I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones. Trimester 1 flew by and Trimester 2 began on December 2nd! Teachers are currently preparing report cards, which will be available for parents via Skyward on December 6th at 3:00 p.m.. Directions for accessing report cards can be found below. In the meantime, please reach out with any questions.

Steere Farm Elementary continues to prioritize giving back to our greater community. Thank you to all who donated to our Thanksgiving Food Drive. Through your generosity, we were able to provide food baskets to SFE families! In addition, SFE staff members are contributing to holiday support in partnership with Between the Cracks, an organization supporting our local families. Thank you for your continued support! SFE is a special place.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Courtney Francis

School attendance is a powerful predictor of student outcomes. Rhode Island defines chronic absenteeism as the percentage of students who miss 10% or more of school days during the year (or two days per month). As of right now at SFE, about 11% of our student population on track to be chronically absent this school year. Let's continue to work together to keep this number under 10%!

Check out the staggering statistics below. Attendance matters!

Our School Improvement Team met in October to review our 2023-2024 School Improvement Plan (below) and discuss action steps. Our meeting agenda and minutes can be found below. Our next meeting will take place in January!

Students will continue to have outdoor recess, weather permitting, throughout the winter. Please ensure your child is dressed for these conditions, and have a coat, hat and gloves in their backpack. When it snows, students who bring in proper gear (snow pants, boots, gloves, etc.) are permitted to play in the snow!

RI Special Needs Emergency Registry:

Enrolling in the Rhode Island Special Needs Emergency Registry (RISNER) lets police, fire, and other first responders in your community better prepare for and respond to your needs during a hurricane, storm, or other emergency.

Many people may need extra help during a time of emergency, including people who:

• Use life support systems such as oxygen, respirator, ventilator, dialysis, pacemaker, or who have chronic conditions and require treatment (e.g., have diabetes and require insulin);
• Have mobility needs and use a wheelchair, scooter, walker, cane, or other mobility device;
• Are visually impaired, blind, hard of hearing, or Deaf;
• Have speech, cognitive, developmental or behavioral health disabilities; or
• Use assistive animals or a prosthesis.

Each month SFE recognizes students who have gone above and beyond to show their 3Rs: Respectful, Responsible and Ready to Learn! Students are nominated by their classroom and/or special subject teachers. Congratulations to our November recipients!

This month we will kick off our second year of awarding a Teacher of the Month! Teachers are nominated by students, who were extremely thoughtful about their nominations! We look forward to providing this opportunity for students to celebrate a teacher monthly! Congratulation to Mrs. Cournoyer, our behavior specialist, for being honored as the November Teacher of the Month!

We are excited to continue Toodle Tickets this year! Students are invited to fill out a Toodle Ticket to give a special shout out to another student who was kind or helpful. At the end of every month, Toodle Tickets are chosen from grades 2-5. These students are then invited to have a special popsicle with Mrs. Francis. Check out the pictures below from our most recent Pops with the Principal!

Students continue to participate in a weekly lesson rooted in one of the four Units: Courage, Gratitude, Forgiveness and Compassion in Action; all part of the Choose Love Formula. This month students are continuing to learn all about gratitude.

A copy of the Choose Love calendar was sent home to all families. We hope the calendar is a daily reminder of the small steps we can take daily to Choose Love at home!

This month, the students in the multiage classroom have been learning about families and being thankful and kind through a variety of social studies lessons. We worked on expanding our writing tasks and had discussions about how families are the same and different. We have been working on our kindness in the classroom with our school family, as well as learning how we can be kind and helpful to others in need. We collected, sorted, counted and organized 13 food baskets for Thanksgiving and Christmas, after another successful food drive at Steere Farm.

Grade 2 students are working cooperatively during reading. Students are learning how to think through learning challenges while analyzing point of view and elements of a drama.

In third grade, we practiced problem solving by focusing on thinking routines. We used graphic

organizers and the CUBES strategy to tackle our problem. Students were challenged with the

task of creating a bridge. They were given a specific set of criteria and had to work in groups of

3-4. They had to build the longest bridge possible with 2 cups, 2 elastics, 1 foot of masking tape,

and one piece of copy paper. The bridge had to stand on its own and they had to show their

problem solving strategies on a planning and reflection document. Students had to work well with

their team, by listening and sharing their ideas. They showed great perseverance!

