September From Our Teachers
Leawood Elementary School
LEAWOOD TRACK TEAM 2023
Calling all 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders! Leawood’s Track Team is assembling once again for this school year, and we would LOVE for you to join us! Leawood Track will begin Tuesday, September 12, and it will be held every Tuesday and Thursday from 2:35 - 3:30 pm.
Our goal is to introduce students to the sport of track and field, inspire healthy and active habits, and promote positive values such as discipline, perseverance, goal-setting, commitment, and teamwork (among others). Our program will include a variety of track and field practices such as properly warming up, training, setting goals, learning skills in different types of events, teamwork, and sportsmanship.
The track season will end with a culminating activity for our Leawood athletes who have attended and participated in our practices, demonstrated good sportsmanship, followed track practice rules and expectations, and maintained a positive attitude! This culminating activity is the Leawood Invitational Track Meet. The track meet will be Tuesday, October 24th at 10:30a.m., and it will be held at Jefferson County Stadium off of 6th and Kipling. Admission is free.
We are excited for this new track season! Track Information Track Registration
CHOIR
4th/5th Grade Choir at Leawood is a special tradition. Mrs. Brandon is excited to start the group on Thursday afternoons from 2:35 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. each week. We will begin on September 7th.
Choir fee will be $25 for the year. This cost includes the choir t-shirt and materials. Students will be dismissed from the front door.
Click HERE for Parent Permission Form
A Message From The Social Emotional Learning Specialist
Dear Leawood Family,
We want your child to be successful in school and that means supporting and encouraging their whole development. While excelling in academic classes is important, children also need skills to take on learning challenges, make good decisions, manage strong emotions, and get along with others.
To help achieve this goal, we will continue using Second Step® Elementary, a research-based social-emotional learning program designed to improve children’s social-emotional skills. For those of you new to Leawood, Second Step skills and concepts are designed to help children both in and out of school. Four units will cover the following:
Growth Mindset & Goal-Setting: Children learn how to pay attention and manage distractions, develop a growth mindset, and apply goal-setting strategies to their social and academic lives.
Emotion Management: Children learn how to identify and label emotions and use emotion management strategies—including stress management for older students—to calm strong feelings.
Empathy & Kindness: Children learn how to recognize kindness and act kindly, have empathy for others and take others’ perspectives, and recognize kind acts and empathy as important elements of building and maintaining relationships.
Problem-Solving: Children learn how to identify and state a problem, recognize if a problem is an accident, and use the STEP problem-solving process:
S: Say the problem
T: Think of solutions
E: Explore the outcomes
P: Pick a solution
You’ll receive communications from your child’s teacher to help you reinforce Second Step language, skills, and goals at home. If you have any questions about Second Step Elementary, please don’t hesitate to contact me or your child’s teacher for more information. Thank you for your support as we work to build a safe and supportive school community.
Sincerely,
Jeni Wells
Social Emotional Learning Specialist
Columbine Hills and Leawood Elementary Schools
(303)982-8088
Hello Leawood Lions! My name is Katiana Brenner and I am the new half-time DTL (Digital Teacher Librarian) at Leawood Elementary. I am also the DTL at Kendallvue Elementary. I am at Leawood on Mondays, Tuesdays, and some Fridays.
Our digital citizenship focus in August was student expectations and device care. I visited each classroom to teach students how to take proper care of their Chromebook. Some of the topics we discussed were carrying the device with two hands, protecting the delicate screen, keeping water bottles and food away, charging safely, and keeping passwords safe. Thank you for reading through the Technology Contract with your student and returning it to the classroom teacher. To see a sample of the presentations at different grade levels, click on the slideshows below.
Leawood's Makerspace offers opportunities for students to engage in a variety of cooperative and creative work. Students visit the Makerspace on a weekly or monthly basis. There are three areas in the room for them to explore:
Under Construction (Legos, Magnatiles, Keva Blocks, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Clixo's, etc.)
Bot Play: Dash Robots, Cubelets
Creative Corner: Variety of crafting materials for students to be creative with
We are always accepting donations of disposable crafting items to help offset the costs of the Creative Corner space. Below is a list of items we are always accepting:
Pipe cleaners
Paper bags
Cloth scraps
Muffin cups
White Coffee filters
Colored paper
Straws
Popsicle sticks
Beads
Googly Eyes
Dried Beans
Tissue Paper
Clothes Pins
Cardboard scraps
Ribbons/Yarn
White Elmer's Glue
Any small, clean, household items (bubble wrap scraps, packaging materials, buttons, rubber bands, etc.)
Donations can be dropped off at the office. Thank you for your support!
Illustrative Math
We’d like to introduce you to the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum. This problem-based curriculum makes rigorous elementary school mathematics accessible to all learners.
What is a problem-based curriculum?
In a problem-based curriculum, students spend most of their time in class working on carefully crafted and sequenced problems. Teachers help students understand the problems, ask questions to push their thinking, and orchestrate discussions to be sure that the mathematical takeaways are clear. Learners gain a rich and lasting understanding of mathematical concepts and procedures and experience applying this knowledge to new situations. Students frequently collaborate with their classmates—they talk about math, listen to each other’s ideas, justify their thinking, and critique the reasoning of others. They gain experience communicating their ideas both verbally and in writing, developing skills that will serve them well throughout their lives.
This kind of instruction may look different from what you experienced in your own math education. Current research says that students need to be able to think flexibly in order to use mathematical skills in their lives (and also on the types of tests they will encounter throughout their schooling). Flexible thinking relies on understanding concepts and making connections between them. Over time, students gain the skills and the confidence to independently solve problems that they've never seen before.
What supports are in the materials to help my student succeed?
Warm-ups: Each lesson begins with a warm-up routine that is an invitation to the mathematics of the lesson. The same routines are used throughout the entire curriculum, and students become very familiar with the structure of the routines. During warm-up routines, all students are encouraged to share their developing ideas, ask questions, and respond to the reasoning of others.
Activity and Lesson Syntheses: Each activity and lesson includes a synthesis that provides an opportunity for students to discuss key mathematical ideas of the activity/lesson and incorporate their new insights into their big-picture understanding.
Section Summaries: Each section is followed by a section summary that describes the key mathematical ideas discussed in the section. The summaries include visuals and worked examples of problems when relevant. Students can use the section summaries to review the topics covered in the section.
Representations: There are a limited number of representations thoughtfully introduced in the curriculum and students are encouraged to use the representations that make sense to them. These representations help students develop an understanding of the content as well as solve problems.
If you have questions about Illustrative Math feel free to reach out to your child's teacher or our instructional coach Jamie Kelley - jamie.kelley@jeffco.k12.co.us
5th Grade News
Fifth Grade has been learning about matter in science. Students developed a model to produce wind. Check out the process of constructing their models.
