OASD Oconomowoc Area School District Falcon Flyer...September, 2015 OASD—Oconomowoc Area School District Dear Parents: I never forget that the first day of school is filled with

OASD—Oconomowoc Area School District September, 2015

Dear Parents: I never forget that the first day of school is filled with lots of emotions for both parents and students: the anticipation of the school year, the relief that your kids are finally back in school and into a structured routine, the sadness that another year is beginning and our babies are one year older, or the worry and uncertainty that your child will be under-stood and cared for. Educators go through the same emotional roller-coaster with new hopes and ideas for the new school year. So as you handed off your child and waved good-bye to your most precious loved ones, know that many hands were reaching out to take your child and assure them that this will be a great school year! There are many new faces to Ixonia. As a welcome to all staff and students, Tuesday morning the entire school had a kick-off assembly! Click to view: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By20QYd8-98wX3VKT1gzQ2xQX00/view?usp=sharing We will strive this year to create a safe, welcoming school for all students, embracing and understanding differences and celebrating our strengths and achievements. We will look for new ways to invite parents into our school for different activities and encourage parents to volunteer in the school and the PTO. We will strive to establish healthy, bal-anced students who understand their learning style and advocate for what they need to be successful, lifelong learners. Student drop off and pick up The first few weeks of school can be a little confusing with buses, parent drop off/pick up and parking. This is an important reminder that parents should not drop off or pick up students in the bus line or cross between buses. All parents should park and use the crosswalk (the designated yellow striped area) if you will be getting out of your car to drop off or pick students up. For parents only lining up in vehicles to drop stu-dents off, make sure the line continues to move and please refrain from getting out of the vehicle in the drop off/pick up only line. It is also important that students being dropped off, join the bus line to enter the building with other students at 8:30. The 8:40 bell indi-cates that all students should be in the building and in classrooms ready to learn. Finally, our top priority is the safety of all students, we do require that parents notify the classroom teacher in writing about pick up transportation changes other than the school bus. If we do not have written permission with specific information about student pick up, the student will be placed on their respective bus.

The first few days of the school year are off to an incredible start! Warmly,

Principal’s Message Principal’s

Message

1

September Cal.

Nut Free

Classrooms

2

October Cal. 3

Vising Ixonia 4

New Faces at

Ixonia

5-7

PIE Time 8

MAP & PALS

Testing

9

Conference

Schedules

Bus Information

10

Homecoming 11

Highway to Heroin

Series

12

PTO 13

OPEF 14

Inside this issue:

Falcon

Flyer

Page 2

Schedule of Events

September

1st

First Day of School

7th

No School

10th

PTO Meeting 6:00

om

11th

Picture Day

18th

PTO MOVIE NIGHT

Doors open 5:45

Showtime 6:15

All students must be

accompanied by a parent

or adult.

September 2015

Just a reminder to parents that all Ixonia classrooms are nut free zones. We have a number of

students with nut allergies and in an attempt to keep all of our learners safe, nuts are prohibited

in classroom. Visit the web page for some nut free snack and birthday ideas. All birthday and

classroom treats must be accompanied by a complete ingredient list including brand

names. You may send foods that contain nuts in your child’s lunch if you choose.

Nut Free Classrooms

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 First Day of

2 3 4 5

6 7 No School

8 9 10 PTO Mtg. 6:00 pm _________ Chip Shoppe Fundraiser

11 Picture Day

12

13 14

15 16 17 18 Family Movie Night

19

20 21 PJ DAY

22 Neon Day

23 Crazy Sock Day Day

24 Purple Pride Day

25 Home-coming No School

26

27 28 29 30 Book Fair

Picture Retake Day

Friday, October 16th

Attendance : 262-560-8402

Office: 262-560-8405

Falcon Flyer

Schedule of Events

October

8th

PTO Meeting 6:00 pm

16th

Picture Re-Take Day

22nd

Chip Shoppe Fundraiser

Due

26th

School Assembly

Speaker

October 2015 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1

2 3

4 5 6 7 8 PTO Mtg. 6:00 pm

9 10

11 12

13

14

15

16 Picture Re-take Day

17

18 19

20 21 22 Chip Shoppe Orders Due

23 24

25 26 School Assembly Speaker 2:30

27 28 29 30 Family Movie Night

31

To

Note:

Novem-

ber’s

Movie night has been

canceled.

BIRTHDAYS! We love to celebrate birthdays here at Ixonia! Birthdays will be shared daily

on the morning announcements, unless you notify the office that your child would not enjoy the acknowl-edgement. Birthdays that fall on a weekend will be announced the Friday before. Let’s not forget about summer birthdays as every child loves to hear their name announced to the school. Summer birthdays will

be announced on your child’s half-birthday as a way to celebrate and acknowledge them. Just a reminder….If you are planning a party at home and wish to invite class members, please phone the invitations or mail them directly to the home rather than handing them out at school so as to not have hurt feelings. Please do not send balloon bouquets or flowers to children at school. If balloons or flowers are sent, they will be kept in the office and given to the child at the end of the day.

