Como Park Elementary
January 2024
A Note from Principal Ewald
Como Park Elementary Families-
I hope you are having an amazing winter break. When students return to school on January 8th, we will work on reteaching our routines to students. At Como, our students are expected to follow SOAR behavior which means being Safe, On-Task, having a positive Attitude, and being Respectful and Responsible.
Attendance is important to your child's education. Please remember that our school day begins at 7:30 am. If your child is going to be gone, please make sure to call the school with the reason for the absence.
Such a strange beginning to winter...I am sure at some point we will have a snowy/cold winter. Please make sure to send winter clothing with your student as we go outside unless the wind chill is expected to be colder than -10 degrees below zero. If your child needs any winter clothing, please reach out to your child's teacher so that we can help with coats/hats/mittens.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Jennifer Ewald, Principal
651-744-6055
A Note from AP Patel
I hope you all had a relaxing and rejuvenating winter break with family and friends. I cannot believe the first half of our school year has flown by. We are excited to have the students back next week and are working on rebuilding rituals and routines for our students. All students will relearn the SOAR rituals and routines at Como this January.
Happy New Year!
Ms. Patel
Assistant Principal
Upcoming Events
- January 8th - School Resumes
- January 15th - No School - Martin Luther King Jr Day
- January 16th - 5th Grade Families - APTT from 5:30-6:45
- January 18th - Family Fun Night/Open House from 4:00-6:00 (see attached flyer)
- January 26th - No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
Visitors
After 7:45 am, all visitors are required to sign in at the front office and wear a visitor badge while in the building. When you leave, we ask you stop by to drop off the badge and sign out. Staff will bring visitors back to the main office to get a badge if we do not see you wearing one. This is for the safety and security of everyone at Como Elementary.
Since our teachers are teaching all day, please arrange a time to talk or meet with your child's teacher or visit the classroom.
2023-24 ACCESS Test for English Learners
State and federal laws require that all English Learner (EL) students are assessed annually to measure their proficiency and progress in reading, writing, listening and speaking in English.
SPPS uses the ACCESS 2.0 (Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State) test as its annual assessment. EL students who receive special education services and who meet certain guidelines may take the Alternate ACCESS test instead. These tests are used to see if students are meeting the WIDA English Language Development Standards and determine if a student is ready to exit from SPPS’s EL program.
All SPPS EL students in grades K-12 will be provided the ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS tests between January 29-March 22, 2024.
If you prefer that your student not participate in the ACCESS or Alternate ACCESS testing, please provide a written note indicating that choice or complete the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) Parent/Guardian Participation Guide and Refusal form and send this communication to your child’s principal.
For more information on English language proficiency assessments and the MDE Parent/Guardian Participation Guide and Refusal form, please go to:
SPPS Family Testing Information website: spps.org/Page/33916
MDE Family Testing Information website: education.mn.gov/MDE/fam/tests/
Please reach out to your child’s school if you have any questions.
EXCITING THINGS ARE HAPPENING IN OUR CLASSROOMS
Half-Day ECSE Classes
Half Day ECSE classes:
Thank you so much to the families who were able to attend our family art activity! Students made a handprint in Crayola Model Magic and painted them. Two of our favorite books for this Area of Study were “Froggy Gets Dressed” and “The Snowy Day.” Students helped Froggy get dressed while focusing on the CORE word “put.” We will also paint a winter scene this last week before winter break.
PreK
We finished the month of December by reading a few versions of the Gingerbread Man. We used the story to learn about how stories have a beginning, middle, and end. We also reviewed names of shapes when we made a Gingerbread Man. The kids had fun going on a Gingerbread Man hunt throughout the school at the end of the week.
Kindergarten
First Grade
First graders have been working on a Friendly Letter writing unit. We learned about the parts of a friendly letter and then we wrote letters to friends, family, and teachers.
Second Grade
Second Graders have been learning about money. Students are identifying coins, counting coins, and making coin exchanges. They are figuring out multiple ways to represent amounts with coins!
Third Grade
Third grade has been busy continuing to learn about multiplication in math. We have been using manipulatives, whiteboards, and other strategies to solve problems. We are practicing skip counting by 3s, 4s, 6s, 7s, 8s, and 9s. This will help us to learn our facts and reach automaticity. If you would like to work with your third grader at home in math, all you have to do is ask them to sing you their skip counting songs!
In reading, we have been doing a genre study of realistic fiction. We have learned that realistic fiction is not true, but it is written as if it is true.
Fourth Grade
The 4th graders are learning about division in math and researching nonfiction texts to write a research presentation. In science with scientists, students learned about erosion. Mr. Windman’s class sent letters to veterans and members of the Air Force sent them back a picture.
Fifth Grade
5th Grade students have been honing their math knowledge by working on place-value, fractions, decimals and comparing numbers including decimals to the thousandths place. We continue to practice other math skills such as multiplication, division and fractions.
We continue to grow as readers and writers too. In reading we continue to build our vocabulary and improve our reading stamina. We are learning many different root words and what their meaning is so that we can use that knowledge to learn other words. We continue to write opinions, write about our reading, and some students are working on poetry.
