New School Year, Same Sierra

This school year was new to everyone! New campuses, new students and a new schedule. With so many changes it came as no surprise that our students were taken aback by the new structure of Sierra Schools. We quickly implemented our rotation schedules with consistency, this was met with challenges but now only three months in our students are more successful than ever.

High School Update
At Livermore High School, students are responding well to incentives and structure. Friday pizza parties are especially fun and weekly incentives keep students coming daily. The addition of our on site therapist Mrs. Rosy has helped the students be more open and work on social skills that previous placements did not focus on. We are seeing our students form bonds with each other and it has become more of a family environment.

Elementary School Update
At Lawrence Elementary students have more of an individualized schedule as they require different needs to be met. Students are responding increasingly well to positive reinforcement and incentives. Our wiggle worms are always on the move and keep our staff moving as well. Being on a district campus allows for more opportunities for our students to be included in events and integration. They look forward to library visits and the support dogs that come weekly for a visit. Students are taking advantage of the student store and work hard in rotations to finish their work and save up their Sierra Dollars!

Events:
September:

High school College fair. Students had the opportunity to attend the college fair at Livermore High and learn about different colleges, trade schools and military service.
High school spirit week. Spirit week was TV show themed and both staff and students had fun judging the acts put on by each class.
High school Homecoming rally. The rally was exciting for our students who participated. They were able to watch the skits performed by king and queen nominees and ended the day watching a bellyflop contest.
Elementary school had a space week where the students were able to create their own sensory bottles mimicking the solar system
Elementary school also had an electronics week where students learned about batteries and power and were able to make their own robot costumes.
We celebrated a students birthday with a trained theme party, students participated in making a human train and got to learn about moving objects.

October:

The highlight of October at Livermore High was definitely our classroom Halloween party! In preparation students carved pumpkins with staff. We had a nacho bar and after finishing school work students enjoyed a spooky movie in our lantern lit classroom.
Throughout the week of October our Elementary kids did many spooky activities including wrapping themselves as mummies, pumpkin painting, and making pumpkin slime. We were so excited to have parents join us at our Halloween party where out kids trick or treated around the classroom and participated in different stations like bobbing for apples, slime creations and donut on a string.

Whats to come:

As we wrap up our first trimester at both schools we look forward to the next steps for our students at Sierra School. Our high school students are integrating more and more and have already begun to look at electives on campus for the next trimesters. Many of our students are interested in art, computer sciences and drama. We cannot wait to see their accomplishments in main stream classes!

Our Elementary students are on the same path. We are seeing more and more interest in social studies and science and the district classes provide classes with fun experiments in classrooms. We are hoping to plan 2-3 field trips in the upcoming months as our students are earning greater and greater incentives.