Bronco Bulletin

Email: wilsonj@bellevue-schools.com
Website: http://www.es.bellevue-schools.com/
Location: 904 West Capital Avenue, Bellevue, MI, USA
Phone: (269) 763- 9435

Communication between school and home is the key to a child’s educational success. Conferences are an excellent time for us to discuss your child’s academic and non-academic progress at school. This year, conferences will be held face to face at the elementary school.

Fall conference notes will be sent home this week with all of our students. Please mark your first and second choices with a (1) and (2) on the form and return it back to school by Monday, September 20, 2021.

It’s a well established fact that parent engagement plays a vital role in student outcomes. One of the primary ways to increase that engagement is through communication, and the Skyward Family Access utility can be a powerful tool. This brief (~90 seconds) video walks parents through the process of downloading, deploying, and using Skyward Family Access. If you are not signed up for Family Access, please contact the Elementary Administrative Assistant, Jennifer Munster by calling the office at (269) 763-9435.

Wow! It has been absolutely amazing to jump into learning with the staff and students at Bellevue Elementary this month!! When walking through the halls, it is hard not to notice the welcoming feeling and sense of community. More importantly, it is obvious that our kids are feeling it too!

The transition back into the classroom after a long summer break can be tricky for a lot of students. To help make this as smooth as possible, teachers have decided to dedicate the first few weeks of instruction to establishing strong classroom communities, foundational skills, and understandings that will prepare students to be life-long learners.

While it is often hard for teachers not to want to get started right away with difficult grade-level content, they also recognize the importance of laying the building blocks for a successful year. Teachers at BCS refer to the first few weeks of the curriculum in each subject area as Unit 00. Unit 00 is designed to launch a successful workshop that will promote and support students' learning for the remainder of the school year and beyond.

If you would like to learn more about our 00 Units, we would be happy to share with you. Please feel free to reach out to any instructional staff member with questions you may have.

As our COVID cases are increasing throughout the county, we wanted to remind you of a couple of things that will help us minimize risk and keep students in school.

1. Please complete a health screener on your child every day. If they are experiencing COVID symptoms, please keep them home.
2. If you have taken your child for a COVID test, please keep them (and their siblings) home while you wait to receive the results.

At this time, the number of students under quarantine because of exposure is much greater than the number of students that have tested positive for COVID. We need your help to minimize risk for all students. Each week we will share our COVID-19 data with you. Please watch for this data on Thursdays. As a district, we are continuing to watch our data and make adjustments accordingly. Thank you!

The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) is a kindergarten readiness tool administered at the beginning of each school year that allows teachers to measure each child’s school readiness across multiple domains. The assessment provides information for your family, as well as your teachers, to help your child learn and grow.

Children come to kindergarten with many different skills and experiences. The KRA is used with other data and information to help teachers understand their students’ strengths and areas for growth.

The KRA covers four areas: Social Foundations (this includes concepts like a child’s ability to work with peers or concentrate on a task), Language and Literacy, Mathematics, and Physical Well-Being and Motor Development.

The KRA doesn’t look like a test. Instead, it includes a variety of items, including the teacher observations of daily activities and age appropriate performance tasks in which the teacher asks a child to respond to a question or complete an activity.

Students in Grades 1-6 have been participating in NWEA assessments for the past few weeks. Students in Grades 1 & 2 participate in NWEA Reading and Math, while our students in Grades 3-6 participate in NWEA Reading, Language Usage and Math. Our teachers will be sharing results of your child's assessments at our fall conferences. Every family will receive a "Family Report" showing a summary of how your child is performing academically.

This year, as part of our on-going efforts with Powerful Student Care, we will be offering a Social Emotional Learning (SEL) class for our K-4 students. They will engage in learning that will provide opportunities to explore and practice communication and problem-solving skills, develop empathy, and create meaningful relationships. This class will be offered as an additional special and will take place in our former after-school care room. Instruction will be provided by Michelle Skaggs with assistance from our new District Mental Health Specialist, Janice Feller anywhere from one to two hours per day. We are looking forward to providing additional support to meet the non-academic needs of our students!

Bellevue Community Schools believes in building a strong sense of community throughout the district, throughout the building, and strongly within each classroom.

Bellevue Community Schools defines the core tenets of community as:

1. Each student is invited to become a part of our community.
2. Each student is a valued member of our community.
3. Each student is here to learn and to succeed.
4. Support for each student will look differently as each student is a unique member of our community.
5. We are here collectively to build community, to learn, and to be successful together. All else is secondary.

We are guided by our universal needs of mastery, generosity, belonging, and independence (Trauma-Informed Resilient Schools, STARR Commonwealth, 2020).

To support each student to meet our academic, social, and behavioral expectations, with the philosophy that students do well if they can, Bellevue Community Schools is committed to:

• Developing warm, trusting relationships with students

• Structuring the environment for student success

• Teaching and coaching self-regulation and problem solving skills

• Using proactive strategies to predict, plan for, and respond to student needs

In order for students to be college and career ready, it is important that they have strong literacy skills. The ability to read is necessary for success in all subject areas and has a direct impact on a student’s educational success.

In 2016, Michigan’s state legislature passed the Read by Grade Three Law to ensure that children who exit third grade are reading at or close to grade level. Based on this 2016 law, third grade students must achieve a minimum score of 1252 in English Language Arts on the state M-STEP assessment in order to be promoted to the fourth grade. Last year, the Read by Grade Three Law was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures, but this year the law remains in place, unless we hear differently from the Michigan Department of Education.

Every students' reading progress will be closely monitored throughout the school year. If you child is not reading at his/her current grade level, an individualized reading improvement plan will be created. Your child's teacher and school will work with your child to find where your child needs support in his/her reading development and create a plan to support him/her.

You will continue to receive updates on the Third Grade Reading Law from the school moving forward. As your partners in education, we are here to support you. Please see the following video and the attached “Facts for Families” document to access more information about the Read by Grade 3 Law.

We are so excited to be back in action for the 2021-22 school year! We’ve missed being in the building, seeing the kids, and working with the staff on a regular basis. We are an organization that is committed to promoting and providing support with educational endeavors, fundraising, social events, and encouraging parent involvement. We organize so many different activities from festivals and carnivals, to staff appreciation, Cookie & Canvas nights, BinGLOW, Secret Santa Shop, and so much more. Our organization meets on the 2nd Tuesday of each month September thru May in the elementary cafeteria area at 6:00. We’d love to see new faces to help us bring some fresh energy! You can find us on Facebook @juniorbroncoPTSO or email us at JuniorBroncoPTSO@gmail.com.

September 14

October 12

November 9

December 14

Fall Festival- Saturday, October 16: 11:00 A.M.-3:00 P.M.

Santa's Secret Shop- December 6-10

Parent's Night Out- December 15 3:00-6:00 P.M.

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