Beach School

This is quite a year for thinking about report cards. Nevertheless, you and teachers have been working hard to help your children engage in learning and grow in the areas that are most important for them, depending on their age and circumstances during distance learning. I continue to be so inspired by the incredible efforts of our Beach staff and the resulting learning processes and activities for children they are creating. Quarter 2 ended yesterday and today is a work day for teachers to analyze student work and assessments they’ve been working on with students all year. You’ll receive a Quarter 2 report in the mail; look for it the week of February 15. Teachers are working on reports today, but the district assessment window is open through Feb. 12; teachers will be able to incorporate all assessments they are still in process with into their reports for you by Feb. 12 then our secretaries will mail reports home. Please be sure you’ve updated any address changes with our office: email eromero@pps.net or tmyers2@pps.net or call:  503.916.6236.)

I hope when you receive your child’s report card, you’ll look for the areas you know your child has tried hardest this year, and celebrate their effort and growth with them. “What do you feel most proud of yourself for this school year?”  Smile, Fist bump or High 5, no matter whether you agree or not!  Please also think about the next most important learning goal, and have your child reflect on what they most want to focus on learning next. I hope you are making every effort possible to look for the content and processes that will work best for your child and help children apply themselves. Genuine, focused effort and belief in ourselves, around just right goals, make all the difference in growing and improving.  I remind myself about that all the time, myself.

This fall, our PPS report card has been revised by a committee of teachers and parents. One of the main goals was to help families more easily understand how your students are doing as they progress through the grades. Click here to see the new report in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Somali, and Chinese. A highlight of the new report card is that there is now only one marking system for grades (E/M/CM/N/NE) and the +,V,/,-- system is now only for characteristics of a successful learner.  Please remember the importance of those characteristics!  They are essential. Here is a guide: academic and social behaviors.  (Spanish then English follows.) Helping your child grow in these is necessary alongside any efforts to help them grow their actual academic understandings; in many cases not having these in place interferes with ability to understand academic content.  I can’t overemphasize the importance of supporting your child’s growth in academic and social behaviors, and it’s a perfect thing for parents to support, especially during distance learning.

A special note for our Dual Language Immersion Families,

As you all know, the two main goals of our Dual Language Immersion (DLI) programs are academic achievement and bilingualism and biliteracy. Your child’s report card will be a reflection of your child’s progress towards these goals. The report card will provide information on how your child is doing academically in math, language arts, health, etc. whether they learned the content in English or Spanish (our “partner language”).  It will also provide information on how your child is progressing in their oral and written language skills in becoming bilingual and biliterate. 

At K-2 the Reading and Writing sections and the Partner Language section of the report card will reflect more about your child’s Partner Language oral and written skill development.  At 3-5 the reporting in Reading and Writing reflects your child’s biliteracy skill development with oral Partner Language skill development reflected in the Partner Language section.  Your child’s teacher may use the notes section to indicate successes and areas for improvement specific to each language.  If you have questions about the information provided about your child's academic performance and/or language development in either language, please contact your child’s teacher.

Whether Spanish Immersion or English Instruction, please give your own wonderful child a warm smile, hug or hello for me. Their thinking and thoughtfulness, and their smiles, waves and hellos when I see them in our various classes, are the best. 

Have a great weekend,

Lisa

Meal services will continue as scheduled at Beach and other regular sites today. For PPS families not near a meal pickup location or who need assistance accessing meals and would like to request home meal delivery, please contact nutritionservices@pps.net with:

• Family name
• Address (where meals should be delivered)
• Contact phone number
• Number of children in the household
• School(s) attended

Requests submitted by end of day Monday, will begin receiving meal deliveries on the following Monday. For cancellations, changes or updates, please contact nutritionservices@pps.net.  Please feel free to visit our website or contact us at nutritionservices@pps.net with any questions.

The Humanities Department is offering a virtual parent workshop in collaboration with the Oregon Historical Society designed to help parents understand how both racism and justice are at the heart of Oregon’s history and are crucial to our ability to build a better future. Parents received communication on this directly. We have closed registration and capped at 777 families registered! More info here. Even if parents did not get to register it will be recorded and posted to our website or available to view via comcast ch.28 or PPS YouTube channel.