Dewing Update

Each month we offer a newsletter that adults and children can use together at home. It's full of fun and interesting ways to talk about reading. See September's edition, attached here.

September 2019

Dear Parents,

Welcome to the 2019-2020 school year! Hope everyone had a great summer! My name is Ms. Higgins and I will be your child’s physical education teacher. Physical education is a key component to a child’s overall health. It is a fact that physical activity positively impacts a child’s achievements in school. The goal of our physical education program is to improve students’ personal fitness and motor skills by providing developmentally appropriate activities through purposeful, creative, and enjoyable instruction. We will be incorporating some various health and wellness aspects as well. This enables students to develop a positive attitude toward physical activity and to develop healthy habits at a young age, which will then hopefully continue throughout their lives.

Safety is of utmost importance. For your child’s safety as well as the liability involved, your child will not be allowed to participate in physical education without proper footwear. Children who wear any type of boots, dress shoes, crocs, sandals, flip flops, or slip on sneakers without full back support will not be allowed to participate that day. Sneakers with laces and a grip bottom are preferred. Coming prepared to class with proper footwear and appropriate clothing counts toward your child’s physical education grade. The children are also graded on effort, attitude, behavior, teamwork, sportsmanship, and how well they treat and show respect to others and the equipment we use. You child will not be graded on his/her ability level. Some activities we do inherently involve some competition, however, due to the varying ability levels of the children, the competitive aspect is down played. I want this to be a positive experience for everyone. Children who become too competitive or aggressive will be removed from the activity therefore potentially impacting his/her grade. There is a time and a place for more competitive activity. The town offers a wide variety of programs to foster this type of play. I would be more than happy to get you connected to the right people if you need more information about that.

If your child is unable to participate in physical education, please write a note to excuse him/her. A doctor’s note will be required if your child has to miss more than one class for the same sickness or injury. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, concerns, or would like to set up a conference. My email address is jhiggins@tewksbury.k12.ma.us. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. I’m looking forward to a great year!

Sincerely,

Ms. Higgins

from Mrs. Bosworth:

On Tuesday Oct 1, we began to divide our first-grade classes into two different groups for recess (3 classes and 4 classes). Our play areas can get crowded with seven first grade classes so we figured out a way to find more space! At the same time, we have the opportunity to access even more of our wonderful outside spaces. Going forward, our first-grade classes will rotate each day between the B-Wing playground area and the A-Wing basketball/grass/sand area. We discussed this with each classroom and the kids were happy to point out that we were using A/B patterns!

We are working to have four square and hopscotch stencils painted on the ground and our goal is to create another playground area for our wonderful students. Once our grade 1 students have had time to adjust to the change, we will consider a similar model for Kindergarten and second-grade students.

Our first day was great! Students had a lot of fun and there were many smiles on the way in.

Email: tgerrish@tewksbury.k12.ma.us
Website: www.tewskbury.k12.ma.us/dewing
Location: 1469 Andover Street, Tewksbury, MA, USA
Phone: (978) 640-7858
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dewing-Elementary-School-1695616993992832/?eid=ARCGV8yMcxvymrGEjxg74fcqt1JGqoIZLj1ZB4I7dd9eN5j06J5jgpI7CQ0aAPEVfyEPyfAed5ABp_af
Twitter: @Dewing_tps