Dear Shepherd Families,
The images above are from Ms. Conte’s African Dance Club for students in PK 3-K. As I walked with our youngest learners yesterday for the Halloween Parade, I realized how much we benefit from our beautiful, adorable, absolutely wonderful children. Their cuteness yesterday was beyond words, and I had the privilege of assisting Ms. Conte on Wednesday and wanted to share their work. Thank you to her and our other teachers who are enriching students’ lives with these after school experiences. Pleases share any great moments you captured yesterday.
Third grade (and their support team) put on a fantastic all school meeting on indigenous people and family history today. Thanks to Ms. Murali and Ms. Pereira who remained steadfast in the face of technological adversity. The photographs you shared of your families were just beautiful and reminded me how fortunate I am to be a part of this community.
Quick reminder that there is no school on Tuesday 11/2 for Election Day and on Friday 11/5 for Professional Development/Records. Please see the announcements that follow, and have a wonderful weekend.
Principal Hedlund
Special Recognition for Dr. Wilson
Our very own Dr. Wilson has been selected as a 2022 District of Columbia Teacher of the Year Runner Up, together with one other teacher, Ms. Rickita Perry, a special educator at Turner Elementary School. This year’s pool of applicants had an incredible amount of top tier, talented educators. Her selection as a runner up is a testament to the incredible educator she is and the outstanding work she is doing. You can read the Mayor Bowser’s press release here.
Provide input to DCPS SY 23-26 Calendars
DCPS will release the SY23-26 calendars this upcoming winter. Review the proposed calendars and share feedback by this Sunday, October 31.
https://publicinput.com/dcpscalendars2326
Using i-Ready Instruction at home
Your homeroom teacher will provide more information, but we are encouraging all K-5 students to log on to i-Ready through Clever (if prompted, they should indicate that they are not in the school building) and complete at least 45 minutes of mathematics instruction weekly with a high percent of lessons passed. This is one of our strategies for combatting Covid learning loss in mathematics.
Here are some guidelines so you can support your student(s). I have also attached the i-Ready Family Guide to this email.
Time on Task: 45 minutes per week
- Pass Rate: Pass 70% or 7 out of every 10 lessons
- Lesson Alerts — Lesson alerts are displayed when viewing reports for the current week. These alerts apply to “My Path” lessons. They do not apply to Teacher-Assigned or Close Reading lessons:
- Yellow Alert— Indicates a student is struggling with lessons. It appears when a student does not pass the same lesson twice.
- Red Alert— Indicates a domain has been shutoff. It appears when a student does not pass two consecutive lessons twice each within the domain (i.e.. four consecutive lesson attempts). The student will be unable to access additional lessons in the domain.