AXIS Orientation Video Series: Elementary Basics AXIS Orientation Series: Elementary Basics A review of basic school orientation information for families of students in kindergarten through 5th grade. Show Transcript welcome everyone to the new family orientation Elementary Basics video this video is for families of students in grades kindergarten through 5th for the 2526 school year at axis International Academy in this video we will cover attendance policy absences due to illness school day structure and students schedules school fees and supplies the school health office family and school communication before and after school care access enriched after school activities and schoolwide assemblies School attendance policies attendance matters at assess students must be present and on time to shine their English and partner language classrooms we ask families we require families to complete the access absence form so that we know where students are a link to the absence form is on our main website and the QuickStart web page daily email and text notifications are sent if a student is marked absent with no form turned in it is important for us that you know where your student is and that we know where your student is this is part of our focus on security and safety of our students are you going on vacation these absence forms can be filled out ahead of time for multiple days so if you know you're going somewhere you're free to fill it out ahead of time extended absence plans are available for families who are traveling or have other extenuating circumstances that will keep students out of school for long stretches think a week or more please contact your students classroom teachers or info access Colorado org to learn more multiple unexcused students absences will result in a family meeting with our administrative team so what if you're wondering if your child is too sick to attend school access follows the how sick is too sick guidelines from CDH e these guidelines are linked on our website and on the QuickStart web page students must stay home if they have a fever over 101 degrees have diarrhea or vomiting if students come to school and the nurse or teacher notice that they have a fever over 101 degrees are experiencing diarrhea or vomiting they will be sent home for the day these students who are sent home by the school health health office may not not returning to school until they are fever vomit or Diary of free for 24 hours absences due to illness are excused for up to 3 consecutive days after 3 days a doctor's note is required to continue excuse using those absences when in doubt about a student illness and attendance please feel free to contact Miss Jessie Boyd our school health assistant so checking students in and out during the day if your student arrives after 8:00 a.m. you will need to walk them into the school building and check in at our main office desk if you need to pick your student up at some point during the school day we recommend calling or emailing ahead of time you can email info at access colorado.org or calling us at our main phone number this helps our front office staff and teachers have your student ready to go accepting cases of medical appointments our front office staff cannot accommodate early student pickup between 2:45 p.m. and 3 p.m. if you know you need to pick up your student during that time window you need to come before 2:45 or join the regular pickup 3pi partial day absences for medical dental or therapeutic appointments do require a signed doctor's note turned into the front office in order for them to be excused many clinics can fax or email those directly as long as you request it at your appointment if you have a standing appointment the doctor can also note that in their note and you can excuse multiple um absences that way next we're going to look at a sample and access so please bear in mind this is just a sample schedule all students schedules will be different but generally all K through 5 students will have these 3 main chunks of their day and these are going to be in 3 different classrooms typically so 1 is their partner language and partner language they'll be doing reading and writing social studies science and specials and then they'll have their English block of day in English they'll be doing reading and writing social studies and Science and then students do have a dedicated math block with a math teacher who is a specialist that is taught in English and so that happens somewhere throughout the day for about an hour and so that's what it looks like everybody gets a 15-minute recess and lunch lots of students get more recess than that but we'll talk about that on the next slide so student daily schedules where is my student during the day all families will receive a detailed copy of their students daily schedule at the sweet start to school social on August 7th if you are not able to attend that event we will give you a folder with that information with your students printed schedule on the first day of school not all schedules are the same due to the 5050 immersion model that we use at access the schedule for all grade levels in cohorts looks slightly different during the day the previous slide is just a general example of a daily student schedule your students schedule will likely look different a note about recess at axis We Believe outdoor time is very important students go outside for recess unless the temperature is below 20 degrees or if it is raining or sewing too heavily for student safety most days we go outside um in Colorado usually by around 9 oclock it's 20 degrees so most days our students do get outside for recess in the case of such inclement weather we do have indoor recess um in classrooms or the cafeteria with games and dancing and again our younger students do get more recesses throughout the day um Pre-K and kindergarten get 3 daily recesses first grade gets 2 second grade gets to and then after that it's really up to teachers discretion but a lot of times teachers do take students outside just to give them a brain break all right student fees or school fees so all students are assessed a fee for the school year so the fee is $130 per student for the full school year these are paid through Infinite Campus our student information system portal and they are due by the first state of school families who qualify for free and reduced lunch have that fee waived for the year so what does this school fee cover any and all individual supplies art supplies classroom supplies and Daniel grade level field trips and an access partner language t-shirt are all covered by the school fee so what does that mean that means there is no school supply list and no back-to-school shopping the teachers know what they want in terms of supply so they will supply everything using the money from those school fees so you may ask yourself what do I need to send my student to school with all your student needs to bring from home is their personal backpack a water bottle labeled with their name and a lunch if you're not planning to order them school lunch so everything else that they need for their school day is provided by the school using that school fee school health office this Jesse is our new health Tech our new health assistance uh she works under our nurse delegator to provide care to assess students Miss Jesse is on-site Monday through Friday at access working the students and Families so what do parents need to do to make sure their students stay safe and healthy at access so we ask that you keep health forms up to date um most of you by now hopefully have filled out your student health entrance form uh but things can change very quickly with students we ask you to let the school know of any changes or new diagnosis or medications or any other important health information throughout the year if there is an update you receive from your primary care provider please share it with Miss Jessie or the school so that we can best keep your students safe and healthy disclose any and all medications that are coming to school this is an absolute my students may not self-care medications into the school without prior authorization from Miss Jesse in our nurse delegator please contact the front office or Miss Jesse if your student will be bringing any medication to school for any reason that includes cough drops that includes skin creams anything proactive communication Miss Jesse will alert parents to student illnesses and any health office visits think on the head uh scrape knees via phone and or email