Waterville Primary Friday Flyer!
Sharing Great News with our AWesome Families!
Events for the week of August 30th - September 10th
Dates to Remember
Friday, August 27th: WPA Fundraiser Kick Off Assemblies held during school day
Thursday, September 2nd: Parent/Guardian Informational Night 5:30pm-7:00pm
Wednesday, September 8th: Walk to School Morning
Monday, September 13th: WPA Fundraiser money due in office
Monday, September 13th: BOE Meeting @ 6pm
Monday, September 13th: WPA Meeting in Waterville Media Center @ 7pm
Wednesday, September 22nd: Walk to School Morning
Welcome Back to School!
We have had the most wonderful start to the 2021-2022 school year! I greatly appreciate the patience and understanding that everyone has shown as we implement and fine tune all of our plans now that the students are here. Your children have had a successful start back and we hope all of our families are feeling that way too! The newness of starting fresh can be a bit hectic but at the same time so exciting!
We thank you all for making this transition from the less tightly scheduled summertime routine to the early mornings of the school year. Your students come to school each day excited and ready to learn. We work hard to keep this momentum and love for school moving forward, but it truly starts at home with all of our families. Your support, understanding, and patience is so appreciated as we iron out initial back to school details. Please continue to communicate with us as we work to make our school days at Waterville Primary enjoyable, productive, and meeting the needs of all our students. So as always, Welcome! It’s great to have you back!
Mask Requirement starting Monday, August 30, 2021
As stated in the COVID-19 Plan for In-Person for 2021-22 on the AWLS website, there will be times when the plan needs to be modified to adjust to the current data. As a result of the current data, AWLS will change the mask recommendation to a mask requirement for all PreK-12 staff, students, and visitors inside of the indoor school facilities starting on Monday, August 30, 2021.
Reporting Absences, Notification of Appointments, Vacation Notification
Waterville Parents' Association Updates
The WPA Fall Fundraiser Assemblies were held at school today to kick off the beginning of this sale that supports the many different WPA organized student/family events and also the purchase of the additional STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) resources that we have in our classrooms here at Waterville. The fundraiser order and collected money is due by Monday, September 13th, here at school. Thank you in advance for your future purchases and efforts that continue to advance our student learning opportunities here each day!
Welcome to Our Newest Waterville Primary Staff!
Mrs. Lauren Schwieterman, Second Grade Teacher
Ms. Tai Knoll, Music Teacher
Ms. Haya Saadeh, Intervention Specialist
Mrs. Abbey Foltz, Third Grade Teacher
Mrs. Kelli Shirey and Ms. Jennifer Balhoff
Mrs. Angela Strickland, Paraprofessional
Ms. Melissa Bergfeld, Paraprofessional
Mrs. Valerie Webb, Paraprofessional
Mrs. Jamie Gladwell, Paraprofessional
News from our School Counselor, Mrs. Cowell:
Hello, Waterville Families!
This has been such a wonderful beginning of the year! I am so thankful to be a part of this amazing community and I truly appreciate the opportunity to work with each of your children every day. I am attaching a flyer which briefly describes my role as your child's school counselor. Please contact me if there is any way I can help support your child or your family throughout the school year!
I will include updates about current school counseling programming in every Friday Flyer. Please see below for what's been happening so far!
Classroom Introduction Lessons
Teila, our school therapy dog, and I have just started to visit classrooms to introduce ourselves and describe our roles at Waterville School. We are having so much fun seeing everyone! I will continue to visit each class monthly to deliver character/social and emotional learning lessons. Please watch your email, as I will send you a follow up letter each time I visit your child's class!
New Student Lunch Groups
This week, I have started meeting with all of our new students in small groups during lunch times. It's been so nice getting to know our newest Generals! We will have one more lunch together next week, and then I will send additional information home for all of the families of new students. Welcome to Waterville - we're so glad you're here!
Fall Small Group Topics
In the next few weeks, I will be organizing and planning for the first round of small groups. These will take place during your child's lunch time (or center time, for kindergarten students). I will always arrange for small groups to occur in a big enough space to allow for physical distancing. Topics for fall groups are:
- Wiggle Worms (Kindergarten - 1st Grade only)
- focused on helping students build self regulation skills by practicing impulse control
- Calming the Storm (2nd Grade - 4th Grade only)
- focused on helping students to self regulate, practice impulse control, and make great choices overall
- Worry Warriors
- focused on helping students to identify and practice coping skills to allow them to better manage stress and anxiety
- X-Treme Self Esteem
- focused on the importance of maintaining high self esteem and helping to promote a positive self image in participating students
If you are interested in your child participating in one of these small groups, please fill out this form! Please also contact me with any questions about any of these group topics!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Sharing in Great Learning Experiences and Relationship Building!
