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Dear Families,
The end of the 2019-2020 school year is upon us, and it feels like forever ago that it first began. We started out the year with renewed commitments:
- we committed to a healthier environment with our first year of the Global Awareness Project and paperless Take Home Tuesday.
- we committed to social and emotional learning by joining the RULER study.
- we committed to collaboration and closing achievement gaps in our school improvement plan.
- we committed to inclusiveness with a diverse group of parent partners through the Welcoming Atmosphere Walkthrough process, and began providing families with front office support in Spanish.
- we committed to anti-bias with our first year of No Place for Hate.
We had fun together as a school community with our Cougar Crawl neighborhood walk and block party, the second year of International Night, our first multicultural day, our first-ever Monster Mash and watching Dr. L appear on Wheel of Fortune!
Then COVID-19 changed everything. Or...did it?
It felt like the world had stopped spinning on its axis. But when I reflect back on this spring, I realize our commitments really didn't change at all:
- we continued our commitment to a healthier environment by teaching our students good hygiene and their role in promoting public health by staying home. We didn't just go paperless with communication, we went paperless with instruction!
- we continued our commitment to social and emotional learning by supporting students through adversity, helping students embrace resilience and hope, and finding creative, new ways to strengthen connections with family, friends and teachers.
- we continued our commitment to collaboration and closing achievement gaps with our approach to distance learning, allowing students to connect with other classes and teachers through our digital classroom partnerships. Our teachers came together as teams to thoughtfully plan to meet students' needs more this year than any other. Most of all, we collaborated with families in ways we never have before -- partnering with you in delivering education at home.
- we continued our commitment to inclusiveness by ensuring all students had meals, school supplies and laptops. We translated News You Choose into Spanish and learned how to use software to make our distance learning accessible for our students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. We held our first virtual PTA meeting and Kindergarten orientation, a format that allowed many more families to participate without the challenges of finding child-care or missing work. Our sixth grade promotion ceremony tomorrow is open to extended family from all over the country.
- we continued our commitment to anti-bias in the wake of George Floyd's murder and amid nationwide protests by choosing courageous conversations over comfort, talking about anti-racism as a staff and with our students, and making sure CWES is a place every student feels celebrated, seen and heard.
This spring, our children experienced loss unlike any that we would ever have wanted for them. No spring sports, no spring concerts, no Fun Fair, no field day, no sixth grade picture and no in-person end of year parties ... the list goes on. We encouraged them to make the best of a challenging situation; to seek silver linings for the clouds that hovered overhead. Now, we owe it to them to make sure the lessons we have learned, the improvements we have made, and the commitments we have reimagined guide our steps into next year and beyond.
Have a wonderful summer break. We will offer supports to promote summer learning, and we will stand ready to meet your children's needs in the fall. Whatever the 2020-2021 school year brings, you can take comfort in knowing our commitments to our students, families and community will be as strong as ever.
Warm regards,
Diane Leipzig, Dr. L
Last week, we successfully distributed almost 700 bags of students' possessions, collected countless library books and musical instruments, and returned many student medications. We also significantly thinned out our Lost and Found. However, the photo below shows there are plenty of bags that haven't been retrieved yet.
If you did not come last week, you have ONE LAST CHANCE before student bags and medications are discarded, and before Lost and Found items are donated.
Please contact Diane Leipzig at deleipzig@fcps.edu to arrange an appointment for early next week.
If you don't intend to come to the school to collect your child’s belongings, please click here to communicate that choice.
Thanks to those of you who joined us to kick off our summer learning program. We apologize for those of you for whom the link was not working properly.
The BBCU recordings will be available using the links below until Monday, and then this information will be available on our new webpage for summer resources, which will go live next week.
1. Overview of FCPS summer programming, i-Ready, CWES Bingo, and other tips for motivating your child to learn in the summer months (Dr. L)
2. Tips for challenging and extending your child's thinking (Mrs. Warren)
3. Strategies for working with your child on reading (Ms. Abd)
4. Strategies for working with your child on math (Ms. Rose)
FCPS is offering several optional distance learning opportunities this summer for students to review and practice essential skills from the current grade.
- Students will have access to skill practice using iReady digital lessons through the FCPS public Universal Screener website. (While there, watch the video introducing the screener featuring our own Dr. L!) Students enter their FCPS login credentials to access these resources. These digital activities will be available until Friday, July 31st. Students will continue to have access to Dreambox, RAZ Kids, and other FCPS digital libraries through the end of July as well.
- Students currently in grades K-6 will receive both a Mathematics and a Language Arts Essentials Summer Practice Workbook in the mail by the end of June. Digital versions of the books will also be posted on the Continuity of Learning Blackboard page. These books will provide practice activities to review essential content from the 2019-2020 school year and do not preview content from next year's grade level.
- A CWES teacher will be available to meet with students at each grade level for one hour a week on Blackboard Collaborate between June 29th and July 31st to support students as they complete the summer workbooks. The schedule will be published next week. Grade level sessions will be available to all students at the grade level, no registration necessary.
Imagine Your Story!
Fairfax County Public Library helps make reading fun by providing tools, access and incentives during its Summer Reading Adventure. The Summer Reading Adventure runs June 12 through August 14 and invites all children and teens—birth through high school—to read for fun over the summer. The theme in 2020 is “Imagine Your Story!” This summer the program will be virtual. Find more information and sign up here.
In addition to Mrs. Choman, Ms. Brown and Ms. Kornman, mentioned previously, we also say goodbye this year to some wonderful specialists and resource teachers who are off to new adventures, near and far:
- P.E. teacher Ms. Williams,
- Theater teacher Ms. Talmadge,
- Adaptive P.E. teacher Ms. Cleary,
- Speech/language pathologist Ms. Breunissen, and
- Special education teacher Mrs. Boucher.
They will be missed!
DeLune Corp in Partnership with Lee District Supervisor Rodney Lusk present a FREE Food Distribution of Dairy & Produce for families in need.
Drive Thru
Thursday, June 25th
1:00 - 4:00 PM
6427 Franconia Road
Springfield, VA 22150
If you are unable to pick up food, contact Maria Franco-Nativi at 703-704-6700 to determine if you qualify for delivery.
Friday, June 12: Sixth grade promotion, 11:00-12:00 on Blackboard Collaborate. JOIN US AT https://tinyurl.com/y7ugdyb (NOTE: Link will not be live until tomorrow morning).
Monday, June 29: Virtual ESY (Extended School Year for students with disabilities) begins
Week of June 29: Weekly CWES office hours begin to support summer learning. Schedule posted news week -- ALL students welcome!
End of June: Final progress reports and summer math and language arts workbooks will be mailed directly to families' homes from central office.
Ahora, puedes leer esta mensaje en español!
We have a created a “Canterbury ES Noticias en español” webpage. Translated messages from News You Choose (beginning with the one dated April 21) will be posted and archived on this page for Spanish-speaking families.
Use this link to access:
https://canterburywoodses.fcps.edu/node/3890
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