Happy New Year Findley Families,

I hope everyone had a relaxing time over the Winter Break. Although I love the time off to spend with family and friends, I do love coming back and seeing all our kiddos. It’s been a lot of fun this week hearing stories from everyone’s time off school.

We are hitting the ground running here in our building, kids and teachers have gotten right back into to the routines of teaching and learning with little difficulty. Thank you for your part in helping make the transition back into routine easy for your student(s). That said there are several things coming up in the next few months I want to highlight here.

Today, we had Rhys The Science Guy, here to kick-off our Science Fair preparations. Our annual school wide Science Fair, scheduled for March 11, 2020, is coming up in two short months. Students will be bringing home forms for participation soon; these forms are due back no later than January 31. Parent approval via signatures are required for entries to be considered. Poster boards can be purchased in the office for $3. You can read more about the Science Fair later on in this newsletter.

Next month, students who are identified as English Language Learners will be taking the annual English Language Proficiency Assessment, or ELPA. We are in the process of putting together a schedule and will be sure to notify parents when exact dates have been determined so that you can help prepare your kiddos for success on this important assessment. Our school testing window is February 10-28, 2020. You can contact our school ELD teacher, Todd Hoodenpyle for more information about this important measure of your students’ English proficiency.

On January 23 we will be presenting our second session in our Parent Partnership Series. The next three sessions will be dedicated to teaching parents more about supporting their students with their executive functioning. This first session on executive functioning will focus on working memory. This is the area of executive functioning that students use when engaging in a task, it is their ability to remember and use relevant information when completing a task. We hope you join us to learn more about supporting your child in this important area. There is more information about the Parent Partnership Series later on in this newsletter.

Lastly, parents please help us keep accurate attendance by notifying our office via the attendance line (503) 356-2100, option 1 if your child will be missing school. Thank you very much!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sherry Marsh, Ed.D.

Principal

Findley Elementary

Parents, by now you should have received an email from me if your child is participating in OBOB. If you have not please email me so that I may add your correct email address to my database.

I had a meeting, today, with all the OBOB captains to give them the team schedule of the Preliminary Round of competition; it will be posted on our website at the end of the day.

There will be a training meeting next Friday, January 17th @ 2pm in Rm #210 for parent volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering please plan to attend this meeting. If that time does not work for you, please still volunteer we can train you as we go (by observing battles).The sign up for volunteering with times and exact dates for the Preliminary Rounds will be on the PTO volunteer sign up page.

At this point your child should be reading lots of OBOB titles. The battles will begin on Wednesday, January 22nd. Our official OBOB page can be found on the Findley School Website under Academics, this page lists the titles, authors, and thousands of practice questions.

Please contact me with any questions or concerns. Keep Reading OBOB Dragons !!!

Rita Vennes

Finish - Student - Teacher

1 . Anshul Mantri - Ray

2 . Liam Sitter - Clay

3 . Ashvant Daniel - Mesler

4 . Bryce Ballou - Skiba

4 . Kavin (Rudra) Pokhoriyal - Lockhart

5 . Rishan Chakraborty - Potocki

6 . Daaniyaal Uddin - Janssen/Pogue

6 . Bethan Pullan - Harris

7 . Harshini Dasari - Gentzkow

With just a few classes left to count, as a school we have read over 9000 hours!! Way to go Findley Dragons.

We are able to get 50 Hives for Bee Families around the world.

Findley Families,

We are excited and pleased to present our 2nd Parent Partnership information Session. Our focus for the remainder of the year will be Executive Function. Executive Function and Self-Regulation go hand in hand in helping our children to manage themselves day to day. They also enable positive behavior and allow us all to make healthy choices. We hope you’ll be able to join us for one or all of these important sessions. Enjoy coffee and tasty treats while gaining knowledge to support your child’s learning.

January 23 - Working Memory

March - Inhibition Control

May - Cognitive Flexibility

Please take a moment to RSVP via a brief google form to let us know if you'd be interested in attending.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

We hope to see you soon.

Emily Gotfried, Counselor

Susan Hargrave, Student Success Coach

Please Note:

· Child care will not be provided and presentations are geared for an adult audience.

In order to provide fewer interruptions to our classrooms, we are asking that parents please be sure to notify the office of your child's absence.

Our attendance number is 503.356.2100 option 1 . Please leave your Students First andLast Names / Grade / Teacher and reason for absence.

If you only notify the teacher and they happen to be absent, the office will not know and you will get a phone call about their absence. Calls go out 2 times a day the first at 9:30 and the second around 1:30.

IF YOU HAVE A CHANGE OF GO HOME PLANS, PLEASE CONTACT THE OFFICE BEFORE 2:30PM so that we can guarantee your child's teacher receives the update.

We are starting a new feature this newsletter called Meet Our Team! We are excited to introduce our staff to you.

