To: Michael Green
From: Jake Hall
Date: 6.12.23
Re: June 2023 Board Report
Lewis River Academy
Our LRA Annual Barbecue at Horseshoe Lake was a resounding success, marking the culmination of a fantastic year for LRA students, families, and staff. The event brought together our online community to celebrate student accomplishments. As families gathered around our picturesque lake, laughter, music, and cheerful conversations filled the air. Nichole Lester and I served up hundreds of hotdogs and cheeseburgers and families contributed to the potluck. Students were awarded their certificates of academic growth. The event served as a testament to the dedication and hard work of the LRA community, sharing memories of a full year post-pandemic and building anticipation of a new year in 2023-24!
Family and Community Resource Center
Our current FCRC Coordinator, Gabby, would like to issue a warm farewell, with a heart full of gratitude and appreciation. She thanks everyone for the opportunity to be part of this incredible community and this important work, and is excited to welcome the next coordinator into the role. I am grateful to Gabby for her masterful work shaping the FCRC, cultivating meaningful connections with community partners, and writing successful grants for the district.
Jonathan King, our current Unaccompanied Youth Coordinator, was successful in demonstrating the highest qualifications for the position of FCRC Coordinator. Jon will take over that role after this 2022-23 school year.
Update on FCRC Grants:
Our final identified Homeless Students accounting for the year are:
Coming up -- Back To School Bash 2023! Thanks to very generous support from Red Canoe Credit Union, IQ Credit Union, and Fibre Federal Credit Union, we will still be able to offer our Back To School Bash, free to all Woodland Families, on Saturday, August 12th at Woodland High School from 3pm-6pm. We will provide a meal, backpacks and school supplies, local resource tables, games on the lawn, and raffle prizes. It’s one of our most cherished events, and we’re so thankful to be able to continue!
Highly Capable
At WMS, students in the Hi-C program have been observing the sun through a solar telescope, recording sunspots and flares over the last couple of weeks. We are having our SUMO robot challenge and will soon have a competition for the strongest build. It is a robot engineering and programming challenge. The LEGO team has designed a robot which can follow a line and use a gear ratio attached to an arm to lift itself off the ground and hold for 30 seconds. This is one of the challenges that the high school robot team has done in the past.
4th grade -- We have continued focusing on labs where students became more independent in the measurement and directions of activities. We did a unit on making airplanes out of popsicle sticks and paper. We made helicopters out of paper with propellers and we studied how these both fly. We also incorporated art in our lessons with origamis and canvas painting.
We also talked about different STEAM jobs that they might be interested in.
3rd grade -- We developed presentations and public speaking skills through our unit in stop motion. We worked on stop motion through the beginning of May using different mediums such as Play Dough or legos to create an animation effect using the software Cloud Stop Motion. After the stop motion unit, we have used play to work on our public speaking and communication skills, playing the Fishbowl game to explore using nonverbal and verbal cues to guess different objects. We have also done experiments, including building a compass using a bowl, water, and a magnetized needle, that develop students' understanding of scientific principles such as magnetic force.
1st and 2nd grade -- We have been running some inquiry-based engineering experiments, such as using preschool-sized legos to build a tower. Students tested different locations/heights of supports around the base to compensate for the height of the tower. The students experimented with building different types of foil-boats to see which could hold the most weight (we added dice) without sinking.
This past week, our 1st and 2nd grade Hi-C students also did a different kind of inquiry experiment with art supplies directly related to a project from Art class. In Art, we are using a resist technique for a solar system painting. The picture is drawn with crayons first and then painted over with watercolor paint. The wax resists the watercolor paint because it cannot soak in, and the crayon is still visible and bold. The students experimented with different mediums and the watercolor paint to see if others would also resist. The students tried various scenarios with regular pencils, colored pencils, markers, oil pastels, chalks, and tempera paint.
LAP Program
North Fork's LAP team ends 2022-23 with pride as our students have experienced terrific growth in literacy skills throughout this school year. Several students have exited services this year and have shown strong retention, evidenced by our end-of-year literacy data. We look forward to continued success in the next school year! Goals for next year include; K-2 Certified teachers instruct most in need students during (SOAR Time - intervention).
CES LAP groups are finishing with end of year testing. We are excited to see the growth that our students have made over the last 9 months. As the data begins to roll in, we will start analyzing and planning for any changes that need to be made next year.
In 2023-24, we will continue to have our LAP teachers and paraprofessionals push into classrooms. This allows teachers to be more closely connected with their student’s intervention progress, help with reporting to families and make connections between core and intervention instruction.
Multilingual Education
At Columbia, we are celebrating three students who met or exceeded the standards on the WIDA test this year, a 300% increase from last year! As the end of the year gets closer, we are planning how to better support our students once the Dual Language program goes away.
At North Fork, all of the ML students were able to join the Second Grade on their field trip to OMSI. The exhibit on Biomimicry was a Spanish-forward exhibit and a wonderful opportunity for our students to share their first language with their school community.
This year the ML department at the high school spearheaded the “Seal of Biliteracy” assessment and high school credits. This is a test to help multilingual students receive world language credits in their native language. Students who did exceptionally well on the test will also receive the Seal of Biliteracy. We are proud to honor our students' multilingualism at the high school!
Special Services
Special Services eagerly awaits the results of the Safety Net Reimbursement Award, recognizing the tireless efforts and dedication of the department in providing exceptional support to students with special needs. As the current school year draws to a close, the Special Services department looks forward to the 2023-24 academic year. The team is excited to embark on another year of educational growth for all students, celebrating the unique abilities and accomplishments of every student in their individualized plans.
Student Engagement
As the year comes to an end for the 2022-23 school year, our Student Engagement Specialist, Lindsay Noble, would like to say this year has been rewarding and challenging. Thanks to Lindsay and the school teams, we have seen a lot of growth and positive changes in our students and families with regard to daily attendance at school. Some of the most exciting changes have come from students taking accountability for their education in order to better their future. Lindsay has done a remarkable job coordinating and communicating resources to underserved families in our community, such as the At-Risk Youth program through Cowlitz Courts, Woodland's FCRC program, DSHS, Child Services, and our Counselors for added support. This has positively impacted how our students feel supported in this process.
Title Program
The Title Department has been busy supporting students who had accommodations for SBA testing and make ups. Paras also are still supporting classes as much as possible. We have completed DIBELS reading fluency testing (minus a handful of makeups). Tara is working on updating student assessment data with the latest spring data. As usual, Tara has done an extraordinary job articulating our Title program for our annual state reporting.
Tara has accepted a teaching position in the La Center school district for the 2023-24 school year. We thank Tara for her faithful, effective service to thousands of students over her years in Woodland School District. I am confident she will continue to do great work for kids in La Center.