4/6/2020 0 Comments March 6, 2020, click hereHello,
It is with sadness that I write this email as I know, after the governor's decision today, that I will not be seeing my students in person again this year. And next year, they will be moving to a different school. While I know that we are in this for the safety and well being of all, it is difficult for me. This week's EELRs were posted this morning. We are continuing around the theme of HEALTH and WELLNESS. Please take a look at the OPTIONAL activities that you and your child can access at home. This will be the last week of EELRs as we will transition into ENLS (Essential New Learning Standards) the week after Spring break. Teachers are training hard on so many different avenues of technology and in a very short amount of time. We all want what is best for our students! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Also, a note from our school occupational therapist, Donna Burns: From Miss Donna, OT: Can you believe we are starting the fourth week of school closures? And next week is Spring Break!! Miss seeing all of the kids and watching them learn!! This week when your child is writing about his favorite foods, least preferred foods and reasons for liking/disliking them, or about a favorite restaurant or physical activity remember to work on letter formation and placing the letters on the lines. Sensory: For many children, and adults too, deep pressure or "heavy work" activities can be calming and help to increase their focus and attention. They are a great way to take a brain break throughout the day! Check out the website below and see if you can fit some of these activities into your day. https://www.growinghandsonkids.com/25-heavy-work-activities-home.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As always, please feel free to email me with any questions. I would also love to hear how the kids are doing! Warmly, Laurie
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3/30/2020 0 Comments March 2020March 30, 2020 Dear Families,
I hope this note finds you all safe and well. Please know I am thinking of each of you and your children. Week two EELRs have been posted for you. This week, and next, we are focusing on Heath and Wellness. If you have any questions, please reach out to me! I want to help any way that I am able. Ms Donna, our school Occupational Therapist, has added information on practicing letter formation, size and spacing. Please check out our school OT's website (click OT Educational Learning Resources) to access her website for guidance. Also please continue to check "visuals", "social stories" and "websites" as I will continue to add materials to those areas. If you need something specific, please connect with me and we can work together to create something that will meet your current needs. ** I just added CLEVER, an online portal for elementary students, to the website page. Please click here to access a letter that provides a short description and logon information. Please take care of yourselves and keep safe! Laurie 3/23/2020 0 Comments March 2020Dear Families,
First I want to say how much I miss my students and you. I still cannot make what we are going though, real. I hope this finds each of you safe and well. Hopefully you have been able to stay busy to keep your minds off of the craziness! I just updated my webpage ( mslauriesite.weebly.com ) that shares links to the first week of EELRs (Emergency Education Learning Resources). Each week (I will aim for Mondays), the webpage will be updated with new resources will provide optional enrichment activities for families to participate in together. Completely optional as well... I’d love it if you’d send back photos of your child engaging in any of the activities and I’ll share with the rest of the class via a "coming soon" PHOTOS tab on my website. I am learning a LOT of technology right now. I’m missing everyone tremendously, so I'm hoping this will help us stay connected! Included in my website is your child's general education teacher's website for you to access, if you wish, as well as the websites for our occupational therapist (Ms. Donna) and our speech language therapist (Ms. Dina). Please feel free to access their sites for additional information/activities. Thank you all so much for your patience and support during this very challenging time. Please let me know if you have any questions – please email anytime! I will get back to you as quickly as I am able. Also, if you know how to ZOOM video conference, and would like to "POP" in for a hello with your student (or without), I am happy to schedule a time that will mutually work. Anything to bring normalcy to your/your children's lives....I am all in! Thinking of and missing you all. Warmly, Laurie 3/4/2020 0 Comments March 2020Dear Families,
It is almost Spring...and this coming weekend we SPRING FORWARD. Don't forget to change your clocks! This month our theme will center around the theme "ALL ABOUT ME!" I will be sending a separate newsletter home this week giving some insight that will share more specifically some of the activities we will focus on. One homework project will be working on a poster of your child. It should include your child's newborn/baby picture and a couple of other ages (including a current one), favorite people in your child's life, pets, favorite foods, a favorite place to go and a favorite toy. Please make sure to label what each picture is. Your student will have an opportunity to share this poster with our class. **If you need assistance with the poster, and can either send the pictures in or email them to me, I will help your student make the poster in class. ***Please complete and send to school by Friday, March 13th. Some activities will focus on friendship, emotions, How Do I Feel spinner for students to identify and talk about feelings (tied into the Zones