Como Park Elementary

Como Park Elementary Families-

We have started a new monthly tradition at Como called Como Cardinal Connections. Each classroom has partnered with another classroom to build community across grade levels. One day a month, classrooms will get together to do different activities. On January 31, we had our first Como Cardinal Connections and it was so great to see students and staff playing games together. Our next whole-school Como Cardinal Connections will be on February 28th.

Students in kindergarten through fifth grade just finished winter testing in both reading and math. Our students are making tremendous growth in both reading and math.

• 51% of K-1 students made typical or aggressive growth in the early Reading test
• 60% of 2-5 students made typical or aggressive growth in the aReading test
  
• 46% of our K-5 students were on grade level or above in the Math test.

If you have any questions about how your child(ren) are doing in class, please make sure to reach out to your child's teacher.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jennifer Ewald, Principal

jennifer.ewald@spps.org

651-744-6055

Happy New Year, Como Families!

In January our entire school enjoyed re-learning our SOAR expectations. Thank you to our students for their hard work re-learning our SOAR expectations this month. We celebrated with a school-wide popcorn celebration last Thursday, January 25th!

We all also had a fantastic family night event this past month. I want to say THANK YOU to all students and families who came and enjoyed the event alongside our staff and community members.

Happy New Year!

Ms. Patel

Assistant Principal

• 2/12 National African American Parent Involvement Day (NAAPID)
• 7:30-8:30 Breakfast with your student
• 8:30-9:00 Assembly
• 2/19 No School - President's Day

February is "I Love to Read Month". Please see the following link for activities that the SPPS Reads and SPPS Libraries have created for our students.

Here at Como Elementary, we use the Zones of Regulation curriculum to help students gain skills in regulating their behaviors. Children can find themselves in one or more of the four zones or states of emotions. This curriculum helps teach students how to identify strategies to use when they are not in a calm, happy, focused state(otherwise known as the Green Zone).Our teachers use the "buddy room" strategy to help a student move back to the green zone when they are off-task in the classroom or experiencing red, blue, or yellow zone feelings. Sometimes students attempt to take a break in their classroom and are unsuccessful in resetting their behavior and focus. If a student is showing signs of needing a break from their classroom, the student walks to the buddy room, where a special designated space is created for such circumstances. The student will then set a 5 minute timer and use a variety of strategies to help them calm and refocus so they are ready to return to their class and continue learning.

During the month of January, students practiced walking to their class’ buddy room and taking a quick practice break. The student then returns to their classroom and resumes what students are doing. Practicing helps students become familiar with the process should they need to use it. The benefits of using buddy rooms are:

• A change of scenery can help students quickly refocus.

• Provides a proactive solution to help adjust behavior and mindset before things escalate.

• Gives the student some space to reflect and then talk more constructively to their teacher about what they need to participate or complete work in class.

After 7:45 am, all visitors are required to sign in at the front office and wear a visitor badge while in the building. When you leave, we ask you stop by to drop off the badge and sign out. Staff will bring visitors back to the main office to get a badge if we do not see you wearing one. This is for the safety and security of everyone at Como Elementary.

Since our teachers are teaching all day, please arrange a time to talk or meet with your child's teacher or visit the classroom.

State and federal laws require that all English Learner (EL) students are assessed annually to measure their proficiency and progress in reading, writing, listening and speaking in English.

SPPS uses the ACCESS 2.0 (Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State) test as its annual assessment. EL students who receive special education services and who meet certain guidelines may take the Alternate ACCESS test instead. These tests are used to see if students are meeting the WIDA English Language Development Standards and determine if a student is ready to exit from SPPS’s EL program.

All SPPS EL students in grades K-12 will be provided the ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS tests between January 29-March 22, 2024.

If you prefer that your student not participate in the ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS testing, please provide a written note indicating that choice or complete the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) Parent/Guardian Participation Guide and Refusal form and send this communication to your child’s principal.

For more information on English language proficiency assessments and the MDE Parent/Guardian Participation Guide and Refusal form, please go to:

• SPPS Family Testing Information website: spps.org/Page/33916

• MDE Family Testing Information website: education.mn.gov/MDE/fam/tests/

Please reach out to your child’s school if you have any questions.

Hello families,

Welcome to 2024! We are finishing up the anti-bullying unit in k-5 classrooms. Ask your children about becoming bully busters. At Como, we always encourage kindness, caring, and empathy. Kids have tools to respectfully stand up for themselves and others. Kids have been learning how to ask for help, solve conflict, and get along with others. Our January cardinal character word of the month was self-control. In February, we will discuss courage and fairness. Our 3rd quarter counseling lessons will focus on the area of careers. Talk to your child about any jobs/careers that people in your family may have and how they chose that profession. Ask your child about their hopes and dreams for the future. It is never too early to start these discussions. You can ask your kids what they feel they are good at and what they like to do. Exploring interests and talents can help lead towards future career options and possibilities.

Please reach out with any questions or concerns. If you need any help or support for your family or your child, I would be happy to talk with you.

Be Well,

Ms Stephanie Lee

651-744-3600

stephanie.lee@spps.org

We had a very successful visit with Children’s Dental Services earlier this month. There is still time to complete permission forms if you are interested in this service! Please connect with health office staff, or your child’s teacher if you need a permission form sent home. Children’s Dental Services will be coming back to our school on February 28th. If you have any questions, please let me know! The health office phone number is (651)888-7613.

Sensical Selections for Kids

These 15 awesome video playlists are sure to include your kid's new favorites … and they won't even know they're age appropriate!

These days, it's a challenge to find kid-friendly content that delivers on both entertainment value and safety. That's where the Sensical Select(™) Badge program comes in: These shows, chosen by our partners at Sensical from Common Sense Networks, have been vetted for age appropriateness—every video on Sensical has been watched by a real, live person!—as well as their ability to spark curiosity and inspire both learning and fun. Whether your kid is exploring a new topic or deep-diving further into a tried-and-true interest, these picks are Sensical's cream of the crop. And what's here is only some of what they have to offer—discover many more kid-safe videos from awesome creators now playing on Sensical.

Check out some great links: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/sensical-selections-for-kids

Our new student pick up system is going very smoothly! If you regularly pick up your child from school, please remember:

• You must have your number with you.
• If you do not have your number, we will ask you to go to the office to show ID. This is for the safety of our students.
• If you need another number, please let someone at pick up know so we can get one made for you.
• If you walk up to get your student, the line now forms on the sidewalk. Please do not stand in front of the door in the parking lot.
• Please pick your student up before 2:10. After 2:10, students will be waiting in the office to be picked up.

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.