The Walden Weekly

We had a great week at Walden! Please take a moment to read through the information below. Here is what is included:

- Read-a-Thon Information

- Spring Conference Information

- 5th Grade World Language Information

- World Read Aloud Day

- Instrumental Music Program Fundraiser

- Social Emotional Learning Survey

- DPS109 Tech Tip

- Photos from the Week

- Upcoming Dates

As a reminder, we do not have school on Friday, February 14th or Monday, February 17th.

Have a great weekend and we'll see you back at school on Monday!

- Stephanie Strenger

A Read-a-thon has two main goals: to celebrate and encourage reading, and to raise money for our school library. Students can choose to log their reading minutes, take part in the fundraising, or both!

Read-a-thons get kids excited about reading and offer a structured opportunity for families to support their kids' reading habits.

The purpose of our fundraiser is to update our aging nonfiction collection and better align it with our new curriculum. Our goal is to raise $10,000! It is a big amount, but if three-quarters of the students in our school each secured donations of $30, we would meet that goal!

Families DO NOT need to donate money to participate. We hope every single student in the building joins our Read-a-thon in whatever way works for their family!

If a student only logs their reading minutes, they will be a part of a community reading celebration and have a chance to win individual and classroom prizes.

If a student helps with fundraising, they will be adding brand new books onto our shelves! They will also be able to compete for school based prizes, and earn money to spend in the online Read-a-thon store.

Our Read-a-thon will run from Saturday, March 1 through Wednesday, March 12. Registration and participation information will be sent home in the next few weeks.

Thank you in advance for helping us build a reading culture and supporting the Walden LMC!

Mark your calendars! Parent-Teacher Conferences will be held on Thursday, March 20 from 1:00-4:00 pm & 5:00-8:00 pm and on Friday, March 21 from 8:30-11:30 am. All DPS109 schools will hold in-person parent-teacher conferences this year with an option to Zoom for parents/guardians who are not available for an in-person conference. Parents will sign up for a conference using Sign-Up Genius. I will share links for all teacher sign-up forms on Thursday, February 20, at 12:00 pm (noon)

It is best practice to hold one parent conference per child, to ensure that both parents receive the same information regarding their child’s strengths and needs. Therefore, I ask that parents sign up for one joint conference per student. If this is a concern, please reach out to me directly. We look forward to seeing all of our parents during conferences. Conferences are a discussion between parents and teachers. At this time elementary conferences do not include students and therefore we ask that children not attend the parent-teacher conference.

Please join us online February 20, 2025 from 6:30 to 7:00pm for a middle school World Language night, where members of the DPS 109 World Language Team will share information about the middle school language offerings. Link to Zoom.

Following the meeting, a copy of the presentation will be emailed along with a form to submit your student's first and second middle school language choice. Please be advised that minimum enrollments are needed to run 6th grade sections. Language selections will be due by Wednesday, March 5 at 8 a.m.

Also, on February 20 (Walden and Kipling) or February 21 (Wilmot and South Park) your 5th graders will have the opportunity to see our current middle school students perform skits and answer their questions about taking French, Hebrew, and Spanish in middle school.

On Tuesday, March 4th, the DPS 109 instrumental music program will hold its annual performance fundraiser at Potbelly's! All (Kipling/Walden) families are invited to stop by for dinner between 4:00 - 7:30 PM to catch a performance by (Kipling/Walden) musicians in our band and orchestra programs. A portion of the proceeds will go towards supporting these programs and we hope to see you there!

Building students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) skills is important at Walden. As a part of the learning process, we will be asking students in grades K-8 to reflect on skills related to social-emotional learning and the school environment. The survey will be administered to all students in grades K-8 between February 18 and February 28, 2025. Per policy, if you would like your child to opt out of taking the survey, please contact me no later than February 13.

In October, we began sharing weekly tech tips in our newsletters to encourage digital safety. If you missed a tech tip or just want to review them, we have a Digital Hub for you to view them at your convenience. Make sure to keep your eyes open for more tech tips to come in the following weeks!