Oct. 17th – 22nd: #CloseTheGaps Initiative
Eliminating opportunity gaps and ensuring educational excellence for each and every student is a key area of focus for Seattle Public Schools. While our district outperforms similar districts academically and is considered a high performing urban district, we still have unacceptable opportunity and achievement gaps. Our district is committed to doing better. As a result, the district announced a new campaign that demonstrates our collective commitment to eliminating opportunity gaps and accelerating learning for all students – specifically for our black students and other students of color. The campaign is called #CloseTheGaps. We are kicking it off the week of October 17-22. You can learn more about the district-wide initiative by visiting the webpage highlighting Seattle Public Schools’ work to eliminate opportunity gaps. Together, we are united in our commitment to each and every student. During this #CloseTheGaps Initiative Week, at Queen Anne Elementary we have our first PTSA-funded Book-It Theatre performance on Oct. 18th: “Last Stop on Market Street”, based on the 2016 Newbery Medal winning book by Matt de la Peña. This play focuses on seeing beauty in the world around us through the eyes of a child and his grandmother. Diversity is also a theme in the book as it explores the beauty in every neighborhood. Also during this week, Seattle Education Association (SEA) is promoting October 19th as a day of solidarity to bring focus to racial equity and affirming the lives of our students. QAE staff and QAE Families of Color have been working together to educate students about the importance of equity and recognizing and celebrating diversity. On this date, many QAE staff will be wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts to show their commitment to students in a coordinated effort. Teachers and staff will be talking with students about the shirt they are wearing to bring focus to racial equity and address how racism impacts the lives of Black people in the US. SEA is leading this member driven effort and working to promote transformational conversations with staff, families and students on this issue. This is an important conversation to have with our students as we support students, as citizens of the world, to work together as a community towards racial equity and unity. These events will be part of QAE’s continued efforts to support students' social and emotional learning particularly in regards to cultural competency. Oct. 18th: “Last Stop on Market Street” Performance We have our first PTSA-funded Book-It Theatre performance on Oct. 17th: “Last Stop on Market Street”, based on the 2016 Newbery Medal winning book by Matt de la Peña. This play focuses on seeing beauty in the world around us through the eyes of a child and his grandmother. Diversity is also a theme in the book as it explores the beauty in every neighborhood. As we need to alter our performance area to accommodate the needs of the theatre company, we are unfortunately unable to have parents and preschoolers join us for this performance due to space restrictions. The play needs to be performed on the floor of the cafeteria with 5th graders seated on the stage and K – 4th grade students sitting horizontally across the length of the cafeteria to view the performance. We appreciate the support of the PTSA to provide this performance for our students, and we appreciate parent understanding and support of our space restrictions for this show. Lost and Found We delayed sending off the lost and found for one week, as we have 3 HUGE garbage bags of clothes that will be leaving QAE on Monday. If you have suddenly realized that your child’s precious coat, sweatshirt, or hat is missing, please dash to QAE on Monday before it is too late. All Lost and Found will be sent to a needy community agency each month, so we need to get this completed ASAP. If you are a parent who would like to help with this process, please contact Jennifer Connolly at jaconnolly@seattleschools.org. Parent Help Needed for Lunch Time Clubs We need your help to get some student-requested clubs underway. If you are available one day per week during the following times, we would greatly appreciate a parent to supervise a club for the following grade groups:
