Riojas Elementary School
April 9, 2020
NO SCHOOL - Friday, April 10
School Rules: Be Safe. Be Responsible. Be Respectful.
From the Principal
New Learning Environment
Look how far we've come! In two week's time, we have adapted to a completely new world. I know we are still struggling in many ways, but the work I see coming in from students and the communications between teachers and families is AWESOME. We are one community and we are coming together in this new learning environment for one great cause: children learning! Thank you to our staff and thank you to our "new teachers" - that is you, parents!
I hear on the news we are in a war... Well, then. We will suit up in our masks and stay home and stay strong! Be safe, be respectful, be responsible and BE ONLINE.
I hope to see you at online school sometime soon,
Christi
More Fun on Facebook
I love the connections that we are making to families and how families are seeing each other through our posts and "Spirit Week" comments! I miss seeing our kids so much and this is giving me a chance to see some sweet faces, too. We are adding some new things through the RES Facebook page: Positive Learning Week (this week's virtual spirit week), Video Announcements, and daily post requests. These are all ways to enjoy each other, connect with our community and just have fun! No worries, participate as often as you want or just go to our page and see what everyone else is up to!
RES Announcements
We will be posting the Daily RES Announcements starting next week, April 13-16th. Yes, video announcements! Teachers will be able to send out the links and you can see them on our RES Facebook page. Watch and enjoy!
School Supply Pick Up
Are you out of paper, pencils, crayons? Need a fresh supply? Some of our amazing staff, working together but following distancing rules, created 209 school supply bags. Each bag contains 2 spiral notebooks, 6 sharpened pencils and a box of crayons for you to come to Riojas and pick up. We will have a COVID compliant curbside pick up on Monday morning, April 13th, between 9 and 11am. Drive through the car line to get a bag per Riojas student, as long as supplies last.
RES Family Stories
I have had a few families respond to our request. You can see their ideas below. I hope you will share your ideas and fun stories with me and our RES community by using the link: RES Community Stories.
Please stay safe and healthy. Take care of each other, follow the CDC guidelines and wash your hands! www.pfisd.net/coronavirus will be the best place to check updates on PfISD decisions, and an FAQ page is in the works.
Virtual Spirit Week - Take 2 - Positive Learning
School Supply Pickup - Monday 9-11am
Do you need devices or Internet?
Don't forget to fill out the Technology Assistance Survey if you need devices or Internet access at home for your student.
Leagues for survey and distance learning are here: http://ow.ly/dojV50z0gam
From Our Counselor - Mrs. Patterson
Keeping ourselves emotionally healthy is important. Riojas Counselor, Mrs. Patterson, has created a list of resources below to help our children continue to grow in their Social-Emotional learning.
The links below are documents to help in a variety of situations including: How to talk to your child about Corona Virus, how to help your child handle worry, and social emotional well-being.
Feel free to contact her if you need ideas on how to help your anxious child or how to help the adults in your home cope with our new environment.
Please remember - I am here if you need me!
-Mrs. Patterson
PTO - Facebook Live Meeting - Monday, April 13th, 6pm
The PTO is still working hard to make sure we are supporting the RES community. Here on some highlights:
PTO Meeting is happening virtually. Join us on FB Live April 13th at 6 pm. We encourage you to ask questions and interact while our PTO President gives all the updates from the comfort of her dinning room.
PTO events for the rest of the year will be cancelled but that doesn't mean the fun stops. Please follow us on FB or join @riojaspto on Remind to keep up-to-date on what we have planned for you.
We are encouraging our RES community to support all the local businesses that have been so generous to us over the years. We are highlighting them on our FB page almost every day.
Yearbooks are still ON SALE. Our amazing team completed the book before Spring Break. It is chalked full of all the amazing school memories we are missing so much. Go to www.balfour.com to order. Delivery will happen in May via door drop or pick-up depending on what is going on in the world.
School Supply Kits for next year will still be on sale towards the end of April. More info to come shortly.
We are beginning to recruit for board (elected) and chair/committee (appointed) members. If you are interested, go to www.riojaselempto.com to see what is available. Any parent or member of the RES staff can hold a role. Fill out the below google forms to express interest.
Board will be voted on May 18th (either live or virtually).
Board Form: https://forms.gle/JsrrnDcGUxhjKV736
Committee Form: https://forms.gle/U3sHpBxQbThJor3M7
Stay safe, stay home and stay in touch!
Live Interaction Opt-Out Survey
ONLY COMPLETE THIS FORM IF YOU DO NOT WANT YOUR SON / DAUGHTER (S) TO PARTICIPATE IN LIVE INTERACTIONS WITH PfISD TEACHERS AND STAFF.
Dear Parents and Guardians:
Teachers and staff have the opportunity to use Zoom as a way to connect with your child (ren) to provide instruction and support through technology. Zoom is the leader in modern business video communications, with an easy and reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars on mobile devices, desktops, phones, and room systems.
As we start educating with Zoom, we want to share some rules with you and give you the opportunity to exclude your student from live interactions.
