Weekly Newsletter

This program is open to all students currently enrolled in the Mohawk Trail Regional School District in grades K-6.

Use this LINK for the enrollment form.

March is National Literacy Month and we were fortunate to start our week with a guest reader, Chief Bezio. She read, Little Cloud, by one of our favorite authors and illustrators, Eric Carle. Preschoolers were very excited and interested in the story and loved sharing about the shapes they noticed in the clouds. We are also enjoying Dr. Suess' books in recognition of his birthday earlier this month. We are learning about him, his use of silly words and rhymes, and his creation of interesting characters and creatures.

This week we have been enjoying our outdoor classroom with the beautiful weather. We took a nice long walk with our buddies and listened to the birds along the way.

This week in our social skills program, we reviewed the list we had made earlier of body signals and tricky situations that warn us that an uncomfortable yellow zone may be coming on. Then we played a game called “Stop, Opt, Go” where I told a story about a situation from their list and the kids said “stop” in sign language at the moment when they would start feeling uncomfortable if it was happening in real life. Then they used their toolboxes that we made last week to select (“opt”) which strategy would be helpful to them in that situation. And then in real life, they would “go” do the strategy, but in our game, we just played again with a new scenario.

In the month of March our number corner has first graders focusing on time and money. Each calendar collector day shows us a different time and first graders are working on identifying what time it is and also how much time has passed since the beginning of March (on our calendar) Each day moves forward by 30 minutes, 1 hour and sometimes even 2 hours. First graders are also getting quicker with identifying pennies, nickels and dimes as well as spinning to collect coins and count up totals at the end of the week. In our daily core math lessons, we are using unifix cubes to help us visualize and create equations that add up to 6 and 7 and also introducing the commutative property of addition, which helps children understand that 3+4 and 4+3 both equal 7. Students are also focusing on various ways to represent one number, for example 6+1, 5+2 and 3+4 are all ways to make 7.

In Fundations we have begun our next unit which has children learning four more glued sounds -ang, -ing, -ung and -ong. These glued sounds make words like fang,ring,lung and song. Children begin to quickly see that all they have to do is change the beginning sound to make a new word, like fang to bang or song or long.

Third graders will soon be getting prepared for taking their first-ever ELA MCAS. We are scheduled to take them on April 3rd and 4th. We will be sharing more information with students as the dates get closer. As these tests can take all day for third graders, please make sure you do not have any plans for your child to be coming in late or leaving early on those two days. Further down the road, third graders will be taking the Math MCAS on May 14th and 16th, so those day’s schedules also need to be cleared.

With MCAS coming up we are amping up our focus on learning to type. It will be important for third graders to communicate their learning through typing as the MCAS are taken on computers. This week we sent home login cards for the Typing Club website. Your child is welcome to log in at home anytime and continue to practice as much as you’d like them to.

In writing this week students created a five-sentence informational paragraph about why amphibians need water. They are also typing and illustrating their paragraphs.

We are in need of a parent volunteer who would be willing to come to school and help fix a fence post in our garden. The years of freezing and thawing have pushed up one of our posts, and it will need to be dug up and set straight with some new cement. If you are willing to come help with this project, please reach out to Ms. Carole directly. Thank you!

National Literacy Month continues! Here are some events and updates to know:

• BOOK FAIR - The Book Fair is next week, March 18 - 22! Notices will be sent home today indicating which day your child’s class will visit the fair during school hours. The fair will also be open during conferences. We would love to see you there!

• GUEST READERS - Pre-schoolers have enjoyed read-alouds from local teacher/artist Lori Austen and Chief Bezio, while 6th graders had the pleasure of welcoming Satch from Ashfield Hardware. More exciting visits to come!

• AUTHOR VISIT - On March 26th, Pre-K - 3rd grade students will enjoy a visit from local author Prudence Marsh, who will share her new book, Pippa and the Lost Paintings.

• BINGO CHALLENGE - Students are doing great with the bingo challenge…keep it up! Remember, families can work together on this at home!

• BATTLE OF THE BOOKS - This week we are reading and voting on two legends: Ancient Night by David Alvarez, a pourquoi tale about the sun and moon from Central America. The other is Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, and Jow Wilson, about the ancient Mahu healers of Waikiki. So far, they are tied….first and second graders will have the deciding vote!

Take a look at this picture. These are called pattern blocks. They are tools/manipulatives that can be used for many kinds of mathematical thinking including counting, shapes, and fractions. What do you notice? What do you wonder? How many shapes do you see? Email me your thoughts! :) aprew@mtrsd.org