Mrs. Weybright - General Office - Registrar

How many years have you been at Findley? 21 years

Mrs. Bishop - General Office - State Testing

What is your favorite song to sing? I have too many to choose one

Mrs. Goldammer - General Office - Principal Secretary

Whats your favorite thing about Findley? The funny - Smart - Energetic kiddos I get to interact with daily.

Ms. Wesenberg - School Nurse - Hours Wednesday & Thursday 10:30 - 1:30

What do you like best about being a school nurse? One of the many highlights of being a school nurse is making connections with students and families on a daily basis. Our students are the kindest, funniest, and brightest students, and to be able to connect with them, even when they are not feeling their best, brings me so much joy. I am fortunate to be able to provide meaningful services to our school and help our students access their education.

Dr. Marsh - Principal

How many miles did you log last year in Findley Flyers? 26 a full marathon

FIRST LEGO League® is a science, technology, engineering, and math program for a team of 3 to 10 members in 4th-8th grades. FIRST LEGO League challenges teams to solve a real-world problem with their own innovative solution and to design, build, and program a LEGO robot to manipulate LEGO models based on real world challenges. Every year, there is theme and this year’s theme is City Shaper where teams have to identify a problem with a building or public space in our community, design an innovative solution and share the solution with others and then refine it.

Our team IncrediBots is made of five 2nd and 3rd grade students (Gagan Girish, Nikhil Bedre, Ashten Hintzman, Inchara Shree and Isha Marla) and our project this year focuses on saving kids’ lives! When we researched, we realized that traffic crashes are the #1 cause of injuries/death for school-aged children. And school zones are the most common location for a kid to be injured by a vehicle. So we decided to focus on solving this problem from three perspectives - the Drivers, the Kids and Cars.

For Drivers: School zone safety App. This would be an App that alerts drivers when they are in a school zone and the beacon is flashing.

For Kids: A feature on phones called "School Zone Mode" similar to Do Not Disturb or Airplane mode on phones so that kids are not distracted in school zones.

For Cars: Improve car cameras with computer vision capabilities to enable school zone sign detection automatically and alert the driver.

Our comprehensive solution integrates innovative solutions for each group and also includes an awareness campaign for educating kids, parents and local communities on the simple steps they can take to keep kids safe.

IncrediBots have showcased this solution at the Qualifying Tournament in December and now share their presentation at the upcoming FLL state-level championship scheduled for Jan18-19 at Liberty High School. Please attend and cheer on IncrediBots and other BSD FLL teams

Findley PTO: Supporting our students by connecting parents, staff, and the community!

Visit our website at www.findleypto.com or email president@findleypto.com.

Do you have an eye for detail?

Would you like to help from home?

If yes, please volunteer as Findley School Directory Coordinator.

We are looking for a new School Directory Coordinator for 2020 - 2021. Those willing can shadow the current coordinator starting this year, please reply to this email or contact Rupal Shah at rupal_a_shah@hotmail.com for more details.

Sincerely,

Findley PTO

Message from the Science Fair team:

Science Fair forms are due by Jan 31st. If you need a Science Fair ‘engineering design’ form those will be available in the school office in January. These forms are also available on the PTO website.

Findley community is full of parents with science/engineering background. If you’re an interested parent, please sign up to be a judge. Please do not sign up middle school kids as judges. For example, a 5th grader will benefit more if a parent with working knowledge of science/engineering judges his/her project rather than a 6th grader.

If your middle and high school students want to volunteer, we have needs in other areas such as setting up for the science fair or at the exhibitor stations. The sign up for these opportunities will be going out in January.

We Need Exhibitors!!!

We are looking for exhibitors! If you know someone (through work or otherwise) who can be an exhibitor that would be great!! They can showcase existing technology; it doesn’t have to be anything cutting edge. For example, we had a mom who works at Intel set up a station with bunny suits that Intel fab folks wear and a Nike mom who brought in different types of shoe soles (all part of existing technology) that are commonly used at Nike. The kids love it!!!

Please email – mitra.poulami@gmail.com with any exhibitor information.

PTO General Meetings (Findley Library) – Presentations and staff updates. Open to all interested parents!

· February 10th

· May 18th

January

15th Art Literacy Training

20th - No School MLK Holiday

22nd - Passport Club

24th - Passport Recheck

24th - Author Visit Deborah Hopkinson

27th - Grading Day

31st - All School Assembly

FEBRUARY

3rd - Report cards available on ParentVue

7th - Author Visit Lisa Schroeder

10th - PTO Meeting

14th - Valentine Parties

17th - No School Presidents Day

18th - No School - Staff Development

19th - Passport Club

21st - Intl Language Day

21st - Staff Luncheon

21st - Passport Recheck

26th - Art Literacy Training

27th - Book fair setup

28th - Book fair begins

28th - All School Assembly

28th - Hip Hop Dance Company

28th - Bingo Night

• 2 Tutoring Teachers - Tutoring Academy
• Chess Odyssey - Chess Club
• Sunset Youth Lacrosse - Registration

Don't miss out!

Unicycle & Xylophone classes are now available through the online payment system.