The Pulse of the Pride

Lyme School Friends,

Happy 2023! It is nice to be back at school and back into our routines. Unfortunately, our weather has not been typical of this time of year. We thought it would be prudent to remind folks about ensuring students have clean sneakers at school to use the gym especially when it is wet, rainy, or snowy.

Leading into our December Break, we had a special day before we departed called our Winter Solstice Celebration. This was an opportunity for students across grade levels to both work and play together. Under the direction of Counselor Stanton, students were split into groups and participated in activities led by our oldest students. It was a resounding success and a nice return of an event where we were able to participate as an entire community.

Ski Program Update: With the hope of snow, many of our students will be participating in the ski program on Thursdays through the recreation department. On those Thursdays, we will dismiss the skiers at 1:30 PM. Everyone else will be dismissed at our normal 2 PM time. Please understand that there are a lot of moving parts getting our students ready and on the buses. If a student is signed up for the program, we will ensure the student gets out to the buses to the skiway unless we hear from a parent to change plans.

Please remember that on Monday, January 16th there is no school.

The next Pulse will hit your inbox in two weeks. Have a fantastic weekend and happy 2023!

John P. D'Entremont, Principal

1/16 - No School

1/20 - Middle School Activity Night Rescheduled

2/20 - 2/24 - No School/February Break

The Lyme School Apparel Store has a variety of apparel and accessories all customizable with a variety of school logos. The Lyme School PTO earns 12% of all sales. Thank you for supporting our school and go Lions! #LYMESCHOOLROCKS

On behalf of all of the middle school advisories, we would like to thank all the families and friends in our community for their generosity during our food drive for The Haven and our coat drive for the LISTEN Center.

Your kindness is much appreciated and we are grateful for the numerous and continuous donations that were received throughout the drive.

Wishing you all a wonderful new year with much gratitude.

Facilitator: Inas Khayal, Ph.D. (ikhayal@gmail.com)

Co-Facilitator: Brian Betournay (bbetournay@lymeschool.org)

What is Girls Who Code?

Girls Who Code is a not-for-profit international organization on a mission to close the gender

gap in technology and to change the image of what a programmer looks like and does.

This introductory session will be open to Lyme girls in 3rd – 5th grade. Club members read and

discuss one of the Girls Who Code’s best-selling books and complete creative challenges.

To learn more, check out girlswhocode.com.

Why join the Girls Who Code Club?

Why not? But also, to increase sisterhood and learn what you can do with code. Besides

learning to code, we plan on cultivating bravery (be bold and take risks), resilience (learn from

setbacks and keep trying), creativity (seek new ideas and create new solutions), and purpose

(know what matters to you and how you want to impact your world). Fun Fact: The world’s

first computer program was written by a woman—Ada Lovelace in 1843!

When is it?

Our introductory session will be on Fridays, February 3rd – March 17th, from 3—4:15 pm

(excluding February break) in the Design Lab. Everything needed will be provided during the

club session.

Who am I?

I am Amina and Ayah’s mom. I am also a teacher, an engineer, a computer scientist, a health

services researcher, and a professor. In other words, I solve healthcare problems with code! I

believe the curiosity for solving problems with technology should be cultivated at this young

age.

Please reach out to Brian and me to gauge interest.

Kati Miller RN BSN: Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri

Matthew Greenway RN BSN: alternating Weds and coverage as needed

Celeste McCool RN BSN: alternating Weds and coverage as needed

We continue to experience elevated sickness among both staff and students. We are doing our best to keep everyone healthy.

Please remember to:

• Wash hands frequently with soap and water.
• Clean/disinfect commonly used surfaces.
• Avoid touching our eyes, nose and mouth.
• Keep a good bedtime routine and get plenty of sleep.
• Be physically active every day.
• Spend time outdoors every day.
• Find ways to manage your stress that work for you.
• Drink plenty of fluids (water).
• Eat nutritious foods at every meal.

Each evening our building is cleaned and we continue to disinfect surfaces around the school.

