Lansing Elementary School
Board of Education Report
May 2020
The ending to the 2019-2020 school-year has been bittersweet. There is relief to an end of a difficult quarter, but there is also a huge sense of accomplishment of a job well-done supporting our students and their families through a historical crisis.
The common theme throughout 4th quarter has been collaboration and teamwork. We have been working hard to clean and organize our storage spaces at LES to help manage our curriculum materials and make them easily accessible to our staff. Our office staff and aides have worked extremely hard to help us through this tedious process.
Administrative teams and BLT have started the process of preparation and planning for the 2020-2021 school-year. Our BLT plans to meet July 16, 2020 for our summer planning retreat.
Our teachers have worked hard to move rooms to accommodate for the fluctuation of class sections per grade level. We were able to include interventionists and special education staff among the grade-level teams for increased collaboration. Teachers also worked hard to gather and organize student personal items for return. Then, our aides facilitated the pick up and return of student supplies.
Our custodial staff has been helpful to provide teachers support with moving bulky items, securing boxes, and installing shelving- all while maintaining the cleanliness of our building. It truly does take a village to run a school.
Our motto is "every person, every day"! At LES, we understand that each of us have a vital role to play in educating our kids and supporting their families.
Dr. Mindy Wells
Proud PrincipalEnrollment Information
Current Enrollment:
Kindergarten: 193
1st Grade: 124
2nd Grade: 196
3rd Grade: 169
Total: 682
Total Kindergarten Enrolled for 2020-2021 to date:
76
LES/LIS Student End-Of-Year Parade
LES/LIS Student End-Of-Year Parade
LES/LIS Student End-Of-Year Parade
Kindergarten Report-Submitted by Hailey McCleary
May was a busy month for Kindergarten! We continued our Continuous Learning Plan (CLP) and thinking of creative ways to engage students in learning. Teachers and students worked hard to make the last month of school a memorable one.
Students and teachers are still continuing to come together each week for class meetings and live lessons. This month we introduced Joke Shows, Virtual Zoo Field Trips, and Directive Drawings. Bingo has continued to be a hit in kindergarten and the students love to play for hours! With our bingo, we create cards that involve sight words, numbers, and consonant vowel consonant words (CVC). The CLP has allowed for many creative doors to be opened!
Teacher appreciation week was May 4th-8th. Many kindergarten students took the time to write their teachers letters or send videos of appreciation. The PTA and administration also showed their support for teachers and staff by bringing in Kona Ice, gift cards from La Carreta, and fun Lansing Strong shirts. The support from our kindergarteners, families, and community throughout this time has been extraordinary!
To wrap up the 2019-2020 school year, we celebrated the end of the year by participating in a school-wide parade. The kindergarten teachers joined the rest of the Lansing elementary teachers in standing at the school on Thursday, May 21st. We waved to our students as their parents drove them through the parade. Teachers also celebrated the end of the year by delivering kindergarten portfolios to each student. These portfolios are made up of an accumulation of schoolwork the students have completed throughout the year. It has been a joy to share each kindergarteners’ hard work with their families!
Our kindergarteners are thrilled to become first graders and are excited for what the future holds!
Hailey McCleary, Kindergarten Teacher
Counselor Report-Submitted by Mindy Wells
The counselors did a wonderful job supporting our students, their families, and staff during the continuous learning plan. Counselor parented with teachers to check in with families that had become non-responsive or disengaged.
Counselors help collect data that was used to facilitate class placements for next school-year. Teams coordinated to provide input to balance classes and find a good match between student and teacher.
Counselors provided food boxes to families in need. Our counselors will loop with students starting the 2020-2021 school-year to continue to build solid relationships with students and their families. They have worked all year in their PLCs to align the counseling program with the ASCA (American School Counseling Association) model
Lots of balloons!
LES/LIS Student End-Of-Year Parade
Creative decor!
Physical Education-Submitted by Chrissy Robinson
We ended the 2020 school year with an awesome tradition……field day! But this year were able to provide a “Virtual Field Day,” for all students in grades KG-5th grade. We were able to create and demonstrate several different fun and unusual games that our students can play at home with household items and family members. So far many of our students have been able to participate in our LES/LIS Virtual Field Day and we hope that all students will take on this opportunity and have some fun with these games
Please see the link below for our virtual field day video
Virtual Field Day Cards
1st Grade Report-Submitted by Jennifer Leitsch
May allowed us to settle into our Continuous Learning Plan (CLP) after all our April planning. We continued via Zoom teaching as well as communicating with students and parents on Seesaw. The students as well as the teachers and parents have learned a lot of new technology and how to use different resources while adapting nicely to our new mode of teaching and learning. As a team, we continued to meet the needs of all three tiers via our weekly choice boards on Seesaw and lessons on Zoom. We were able to coordinate quite well with the art, music, and Physical Education teachers via our choice boards and Zoom meetings.
With our CLP, we have had 72% of the first-grade class participating in class meetings, small group learning opportunities, and live Zoom lessons. We have had closer to 85% of first-grade students participating in the daily Seesaw activities we send out weekly per tier group. Teachers have been creating games to play and thematic days with their kids and families such as Guess My Number, Hangman, Bingo, Scavenger Hunts, Show and Tell, All about Me sessions, Pet Days, Directive Drawings, Would You Rather, Author’s Chair Sharing, listened to Tumble books, watched Mystery Doug videos, and student read alouds. We culminated our year with some thematic fun for the last week of school with a virtual field day, a camp out day, and a virtual field trip day. We tied these themes into our Seesaw choice boards as well as class Zoom meetings.
