Tiger Talk

The second week was even better than the first. We are working out the kinks and getting in a groove! We began our beginning of the year assessments, walked through our PBIS expectations, engaged in more team building exercises, and can you believe our kiddos thought it was oh so funny they had the day off on Friday but their teachers had to work 😉!

Below you will find new info about morning routines, added dates that are important to Elementary, and a repeat of last weeks information (it was a lot).

Becca Warren

warrenb@smithton.k12.mo.us

660-343-5316

We begin dismissing to our classrooms at 7:51 and begin our day at 7:55. If your child is a car rider and plans to eat breakfast please ensure they are dropped off with time to do so. We will never let a student go to class hungry, but certainly appreciate efforts made to get our day started on time.

We receive a significant number of transportation changes on the daily for our elementary students. We would greatly appreciate your assistance in minimizing these changes. We encourage you to establish a consistent end of day routine for your k-6 students to alleviate the chaos of the end of day procedures, making them more consistent, less confusing, and most importantly safer. Please know, we absolutely understand that is not always feasible and will accommodate changes at your request. But would greatly appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this manner.

We do ask that all changes to end of the day routines are communicated to our elementary office by 2:15. This ensures information is communicated with classroom teachers. If you send a note, please send one for each student the change applies to.

All elementary students will exit through the elementary doors this school year. This ensures staff members that are familiar with the k-6 students are supervising them, eliminates the chaos of our younger students being mixed in with junior high and high school, and simply allows for us to operate out of the elementary. Students being picked up by junior high or high school siblings will be picked up in the elementary from Ms. Dana's classroom.

Car Parent Pick-Up Procedures:

All elementary students k-6 Cars will line up on COOMBS STREET (beside the playground/baseball field) headed WEST. We will begin dismissing car riders at approximately 3:00. We will provide a name tag to place in the front passenger corner of your window to help us familiarize ourselves with regular car riders (if you didn't get this please let the office know).

Please stay in your car, our staff will assist your child into the vehicle. We will load 4 cars at a time, and then dismiss all four at once. Please do not go around the car in front of you, unless prompted by school staff. When exiting the pickup area, please be respectful of the other parents and cautious of children at all times. We ask that you pull forward to the No Parking Zone to buckle car seats if need be.

WE WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE YOU STAYING IN THE CAR RIDER LINE INSTEAD OF PARKING AND PICKING UP YOUR CHILD. THIS ELIMINATES FOOT TRAFFIC, PROVIDES CONSISTENCY, AND ALLOWS OUR ROUTINES TO BE MORE EFFICIENT.

We strive to improve and streamline communication between home and school.

Rooms-Hopefully by mid week (of this week) our Smithton R-VI app will be updated with a communication platform referred to as rooms. This platform will replace all other communication apps previously utilized here at Smithton. You will be able to communicate with your child's teachers, the elementary office, and our counselor via this new platform. You will have access to each of your children by simply toggling to their room. We are super excited to have this application, believing it will improve and streamline our communication (once we get the hang of it of course). Don't worry there will be some additional info coming your way!

If you don't already have the Smithton R-VI app downloaded, you will need to do so in order to access rooms.

Friday Folders-

Beginning this school year Smithton is a No Phone Zone. Please know that we understand fully your desire for your children to have access to their devices before and after school for bus routes, Boys and Girls Club, extra curriculars etc. We simply expect students to keep their phones, watches, earbuds etc. either in their backpacks, lockers, or with their teacher (if this is your preference). Please trust that if your child needs you we will make sure that contact takes place.

This year we will be designating time within the school day for all students to apply their reading skills! We are using a platform called Beanstack to get our students excited about reading! Instead of using a quiz based approach to reading, we are taking a free choice approach. The Beanstack platform motivates young readers through competition and recognition. We will have class and school wide goals and competitions that we are hopeful will grow our reading culture here at school and home! There will be more information to come on this topic!

September 9th- NO BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB (please let the office know your child's plan for after school)

September 17th- Get the Scoop - Ice cream social 6:00-7:00 (more info to come)

September 18th- Picture Day

September 27th- Fall Field Day (more info to come)

October 12th -Fall Festival (more info to come)