Page 3

Welcome back to a what I anticipate is going to be a wonderful school year. The safety of all students is our number one priority at Ixonia School. Part of keeping students safe is know-ing who is in our building at all times. Please be reminded that district-wide check-in and check-out procedures are in place at all school locations. This letter details the procedures.

In 2013 our District Safety Committee was asked to find a way to improve the visitor man-agement process at the high school. The goal was to create a consistent and safe visitor procedure that could then be implemented at all buildings in the district. We will now keep track of people coming into our buildings by using visitor management technology.

You may have heard about the “Raptor” Visitor Management software piloted at Ocono-mowoc High School during the 2013-2014 school year. Feedback from our pilot survey re-sults were 100% positive - people were able to quickly and easily navigate the system. The school board then approved expanding visitor management software beyond the high school to all buildings in our district, including Park Lawn.

The visitor management software will:

Electronically log visitors at check-in

Print visitor badges

Screen all visitors against a national sex offender database

Provide real-time offender alerts

Check-In and Check-Out Procedures

Here’s what to expect when you visit any school building in our district during regular school hours: First-time access to a building will require that we scan your driver’s license or photo ID

to register you in the system.

Upon approval and a photo match, an ID badge will print

Hand the office Administrative Assistant photo ID and keys

ID and keys will be kept at the office until check-out

At check-out, sign out on the touch screen, then keys and ID will be returned

On subsequent visits, sign-in on the touch screen, then check ID and keys at the front office until your visit is complete and you check-out

We have made these changes district-wide to help insure the safety of all students and staff. Our goal is to make checking in and checking out as hassle-free as possible. Thank you for your continued cooperation. If you have any questions, please contact the office.

Sincerely, Mrs. Yearling

Page 4 Falcon Flyer

New Faces at Ixonia My name is Jennifer Wagner and I am your new school counselor. This school year

will be my third in OASD. I will be at Ix-onia on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I will be in every classroom once a week to run classroom guidance lessons. A little bit more about me: I graduated with my Masters in School Counseling from Marquette University. Before that, I went to UW-La Crosse and Waukesha North High School. My family is very important to me. My mom, dad, brother and I spend a lot of time together laughing and en-joying each other’s company. In my free time I love to read (especially historical fiction), watch TV, and spend time with my family and friends trying new restau-rants. Please stop by and say hi anytime. I am looking forward to getting to know all the students and families here at Ix-onia!

Hi! My name is Carol Hunter—I am new to the front office at Ixonia. For the last few

years, I’ve been working in the office and library at Nature Hill, so I might know a few of

your brothers and sisters!

I live in Oconomowoc with my husband and two

children. My daughter is a sophomore and varsi- ty

cheerleader at OHS and my son is a 7th grader

at Nature Hill who loves to play football, basket-

ball and baseball. They keep me very busy!

In the past, I’ve been a tv news producer and a

professional photographer. My family enjoys

camping and of course, we’re big Badger Fans!

Please stop in to say hi anytime! I’m happy to be

here in your school helping in any way I can to

make everyone’s day just a little bit brighter!

Page 5 Falcon Flyer

New Faces at Ixonia

Hi! I’m Tracy Hribar Cavanna, and I am the learning strategist here at Ixonia. I’m not new to the district, and some of you may know me if you have older brothers or sisters at Nature Hill, as I worked there since it opened. Prior to that, I spent some time at both Park Lawn and Summit. I live in Oconomowoc with my husband Chris and our dog Libby. I really love the Oconomowoc area since I grew up here, too. I attended Meadow View Elementary, the old Oconomowoc Middle School, and Oconomowoc High School. Now, my nieces and nephews go to Ixonia and Nature Hill, so I have an extra special love for both buildings. Finally, as I shared with many of the classes yesterday, I think I have the best job in the whole school because I get to work with ALL the students and ALL the teachers in ALL the grades to help ALL learners find ways to be successful!

Hello my name is Renee Gallagher. I worked as a part-time math intervention-

ist here at Ixonia last year; but this year I am new to the first grade team! I have

been in education for 12 years. I have taught 1st grade, 3rd grade, served as a dis-

trict math specialist, and have taught some graduate classes in math instruction-

al methods. I am a wife and a proud

mother to two wonderful boys! Wes-

ley is 7 and Charlie is 5. I love to

read, play board games, and sing at

church! I am very excited to be teach

1st grade this year at Ixonia!

Page 6 Falcon Flyer

New Faces at Ixonia

Hello family and friends! My name is Sally Losinske and I am the new 4

th grade teacher here at Ixonia Elementary. I grew up about 20

minutes away in the town of Nashotah, growing up with one sister. I’ve recently finished teaching 4

th grade in Elk Mound, Wisconsin, but

I am eager to be here now! In my spare time, I love to read, swim in the summer, take va-cations to new states, dance, and spend time with my family. In the halls of Ixonia, you can find me smiling to all students, reading aloud a great book, or enjoying my class of 4

th

graders. I look forward to all that I will learn this year from both families and staff! Here’s to a stellar year!

