Washington Family Connection

November is a wonderful reminder to pause and appreciate the people who make our school community so special. At Washington Elementary, we have so much to be thankful for, especially our students and families! Your children bring joy, curiosity, and kindness to our classrooms, and we are grateful for the opportunity to help them learn and grow.

Thank you for trusting us with your children and for the many ways you support their learning. From encouraging them at home to staying connected with their teachers, your partnership makes a difference. We look forward to another month of learning, celebrating progress, and making memories together!

Mrs. Buckley

We are looking forward to meeting with you during our upcoming Parent-Teacher Conferences on Monday, November 16th from 11:00-7:00. These conferences are a wonderful opportunity for us to connect, celebrate your child’s successes, and discuss goals moving forward. Your partnership is important, and we sincerely appreciate your involvement in your child’s learning. To sign up for a conference time, please use the link below:

Conference Sign-Up Link:https://www.ptcfast.com/schools/Washington_Elementary_FallConferences2026

If you need help scheduling a conference, please contact our office at 641-472-2110, and we will be happy to assist you. We look forward to collaborating with you and appreciate your continued support of our school community!

You may notice that your child’s report card looks a little different this year. Our teachers are taking a closer look at the Iowa Core Standards and identifying the most important skills students should learn at each grade level. Each trimester, teachers will focus on specific priority standards. Because of this, not every standard or skill will be graded each trimester.

Our goal is for the report card to give you a clear picture of what your child has learned, what they are still working on, and where they may need extra support.

We will continue to review and improve our report card as teachers work together to make sure they reflect the most important learning for students.

A report card is only one way we share your child’s progress. Parent-teacher conferences are another important opportunity to talk about your child’s strengths, growth, learning goals, and next steps.

Parent Teacher Conferences are coming up November 16th from 11:00-7:00. Report cards will be distributed at conferences. Click here for conference sign-ups. If you need assistance signing up, please contact Washington at 641-472-2110.

Thank you for your patience and partnership as we continue improving this process. We look forward to sharing and celebrating your child’s progress with you!

Congratulations to our Leaders of the Month! These students have demonstrated Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind by setting goals and working with hard every day. We are proud of their leadership!

Washington has teamed up with Leading Edge this year! Our fundraiser will run until November 10th. Thank you for your help supporting our school!

School Counselor News

The past month Preschool students learned about what makes a good friend and cooperation skills from the Al’s Pals Curriculum. In November the students will learn about how our differences make us special and brainstorming.

The K-1 students have started having lessons about Empathy from the SecondStep curriculum. These lessons will continue through November.

In each lesson we review:

• Listening Rules

• Empathy

• How to identify feelings in ourselves and others

• Look at the face, body, and think of the words said

• Role Play with partners or as whole class volunteers

• Discuss different situations and discuss people having different feelings about the same thing

Throughout the year, students may bring home papers called Home Links from their lessons. These provide additional information about what students are learning in class and offer ideas for continuing these conversations at home.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at (641) 472-2110 or Kelsie.roland@fairfieldsfuture.org.

Preschool News

In the month of November we will be continuing to focus on our classroom and school rules and routines. As students are beginning to get more familiar and comfortable with them we will do reteaching as needed to reinforce the positive behaviors. We will also continue learning about the leader in me habits and what each habit means and how we can be leaders at school and at home.

We will continue to learn our letters by focusing on a new letter each week. We practice writing both capital and lowercase letters and do several activities with the letters throughout the week. This month we will be focusing on the letters Ii, Uu and Cc. Other letters we have learned are Ee, Ff, Hh, Ll, and Tt. We will read books about families and traditions along with Thanksgiving and Fall. We will continue to talk about rhyming words and beginning sounds as well.

In Math we will continue working on identifying, writing, counting and making groups with numbers 1-10. We will also do some activities with patterns, positional words and measuring with different items.

As long as the weather allows we will go outside each day. Please be sure to pack sweatshirts or jackets for your child for those cooler mornings. To help build independence, please be sure to show them how to zip or button their coat.

We are so thankful you share your preschoolers with us and it is such a joy to watch them grow each day!

Begindergarten News

Hello Parents!

We are already heading into November! I have a feeling this month is going to fly by. I look forward to seeing you all at Parent-Teacher Conferences on November 16th!

Our field trip to Jefferson County Park was wonderful! We had a little drizzle, but we were able to spend almost the entire time outside. One of the highlights was getting to watch the snake in the Nature Center eat a thawed-out mouse. That was quite an interesting experience, to say the least! We also enjoyed a nature hike and learned about different plants and interesting facts about animals during the fall. I think the kids had a great time!

In the classroom, our focus has been on letter formation and saying the letter name and sound as we write each letter. I am so impressed with how quickly the students are learning their letter sounds, and their handwriting is improving every day. Almost every child can now write their name independently, which is AMAZING! It is exciting to see how much confidence and independence they are gaining.

Some students are already ready to move on to learning numbers 10–20, which is very exciting! On the kindergarten FAST assessment, students are expected to identify 42 numbers in one minute, with numbers ranging from 1–31 and presented out of order. Students who are ready will begin working on teen numbers before moving on to numbers 21–31. We will continue to work at each child's pace to make sure everyone is building a strong foundation.

I am truly amazed by the growth I see in each child. They are growing in so many ways, becoming more independent, and learning new skills every day. It is such a joy to watch their progress, and their accomplishments are definitely worth celebrating!

Ms. Spalla

Kindergarten News

Hi families!

We have had a beautiful fall season so far and are looking forward to a wonderful November! Throughout the month, our kindergarten classes will be taking field trips to Jefferson County Park to learn about life cycles. We are excited for our students to enjoy these hands-on learning experiences!