If your child is experiencing symptoms, please test for COVID. If a person is not positive but has any symptoms, we kindly request a mask.

Thank you so much for your partnership in keeping us all healthy.

Hello, Happy New Year and and welcome back, Lyme Families!

Hope everyone’s breaks were fun and restful. Exciting news - We’ll be welcoming Meredith (Merry) Richter, a current Plymouth State University School Counseling program student, to the Lyme School as she completes her internship for her Master’s Program. Merry has a robust background in education and youth development from her camp counselor and camp administration experience as well as teaching in private school. She also operates her own tutoring and college prep program. We are thrilled to have her join our wonderful community and be a part of her school counselor journey.

Winter Solstice Wrap-Up!

Our winter multi-age event before break was a major success! Students spent the morning reading winter books together, playing soccer, corn hole, twister, and other movement activities in the gym. They enjoyed cookies and free play outside, tried their hands at some marshmallow “ski ball”, created some beautiful winter crafts, and competed in some tricky winter trivia. A huge kudos to our middle school students who facilitated the activities as well as lead our multiage groups. They did a commendable job at ensuring that students kindergarten through 5th grade were engaged, felt comfortable, and knew where to go as they were navigating new people, spaces, and experiences. I wish families could have been flies on our walls as it was truly heartwarming to see these big kids connecting and playing with our lower school students. This was also a chance for staff to connect with colleagues that they don’t regularly see. Our last multiage event was back in 2019 and we are so grateful we could finally connect and play as a whole community once again. Thank you to everyone who made this day such a success!

Welcome back and Happy 2023,

This is an exciting time of year, when many students and classes across grade levels and subject areas are delving further into research and inquiry. Inquiry-based learning increases student engagement by nurturing curiosity and excitement about topics, often topics chosen by students. When we use an inquiry-based approach, students get to be in charge of their learning more than traditional teaching models. Teachers guide students through research as they both pose and answer their own questions. We provide curated resources and materials matched to their grade level and targeted lessons on technology tools to share their learning with peers, teachers, families, and potentially their community and beyond.

Just a few of the projects on the horizon are an inquiry into states of matter in Kindergarten, local animals and their survival in first grade, Native Alaskan culture in fourth grade, a diverse author study in fifth grade, the Columbian exchange in sixth grade, and individuals who push boundaries/innovation in seventh grade. Students will delve into research resources, both print and digital, to explore these topics. We model many parts of the process, including skills related to searching for information based on grade level. Students will take notes, ask questions, share their learning, receive feedback, explore more, and share with a variety of final products. Stay tuned for infographics, podcasts, videos, and more!

How can you support your child’s inquiry at home?

• Be aware of your child’s interests and curiosities, and give them a nudge to question and find out more.

• Listen to podcasts to support their curiosities. But Why? A Podcast for Curious Kids is an incredible source of questions and answers to spark curiosities.

• Encourage children to ask their own questions and follow up questions about topics.

• Make observations and pose your own wonderings out loud.

• Read! Visit the library! There are so many topics to explore.

In other news, check out these resources for families from Ms. Judy:

Martin Luther King, Jr. materials (includes video: DVDs and Kanopy)

Winter Reading ideas

The Lyme School is proud to have had an elementary Spanish language program in place for 14 years now. Our K-8 program is based on three foundational principles: 1) the neurological capacity to speak multiple languages is determined early in child development, 2) the brain is most receptive to learning while at play, 3) the process of learning a second language is most effective when it parallels the patterns of how we naturally learn our native language.

For these reasons in K-8 Spanish, we use the “Comprehensible Input” method of instruction which emphasizes a developmental approach to the acquisition of a new language. Acquiring a language is something that happens to you instead of something that you make happen. When you learned how to speak your first language, you acquired it naturally by listening to other people speak it around you for a long time; not by studying it. Our caregivers repeated words and phrases used often in daily life (high-frequency words) and we learned to recognize these words and phrases and responded to these “comprehensible inputs” long before we could actually speak the words and phrases. In the same manner, our K-8 students experience Spanish language acquisition, similar to how they learned to speak their first language at home with their parents. Therefore, almost all of our class time will be spent using Spanish--not using English to talk about Spanish.