Ms. Losinske

Page 7 Falcon Flyer

Mrs. Kielpikowski joins us as an instructional aide with previous teaching experience

Mrs. Huibregtse (Hubrex) is our new math interventionist

Ms. Gascon is our new reading interventionist

Ms. Jorn, our music teacher, got married this summer and is now Mrs. Ciesielski

And we can’t forget...

Have you heard about “PIE Time?” We are excited to share with you as part of our continuous efforts to meet the needs of all learners we will be launching “PIE Time” on October 5th. Due to the fact that children learn differently and at different rates we have designed PIE, or Practice, In-tervention, and Enrichment, to increase the amount of time our learners are en-gaged in individualized instruction. In addition to their regularly scheduled math and reading time, PIE creates a block of time dedicated to providing all children targeted support, practice and/or enrichment in literacy or math instruction for 30 minutes, four days per week. This change will help us improve and meet the needs of a wide varie-ty of learners’ needs. Through student centered collaborative planning, our grade level teams will review the progress and performance of all students in each grade in order to determine the needs of each individual. We are fortunate at Ixonia to have a talented and skilled staff beyond our grade level teachers. This affords students potential opportunities to work with multiple grade level teachers or support staff such as the reading special-ists, math and literacy intervention teachers, learning resource teachers, paraprofes-sionals during PIE time. As we implement our “PIE” learning block, our focus will remain on the best interests of our students. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss this further, do not hesitate to contact your child’s teacher, (principal) We appreciate your support as we continue this learning opportunity.

P… Practice

I… Intervention

E… Enrichment

Page 8 Falcon Flyer

Ixonia Parents:

Again this year, students in grades 5k-4th grade will take a computerized assessment called

Measures of Academic Progress™ . MAP tests measure academic growth throughout the school

year, and from year to year. Students will be assessed in reading and mathematics. The total

test time ranges from 1 to 3 hours over several days.

MAP tests are unique in that they adapt to your child’s level of learning. As a result, each student

has the same opportunity to succeed and maintain a positive attitude toward testing. With MAP

tests, we can administer shorter tests and use less class time while still receiving detailed infor-

mation about your child’s academic growth. This allows us to ad-minister the MAP tests three

times a year: once in the fall, once in the winter and once in the spring. Your classroom teacher

will share the testing dates for your student.

Dear Oconomowoc Parents,

Wisconsin Act 166 requires that an early literacy screener be administered to all 4K to Grade 2 students enrolled in

Wisconsin schools. The WI Department of Public Instruction selected the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screen-

ing (PALS) to meet the legislative requirements.

PALS assesses literacy fundamentals including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary. The

screener allows teachers and school-level reading specialists to identify students who are at risk of reading difficul-

ties because they lag behind grade-level expectations in literacy fundamentals. PALS will ensure that these stu-

dents get extra instruction when they are young.

PALS is administered twice a year: in the fall and in the spring. The test windows are presented below.

4K and 5K students will be tested October 12 ‐ November 6 and April 25 - May 20

Grade 1 and 2 students will be tested September 14 - October 9 and April 25 - May 20

There is no need to prepare your student specifically for PALS. Rather, the purpose of PALS is to provide the class-

room teacher with information to guide instruction. We do encourage parents to read to their children and to spend

time with books. Any time spent reading books will help students develop important early literacy skills.

Please visit the Wisconsin PALS Resource Center for additional information. You may also contact your child’s prin-

cipal or teacher with any questions about PALS.

Sincerely,

Derick Kiger

PALS TESTING

MAP

TESTING

Ixonia PALS testing dates:

First and Second Grade: September 14-28

Ixonia MAP Testing Dates:

Grades 1-4: September 14-18

Kindergarten: October 5-9

Falcon Flyer

Page 10

Fall Conference Dates:

November 3 (Tuesday) 7am-8am and

4pm-7:30pm

November 4 (Wednesday) 7am-8am

November 5 (Thursday) 7am-8am and 1pm-6:30pm

NEW THIS YEAR: Conference sign up will be done

online! Please watch for more information to come home

from your child’s teacher.

Oconomowoc Transport

920-355-4040

Bus route information can

Be found on the district

Website under

Family Resources/Bus

Bus Information

Summer Reading Challenge: Before the school year ended, Mrs. Burton invited all students to participate in the Summer Reading Chal-lenge. For those of you who read or was read to for 1000 minutes or more, you are an “All Star Reader” and will be celebrated in a group picture and a Popsi-cle Party with your new principal, Mrs. Yearling. Turn in your reading logs by Tuesday, September 8th if you met the challenge.

Falcon Flyer

2015-16 Homecoming

“Planet Ixonia, Blast Off Into Learning”

Spirit Week Themes – September 21st – 25th

Monday: Pajama Day

Tuesday: Neon Day

Wednesday: Crazy/Mismatched Sock Day

Thursday: Purple Pride—wear Ixonia colors!

Friday: Parade (no school this day)

Line up for homecoming parade starts around 4:00

If you are interested in helping with the parade float, or being in the parade, please contact

Jennifer Ellis ( [email protected])

Page 13