All meetings will be held under district-established guidelines.
Click this link to see more details and fill out the form.
Special Area Menus
Some information about the PDF’s for the Special’s menu: If you have no issue opening the menu, I hope you and your student are enjoying some of the activities and lessons we have found during this time.
If you are having issues opening the PDF, you have some options.
Option 1 – Download adobe on your device for FREE. Just go to the website https://get.adobe.com/reader/ and click download.
Option 2 – If you do not want to download a program onto your computer, there are websites online that will read the PDF for you. You can google PDF reader online and many will come up. It takes a little longer to load, but it works without downloading anything. Here is one I tried where the links all worked - https://allinpdf.com/pdf-reader
Just drag the PDF into the blue area and wait for the magic to happen.
RES Community Stories & Ideas
My son has been working on a letter that he is going to send via google docs to his teachers! Telling them why they are so special to him even from a distance.
From the Denison Family - 4th - Hammett
Hailey in Mrs. Hammett’s class wanted to share this message of hope with the school. Hope you and your family are staying healthy.
From an Anonymous Family
We made math fact flash cards on index cards. We took them outside, got on our bikes and played "old school style- Around the World" with a twist. If you lost the fact battle, you had to ride your bike around the "loop" of our street!
If you would like to submit your story, please click here!
RES Community Stories and Ideas
One of the critical factors to ensuring the success of our students and families at this time will be continuing our sense of family and community. In an effort to share our stories and our fun, or even our frustrations, I have created a google form. Please submit your stories of how you are spending your time, your funny anecdotes of things like “You’ll never believe what my kids said!” or “You’ll never believe what I learned when I was home schooling my child!” and any other great ideas you have. You can ask that your story be anonymous or include your family’s name, but I will put them together to include in my newsletters over the next few weeks.
Message from the Riojas ART room:
Hello Kinder - 2nd Grade families,
Excellent news! The art fundraiser we began before Covid-19 is back on! Even more exciting, Art to Remember has created a Riojas website that will allow you to purchase keepsake products customized with your child's art completely online. There are over 50 products and many are less than $15. These make great gifts and a percentage of every purchase goes right back to our school! Click on the link below and enter your child's first and last name to search for their artwork. Then, have fun shopping!
The new extended deadline for purchases is April 16th.
https://arttoremember.com/school/THW4H3
If you have questions, feel free to email me: brianna.hinchey@pfisd.net
Best,
Ms. Hinchey
Need a Conference with your Teacher?
Make Sure You Are Getting Our Emails
We have many email addresses and families that are on this email list, however, if you hear that someone is not receiving my emails or district emails, please send their email address and name to me at Christi.Siegel@pfisd.net. Spread the word by forwarding: the more informed we are, the better.
Copy of Dr. Killian's Email 4/7/20
Dear PfISD Parents,
We now have a week under our belt with the Remote Learning, and hopefully, you all are somewhat settling into a groove. If you're still not entirely comfortable, take heart, this is a challenging task the state is asking of all of us, and Rome wasn't built in a day. We will get there together. Our Instructional Technology team has created a brief video tutorial to help you navigate the Remote Learning website. You can check it out here.
Even as we are adjusting to our "new normal," our regular work is still there, and we are currently planning for the items for the 2020-2021 school year. One thing our staff is working on is rescheduling our prekindergarten and kindergarten registration, and we expect to provide more information on dates and procedures next week.
We know we have received many questions from our parents, students, and staff, and we have directed parents to contact both their student's teachers and their campus principal. The Communications team has also been answering emails from both staff and parents, and are working to keep up with the flood. We know all of our staff members are being pulled in a variety of directions, and we have come up with a new system that will hopefully provide relief while also providing excellent customer service and timely responses to our parents and students.
Our district is utilizing K12 Insight to create a "Let's Talk" page on our website. This page will have multiple buttons that parents, students, and employees can choose from to ask a question and make a comment or suggestion. We will have buttons on the following: Payroll, Food Services/Meals, Technology, HR/Benefits/Leaves, Online Learning, and General Coronavirus Questions. Additionally, we are adding buttons for each campus for parents to direct any questions or comments. I know this is a new system, and it may seem like a difficult time to roll out something new, but we have high hopes that this will allow us to ensure that questions are being routed to the correct source and answered promptly.
We began distributing technology devices to students last week for those whose parents completed the survey by March 30 at 12:30 p.m. We have had many questions from parents and staff members regarding the distributions and who was chosen. As PfISD is not a 1-to-1 district, we do not have enough technology devices for every student. Additionally, we had to allocate some technology devices to our teachers and staff members to enable them to work from home, which also depleted some of our resources. As such, we are trying to provide services to students with the highest needs first.
Due to the difference between the number of students in PfISD and the number of laptops the district owns, a majority of households will receive one laptop. There are a few instances where a family will receive two laptops due to a high number of students within one home. Once we complete the distribution to those students, we will review the number of devices we have remaining and consider ways to distribute additional laptops. If a student is designated to receive a device, the parent will receive an email with information on pick-up location, date, and time. The student-device request form is still available, and devices will be distributed based on the criteria above.