We had a very fun visit from the Raptor Center and learned about eagles, falcons, great horned owls and red-tailed hawks. It was awesome to meet the raptors and students really enjoyed the presentation.
Genius Squad
Genius Squad students are learning to use and code a variety of robots, along with helping to set up equipment such as the sound system for assemblies.
Counselor's Corner - Ms. Lee
December's cardinal character words were Caring and Empathy. It is a perfect time of the year to show people how much we care. Second-quarter counselor lessons focus on bullying prevention. Students learn to recognize bullying and gain strategies for resolving conflict with others.
As the weather gets colder and the holidays approach, this is a time when people may need more help. If you or your family needs resources at this time, Como staff is here to help.
If you would like assistance for insurance, clothing, holiday gifts, or bills, we can connect you to someone who can help. We also have resources to get free beds for students.
Como students can get access to counseling for specific skills and social-emotional support through our mental health partner: Lifestance. Let me know if you would like more info.
Please reach out to me if you or your child/ children need anything. Hope this time of year finds you happy, safe, and warm.
Take care and Be well!
Stephanie Lee
School Counselor
651-744-3600
stephanie.lee@spps.org
From Nurse Morgan
Children’s Dental Services will be coming to Como Park Elementary on January 12th, 2024! If you are interested in having your child seen by a dental profession while at school, please complete the permission form linked below and return the completed form to school. Thank you!
Technology Tips from Ms. McConley
Please see the following from Common Sense Education for tips on "Help Kids Make Friends and Interact Safely Online"
Student Pick Up
Our new student pick up system is going very smoothly! If you regularly pick up your child from school, please remember:
- You must have your number with you.
- If you do not have your number, we will ask you to go to the office to show ID. This is for the safety of our students.
- If you need another number, please let someone at pick up know so we can get one made for you.
- If you walk up to get your student, the line now forms on the sidewalk. Please do not stand in front of the door in the parking lot.
- Please pick your student up before 2:10. After 2:10, students will be waiting in the office to be picked up.
Quick Links
ENGLISH
Prefer a language other than English? You can open the newsletter link and click a button on the right (on a computer) or at the bottom (on a mobile device) to have it translated into many different languages. Please know that the translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete. If you have any questions, please call us at 651-293-8820.
KAREN
ကျိာ်ဂုၤဂၤတခါလၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးအီၤ လၢအတမ့ၢ် အဲကလံးကျိာ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဧါ. နအိးထီၣ်ကွၢ်လံာ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်ပှာ်ဘျးစဲ ဒီးစံၢ်လီၤဖဲ ပှာ်ဘျးစဲအဖီခိၣ်ဖဲစုထွဲတကပၤ(လၢခီၣ်ဖၠူထၢၣ်ဖီခိၣ်) မ့တမ့ၢ် စံၢ်လီၤဖဲတၢ်ဖီလာ် (လၢနလီတဲစိ ဖီခိၣ်) ဒ်သိး တၢ်ကကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤလၢကျိာ်အဂုၤအဂၤအဂီၢ်သ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ လံာ်လၢ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အကမၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်တလၢတပှဲၤသ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဝံသးစူၤကိးပှၤဖဲ 651-293-8820 န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.
SOMALI
Ma waxaad doorbideysaa luuqad aan aheyn af-Ingiriis? Waxaad furi kartaa lifaaqa wargeysyada oo guji batoonka midigta (ee kumbiyuutarkaaga) ama xagga hoose (ee taleefankaaga gacanta) si aad wargeyska ugu tarjuntid luuqado badan oo kala duwan. Fadlan ogow in natiijada turjumaaddu ay noqon karto mid aan sax ahayn ama aan dhammaystirnayn. Haddii aad wax su'aalo ah qabtid, fadlan naga soo wac 651-293-8820.
HMONG
Puas xav tau ua lwm hom lus? Nej qhib txoj kab mus rau hauv daim ntawv xov xwm thiab nias lub pob ntawm sab xis hauv lub koos pis tawj, los sis yog lwm hom twj no ces nyob hauv qab, ces yuav muaj txhais ua ntau hom lus. Nco ntsoov tias cov lus txhais no yuav tsis raug txhua lo los sis txhais tiav tiav. Yog nej muaj lus nug, thov hu rau peb ntawm 651-293-8820.
SPANISH
¿Prefiere un idioma que no sea inglés? Puede abrir el enlace del boletín y hacer clic en el botón a la derecha (en una computadora) o en la parte inferior (en un dispositivo móvil) para traducirlo a muchos idiomas diferentes. Tenga en cuenta que la función de traducción puede ser inexacta o incompleta. Si tiene alguna pregunta, llámenos al 651-293-8820.
Como Park Elementary School
Website: https://www.spps.org/comoel
Location: 780 West Wheelock Parkway, Saint Paul, MN, USA
Phone: 651-293-8820
Twitter: @ComoElementary
Translations of required school-related communications can be made available upon request. Our school can also provide translators. Please contact the office or your student’s teacher if you are in need of these services.