of Regulation), body parts, talk about different family members and a science project of labeling an life-sized outline of their body. We will read books such as, I Like Me!, Clifford's Family, When I Grow Up, etc. We will also assemble friendly cheese and crackers to have as an added snack one day. Our students continue to work hard on their goals both inside and during general education inclusion time. It is so exciting to see them engaged in learning. I am introducing our new reading program to students and with practice, so many of our students will become readers. They seem to be excited about the activities within the program. I am seeing some amazing progress with our Zones of Regulation practice. Students who refused to choose strategies to help themselves regulate in the past are now choosing (and actually doing the chosen strategy)! HUGE PROGRESS! Each of the boys has a full body picture that they can move between the Zones to indicate the zone they are in. I often ask the boys to help me choose a strategy to help me find my way back to the green zone. They love to be helpers! :) The boys are all practicing their writing skills (formation and placement) on lined paper as well as holding their pencils correctly. Some are reading leveled books and answering WH questions and some are learning grade level sight words. In math, students are learning to count on using the touch math method, to add and subtract. It has been so fun to see their progress in being able to draw touch points on numbers 1-9. ***Auction*** Celebrate “IVE Through the Years” on March 14, 2020 4:00-8:00pm TICKETS: Join us at our casual Spring Fundraising Auction and help IVE celebrate 50 years! HURRY! Tickets are on sale NOW at: https://ivepta.schoolauction.net/ive2020. Buy your tickets before February 28th and get entered into a drawing to win a $25 gift card generously donated by The Bellevue Collection!
***Yearbooks*** Pre-order your yearbook at https://ivepta.ourschoolpages.com/Packet/Order%20Yearbook. Price: $18 through February and $20 from March - April 20th. Deadline to order is April 20th. We Need Your Photos! The deadline to upload all photos is Feb 28th. Directions for how to upload photos at: http://ivepta.org/Page/Fundraising/Yearbook Please remember to view the email link on hand washing that was sent via email. With the Corona Virus circulating, now is a great time to teach this skill. We are practicing hand washing a lot in class, too, and have watched the video together. Warmly, Laurie 2/26/2020 0 Comments February 20202/26/20
Dear Families, I hope you all enjoyed your mid-winter break. The students have all settled back into the routine of school nicely! We have been focusing on FRIENDSHIP this month. What it means to be a friend and how to act like a friend. We have incorporated some friendship books such as My Friend Is Sad, Frog and Toad are Friends, How To Be A Friend, Will You Be My Friend and The Pout Pout Fish. At this same time, we have been able to incorporate our Zones/feelings. It has been great practice! Our students continue to work hard on their goals both inside and during general education inclusion time. Many students have new IEPs and are now working on new goals after mastering many of previous goals! It is so exciting to see them all learning! Some new goals students are working on include retelling stories by telling what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story; solving math problems by showing work in pictures; working on Zones of Regulation strategies to help regulate emotions by identifying the current zone and choosing a strategy to help with the regulation. Our practice with the Zones is going amazingly well! Students are starting to understand what those colors mean as well as being able to figure out a strategy to help with regulation. Especially when I need help! I often tell the students what Zone I am in and if it is any other than green, I ask someone to help me choose a strategy. We all strive to be in the green zone (or as close as we can be to it) so we are ready to learn. We continue to work on following directions, and being flexible when we have unexpected schedule changes. Most students are working on correct letter formation/placement on primary lined paper and writing names on their papers. Happy end of the month! Time is flying! Warmly, Laurie 2/9/20 Happy February! It looks like the snow is behind us! Hopefully the flooding is, too. We are focusing on FRIENDSHIP as our theme for the month of February. What does it mean to be a friend? What can you do to show you are a friend? What are nice words you can say to your friend? We will be working on art projects that represent friendship as well incorporating books to read about being a good friend. Additionally, we will make "smiley apples" that will accompany a poem about smiles. Our students continue to work hard on their goals both inside and during general education inclusion time. Many students have new IEPs and are now working on new goals after mastering many of previous goals! It is so exciting to see them all learning! Some new goals students are working on include retelling stories by telling what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story; solving math problems by showing work in pictures; working on Zones of Regulation strategies to help regulate emotions by identifying the current zone and choosing a strategy to help with the regulation. We all strive to be in the green zone (or as close as we can be to it) so we are ready to learn. We continue to work on following directions, and being flexible when we have unexpected schedule changes. Most students are working on correct letter formation/placement on primary lined paper and writing names on their papers. We are a busy classroom! Our mid-winter break begins this Saturday, February 15th and school resumes on February 24th. If you student will not be in school any day this week, please remember to let the attendance line know (and an email to me, for planning purposes, would be greatly appreciated!). I hope you all have a wonderful break and find time to relax and have fun with your children. Sincerely, Ms. Laurie 1/25/2020 0 Comments January 2020January 2020 update:
