👋🏻 Hello Highlands Families!

A big thank you to Mrs. Lunetta, our 6th Grade Choir, and our incredible veterans for today's Veterans Day Program. Thank you to all that served.

📌 Next Week is Spirit Week (see above for details).

🗓️ Highlands MVP Training: November 13th @ 2:15 🚫 CANCELED 🚫

• The background check system is down and the district cannot move forward with MVP trainings until the background check system is back up and running. Stay tuned for the rescheduled date. Thank you for your understanding.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Laura LaHue

Principal

https://highlands.smsd.org/

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education’s decision to desegregate schools, Highlands PTA would like to host a Walk to School day, which will take place on November 14, 2023. This walk is promoted by The Ruby Bridges Foundation. The walk honors her legacy as the first child to break the segregation barrier and attend an all-white school in 1960. This event supports the SMSD Strategic Plan objective to create a fully unified, equitable, and inclusive culture.

WHEN: Tuesday, November 14th @ 7:30 am

WHERE: Meet at Fairway Park and walk to school together

HI WIG #1: Implement a system-wide monitoring process that utilizes collaborative instructional teams who meet regularly to review student data from screening, progress monitoring, and common formative assessments (CFAs) to identify next steps for instruction.

• ✅ Lead Measures (to get us there):
• Intentional Core Instruction: Students are doing the talking (thinking); teachers are asking questions to encourage students to think and generalize what they know to new situations.
• Intentional Core Instruction: Teacher teams will use information from CFAs and real-time observations during core instruction to strategically target skills that will accelerate achievement
• Educational Equity: How will we get EVERY student there? A collective responsibility to provide students with what they need, when they need it, and with an urgency to master essential outcomes.
• IXL: students will engage in personalized learning plans using the IXL app to master skills for each priority standard with an 80% proficiency in both ELA and Math.
  

HI WIG #2: Prioritize social/emotional personalized learning through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom norms, school rituals/routines, and caring attention.

• ✅ Lead Measures (to get us there):
• Student absenteeism: monitor student absenteeism and create a plan to help students be at school consistently. Students that miss 10% of school days are defined as chronically absent.
• Mindful Mornings: Each morning from 8:00-8:30 will be a time for face-to-face (device-free) connection and friendship. Students know they can softly enter their school day.
• Schoolwide system of mentorship: all-school mindful mornings each month, Hawks Nests each month, classroom buddies, and 6th grade jobs.
• Positive behavior system: of grace and accountability through our PBIS and BIST programs.