Como Park Elementary

Como Elementary Families:

On February 10th we observed National African American Parent Involvement Day(NAAPID) at Como with the theme of "Celebrating Families". We had an amazing assembly with students singing, reciting poems, and watching a video about families from our 4th graders. Thank you to all of the families who were able to join us at our assembly and stayed to make bracelets with their students.

We also celebrated "I love to Read" month with a book challenge, a bookmark contest, and fun reading activities on February 14th. Take a look at our amazing bookmarks that were turned in by our extremely talented artists!

As always, please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Jennifer Ewald, Principal

jennifer.ewald@spps.org

651-744-6055

Hello Como Families,

Conferences are coming around the corner for spring! We look forward to having you attend in March. Confirmation conference letters will be going home on Friday, March 7th. If you need to change your child’s conference date/time, please immediately inform your child’s classroom teacher.

Conference Dates:

• Monday, 3/24 Spring Conferences (3-7pm)

• Thursday, 3/27 Spring Conferences (3-7pm)

• Friday 3/28 Spring Conferences (8-12pm) (No School)

We look forward to seeing you during Spring Conferences.

Meera Patel, Assistant Principal

meera.patel@spps.org

During our monthly family meetings, we like to begin by asking a question of the month. We would like to hear from all of our families. If you would like to provide feedback, please use following form.

MCA Testing

The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs) are assessments in reading, mathematics, and science and are administered every year. The MCAs are based on the Minnesota Academic Standards, which specify what students in a particular grade should know and be able to do.

Como students in grades three through five will be taking the reading test on March 25-26th, and math on April 16-17th. Fifth graders will take a science test on May 1st. It is important that students are at school on time so they are prepared to take the test on those mornings.

Preparing for Assessment Day

Parents/guardians and families can help their students prepare for the statewide assessments by making sure they understand why they are taking the assessments. Using positive language about the assessments, practicing stress-reducing strategies and having a healthy meal before testing can also help each student do their best.

For more information: https://www.spps.org/about/departments/research-evaluation-assessment/test-coordination/mca-family-information

In March, classroom counseling lessons will continue with more career exploration activities. 3rd -5th grade students will also have lessons surrounding test-preparation and test-taking strategies to help them feel their best for testing this spring! If you notice your student feeling overwhelmed or stressed about school or testing, let them know there are many adults at school who want to support them. Remind them that they can talk with their teacher, myself, or one of our wonderful social workers about their feelings- we are here to help!

How to talk about career exploration at home:

• Ask your student what they have been learning about careers or education opportunities after high school

• Talk to them about what they envision their life looking like when they grow up- and share your hopes and dreams for them, as well!

Establishing and monitoring a screen time routine can be difficult. Screens are everywhere! Here is some guidance from Mayo Clinic:

1. Encourage students to have technology free time each day. A mealtime or a specific day of the week is a good start!

2. Set and enforce a screen time limit for each day. Example: ending screen time 1 hour before bedtime to aid falling asleep.

3. Consider using parental controls on devices to manage the length of time spent on devices

4. Keep electronic devices out of the student’s bedroom.

Mayo Clinic stresses that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for screen time limits. It’s up to parents to determine what is appropriate and what works for the family.

Here is the link to the full article: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/childrens-health/in-depth/screen-time/art-20047952

Hello Como Park Families,

We had a great month of February in music. Classes learned about African American Spirituals, American roots music like the blues and bluegrass, and third grade learned how to play polyrhythms on African xylophones from Ghana called "gyli".

Looking ahead, there are some exciting music performances happening for Como Park students in March:

• March 11th - MN Sinfonia will perform two concerts and have musicians do classroom visits with their instruments. MN Sinfonia is a professional chamber orchestra focusing on public and educational outreach.

• March 12th - Murray Middle School band and orchestra will perform and show students what they can look forward to when they move up to middle and high school.

• March 17th - "Friends of the Orchestra" will visit certain classrooms as the last part of a music/literacy residency. Students will get a short introduction to the violin and get a chance to hold and play a violin.

• Fourth and fifth grade will also get to go on their second field trip to see the MN Orchestra perform at Orchestra Hall.

  
  

I'm excited for what springtime will bring us, and before we know it we'll begin working on music for our spring concerts!

Tyler Anderson

Music Specialist

In Physical Education class at Como students engage in activities and sports that promote collaboration, teamwork, and communication. They practice gracious losing, humble winning, and community-based decision-making through negotiation and compromise.

To continue beyond class, students can join Como’s afterschool program Extended Day Learning (EDL), participate in St. Paul Parks and Rec sports, or take Community Ed Swim Lessons. These programs offer great ways to stay active, build skills, and be part of a team.

Greetings Scientists!

This month we spent quite a bit of time learning about Animal families. We understand that all animals care for their young by providing them with safety, food, and the knowledge to survive. This was also an excuse for us to view many animal babies! We also had a great “Physics” week. We learned about simple machines and the principles included. The 5th grade classes have worked to design a special logo for the Planetarium’s 50th anniversary. Right now, staff and students are voting on which design will make it to the final round to represent this important birthday. Stay tuned in March for more information!

Students in kindergarten through second grade are creating and coding in Scratch Jr. Third and fourth graders are finishing up their Scratch Google Logo projects and will be moving into research projects and then creating a coding project with the information they collect.

Meals will be provided to take home for students who are fasting during Ramadan starting on March 3rd. If you would like you child to bring home a meal, please contact the office.

K-8 Summer Registration

• Visit www.spps.org/summer to learn about the programs being offered.
• Register online through Campus Parent Portal

• 3/7 - No School - Conference Prep Day

• Spring Conferences for PreK-2nd

• Monday, 3/24 - 3-7 pm

• Thursday, 3/27 - 3-7 pm

• Friday, 3/28 - 8-12 pm

• 3/28 No School - Conferences
• 3/31-4/4 No School - Spring Break

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's mission is to develop life-long learners and responsible citizens. Como Park Elementary inspires, challenges, and cares for each student. Como Park Elementary welcomes, respects and values families and communities. Como Park Elementary unites, strengthens, and prepares learners.

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.