The pros of this process are that we overcame many obstacles together as a united team. We collaborated very well and shared the workload and troubleshooting as we progressed through this new experience. As a team, we were proud of our shared learning and ability to adapt and overcome while connecting with and supporting our students. This whole process has been a learning experience. I am proud of our team, school, and district for how well we adapted to teaching from home. We were able to connect with our students on a more personal level through our Zoom check-ins. We also saw kids who were shy come out of their shell a little during this process.
Cons were that it was difficult to have entire class meetings or lessons. Parents really needed to be around to help the students navigate Zoom and Seesaw. The CLP required help from parents at home. Some felt the technology was more than their household could handle. Those with older siblings struggled the most as there was not enough time or data.
Teachers have continued reaching out to and connecting with students and families in a variety of ways throughout the last month of school. We have checked in with all students via Zoom sessions ranging from 3-4 times a week, email, class Dojo/Bloomz, and phone calls. We have made connections with caretakers, grandparents, and older siblings assisting family members. We have worked in concert with the Student Behavior Support Team and Special Education staff to best meet the needs of Tier 3 and Individual Education Plan students and to document our observations and student contact.
We have continued to have our weekly Professional Learning Community meeting to share, discuss, and gather information on how our process is progressing, how we could improve it, and to make decisions for the coming year. We have elected to utilize Bloomz as the means to communicate with parents and google classroom as a replacement for Seesaw in the coming year as a CLP, if necessary.
We continued to “surprise and delight” students with items such as the delivery of door signs, pinwheels, summer buckets with chalk, bubbles, notebooks and pens, visits from Finley, our school dog, birthday celebrations, and a visit from the Royals very own Slugger!
Parents have expressed gratitude for the daily lunches, technology, and internet access that have been provided. They have been appreciative of and impressed by the dedication of the leadership and teachers during this process. They have felt supported.
While things have become a normalized routine in terms of our CLP, our grade level has had many recent changes. Mrs. Turner, our team leader will be moving to third grade and Mrs. Knapp will be the new team lead. We would like to thank Mrs. Turner for her service and dedication as team leader and we wish her well in her new adventures. We would like to thank the leadership for recognizing the importance of reducing class sizes and adding a ninth section to first grade. We have two new teachers joining our team, Ms. Black (formerly 2nd grade) and Ms. Watkins (formerly 4rd grade). We are excited and thankful to have a first-grade interventionist, which will be Mrs. Flynn (formerly K teacher). We’ve also had several classroom moves, so next year will feel like a new team. We are excited to welcome and embrace these new changes along with our theme, “The Energy Bus”.
Love to be a Lion!
1st Graders Zooming
1st Grader working hard on the CLP
Happy to see our teachers!
LES/LIS Student End-Of-Year Parade
The car decorations were amazing!
Music Report-Submitted by Ryan Rothmeyer
Kindergarten and First Grade have been reviewing high and low sounds and singing some of their favorites from the year in some videos we created.
2nd Grade and 3rd Grade have been reviewing pitch, tempo, and beat. Also mainly through videos we created and sent them.
2nd Grade Report-Submitted by Barb Robinson
Second graders have been ending the year working hard on their choice boards in Seesaw.
The second graders ended the year working on researching a rainforest animal presenting and recording their report on Seesaw. Some students wrote their report out and posted it on seesaw as well.
The second graders also got to do a virtual “Field Day” on Seesaw. The students could do different Physical activities virtually and post them for all students to see.
The year ended with the second grade teachers telling their student’s goodbye on Zoom and finishing the year with an end of school year parade. Parents, students and teachers celebrated the end of the year with smiles, love and good-byes. The teachers, parents and students hearts were full!
A hard-working 2nd grader
Animal Reports
2nd Grade Team @ the Parade
So great to see our students!
LES/LIS Student End-Of-Year Parade
We see you!
3rd Grade-Submitted by Sara Mulford
3rd grade finished the year with a flat teacher project based on the book "Flat Stanley" by Jeff Brown. All students received a likeness of their teacher in the mail along with a bingo board. The bingo board included activities such as:
- Take me for a bike ride.
- Record a weather report with me.
- Count how many pennies tall I am.
- Take me outside to see the stars at night.
- Go on an adventure with me and write about it.
- Read a book with me.
Teaching using the Continuous Learning Plan taught us as much as it did the students. Here are some things we are taking away from our experiences:
- "I have learned that I'm a little more technologically savvy than I thought. 🙂"
- "I have learned to have patience, and I have learned A LOT about several different technology platforms that I did not know about before this!"
- "It is possible to teach someone area and perimeter over the telephone without a video connection!"
- "I learned that you can teach old dogs new tricks… or in this case, new apps. I learned that even our quietest kids crave social interaction."
Engaging Students Through Flat Teacher Project
Students shared their many passions and talents
Working hard with her flat teacher!
Art-Submitted by Dawn Blankartz
Art teachers continued to list work for all the specials teams on their assigned grade level learning boards and See Saw boards for grades K-3. We continued to comment on student participation in those activities.
On our fourth and fifth grade Google classroom we engaged with students through weekly art meetings that included drawing games, building relationships, and art links/challenges. We continued to engage with students in content class Zooms when available. We assisted several teachers during their own drawing lessons. We continued to make videos for the Lil Roar morning show. We also began coordinating with the incoming art teacher to assess supplies for next year’s order. We cleaned out our rooms and prepped for check out day.