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Happy New Year! We have now concluded the first semester of the 2023-2024 school year! We want to sincerely thank you for all of your support of our students and their academic success thus far. In this month's newsletter, we have our general school announcements, upcoming events for this quarter, and information about the 8th to 9th grade transition. The parent resource of this month includes AODA, Teen, and Family Therapy information. We hope you find all of this information useful! Take care, and happy winter!

Sincerely,

BRMS Principal Team

• Week of January 29th - Quarter 2/Semester 1 report cards are available on PowerSchool or in the mail

• February 1st - First day of Black History Month

• February 16th - No School

Teachers each day communicate with students for several independent but related purposes. First they convey that teaching and learning are purposeful activities; they make the purpose clear to students. One way we do that is through posting, referencing, and unpacking the learning target (e.g., the objective of the day) with our students. In doing so, we provide students with an on-ramp for the learning that is about to happen. Check out the video below to see 8th grade math and algebra teacher, Mrs. Harms, leverage this high quality instructional practice with her students.

Sarah Hall

Badger Ridge School Social Worker

Email: halls@verona.k12.wi.us

The Badger Ridge Family Engagement Team and Sunshine Committee is seeking to revamp and restructure opportunities for parent involvement at BRMS as it relates to fundraising, teacher/staff appreciation, and general volunteering at our school. It was brought to our attention that the link in our previous newsletter would not allow you all to sign up due to a setting that restricted emails from those outside of VASD. If you are still interested in being involved at Badger Ridge in any of these three capacities, please fill out this updated Google form. Again, we want to hear from you and create as many avenues as we can for you to be a part of the Badger Ridge community. Thank you!

We will be wrapping up our winter Star testing this week. Star reports will be mailed home with report cards the week of January 29th.

Throughout the month of January we are focusing on keeping the shared spaces in our community clean. The Leave No Trace Challenge is a grade level competition to reinforce our Power 6 expectation of “Leave No Trace” across our school. Every day from January 17th - February 9th, we will assess how well each grade level demonstrated “Leave No Trace” in the commons, on the playground during lunch and recess and in our bathrooms throughout the school day. The grade level with the most points at the end of the challenge wins bragging rights and an incentive!

• We’re having our first dance of the school year! On Thursday, February 15th, Badger Ridge is hosting our first ever Sneaker Ball! All grades will have an afternoon of fun in their best outfits and favorite sneakers.

  
  

  Sneakers are not required to attend, but acceptable behavior is! To positively reinforce our universal expectations, all scholars that meet the following criteria starting January 16th until the date of the dance are welcome!

  
  

  • No In-School-Suspension or Out-of-School Suspension

  • Less than 5 support calls

  • Less than 20 Tardies

February 1st is the first day of Black History Month! We have several things planned for Badger Ridge in honor of the contributions to society made by individuals from the African diaspora:

• Daily “Who Am I” Trivia

• Door Decorating Contest

• Spirit Week led by students from our BSU

• Schoolwide assembly

Eighth-grade students are learning about the transition to VAHS. We are excited to share the many opportunities that are available as they start to look at classes, clubs, and sports for ninth grade. The VAHS Landing page is shared below with all of the links, forms, and descriptions for families. Please reach out to your child's middle school school counselor if you have questions. (Ms. Pittman students with last names A-K and Mr. Elvis Ajong students with last names L-Z)

Pittmana@verona.k12.wi.us

Ajonge@verona.k12.wi.us

VAHS Landing Page

Students are continuing to use AVID strategies in Advisory and R2S. Advisory’s focus this month was on Relational Capacity, which is the ability to experience and understand connection to others. In the classroom, relational capacity is the degree of trust and safety between teachers and students, as well as directly between students. Students participated in several relationship-building activities and reflected on how their class norms or agreements support their relational capacity. R2S used WICOR (Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading) strategies to analyze a non-linguistic text.

AVID recruitment emails are out! If your student received an invitation to apply, you were also copied into the email. Please reach out to Christina Grulke, AVID Coordinator, with any questions (grulkec@verona.k12.wi.us)

Canvas is the learning management system we use in Verona at the middle and high school levels. All middle school students utilize canvas throughout the day to access class content and assignments. Families are able to join Canvas as an observer to see coursework and assignments as well. Missed the event in December on how to use Canvas? That’s okay! The linked slides include directions for becoming an observer in Canvas and information about the items you will see once you are signed up.

Canvas Observer Slides (English)

Canvas Observer Slides (Spanish)

Our resource of the month is a compilation of community resources related to child/teen therapy, family therapy, culturally specific therapy, and more. We know that throughout Dane County, various locations for therapy assistance tend to be booked out for months, so we thought it would be helpful to put together a resource set for families to use and select the services that best meet your child’s/family’s needs.

The resource compilation can be found here (Eng) and here (Spa).

If you need assistance with navigating these resources or setting up an appointment with a particular organization, please contact our Badger Ridge Social Worker Sarah Hall. If you need translation services too, please reach out to the VASD translators vasd-translators@verona.k12.wi.us or Badger Ridge’s interpreter Emily Knott, and they will help get you connected with Ms. Hall on an interpreted phone call. Ms. Hall and Mx. Knott’s contact information can be found here:

Sarah Hall

Badger Ridge School Social Worker

Email: halls@verona.k12.wi.us

Phone: (o) 608-845-4408 or (c) 608-313-4797

Emily Knott

Badger Ridge Spanish Interpreter

Email: knotte@verona.k12.wi.us

Phone: (o) 608-845-4478

Shout out to our 8th grade students who did an AMAZING job at the STEM field trip a couple of weeks ago!

VAHS counselors visit 8th grade classrooms to present about 9th grade!

Black History Month Image by <a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/black-history-month-collage_94958921.htm#page=2&query=black%20history%20month&position=10&from_view=search&track=ais&uuid=8458717a-3c31-43c1-98f9-9e7584cc942a">Freepik</a>