so please watch for those Communications from the school communication school to family so this slide talks a little bit about what you is the family can expect in terms of communication coming from school to you uh so the first way that we communicate with families is through Infinite Campus that's our official system of record it has the parent portal this is how we communicate with parents also in case of emergency so when we send a text message or an email directly to your inbox we're using Infinite Campus to do so this means that you are responsible for keeping your contact contact information up-to-date so that we can reach you another way we communicate is to classroom newsletters so weekly schoolwide newsletters are emailed and texted out on Fridays that's for everyone in the school classroom newsletters go out weekly or bi-weekly depending on student grade level for a younger students those go out weekly kind of fourth fifth grade those will come every other week from both the partner language and English classroom teachers to let you know what students are doing in class if there's a coming up tests all of those classroom communication pieces will be in that newsletter they will be sent from your teacher's email to you other ways we communicate with family uh we do put General announcements and updates on events and those can be found on our Facebook and Instagram Pages again we do direct text and email um when a message is important and time-sensitive and again you just need to keep your information up to date and Infinite Campus so we can share those things with you and finally we do coffee talks Miss Jenny and the administrative team um have a coffee talk monthly to chat and share um any questions or concerns so parents can bring any questions or concerns those meetings each month uh Jenny and the team feature a different presentation so they do some on Behavior policies facilities academics volunteer opportunities Etc so uh you will get messages about when those are scheduled throughout the year there are roughly monthly and that's a great way to communicate with school all right communication family to school so how do you contact 1 way to contact teachers is to email are not available by phone during the day as they are typically teaching uh and you will get your teacher emails when you come to Sweet start to school social um they're also available to you in your registration materials but if you're not sure who to contact with an non-urgent question um like you're not sure where it fits or who does it email info at access colorado.org that's a shared inbox and our front office team monitors it daily and they can send your question wherever it's appropriate to so don't ever not ask because you're not sure who to ask always feel free to send a question there also if there's a time-sensitive matter we urge you to call the school directly we answer whenever we can sometimes we're on the line with a different parent please leave a voicemail we do check those so our main line number is 970-658-4199 so when in doubt if it's urgent or time sensitive please just call us so something not going well with your experience or ask with access or with your student uh please tell us either via email or phone please communicate we do want to know if things are not going well or something's not working for your family we can't help you out if we don't know what's going on so please please feel free to engage in that proactive communication is something going really well please give a shout out um The Weekly schoolwide Newsletter will feature a link to our access staff shout out form this is where you can leave glowing reviews and positive notes for our staff and faculty this is a really nice feature and um it's something that our teachers really enjoy so there's something you really want to give someone a pat on the back for this is a great way to do it all right before and after school care with alphabest alphabets now runs the before and after school programs at axis both programs are offered on-site at our school families must register for alphabest separately from access so you must register with them before you attend their before after programs and they are separate from us there is an annual registration fee per family and you'll want to visit access colorado.org alphabest for registration info this will be posted on your QuickStart website as files so you can always click a link for alphabest alphabest also offers um before and after school care as well as um care during school breaks so these may or may not be on site at a was depending on how many students sign up but that is new for us uh it used to be that when we were closed for break the school was just closed and Now alphabest is offering um camps and care to our students on those days access enrich what is access enrich after school classes offered through vetted Community partner organizations these are fee-based after-school activities that cover a wide range of topics and so some examples of these are yoga classes dance classes Science Matters in America Lego robotics Taekwondo Mighty kick soccer Artisan you and more so there's lots of different organizations that come in and run after school school programs uh they are fee-based you do not have to pay for aftercare and enriched as long as you'll be picking your student up these programs tend to run till around 4:15 p.m. so if you're going to be arriving to pick your student up by then you don't need to double pay for enriched and then also for um after care so as you can see there are 3 enriched sessions throughout the year so there's 3 different times to register and take classes so students can try different activities throughout the year and the registration for the first session of enriched won't open until around the 2nd week of the school year so you'll get a lot of messaging before sign up opens about what's available and how to sign up on our website but do look for those proactive Communications if you're wanting to sign your student up for after school enriched classes all right last slide schoolwide assembly so we do have schoolwide assemblies throughout the year this year is going to be a little tricky as our building is uh going to be going through some remodeling that impacts what we usually do here uh so the first type of assembly we have is uh for 3 RS do to a point so you will hear your students talk about teachers using points uh for the 3rs which are respect relationships and responsibilities so those are our classroom pillars and access and our teachers reinforce that and reinforce positive class Behavior by giving what we call dojo points and points are only given to students and they're only given to students as a group so students can't lose these points they just earn the point daily or they don't earn the point um and so at the end of a 6 week period will tally up what different classrooms have achieved in terms of dojo points and we use that to sort of celebrate positive behavior so that results in something called a 3 hours Dojo party so we host an all school assembly to celebrate our top scoring classrooms and dance to songs chosen by classrooms who win the 3rs dojo Point drawing um and so we will be probably doing this via Zoom this year because the auditorium is being remodeled but this is a really fun way for students to celebrate positive behavior so the other type of schoolwide assembly we do at axis is a language showcase this is a big deal because parents are very much invited into the school for these language showcases um our 3 partner language departments French Mandarin and Spanish take turns hosting student performances during these Pro excuse me during these performances um students of all grade levels share skits songs and dances Incorporated their partner language skills parent receptions before each of these performances we invite parents to join us for a family reception for its coffees and pastries at school these are for parents of the students who will be performing that day this is a great opportunity to get to know other families in the same partner language program as you and your student so these language showcase performances usually happen throughout the school year because of the remodeling happening in the audit torium these will all take place in Spring of this year so please watch out you will get notifications of when those are coming that concludes our elementary Basics video um thank you for watching and if you have any questions please feel free to email or call the school
