Schofield Scoop

Spring forward officially happened Saturday night. I am looking forward to more outside time after school, and I think my pooches are too! So much has happened since our last 'Scoop - World Kindness Day, sharing nice notes and Valentines, Winter Vacation, and we roared into March with Read Across America week. Many many thanks to Amy Tierney, our reading coach, for bringing in some amazing guest readers and planning the whole week of fun literacy activities. Students and staff had a wonderful time celebrating Forestdale's love of reading.

On our March calendar below you will see that the busy fun and learning continues. Upcoming, we have Specialist Night (including a chorus concert!), parent/teacher conferences, and tours for incoming Kindergarten families to name a few. We also will close our Term 2 and report cards will be emailed home.

Enjoy the photos of these last few weeks of school. I enjoy taking them, and sharing them with you.

Kara Schofield, Assistant Principal

These amazing bus riders continue to be kind friends, respectful riders, and role model student bus riders. Thank you for all the wonderful things you continue to do on the bus, making the ride to and from school such an enjoyable event every day. Keep up the great work!

Whole group, or large group instruction is the more traditional learning style that may be familiar. In these learning situations, the teacher is giving the same instruction to the large group or whole group, so all students are given the same information at the same time. These instructional groups take often take place with phonics, phonemic awareness, read alouds, when introducing new math concepts or when giving instructions for independent work. Students typically work in large groups daily, but it is not the entire structure of their learning throughout the day.

Small group instruction takes place in every classroom in Forestdale and can occur in a variety of ways. Teachers and staff work with groups of a few students at a time while other students are busy working with other staff or on independent tasks. Small group instruction allows students to have close and frequent interaction during the learning opportunity, allowing them to fully engage in and understand the instruction taking place. These groups are for all learners, in all academic levels. Each student benefits from this type of instruction that we utilize daily here at Forestdale.

This is the time that students can work independently on their learning tasks, or with a small group of student led students. Children can express their learning and thinking, and others can learn from them sharing! This is a format also used in daily learning for our Forestdale students.

These Kindergarten students are busy planning, creating, building and testing spinning tops. Using their choice of connectors and rods, students create tops that spin and showcase their creations for their classmates. This is one of my favorite Mrs. Beers' science classes, as you can see students working through their difficult building problem, helping each other, and hear the loud shrieks of excitement from the scientists when success occurs.

Share feedback here: kschofield@sandwich.k12.ma.us Thanks for all your great suggestions and ideas.