Hawk Highlights

☃️ Well, we are definitely getting our SNOWY winter! It was so, so good to see your kiddos on Thursday and we are thrilled to have gotten that day of school in. Here's to "normalcy" starting next week!

🌟 Q3 Lunchroom Volunteers: Sign-Up HERE to volunteer in the lunchroom this quarter (must be MVP trained). Thank you!

Upcoming Events:

• 🔬🎨 🤖 STEAM Night: Thursday, January 16th, 6:00-8:00 pm
• 🚫 No School (Dr. MLK, Jr. Day): January 20th
• 🚫 No School (Professional Learning for Classified + Certified): January 21st
• ❤️🖤 Kindness Week: January 27th - January 31st (details to come)
• 👥 Conferences: February 6th 4:00-7:00
• 👥 Conferences: February 7th 8:00-3:30
• 💕 Class Valentine's Day Parties: February 14th @ 2:30
• Room Parent + 2 Adult Helpers Invited
• 🚫 No School (President's Day): February 17th
• 🚫 No School (Teacher Professional Learning): February 18th
• 🎉 PTA Auction/Casino Night: February 28th @ Boulevard Brewery
• More communication to come on purchasing tickets for this event.

It's great to be a Highlands Hawk!

Laura LaHue

Principal

Instagram: @HighlandsHawks512

Twitter: @512Hawks

Date: February 28th @ 7:00pm

Where: Boulevard Brewery

Join us for STEAM Night on January 16th @ Highlands from 6-8 pm. Families will have the opportunity to enjoy MAD Science experiments, robots, Zoology animals from SME, and art projects!

Join us for our General PTA meeting + Screen Sanity Parent Night Presentation on Wednesday, January 5th from 6:00-7:30 in the MPR. There will be babysitting in the gym for kids.

• Screen Sanity: The mission of Screen Sanity is to create a world where kids are captivated by life, not screens. Presenters will provide informative guidance resources and tools are designed to support families on every leg of their digital parenting journey — helping them to quickly navigate to the issue that is most pressing for their own family.

Please sign-up HERE to volunteer in the lunchroom for the months of November and December. Volunteers must be MVP trained.

This event is a highlight of the year and we need people to join the planning committee. Please contact Kaitlin Holt @ Kaitlin.bowen@gmail.com or 816-519-8100.

• We are also looking for businesses that would donate or items that anyone has for the auction.

Our goal is to feature as many students as possible in the yearbook and for that we need your help! Photos snapped of your student at school or a school sponsored event (ex back to school, Color Run) can be emailed to highlandsyearbook6200@gmail.com. We love to feature Hawks at their sports and extracurricular activities but please don't send photos with students from other schools.

• A PTA membership gives you access to classroom directories, updates on events, and helps support the PTA's impact on our school for the upcoming year.

⭐️ Highlands will continue the work of belonging and inclusion through the newly-adopted district Social-Emotional Resource Character Strong for grades K-12. We will kick off each theme from Character Strong at our monthly All-School Mindful Moments and continue throughout the month at Hawks Nests and daily social-emotional lessons.

⛈️ ☔️ We will continue with an alternate dismissal plan for inclement weather (heavy rain, sleet, extreme cold, thunder/lightning).

📌 A message will be sent to parents via email during the day (as time sensitive as possible) to provide notification when the alternate dismissal plan will be used.

🔔 This method is used sparingly and only when student/staff safety is compromised by weather. It will likely take a bit longer than normal, but we will get the hang of it. Your patience and understanding are very much appreciated ❤️.

Alternate Dismissal Plan:

• ❗️Please go through the carline to pick up your child.
• ❗️Do not park in the parking lot and cross the crosswalk as this delays dismissal for all students and creates confusion for both staff and kids.
• 🚶🏽‍♂️‍➡️If you do park and walk up to the circle drive, your student is considered a walker.
• 🚗 If you are in the carline, your student is considered a car rider.
• 🎙️Students will be dismissed from their classroom as they are called from the walkie in the carline (the walkie calls are transferred to a shared google doc on the projector of each classroom).
• 🚶🏽‍♂️‍➡️Walkers will be dismissed last.

HI WIG #1: Implement a system-wide monitoring process that utilizes collaborative instructional teams who meet regularly to review student data from screening, progress monitoring, and common formative assessments (CFAs) to identify next steps for instruction. (Intentional Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 instruction)

• ✅ Lead Measures (to get us there):
• Intentional Core Instruction: Students are doing the talking (thinking); teachers are asking questions to encourage students to think and generalize what they know to new situations.
• Intentional Core Instruction: Teacher teams will use information from CFAs and real-time observations during core instruction to strategically target skills that will accelerate achievement
• Educational Equity: How will we get EVERY student there? A collective responsibility to provide students with what they need, when they need it, and with an urgency to master essential outcomes.
• IXL: students will engage in personalized learning plans using the IXL app to master skills for each priority standard with an 80% proficiency in both ELA and Math.
  

HI WIG #2: Prioritize social/emotional personalized learning through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom norms, school rituals/routines, and caring attention.

• ✅ Lead Measures (to get us there):
• Character Strong SEL Curriculum: Tier 1 daily instruction.

• Attendance Team: The office attendance team will monitor excessive absences by proactively sending out 7-day & 10-day absence letters and excessive tardy letters (10+ tardies) each week.

• Chronic Absenteeism rate will be communicated each month via school parent newsletter, as well as grade-specific rates through individual classroom newsletters.

• Mindful Mornings: 8:00-8:30 daily, building-wide. Students know they can softly enter the school day through friendship and connection. Device-free.

• Schoolwide System of Mentorship: all-school monthly Mindful Moments, Class Buddies, Hawks Nests, StuCo

• BIST + PBIS: building-wide system of grace, accountability, and positive reinforcement

• Weekly student SOAR tickets

• SOAR student store

• Quarterly PBIS assemblies + Highlighted Hawks

• BIST continuum: Implement buddy pass system and monitor usage/efficacy of buddy intervention