Grade 4 recently enjoyed a field trip to the Audubon Society where they did some soil testing, looked at how the land has shaped over time, and built mini villages to withstand water events! It was a great hands on learning experience!

The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation and RI School Recycling Project staff visited SFE to introduce composting and a shared table/cooler into lunchtime clean-up and sorting practices.

With the help of newly trained SFE Junior Rangers, students have quickly picked-up ways to reduce their impact on the environment and specifically the RIRRC Johnston site. We also have a "share fridge" to reduce food waste and allow students to safely share unopened, packaged food items.

Currently, Steere Farm has reduced the cafeteria trash going to the landfill by 79%!!! The recycling has doubled and the amount of good food not going into the landfill is remarkable. Steere Farm will have 495 less bags of trash going to the landfill every school year. Keep up the great work!

SFE students and staff started their Friday with high fives twice in the month of November - once with the BHS girls volleyball team and then again with the BHS football team right before their Super Bowl! It is the best way to start the day!

Grade 2 students listened to the story, Balloons Over Broadway, designed their own balloons, and showed off their creations in the Balloons Over Steere Farm parade!

Back by popular demand, the classroom that brought in the most amount of items for our food drive chose the beard design for some of our male teachers! Kudos to Mrs. Barr's class for winning and to our teachers for being good sports!

Mrs. Adams' literacy group is off to a great start! These students were selected to be part of a weekly enrichment group based on their work ethic and high academic achievement scores. Students most recently worked on creating their own poems and some chose to share them with the school during morning announcements! Well done!

The Steere Farm and Callahan Elementary School choruses combined to provide a holiday concert in downtown Pascoag! This was part of the annual Victorian Holiday event. Our fourth and fifth graders, led by Mr. Latendresse and Mrs. Brown, brought a lot of holiday cheer to our community and did a wonderful job!

The next PTA meeting will be Monday, December 9th at 6:30. You can join us in the library or join virtually! All are welcome- we would love to hear new ideas from other parents!

Please join us!!

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/3566762627?pwd=y6zEdneA54RfHajnprEaiUXSIqxchq.1

Our next restaurant fundraiser is Friday, December 6th at the Taco Shop from 3:00-8:00!

Our PTA polled classroom teachers about their favorites--food, shop, color, etc.--in an effort to help guide us parents when looking to purchase a gift. You can view the list below! This ask was voluntary; if your child's teacher is not listed, and you are looking for some guidance, we suggest contacting your teaching to ask if there is anything in particular their classroom could benefit from.

The Burrillville Elementary Schools are happy to announce that the Holiday shop will be open to all K-5 students to purchase holiday gifts. Be on the lookout for further information next week. Registration for shopping times is required and will be included with the information sent home. Shopping will be at AT Levy on Wednesday, 12/11, from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and Friday, 12/13, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Events such as this can not happen without volunteers. While we know it is a busy time of year for everyone, we have had to reduce the number of available shopping spots for Friday night due to a lack of volunteer commitment. If you would like to support us, please sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050944ACA822A1F58-52764079-elementary#/ If we get enough volunteers, we will be able to add more shopper spots. We want you to know that we value and appreciate your help. For any questions, please reach out to eiafrate5314@gmail.com

AT Levy PTA

Steere Farm PTA

Callahan PTF

Square 1 Art makes a memorable keepsake of your child’s art work. If you wish to order a gift for Christmas please make sure you place your order by December 10th!

12/2: End of Trimester 1

12/2: Chorus & Recorder Ensemble Concert @ 6:00 p.m. (BMS)

12/6: Report Cards Available for Families

12/9: PTA Meeting @ 6:30 p.m.

12/11 & 12/13: Holiday Shop @ Levy School (p.m.)

12/16-12/20: Holiday Spirit Week!

12/18: School-wide Sing-Along

12/19: Keith Munslow Performance

12/23-1/1: No School - Holiday Recess

1/2: School Resumes