Dear Canyon Crest Families,

Thank you for all of your support as we navigated the twists and turns accompanying the start of the new school year. There is nothing like being together again! Our staff was so excited to meet their new students and see the return of familiar faces. The students have done an admirable job adhering to safety guidelines, adapting to the hybrid schedule, and using their chromebooks in a responsible way. The full purpose of these changes is to keep our students and staff safe and to ensure we can continue to spend time together in person.

One thing that has not changed is our commitment to maintaining high standards of academic excellence. Necessity drives innovation, and already our staff are finding novel ways to drive learning forward in person as well as through our online learning platform. I encourage all of our parents to sign up for an “observer” account through Canvas, our learning management system. Instructions for this are provided below. Regularly logging into your observer account will help you stay up-to-date with the online portion of your child’s learning experience.

Building strong literacy skills is one of our main focuses this year. Fluent reading and solid comprehension create a strong foundation for all other learning to build upon. Soon each child will take the beginning of the year Acadience Reading test. This assessment is taken three times each year and helps us gauge each child’s current reading levels and what support they need to be successful. Your child may be eligible for additional help through our Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, a well-developed system of interventions where we pinpoint exact skill gaps and pair students with trained tutors to address those needs. All of our kindergarten through third grade students will have accounts for a personalized and self-paced online reading program called Lexia. Teachers will send out more information about this shortly. Our wonderful Librarian, Mrs. Naylor, has been working hard to create procedures that will allow our students to safely check-out library books on a regular basis. Our younger grades will also have access to our “baggie books” program, where students are loaned books selected for them based on their individual reading levels.

The home is another important piece of the literacy puzzle. When you show your children how much you value reading, they are more likely to follow your example. Here are some simple ways you can develop reading skills at home:

For very early readers, point to each word as you read it aloud. This helps develop pre-reading skills, such as a one-to-one correspondence between spoken and written text and tracking from one line to another. Model thinking out loud as you read. Stop the text to ask yourself “I wonder…” questions and then talk through the answers with your child. For example, if you were reading The Tortoise and the Hare, you could say, “I wonder who will win this race? The rabbit is very fast, so he could win, but the tortoise may have some tricks up his sleeve.” Read out loud with fluency and expression. Your child will learn from you what fluent reading sounds like. Take a “picture walk” by looking at the pictures in a book before you read it. Have your child make predictions about what the story might be about.

There are a few upcoming dates in September to mark on your calendar. Bike to School Week will be on the 14th – 18th. Students who ride their bikes to school and wear a helmet will be given tickets they can use to enter a raffle for prizes. Picture Day will be held on the 16th for our A day students (A-K last names) and 17th for our B day students (L-Z last names). Those of you who have chosen the full time Home Study option can call the front office to set up a time to come take your pictures. Lastly, the Reflections contest theme this year is, “I matter because…” Entries should be submitted before October 1st and will be judged entirely online. Our marvelous PTA will send out more information about Reflections soon.

Lastly, I encourage you to connect with us on our school Facebook and Instagram pages, read the weekly “This Week at Canyon Crest” emails, and participate in PTA meetings. A strong home-school connection is one of the best indicators of student success.

We look forward to learning with you this year and for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Jayme Gandara

Facilitator

Instructions for Creating a Parent Observer Account

Go to: https://provo.instructure.com/login/canvas

Create an account by following this how-to article: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Observer-Guide/How-do-I-sign-up-for-a-Canvas-account-as-a-parent/ta-p/540  dd

Before you can finish your account, you will need to pair your student’s account with yours. This article will help you generate the pairing code: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Student-Guide/How-do-I-generate-a-pairing-code-for-an-observer-as-a-student/ta-p/418  

If you have more than one student, you will need to pair the remaining students as well. This how-to article will help you complete that: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Observer-Guide/How-do-I-link-a-student-to-my-user-account-as-an-observer/ta-p/539