Students have clubs they want to create, but we need a caring parent who will be a supervising adult in the room. No expertise needed! Please contact Janine Roy at jbroy@seattleschools.org for more information. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide! Interdisciplinary Learning in Action: Combining meaningful reading, writing, math and social emotional learning at QAE: What goes on at QAE each day? Here is an example of the rich learning opportunities at our school. Here are 1st and 2nd grade students reflecting on their reading using a growth mindset model, writing their reflections on post-it notes and then graphing their post-it note reflections to develop data analysis skills in math. This is a wonderful example of how QAE teachers set learning goals using our data, teachers then analyzed our data to identify specific targets in learning, and combined this work to support students with our social emotional learning goal: Lunch Update: Science in Action In response to feedback from older students, this year we aligned our lunch schedules so that students of similar age can eat and play together each day. 4th and 5th graders, 2nd and 3rd graders and K -1st graders have recess and lunch breaks together. This means that we have a large number of students eating lunch simultaneously in a very cavernous space. This gave our staff and students the opportunity to involve science to solve our noise conundrums. At first we grouped students by class while we helped students learn how to clean up their lunch area independently after eating. Once these responsibilities were mastered, our creative staff implemented responses to our sound challenges: we moved tables around so that students were sitting beside peers rather than across from peers and we faced the tables in the same direction. Then we taught the students about sound waves and explained our thinking about our cafeteria reorganization to reduce the volume. By involving students in solving the problem using science, we helped students to generate multiple solutions to our common problem. Our collaborative problem solving will continue throughout the year. We are proud of our student and staff collaboration on problem solving our real-life challenges together. Thank You, 5th Grade Leaders! 5th Grade Tour Guides: Thank you to the following 5th grade students for being Tour Guides for our Oct. 3rd visit from Superintendent Dr. Larry Nyland and Director Sue Peters:
5th Grade Greeters and Ushers for our Monthly Assembly: Fitting 18 classes into the cafeteria is a challenge this year, and we thank our 5th grade leaders for modeling and guiding younger students during our monthly assemblies:
5th Grade Jog-A-Thon Supporters: Thank you to the following 5th grade students who helped to count laps, assist runners, hand out water and cheer students on:
Questions? If you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact our school. Classroom teachers are happy to answer your questions about your child’s learning. Principal Janine Roy is happy to answer any questions parents have about our school, programs, initiatives and events. Please let us know how we can best support your child and family. Janine Roy: jbroy@seattleschools.org QAE Phone: 206-252-1302 Weekly news from Principal Roy: PTSA Chili Cook-off: Wednesday, Oct. 5th The PTSA is sponsoring a Chili Cook-off. Join the PTSA at the Queen Anne Community Center from 5:30-8pm on Wednesday, Oct. 5th. Curriculum Night: Wednesday, Oct. 6th For new QAE families, Curriculum Night is an annual SPS evening information session for parents. This year, QAE parents/guardians will begin in the cafeteria at 6:30pm for staff introductions and an overview of our five pillars and QAE foundational elements, such as Project Based Learning (PBL), social emotional learning and innovative technology. Then parents/guardians will move to your child’s classroom where your child’s teacher will provide a presentation from the grade group team on academic programs, social emotional learning and supporting your child at home. Teachers are providing presentations planned by the grade group team this year so that parents can learn about the academic programs, activities and events that are being offered in all classrooms in that grade. We will begin in the cafeteria at 6:30 pm for staff introductions and an overview of our QAE pillars. A 20-minute presentation will be offered by each classroom teacher at 7 pm and repeated at 7:30pm to accommodate families with more than one child. Beginning at 7:30 pm, Janine Roy will be available in the cafeteria to answer any remaining questions. The PTSA will be providing childcare. More details will be available soon. QAE Updates: Jog-a-Thon Update Huge thanks to QAE parents Michele Lisenbury Christensen and Marna Metcalf. This was a highly successful event today, and we want to thank these fabulous parent organizers for this impactful event for our students. We would like to thank our generous sponsors for their donations:
Monthly Assembly: Thursday, Sept. 29th at 1:45 pm Our first Monthly Assembly was a great success! 5th grade students served as greeters and ushers, and we greatly appreciated their leadership with seating younger students. QAE Explorers were fabulous global citizens as they modeled respectful listening throughout the assembly. Our assembly focused on citizenship and goal-setting. Thank you to those parents who were able to attend. Our Monthly Assemblies will be the last Friday of each month, so our next one will be Oct. 28th at 1:30. The exact start time will be confirmed the week before the assembly. Traffic Updates:
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SCHEDULE2023-24 On-Site Schedule
7:55am - School Day Begins 2:25pm - Dismissal Wednesday Early Release 1:10pm - Dismissal |