We continue to provide meals for our families at ten locations across the district, and last week alone, we provided 48,484 meals to our families! We are so appreciative of the hard work by our food service providers who continue to passionately serve our students and families. Last week the Texas Department of Agriculture adjusted meal requirements to ensure the meals picked up were for children under 18. These guidelines require adults who pick up meals without students to provide one of the following:
· Official letter/email from school listing children enrolled
· Individual student report cards
· Attendance record from parent portal of school website
· Birth certificate for children
· Student ID cards
We will continue to provide breakfast, lunch, and dinner for our families during our school closure. Please visit our website for locations and times.
We know this quarantine has hit some of our families hard, and we expect to have more families reaching out for assistance due to loss of jobs or inability to work. Please know that we are here for you and happy to lend a hand. At times like this, it's important for our community to pull together and help each other. We encourage any family who will need meal assistance to please complete the Free and Reduced Meal Application online today. Doing so now will help for a smoother transition for any students who have a need, if and when we return to school.
I hope everyone is staying safe, practicing social distancing and other safety precautions. We are looking forward to seeing all of our PfISD students when this quarantine is over. As a sign of hope, our Pfield Stadium and other stadiums around the district will join other districts around the state by burning our stadium lights this Thursday from 8-9 p.m. as a symbol of hope and assurance to our students, teachers, community, and all who need support during this time. We may be closed, but we are always here! #BeTheLight
In the best interest of students,
Doug
Dr. Douglas Killian
Superintendent
Food Service
PfISD has also implemented a plan to distribute lunches to all children starting Monday, March 23 at ten campus locations across the District.
Grab-and-go meals will be available for curbside pickup from 8-9 a.m. for breakfast and 11 a.m.-1 p.m. for lunch.
Locations
Pflugerville High School
Dessau Middle School
Kelly Lane Middle School
Park Crest Middle School
Westview Middle School
Copperfield Elementary
Northwest Elementary
Pflugerville Elementary
Wieland Elementary
Windermere Elementary.
This program serves students 18 and younger regardless of Pflugerville ISD residency or enrollment. Families can pick up meals curbside in the carpool lanes at the campuses listed. Students must be present in order to receive meals. Parents may pick up breakfast and lunch at the same time. For those who do not drive and need to walk to pick up the meal, you will be allowed to walk and pick them up to go. Access to enter the buildings will not be available.
PreK and Kinder Registration Postponed
7 Habits of Happy Kids
https://www.leaderinme.org/family-resources/
The link below is to the amazon page with ordering information for the kid friendly book 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey. I'm sure you can purchase this book from many other vendors as well.
Reflex Math Practice at Home
At Riojas, students use a variety of tools and resources to practice and retain their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. When students are fluent in their facts, they are able to gain confidence in their problem-solving abilities and free up mental resources needed for learning.
Here are a few ways you can help at home:
- Games – Games provide real, relevant, connected, and fun ways to use math facts repeatedly
- War: This game is played with a deck of cards (minus the face cards). Each person turns one card over, and the first person to announce the sum takes both cards.
- Go Fish with Facts: Instead of looking for the same number as in the original “Go Fish” card game, players try to pair cards with equal sums.
- Domino Top It: Have players place dominoes face-down between them. Each player turns over a domino and calls out the sum of the dots on the two halves.
- Traditional/Triangle (Fact Family) Flash Card
- Students 1st - 5th Grades can log on to http://reflexmath.com using their teacher provided login and password.
ABC Mouse
View the attached PDF file for more information.
Boosterthon Support for RES
Hey Riojas Team!
I hope that you are doing well and spending some quality time with your family. Please stay safe and healthy!
After schools started closing around the nation, we decided to open up our Character Video Library to all of our partners. You may have gotten an email about that on Friday from our founder and CEO, Chris Carneal. If you didn’t get the email or haven’t been able to register yet, here is the information:
- www.BoosterthonCharacter.com Click on Register. (Access Code: home)
- There’s no cost to register
- 75 + streaming videos with character topics and fitness exercises (PBIS, SEL, STEAM, etc.)
We hope this resource serves not only as a helpful diversion while the kids are home, but also as an opportunity for families to engage in character-building conversations while also staying active at home. Please feel free to share this resource with your school community, family, and friends!
Stay healthy and safe!
Walker Burns
Program Director
(817) 269-9042
ChooseBooster.com
Support Your Child's Social and Emotional Awareness
FaceTime with Friends
Riojas Elementary School
Counselor: Lori.Patterson@pfisd.net
Assistant Principal: Carrie.Quinney@pfisd.net
Principal: Christi.Siegel@pfisd.net
Email: christi.siegel@pfisd.net
Website: http://www.pfisd.net/riojases
Location: 3400 Crispin Hall Lane, Pflugerville, TX, United States
Phone: 512.594.4100
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Riojas-Elementary-School-903788353020395/