Friday 3/5/2021
Dear Families,
I know that first and foremost on everyone’s minds are the plans for Llewellyn School during the 4th quarter. Thank you to everyone who has completed the survey. Your responses are vital to our planning. Choosing between the two options, Hybrid or CDL, couldn’t have been an easy choice. I need to ask your continued patience as the plan is finalized. Much of the decisions we will make at Llewellyn cannot be finalized until negotiations are completed with our labor union groups.
I have been asked to speak to the barriers and considerations around the return of students to school. Please know that keeping our students, staff and families safe is our highest priority. Schools must follow the safety guidelines given to us by PPS and the Oregon Department of Education. At this time, COVID metrics allow us to have smaller groups of students return to in-person instruction for a limited amount of time. One barrier is classroom size. Students must be seated with 35 square feet between themselves and their peers. At Llewellyn this means that only a portion of the students in a class can be in a room at one time. Furthermore, students can only interact with two cohorts of students. Thus, if your student rides the bus that is one cohort and the class group would be the other. This is why a morning and afternoon cohort of students is part of the Hybrid planning. We also realize that not all families are able to send their students back to school yet, so the option to continue some form of CDL has also been offered.
While you have done many things to support our school and students in learning, I need to ask that you understand that we will not be able to plan around requests for grouping students according to Learning Pods or other outside school groupings. We will try our best to have siblings attend school at the same time. Additionally, if you have not yet filled out the survey, please do so so that your preference is known. If you need assistance with the survey, please contact Mark Robb (mrobb@pps.net).
For more information around guidelines and the proposed Hybrid Model please see:
https://www.pps.net/Page/17260 - This is the Hybrid Learning FAQ Page
Ready Schools, Safer Learners ODE Document
Thank you for your understanding and continued patience. I will get more information to you as soon as possible.
Kindergarten LIPI- We have just completed our first week of Kindergarten LIPI at Llewellyn! I am so proud of our kinders and how quickly they have adjusted to the new safety routines and their new surroundings. It was extremely rewarding to see their smiles and hear that they loved coming to school, even if it was only for a couple of hours. Thank you Kinder teachers for all your work planning and creating a safe and welcoming space to learn!
Be Well! Be Safe!
Sincerely,
Principal Pam
This month’s Star Flier! March 5.pdf
Check out this month’s edition! It contains many articles, as well as artwork, created in response to students’ learning experiences during Black History Month. We hope to see articles about women that have inspired our students in our next edition.
5th Grade Information Night @ Sellwood MS- March 11th 6:00-6:45pm
Do you have a 5th grader this year? Please plan on attending the 5th Grade Information Night to learn all about Middle School. See the attached flyer for details! Sellwood 5th Grade Parent Info Night.pdf
Oregon Writing Festival (OWF) 2021 Goes Virtual!
The thirty-sixth Oregon Writing Festival will be held virtually this year on Saturday, May 1, 2021. This event has showcased the writing of more than 35,000 students (grades 4-12) from school districts across Oregon and has been an exciting event for students and teachers for thirty-five years.
The event will be 2 ½ hours long, with these starting times:
Grades 4 - 5 at 8:30 a.m.
Grades 6 – 8 at 9:30 a.m.
Grades 9 – 12 at 10:30 a.m.
Keynote speakers for the three groups will be award-winning writers Jane Kurtz, Roland Smith, and Emily Suvada.
This is an independent writing project if you decide to participate in this great opportunity, teachers will be informed if your student is participating, however they will not be responsible for monitoring this writing project.
If you would like assistance with the $20 per student, please contact your TAG coordinator (Loren Herrmann, lherrman@pps.net) by March 12th, 2021. Your TAG coordinator will then put your name on a school list, and contact the TAG department to help make sure that the $20 is covered. VERY LIMITED SPACE!
If you miss this deadline, you can still pay your own way: register through Barbara Wiegele (bjwiegele@aol.com) for details and for reservations. Registration will close when filled and no later than Friday, April 2: Cost per student: $20.
For more information into the background, student writing assignments, and participating authors, please see the following document: Oregon Writing Festival 2021
Successful Schools Survey Window will be open February 8th- March 12th!
Please take a moment and complete the survey, if you haven't already done so. When you take the survey, you help us understand your experience as a parent or guardian. This important information will guide us as we determine the future of our schools. Go to surveys.panoramaed.com/portlandor/ppsfamily Thank you for your time and input!
Kindergarten Connect Events coming soon!
Do you have a student who will be eligible for Kindergarten next year? Do you know others who do as well? Please invite them to check out our Kindergarten Connect information and events listed under the Kindergarten tab on our Llewellyn Website (https://www.pps.net/llewellyn) Our first event will be held on Thursday, April 1st. This Information Night will be an opportunity for Kinder families to meet our Kindergarten teachers and hear from former Kinder parents & students all about Kindergarten at Llewellyn while getting to know each other as well. Help us to build community with our new families by spreading the word about this event!
From our Counselors:
Hello all!
Llewellyn’s counseling team wanted to reach out and let you know that we are about to start a new unit in our classroom counseling lessons. This unit will focus on kindness & empathy, diversity, injustice, and standing up for what is Right. We are both very excited for students to learn about themselves, respecting others, living in a multicultural world, and ways to use their voice to speak up (with words or actions) to help create a more understanding and caring community.
In order to avoid any confusion about what these lessons will focus on, we wanted to share with you the main points of each lesson. Please know that when we teach these lessons to each grade level, the content, ideas, and read alouds/videos will be age and grade level appropriate.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions!
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•Kindness: The importance of kindness and empathy and ways we can show kindness and empathy to others.
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Diversity: Differences are not bad, we have many commonalities despite our differences, diversity is important, and that it is okay to ask, respectfully, about differences.
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Identity: Parts of our identities (name, gender, religion, culture, ethnicity, race, appearance, strengths, language, personality).
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Stereotypes: What are stereotypes, why stereotypes are harmful, challenging stereotypes people can have about us.
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Injustice and Disrespect: discrimination, racism, gender discrimination, identifying when a person or a group of people are being treated unfairly (with a focus on how this hurts them).
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Taking Action: boycotts/protests/letter writing, Mari Copeny (Flint water crisis), Malala Yousafzai (girls education in Pakistan), Marley Dias (#WeNeedDiverseBooks) standing up for others
As always, please reach out with any questions.
Best,
Ms. Allie and Ms. Brittany
From the Llewellyn PTA:
Please join us at the PTA meeting Tuesday, March 9 at 7:00pm.
Here's the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83665286406?pwd=MEJ3NjNyUWRQTDNXNndLVHVtaDk2QT09
Meeting ID: 836 6528 6406 Passcode: 144039
We look forward to seeing you there!
Important Dates:
February 1-March 12 MAP Assessments Window
February 8-March 12 Successful Schools Survey Window
March 1-April 7 Kinder LIPI Program (Mon & Wed)
March 11 5th Grade Information Night @ Sellwood (virtual/see flyer)
March 22-26 Spring Break
April 1 Kindergarten Information Night (see Llewellyn website for link)
April 12 Quarter 4 Begins
