank You for being understanding and considerate.

Nurse Tina

Last spring, Mrs. Misner, our Wasco Physical Education teacher, was awarded two grants from the Greater St. Charles Education Foundation. The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting excellence in education within Community Unit School District 303. The group provides grants to teachers and several scholarships each year to our St. Charles High School students. Mrs. Misner received a grant for $274.98 for a Gopher Ignition Pro Interval Trainer that will be temporarily mounted on the wall in the gym. The timer can also be placed on a table so it is moveable. This will provide a great visual for station work and fitness training.

A second grant was written by Mrs. Misner for $990.31 on behalf of the D303 Elementary Physical Education team for new bowling equipment. The bowling equipment travels to each school throughout the year with all of our elementary students using it. The purchase was for 3 new bowling lanes including a rubber bowling ball and 10 pins and 6 new lightweight bowling balls for our primary and students with special needs to use.

Mrs. Misner would like to express her gratitude to the Greater St. Charles Education Foundation for their continued support of education and students in D303. If you are interested in learning more about the Foundation or would like to make a donation, the website is http://stced.org/

The picture below is a great example of functional writing. We teach writing to communicate ideas and we revise our writing to facilitate the reader's comprehension. As a school staff we invite students to learn and practice purposes of writing. One of our school writing goals is to increase students' knowledge of how to convey their thoughts and ideas with clarity.

There is a chill in the air and the weather is turning colder. Please dress your students appropriately for P.E. and recess with coats, hats and gloves. Please put your name on things so they don't get lost! If you are missing an item please stop by our lost and found inside the vestibule.

Please feel free to contact me if you have additional questions at julie.misner@d303.org.

Julie Misner

Physical Education teacher

Our school library is here to provide reading materials for your child. We have three ways to access fiction and nonfiction books: Print books for In-Person Learners, Digital/eBooks for In Persona and Remote learners, and Book Pickup for Remote learners. Please use this link below to access the pathway you choose. Happy reading!

Book Checkout procedures

It is important to us at Wasco that we provide a community of care and support to our families, especially when faced with financial hardship.

The current situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic has caused some families to experience a need related to job loss, medical bills, child care, etc. District 303 has several supports available for families through our schools.

The supports available include: Thanksgiving Meal Support and Big Hearts of Fox Valley Holiday Support Program. If you are interested, please complete this survey.

Parents we really appreciate your attention to safety you are when you arrive on campus. As inclement weather approaches, we are working to make sure we move traffic as smoothly as possible. Here are some suggestions:

• Please pull up AS FAR AS POSSIBLE in available space, without occupying the crosswalks (marked with white stripes). This will enable us to place more students in cars.

• Please be aware of loading quickly so that we can exit cars in the pickup line as quickly as possible.

• Take care to limit social interactions while driving. During arrival and dismissal, there is a lot of activity and we want to ensure all adults are watchful for moving students.

• Encourage your child to watch for your vehicle.

If your child is absent from school, your child's teacher will provide the necessary classwork, just as has happened in the past. Teachers can send home online resources as well as provide you with the learning objectives for each content area. Please reach out to your child's teacher when you need information about their lessons.

Parents and other visitors to a school campus are expected to be wearing a mask when at the school. Our school community goal is to be as safe as possible and following the precautions such as wearing a mask when sharing space with others or when we are unable to keep our distance is a community practice that decreases the spread of germs. Your help modeling mask-wearing and spacing from others demonstrates our commitment to the health of one another.

We realize there is much information to digest, especially if you are a parent new to Wasco. Please use this link to access a plethora of information about the daily operation of our school. We hope this guide answers all of your questions. When in doubt, please reach out to our office. We are happy to help! Even if you are a returning family, you might want to keep the link handy.

Transportation route information is accessible to families using this link: Bus Routes. You will need your HAC number to access the information. Transportation route information will not be sent home through the mail and can only be accessed online. Please note that for the first two weeks of the school year, the district will not make adjustments to the transportation routes. Our transportation department will collect suggestions about the routes and make adjustments where necessary after the first two weeks of classes.

Since March, District 303 has collaborated with our food service vendors to provide grab and go meals for students to enjoy at home. We want to make you aware of the procedures for making sure that students continue to receive meals, whether they are learning in-person or remotely.

Families who choose to purchase meals for their children will have their PushCoin accounts debited, unless eligible for free lunch. For more information about eligibility for free and reduced lunch, please contact Patricia Townsend at 331.228.6529.

Email: heather.kudabeck@d303.org
Website: https://district.d303.org/
Location: 4N782 School Street, Wasco, IL, USA
Phone: 331-228-2900