1/25/20 Hello! It has been an interesting start to the new year with added time off for snow one week after we returned from a two week break! This will extend our year by 3 days at this time, making our final day of school now June 23rd (IF we do not have any additional days off due to weather). Keep your eyes on the district website for updated information in the near future. In the event we do have additional inclement weather, here are sites that provide information regarding school closures/late starts: *FlashAlert *Families with verified mobile numbers in Family Access will receive tests from the district *District and School websites will post information by 6:30 AM (issaquah.wednet.edu) **Please locate your Emergency Transportation Bulletin (ETE) that was mailed out in October or access the ETB online. Also, take a moment to use SNOW E-Link to find your emergency snow route and make sure you check the chart to become familiar with program changes. ***In the event of a late start, we are unable to have students arrive to school earlier than the time stated that school will start. For example, if school starts two hours late, your students will arrive at school two hours after our typical 9:15 start time, which would be 11:15 AM. We have been revisiting and practicing our classroom expectations. We are talking about situations that are little deals/big deals, red zones, green zones and yellow zones, where we feel we are and perhaps using a tool (or two) that will helps us to remain in, or get back to, the green zone. This is the zone we all strive to be in....the one we are at our best to be productive, learn, help a friend, etc. The Zones will soon be used school wide so if you hear your student using terms green zone, yellow zone or red zone, you will know why! We are continuing our Winter Animal theme of the month. This past week w talked about, watched a short video, and made a craft on penguins. Students practiced cutting, gluing, and following directions to craft their penguins. Once they made their penguins, they had an opportunity to practice writing a sentence about the penguin underneath on a strip of lined paper, stating that penguins like to swim. They did amazing work! If you would like to volunteer to come into the classroom and teach the students a simple lesson about a winter animal, read a short book or do a craft with them, please let me know and I will be happy to work on days and times with you. We continue to work on all student goals in areas of behavior, adaptive, social/emotional, reading, writing and math. Areas include reading comprehension, retelling stories, forming sentences, sounding words out, identifying letters and letter sounds, adding, subtracting, drawing pictures to prove answers, identifying colors, practicing letter and word writing. We are BUSY! A GREAT app that I love is called "Letter School". If you can download it, it provides great practice on how to form letters beginning with guided practice and ending with independently forming the letter. It has super cute sound effects and graphics that keep student attention. Hard to believe February is right around the corner! 1/12/20 Dear Families, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful two weeks off with your students celebrating holidays and making new memories. It was great to see each of our students back after all of that time. They started their daily routine the day we returned and showed that they remembered so many of our classroom expectations. I was proud of them being able to return to a full week after so much time off. We were all tired by the end of the week so took this past Friday afternoon to relax and play after a morning of learning. Hopefully they have had time to sleep in this weekend. :) We have jumped right back into the routine of working on individual student goals, attending specialists, participating in general education inclusion and even attended an assembly! One fun thing we did this past week was practice our letter writing in shaving cream! They loved it! We sprayed cream on the table and worked on letter formation with specific letters, their names and words that some students are working on. For students who have an aversion to the feel of the cream, we put some in little bags and sealed it up so they could also join in the fun! Our monthly theme this month is going to be WINTER ANIMALS. Last week, Ms. Donna, our school OT, came in and made our first winter animal project, a bear sleeping in a cave after some discussion about what bears do in the winter. The craft turned out very cute. We will be reading books and talking about all kinds of animals. If you would like to plan a craft and/or read a specific story with our kids around this theme, please let me know! We would love to have you join us! ************************************************************************************************ With snowy weather upon us this week, please check out these sites to help keep you informed: *FlashAlert *Families with verified mobile numbers in Family Access will receive tests from the district *District and School websites will post information by 6:30 AM (issaquah.wednet.edu) **Please locate your Emergency Transportation Bulletin (ETE) that was mailed out in October or access the ETB online. Also, take a moment to use SNOW E-Link to find your emergency snow route and make sure you check the chart to become familiar with program changes. ***In the event of a late start, we are unable to have students arrive to school earlier than the time stated that school will start. For example, if school starts two hours late, your students will arrive at school two hours after our typical 9:15 start time, which would be 11:15 AM. The message below is from a student from the Issaquah High School ASB class. She is hoping for support! "For this year, the Special Olympics is scheduled to happen on January 15th at 7pm in the Issaquah main gym. As one of the coordinators, I was wondering if the LRC2 class at IVE would be willing to attend this event to support the basketball players and show their school spirit? We are thinking of planning a tailgate before the game with pizza and a fun environment to bond with each other. Thank you!" IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! 