In Kindergarten through 5th grades, we use the high-frequency words and phrases along with motions to help students build their listening comprehension in Spanish. Students quickly recognize and understand the many words and phrases they hear their teacher use. We use these words and phrases to make up stories in class, which we then use to make videos and little books. The stories serve as the backbone and focus of the class, and interwoven throughout each class are games, songs, mini-stories, and other activities designed to build listening comprehension and beginning spoken vocabulary. We believe strong listening comprehension skills are an important foundation for acquiring a new language.

In the Middle School, we continue to focus our class time on the acquisition of high-frequency structures, and we use these structures in class discussions, stories we read, and cultural explorations. We incorporate all four language modalities: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. We continue to take in lots of comprehensible input in the form of reading and listening to a variety of Spanish-language sources. We also take more time to point out grammatical concepts that have already been acquired throughout the program, and we ask students to give more attention to these grammar points as they begin to produce more of their own output in the language. The welcoming, low-stress environment invites students to comfortably take chances writing and speaking in Spanish, incorporating grammar rules, and ultimately increasing students’ accuracy. The goal of the Middle School program is to prepare students for high school Spanish.

The K-8 Spanish program strives to get students excited about learning Spanish and to recognize the benefits that come with knowing another language. We hope that all students become life-long learners who are prepared to communicate in the real world.

**The program description above was written by Tom Harkins and Mo Chandler, our K-8 Spanish teachers.**

Pictured below - Teachers gathering January 5th to go over our school-wide writing goals and sharing our writing sample results across grade levels.

Auditions for James and the Giant Peach Jr. are next week! Any middle schooler interested for a main cast role has been given resources to sign up. Auditions will be seen by a casting committee and the cast list will be posted Friday, January 20th. Break a leg everyone!

SAVE THE DATE!! This year, the middle school will be presenting Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach JR. More information about the show will be presented to students later this month. For now, please put March 17th and 18th (Friday and Saturday) into your calendars for show dates!

As we enter the new year, students in the primary grades are continuing their work using their eyes and hands as a team ( eye-hand coordination). This work is being coupled with the manipulative skill of striking at a low level.

Students have been using soft foam sticks and soft foam balls to move in general space, keeping their ball in control using a "guiding hand" and a "power hand". Their efforts are impressive and commendable as navigating these combined skills can be challenging.

Our middle schoolers are hard at work using clay and painting in their Art Electives.

Next Meeting January 10, 2023 7PM.

Lyme School PTO Meeting Link:
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/hqd-ixad-cri
Or dial: ‪(US) +1 407-545-7995‬ PIN: ‪522 319 072‬#

The next Board meeting is Thursday, January 12th at 7 PM at the Lyme School.

ALL Together has Elementary and Middle/High School Parent Handbooks available free of charge.

These handbooks are a practical guide for parents, guardians, and others who interact with youth and addresses today's toughest issues.

The Elementary edition: "Raising kids isn’t easy, start the journey off on the right foot. Cell phones, social media, anxiety and even issues with alcohol and drugs are starting earlier than ever. Learn how to set boundaries and keep your child safe."

The Middle/High School edition: "This edition of our Parent Handbook addresses some of the toughest issues affecting today’s parents and their teens. This resource will raise awareness immediately and educate readers on the latest trends, misconceptions and warning signs associated with each issue. This handbook is being used to help prevent issues such as addiction, violence and suicide across the United States."

Please fill out this form if you are interested in a FREE handbook.

OUR VALUES

● Fairness ● Acceptance of Others ● Integrity ● Responsibility

● Perseverance ● Individuality ● Compassion ● Courage

John P. D'Entremont, Principal

Elise Foxall, Academic Director

Geoff Tomlinson, Student Services Director