Within these pages, you find information about our teachers, curriculum, links to online resources, and general parent information. If you do not find what you are looking for please contact the elementary office at 970-626-5468.

Approximately 150 students attend RES. There are two class sections of preschool and one section for kindergarten through fifth grade. Our class sizes are small, allowing for great attention to each student.

Our staff is comprised of 20 professionally licensed teachers, 5 paraprofessionals, 1 support staff and 1 office manager. We have a HIGHLY TALENTED STAFF who are committed to improving their practice each and every year. Please click on the Teacher Button on the left to learn more. 

RES received the JOHN IRWIN SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE AWARD. This was accomplished by our excellent teachers working together to implement a meaningful, consistent curriculum based on the Colorado Academic Standards. 

RES Highlights:

• Counselors - Sharon Brown is the counselor at RES.  We are fortunate to have a counselor support our students' needs and teach important social-emotional, health, and student safety lessons in our K-5 classrooms. 

• Specials Classes- Our students are offered a wide variety of specials classes each week.  Students participate in two music, two art, two media/technology, one SEL- Social Emotional Learning, two PE, and one SOAR class.

• Playground - Recently, we celebrated the opening of our newly remodeled playground. Thanks to many parent volunteers, GOCO grant funds, and leader extraordinaire Danika Gilbert, the playground came to life. Our playground includes a soccer field, zipline area, a four-square court, a basketball court, climbing wall, swings, play structure, and natural green space for our children. 

• Outdoor and Experiential Education (ODEE) continues to be a district goal. we are proud to offer our students the opportunity to connect with nature, local resources, and regional learning opportunities with a minimum of one ODEE trip per year. Our teachers continue to refine the curricular integration of each ODEE trip to make these experiences as rich as possible for our students. 

• The preschool has been teaching the Pyramid Social-Emotional Curriculum for five years. This program is such an incredible success that is now used in Ouray, Ridgway, Telluride, Norwood, Nucla, Naturita, and Paradox preschools. This is the most age-appropriate and common-sense way to teach our youngest students how to ask for help, initiate play, solve their own problems and develop friendships.  

Curriculum:

Bridges Math Program: Teachers are highly invested in this program and appreciate the hands-on nature.  Students are required to do much more thinking and writing about the math processes they use (rather than memorizing the steps of division or multiplication). This approach is reflected in the Colorado Academic Standards and in our state assessments. 

One of the most important things parents can do is shine a spotlight and the many ways you use math in a given day. Working with money, computers, playing games, shopping, planning your day, trips, etc. We encourage you to talk more with your kids about numbers and to find fun ways to give your child more practice with building their number sense. Playing family games and working with money are two easy ways to begin. 

Reading is one of the most important skills we teach in elementary school. We have two goals in mind when teaching reading. The first is to make sure all students can independently read and comprehend grade level material. The second goal is to help students develop a love of reading. The only way to do this is by providing consistent, uninterrupted time for students to read books that they have selected every single day. Each year our classroom libraries grow to ensure we have a variety of books for students. Once reading becomes "fun" for students, they are on their way to becoming great readers and a great student.  Our goals can be reached when parents help provide quiet reading time at home on a regular basis.

RES has adopted a Comprehensive English Language Arts Curriculum K-5 starting in the 2022-2023 school year. Collaborative Literacy from Collaborative Classroom will be our program for teaching reading and writing.

Parent volunteers are encouraged at RES. Teachers often ask for parent volunteers to read with students, help in the library and attend field trips. We have a very thorough screening process for school volunteers just as we do for school employees.