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Volume 3, Issue 19; January 12, 2025
🌟CRES All-Stars!🌟
Did you know every student with a reading plan has access to additional resources to support reading development at home? We are thrilled to strengthen our home-school partnership to "Help Our Minds Excel!" Check out this amazing resource we are using to support many of our students!
Dear CRES Community,
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Every Day Counts at CRES!
Help us reach our goal of 6% or less this year!
To ensure transparency and celebrate our progress, we will be sharing weekly attendance data and updates in our newsletter. By highlighting this important information, we aim to keep our families informed and energized about our collective efforts to encourage regular school attendance.
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We were thrilled to welcome students back on Friday! The smiles and joy they brought into the building lifted our hearts. However, we noticed that 24 kindergarteners—an entire quarter of the grade level—were not in school, contributing to absences totaling 25% of our entire school. That is a significant number of missed opportunities for learning and connection, and we truly missed each and every one of our absent students! Regular attendance in all grades, especially kindergarten, is vital for building foundational life skills, including school readiness.
As we are in the second half of the second quarter, we are gearing up to share your child’s State of Attendance reports and celebrate attendance milestones with our second Attendance Pep Rally and Poster Contest. Ask your child for details--and read more below!
Let’s make Monday a strong start with all of our students at CRES—we can’t wait to see them!
Together, let’s make every day count!
“Coming to School Every Day is Cool!”
Poster Contest Details!
Your child is invited to participate in an exciting poster contest highlighting why coming to school every day is cool! Encourage your student to listen for helpful tips each week on the News Show to spark their creativity. Posters are due to Mrs. Helmer by the morning of Thursday, January 24th. Winners will be announced at our Attendance Pep Rally and will have the opportunity to showcase their posters on the News Show, around our school, and in our yearbook. We can’t wait to see our students' amazing ideas!
FCPS News Updates
Gradebook Available Until End-of-Quarter
Based on community feedback from the first quarter closure, FCPS revisited the scheduled dates for closing the Gradebook and Report Card modules in the SIS ParentVUE and StudentVUE apps.
Moving forward, the app will close in alignment with the actual quarter-end dates. This change will allow students and families to view their assignments and grades until the last day of the quarter. Gradebook will be closed for the second quarter from Tuesday, January 28, 4 p.m. to Tuesday, February 4, 6 a.m.
Access Your Child’s Grades Through SIS ParentVueLearn how your ParentVUE account allows you to easily access grade reports and other helpful information about your child.
📵 Phones Down, Engagement Up: FCPS Cell Phone Policy
Keeping cell phones off during the school day helps students focus and learn. It also boosts positive social behavior. Review FCPS’ cell phone expectations by grade level with your child and help keep our classrooms free of distractions! If you need to reach your child during the school day, please call our main office at (703 227-2600.
📑 Varsity Tutors Provides On-Demand Support at No Cost
FCPS is partnering with Varsity Tutors to provide students and families with extra resources for learning. Every student can take advantage of Varsity Tutors’ services at no cost, including weekly live online classes; on-demand 24/7 chat tutoring; essay editing; and study resources such as recorded content, practice problems, and diagnostic tests. Learn more about online tutoring with Varsity Tutors.
FCPS News: In Case You Missed It!
In case you missed it in FCPS This Week, the school division shared updates on the following topics and others:
- National Merit Commended Scholars
- Celebrating the Best of 2024 in FCPS
- Cell Phones Off, Learning On
Read FCPS This Week to learn more about these topics. If you are not already receiving this weekly newsletter, please sign up today.
Ronnie Ram's Homerun Highlights!
We love highlighting learning experiences that support the acquisition of Portrait of a Graduate attributes and skills across our classrooms!
Thank you to our PTA for creating a new space where students can practice self-regulation and learn new strategies! We can’t wait to share the final outcome. Pictured: Ms. Hartle, our social worker, and Ms. Echegoyan, a monitor and proud CRES parent.
#Goaldirected #Resilient
For more information on Portrait of a Graduate, ask your child how they are a communicator, collaborator, critical and creative thinker, goal-directed and resilient individual, or ethical and global citizen. Or, click here!
Please click on our main hashtags, #CRESSchoolofDreams and #CRESAllStars, for more awesome highlights from Centre Ridge!
We will continue to expand our social media presence this year!
Twitter and InstagRAM
DedicatED: For Parents and Teachers
Do you have a toddler or pre-school aged child? Read more about how to support learning in their early years. There is so much learning that can happen at home!
"Measuring What Matters"
There is more to preschool than learning your ABCs and 123s, researchers say, as they propose broader range of skills for assessing early education.
Excerpted from Usable Knowledge, Harvard University
By: Elizabeth Ross
(To read the full article, click here.)
What parents and educators can do:
McCoy explains how educators and parents can encourage and support skills in preschoolers:
1) Encourage play – “the work of childhood.”
“Play looks really different for different kids in different situations. It can be solitary or imaginative play where a child is on their own playing. It can be play in relationship to peers, it can be play with an adult. But any and all forms of play are very useful.”
2) Be responsive to children’s interests.
What can be helpful are “child-directed interactions where parents or teachers respond to children's cues and interests. For example, when a child asks a question, an adult can provide an answer and then ask another question related to that topic to deepen and expand the conversation.”
3) Model the skills yourself.
“Kids are always learning by watching and imitating the adults in their lives. So what they do and say is important. If you're angry, you can help kids to know how to self-regulate by saying, ‘I'm kind of feeling angry right now. I need to take a minute and walk away and take some space and then come back.’ Or, if you're trying to take someone else's perspective, [you might say], ‘I'm really trying to understand what you want in this moment. Can you tell me more?’ Just saying out loud what you're thinking about and then using actions that are in line with what you hope your kids will do [is useful]. Adults who are curious, have kids who are curious and adults who use creative methods, have kids who use creative methods, adults who talk about their own identity have kids with a strong sense of self.”
4) Teach children strategies.
“For some of these things — self-regulation, for example — there's a lot of good evidence that we can teach kids specific strategies that support their development. We can tell kids that there are concrete things that they can do to be better regulated, like stopping and taking a breath when they feel upset or excited or angry, to help them to calm down.”
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Family Literacy Program: Learn English!
Who: For parents with children in FCPS or with children from 3-5 years old.
When: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 am-12 pm (You can join anytime!)
Where: At Centre Ridge Elementary!
For more information, please contact Mary Pierri, our Family Liaison, at (703) 227-2600.
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Please Mark Your Calendars!
Great news! Centre Ridge Elementary School's events are now easily added to your own personal calendar. To find out how to download our calendar feed, please go here.
Tuesday, January 14th: PTA Meeting, via Zoom, 7 pm. Please RSVP here!
See the complete 2024-2025 school year calendar.
FCPS Cares Program
Recognizing employees who go above and beyond
FCPS Cares is an opportunity for parents, staff, and community members to recognize those who go above and beyond to help others and show they care. We invite you to submit your story so we can all acknowledge the outstanding work of FCPS, and more specifically, Centre Ridge employees.
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Ram Reflection
To provide feedback directly to Dr. Hertzberg, please use the QR code, or click on this link. Thank you, in advance, for sharing your thinking!
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