12/11/2019 0 Comments DecemberUpdate: 12/19/19 Dear Families, The message below is from a student from the Issaquah High School ASB class. She is hoping for support! "For this year, the Special Olympics is scheduled to happen on January 15th at 7pm in the Issaquah main gym. As one of the coordinators, I was wondering if the LRC2 class at IVE would be willing to attend this event to support the basketball players and show their school spirit? We are thinking of planning a tailgate before the game with pizza and a fun environment to bond with each other. Thank you!" IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! A HUGE THANK YOU to Mrs. Azlin for supporting our Around The World Holidays with a gingerbread house craft, that she prepared for each one of our students. All of the principals, the OT, SLP, school psychologist and others, stopped by and in awe of how excited the students were while making their houses! Pictures coming home soon! :) Reminder: 12/20/19: Last day of school before break 1/6/20: School resumes Wishing you ALL a very happy, restful and safe holiday season! Happy New Year! 12/11/19 Dear Families, It was so wonderful to have time to share your children's strengths and progress, as well as getting to know you better, during conferences! Hard to believe three months have already passed! This month we are focusing on Holidays Around the World. In an email earlier this month, I had asked for volunteers to come in and share a holiday tradition. So far, we have ONE volunteer who will be making gingerbread houses and reading a story about The Gingerbread Man with the kids. She will be here on 12/16/19. We are so excited! Following that activity, we are hoping to make gingerbread men. One may even become lost in the school - prompting a gingerbread man scavenger hunt! PLEASE let me know if you are still interested in participating on another day! Students continue to work on all of their individual goals on a daily basis. We are working hard on learning to regulate emotions in a calm way. Trying to determine if our problems are little or big, with visuals. We are also working hard on sharing materials and toys, having safe hands and bodies, following schedules and adult directions, as well as walking in a line, and learning the meaning of flexibility. *A huge life skill for our students is learning that sometimes we do not always get something exactly when we want it. Children are making some nice gains on navigating through their days with the new visual schedule books. Academically, your students continue to work on their IEP goals. Please practice, practice, practice at home. We are working on calendar each day, too. We talk about the weather, the month, day and year as well as practice math and literacy with some favorite videos. We practice counting our days, count to favorite days (i.e. birthdays, days off until winter break, etc.). We have also been working on spelling color words to a song. I have seen some of the students generalize skills and are now able to spell color words during writing activities! WHAT: Last day of school: December 20th, 2019. School resumes: January 6, 2020. I wish you all a very safe and happy holiday season with your family and friends! 11/24/2019 0 Comments NovemberDear Families, It has been a busy, but fun, start to the year! Your students are learning how to use visual schedules I have introduced. The schedule outlines their entire day. I am happy to show you what they look like at conference time. Goal dependent, students are working on direction following, CVC words, 2-syllable words, spelling, addition and subtraction, handwriting, drawing and writing about pictures, sequencing and telling a story, answering questions about stories, and so much more! Our theme for the month is Being Thankful. What we are thankful for and who we are thankful for. Update 11/18/19: We have been talking about what we are thankful for at school. Each of our students have made turkeys and on the feathers, they listed who or what they were thankful for. I have pictures I will be emailing you soon! WHAT: On Wednesday, November 20, 2019, our school staff and students will be hosting a "Bus Driver Appreciation Luncheon". This will take place from 1:00 - 1:30. We will be providing our amazing drivers with a lunch and dessert (cupcakes), which the kids will be helping to make and decorate. We will be sure to take pictures and send them to you! UDATE 11/24/19: Our bus drivers were so appreciative of their lunch and getting to spend time with students and staff. The kids made confetti cupcakes with lemon icing. We took them to the staff kitchen and baked them! (pictures coming soon via email!) Reminder: No school on Thursday or Friday, November 28th/29th (Thanksgiving) **CONFERENCES: Dec. 4th and 5th. There will not be school for students on this day. A conference schedule form was sent via email on Friday. If you would like to conference, please fill the form out according to directions and return to me at your earliest convenience. |
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