We are also looking forward to meeting with you during Parent-Teacher Conferences on Monday, November 16th, to discuss the wonderful growth and progress your child has made so far this school year. We appreciate your continued support and partnership!

As the weather gets cooler, please remember that students need to have their arms covered when the “feels like” temperature is between 50–59 degrees. When the “feels like” temperature is 49 degrees or below, students will need a jacket or coat. Please make sure your child comes to school dressed appropriately for the changing temperatures so they can stay comfortable and enjoy their time outdoors.

We have moved beyond practicing prewriting strokes and are now fully underway with writing letters and learning correct letter formation!

In Skills, we will begin Unit 4, where students will learn additional letters and their corresponding sounds, including /n/, /h/, /s/, /f/, /v/, /z/, /p/, and /e/. Students will continue building on the letters and sounds introduced in Unit 3 while adding these new letters to their learning.

We will also continue practicing blending sounds, segmenting words into individual sounds, and building word chains. Additionally, students will begin learning about tricky words. These are words that cannot be fully sounded out using the letter-sound patterns students have learned so far. Students will practice recognizing these words by sight and will continue building their knowledge of them throughout the school year.

We will soon wrap up Unit 8: Seasons and Weather in Knowledge. Throughout this unit, students have learned about the four seasons, different weather patterns, and the characteristics that correlate with each season. Learning about these topics during the fall has been a wonderful way to connect our classroom learning to the world around us! Our next unit will be Unit 9: Columbus and the Pilgrims, which connects with the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. We will complete this unit before Thanksgiving break.

In our IM math curriculum, we will wrap up Unit 2: Numbers 1–10 and move on to Unit 3: Flat Shapes All Around Us.

In this unit, students will explore two-dimensional shapes by identifying, describing, comparing, and composing shapes. We will make connections between the flat shapes we learn about in the classroom and the shapes we see in the world around us.

Our Pumpkin Day and fall parties went wonderfully! We love having opportunities to celebrate together, enjoy special treats, and create fun crafts with our students.

Looking ahead, the Kindergarten team will celebrate Turkey Day on Tuesday, November 24th, before we head into Thanksgiving break. We are so thankful for each and every one of our students and feel incredibly fortunate to be part of their learning and growth this year!

Wishing all of our kindergarten families a happy November and a wonderful Thanksgiving!

- The Kindergarten Team

First Grade News

This month is going to be very busy in First grade. In reading, we are continuing to improve our reading skills by continuing to blend and segment words, practice spelling patterns that contain the magic “e” and by reading, writing and saying our tricky words. We will be comparing and contrasting different Indigenous people from around the world, their culture, and traditions during Knowledge. This is a fantastic unit to have in November since we are learning about our own history and traditions at that time.

In Math, we will continue learning new strategies and procedures that will help your child be a better Mathematician. Unit 3 focuses on adding, subtracting and how important the equal sign is. We are already working on adding and subtracting teen numbers. We are teaching the students how to solve these math problems with ten frames, counting blocks, drawing pictures and using number bonds (part part whole strategy).

Leader In Me has been going great! Our primary focus has been on the first three habits and I’m happy to say we see the students using them everyday! The first three habits are Being Proactive, Begin With the End in Mind, and Put First Things First. We have introduced Habits 4 and 5 and will be spending more time with them pretty soon.

We are really looking forward to doing some fun activities around Thanksgiving as well. We will have a Turkey in Disguise activity but we are really looking forward to having our Macy’s Day Balloon Parade again! All the students will decorate a balloon, we attach it to a stick and we walk through all the classes with the parade music. It is always a lot of fun with smiles and laughter.

Music:

We are having so much fun exploring sounds, rhythms, and movement! Here is a quick

look at what your little musicians are learning this month:

Preschool: Finding our steady beat! We are using egg shakers and our own bodies to

stomp, clap, and shake along to different tempos (fast and slow). We are also tapping

rhythms with small pool noodles and waving colorful scarves to match the speed of the

music.

Begindergarten-Kindergarten: Exploring the four voices (speaking, whispering,

shouting, and singing). We are playing simple classroom instruments like triangles and

hand drums. Plus, we are bringing in pool noodles, egg shakers, and scarves to

practice moving and playing along to changing tempos!

1st Grade: Introduction to rhythmic notation! Students are learning to read, clap,

and play simple quarter notes (Ta) and eighth notes (Ta-Di) using rhythm cards and

rhythm sticks. We are also keeping the energy high by using pool noodles and egg

shakers to master fast and slow tempos.

Upcoming Concerts

Concert dates will be in March. Look for more information to come in the January

Newsletter!

Contact Information

School: Washington Elementary

Music Teacher: Lori Krumboltz

Email: lori.krumboltz@fairfieldsfuture.org

Hours at Washington: 11:45 AM – 3:45 PM

Thank you for making sure your student arrives at school on time each day! Being on time helps students start their day positively, feel prepared, and make the most of their learning. We appreciate your partnership in supporting your child’s success!

Tardy and Attendance Guidelines:

• 8:15–8:59 a.m.: Students arriving during this time will be marked tardy.

• 9:00 a.m. or later: Students arriving at or after 9:00 a.m. will be marked with an unexcused absence, unless the absence qualifies as excused under district policy.

• Four tardies = 0.5 day of unexcused absence. These accumulate and are included in a student's total unexcused absences when applying our district attendance policies.

November 16- No School

November 16- 11:00-7:00 Parent Teacher conferences

November 24- Early Release @ 1:15 for Washington

November 25-27- No School

Reminder: EVERY Friday is a 1:15 pm early dismissal