RIDGECREST ROAR January 1, 2024
Good evening Ridgecrest families,
Welcome to a new year! I hope the winter break has been a wonderful chance for everyone to spend time with loved ones.
We are so excited to see your children back at Ridgecrest tomorrow, January 2nd, 2024. New Year’s Day is such a great time to reflect and set goals towards a wonderful new year. With this in mind, we are planning to spend part of this week reviewing school rules and expectations with our students to help everyone get back in the routines of learning and to set goals for the rest of this school year. As a school, our goals will continue to focus on great attendance and increased time spent reading with children. Both of these goals make such a difference in the overall learning for our children.
School Information
Million Minutes Reading Challenge – We are so excited to see if we beat our reading minutes for the month of November and to see our progress towards reaching our million minute goal! Please send the December reading calendars back tomorrow so we can add up our minutes!
We also have a couple more resources to share with you for ideas about finding great reading material for all readers:
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This is an article about finding reading material that is “just right” for your child.
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Scholastic Book Wizard This site is great if you have a book title and you want to know the level. Caution: Some books are not leveled and will provide a grade level range i.e. K-2
Ridgecrest Readers: Staff Recommendations – Moving forward, we will be highlighting some of the favorite books our staff enjoyed when they were children. We hope this will become a resource of great books for you to explore. I’ll start us off!
- When I was in elementary school, I loved to explore the poetry in the book Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I had a few favorite poems I returned to frequently. I loved this book because I always found myself laughing as I perused the collection. I hope you do the same. – Mrs. Allen, Principal
- One of my favorite books to read as a third-grader was Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. I really enjoyed the humor in this book. An unfortunate accident causes ordinary Stanley to develop a superpower he uses to help catch art thieves. – Mrs. Palmer Gnotta, Instructional Coach
Spelling Bee – It’s time for the spelling bee! We are so excited to offer this fun experience for the kids at school. Our class spelling bees will be on Monday, January 8th. The top three spellers from each class will advance to the school bee, which will take place Monday January 29th. Please mark your calendars for these dates. We need quite a bit of help on the day of the class spelling bees. Please see the sign up genius link below to volunteer to help. We can’t do these great programs in our school without a lot of parent involvement. Thanks so much for your support! Sign up to help using this link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/508044CABAA22A5F94-46900976-class#/
Digital Safety for Families – Net Positive is a community agency we partner with to help teach our students about digital citizenship. They also provide many helpful resources for families. I am attaching some of their resources that are about navigating digital safety with new devices since I know many of us have new devices after the holidays. I hope you find it helpful.
Attendance – We finished 2023 with an average of 91% of students present and ready to learn. Our goal is 95% but we are averaging a higher rate of attendance than we did last year. Thank you for your attention to ensuring your children are at school each day. It makes such a difference in their learning.
From the PTA:
Happy New Year from the PTA. We hope everyone enjoyed the break. We are looking forward to getting back to school.
- Spelling Bee- Monday January 8th will be the class spelling bees. The kids received the spelling bee list before winter break. Hopefully they have taken some time to practice!
- Community Night- Our next community night collaboration is at In and Out Burger on Tuesday January 9th from 4 P.M to 8 P.M. Be on the lookout for a flier!
- The nominating committee is looking to fill spots on the PTA board for the 2024-25 school year. If you would like to serve on the board or have questions about what is involved please reach out to the PTA email at ridgecrest1pta@gmail.com
- Our next PTA meeting is Monday January 8th in the library conference room. All are welcome to join.
Thanks!
Suzy Doom
PTA President
DATES FOR YOUR CALENDAR:
January
2 First day back to school
5 Fire Drill
8 Class Spelling Bees
PTA Meeting 12:00 PM
9 Community Night – In and Out Burger
11 End of 2nd Quarter
12 No school for students – teacher grading day
15 No school – MLK Jr. Day
16 Midyear Report Cards
-Sara
Sara Allen
Principal, Ridgecrest Elementary School
(801) 826-9250
Sara.Allen@canyonsdistrict.org