Powering Student Progress with STEAM!
We are thrilled to announce that we have received additional grant funding in the amount of $1,000 from the Ohio Space Consortium to support Project PRAIRIE (PRairies thAt InvigoRate Inquiry LEarning). Previous grant funding has been awarded to us from the Ohio Education Association ($3,200) and Waterville Primary is also a 2019 America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education winning school district. We received a $10,000 grant to support Project PRAIRIE (PRairies thAt InvigoRate Inquiry LEarning) from The Bayer Fund.
All of our grant funding has been used to install the native prairie as an extension of our existing LandLab in the back of the property of Waterville Primary. Our entire staff and all of our students have participated in professional development and inquiry based exploration led by the Toledo Zoo throughout these past two school years. This will continue this September as all of our classrooms and students participate in a Monarch Outreach project during which our classrooms will rear butterflies, tag them, and track them as they migrate. We will be sure to share more about this special project this fall!
Project Prairie is an interdisciplinary, inquiry based STEAM rich experience that is designed for all of our students in Kindergarten through Fourth grade. The curriculum and lessons guiding the student activities are relevant to our local ecosystem with a strong foundation in Problem Based Learning Science exploration. In addition, Project Prairie is used to teach many learning standards across Science, Technology, Visual Arts, Reading, Writing, Social Studies, and all grade levels taught at Waterville Primary.
Project Prairie establishes the perfect partnership between the Toledo Zoo and Conservation Education. The Toledo Zoo Conservation and Research staff along with the Toledo Zoo Education staff partner with our teachers and students in Kindergarten through Fourth grade, to allow for the maximum success of the learning experience. There is great potential to foster partnerships with additional local conservation agencies and community organizations.
Project Prairie is entirely innovative as it introduces new methods of instruction, advanced learning opportunities, experimental and inventive problem solving, all taking place on our school grounds. Each of our students participate in inquiry based QUEST Model curriculum provided by the Toledo Zoo educators that reflect innovation, an entrepreneurial spirit, and collaboration. The QUEST Model curriculum will be implemented with all students, aligned by grade level and content area, spiraling with increased complexity and rigor.
Students will continue to use the QUEST Inquiry based model to collect and report Prairie data through citizen science programs such as iNaturalist and Bumble Bee Watch about native species, diversity, and abundance. The technology used engages students in local, state, and global learning opportunities as they join the scientific community.
Our students are engaged in long term Project Based Inquiry Learning that Project Prairie facilitates. Our students continue to evolve into stewards of our native ecosystem as they are immersed in the “dynamic process of being open to wonder and puzzlements and coming to know and understand the world.”
Photos shared with us from the Prairie and Land Lab this summer!
Follow Waterville Primary on Twitter!
Waterville Primary will be continuing our presence on Twitter with the handle @AWLSWA. This medium is used for both sharing daily activities and any potential alerts for our building. If you do not have a Twitter account you can still get updates via a Fast Follow feature that sends tweets to phones via SMS text messages. Here is all it takes to sign up to receive SMS text messages from the Waterville Twitter account when a tweet is posted:
On the phone to receive the messages, simply create a new text message to phone number 40404. Next, the message to be sent should read: follow @awlswa
That’s all there is to it! Any student or parent that follows this procedure will receive any Waterville school Twitter messages to their phone as an SMS text message.
To turn off text messages, you would send a message to 40404 that reads: off @awlswa
Flyer Central
The following flyers are available online at www.anthonywayneschools.org on Flyer Central under District Links:
(click on Waterville Current Flyers)
· Fall Theatre
· Roche de Boeuf Festival
· Fall Festival
· Premier Volleyball Fall League
· Premier Volleyball Minis & Peanuts
· RiverFront Studios: Art & Music Lessons
· Toledo Volleyball Club Fall League
· Family Fun & Fishing Derby
· Picnics at Wheeler Farms
· Lucas County Job & Family Services
· Help Me Grow
· Anthony Wayne Community Food Ministry
· First Energy Customer Assistance Program
· I.D. R Kids for Safety