Hello, Howard!

November PRIDE theme of the month is empathy. Empathy is a person's ability to understand someone else's feelings, and it is an important skill for student to develop to enable them to be successful in collaborative endeavors.

Empathy is key to healthy relationships, and how to be a good friend/classmate/student is one of the most important things children learn in elementary school. You can learn more about the importance of empathy in school in this article.

Thank you for your continued support of the PTO and their mission to provide enrichment activities to the elementary students of WBPSD. This year the Fun Run raised over $42,000! We couldn't have done it without you!

What a fun day! So many creative costumes! We saw cookies and milk, Dorothy and the tornado, alien abductions, minions, tacos, and so many more! Here's a small sampling of the silliness of the day.

Order ahead by visiting mylifetouch.com and using Picture Day Code EVTRRF7WP.

There will be no school on Veteran's Day.

Fall Conferences are upon us! Please follow the links below to sign up for a time. Sign ups will close at 3pm on November 19. If you need to sign up for a conference after that time, you will need to reach out to your child's teacher.

Click here for 4th grade.

Click here for 5th grade.

Click here for 6th grade.

Students will have half days of school with dismissal at 11:25 on:

Friday, November 22nd

Monday, November 25th

Tuesday, November 26th

Students will have a half day on Wednesday, November 27th and no school on Thursday the 28th or Friday the 29th.

We heard your request for aligned spirit days, and we have obliged! All elementary schools - Spring Street, Rose L., and Howard, will have the following spirit days in December.

Click here!

A former textbook writer, Steve Sheinkin is now making amends by writing books young people might actually want to read. He's the author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction including Bomb, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Impossible Escape, as well as The Bletchley Riddle, a middle grade historical mystery written with Ruta Sepetys. Steve's accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, three National Book Award finalist honors, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award.

Steve will present to the whole school as well as participate in a small group readers discussion and conduct a small group writers workshop.

The PTO has generously purchased one of Steve's books for each Howard Student.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy fall season! Thank you to everyone who continues to send in updated physical forms and immunization records. Letters regarding missing health documents have gone out. Please reach out to Nurse Mando if you have questions on these to ensure that your child’s health file is complete.

Please complete the Annual Student Health Update form at your earliest convenience, if you haven’t done so already. I will be conducting vision screenings for grades 4 and 5 during November; please let me know if you would like to have our child opt out of this screening.

There will be a sixth grade fundraiser involving Hilliard chocolate bar sales. Please reach out to me if you would prefer that your child doesn’t participate or if you have any restrictions on the chocolate that will be sent home. More specific information will be coming from the sixth grade team on this, so stay tuned!

Otherwise, we want to keep everyone healthy while at school so please keep them home if they are not feeling well. Please refer to our Sick Child Guidelines and school health policies at https://www.wbridgewaterschools.org/page/health-services and reach out to me directly with any concerns.

As always, please feel free to reach Nurse Mando if you have any questions or concerns: smando@wbridgewater.com or 508-894-1250 ext 3115.

On Tuesday, Oct. 29th, the ML Department hosted their 3rd annual Fall Family dinner, and it was a great success! Families enjoyed a delicious “Harvesty” breakfast for dinner, served by our Food Service Department, and there were activities, crafts, raffles, a pumpkin patch and even baby animals! We are thankful to all community businesses and partners, who were so generous in donating their time to make it a great night! Special shout out to Vineyard Farm for the pumpkins, animals, and gift basket donation!

The Howard School Winter concert will be at the high school auditorium on Tuesday, December 10th (along with the MSHS Band and Chorus) at 6:30 PM (6:00PM students should arrive so they can set up and be ready). The Howard Band will be going on first.

The band should wear black pants and white dress shirts for the concert. Also, to make our band concert festive, I am allowing students to wear festive hats for the holidays on a voluntary basis (not required). This includes Santa hats, reindeer antlers, and general winter or Hanukkah items to make it a little more entertaining. Please use your judgment to select appropriate festive attire that will not interfere with them playing their instrument. I like the students to treat the winter concert as a festive celebration of the holidays rather than a more formal concert as our spring concert will be. If there are any questions or problems with concert dress, please contact Mr. LeMarier at least two weeks before the concert to help you.

Seeing that we will be performing as a full band (5th and 6th graders only during the Winter concert), we will need some morning rehearsals to make sure we practice as a whole band so that we can be prepared. Unfortunately, we can not fit these in the school schedule during the school day. These morning rehearsals are the only time the band will be able to practice and play with the entire band before our concert. The rehearsals will be 7:20 to 8am in the Howard gymnasium as follows:

Thursday, November 7th
Thursday, November 14th
Thursday, November 21st
Wednesday, December 4th
Thursday, December 5th
Tuesday, December 10th (if needed)

Students will continue exploring, “What is a great heart, literally and figuratively?” To practice reading we will be looking at elements & structure of poetry, analyzing poetry, summarizing, text structure, finding evidence, determining themes, and making inferences. Writing Skills will consist of summary writing, and informative paragraph writing. For language/word work, we are learning about adjectives, word roots, using quotation marks, engaging in a collaborative discussion, looking at content vocabulary, and defining words in context.

In math, we are continuing multiplication with multiplying 2-digit by 2 digit numbers. It is important that your child continues to practice their basic multiplication facts at home.

Students are learning about plant and animal adaptations. To start our unit, students conducted an experiment involving celery and food coloring to answer the question, “How do plants move water throughout its various parts?” The purpose of this experiment was for students to visualize how water travels through plants.

To explore Empathy, students will be engaging in discussions and watching videos about what empathy means and why it is important.

In ELA, students are enjoying reading Thunder Rolling in the Mountains while they compare and contrast character traits and what the Nez Perce homeland meant to the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) and the U.S. government/settlers.

Students have begun Topic 4 where they are multiplying decimals.

Students are learning about early colonization and the growth of colonies.

We just wrapped up "Ecosystems" with a dissection of owl pellets and will move on to the "Water Cycle and Human Impact" in a few weeks.

We're excited to have Raising Multicultural Kids back in the classrooms! Each class will be visited twice a month.

Students are finishing up their review on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals! We will be starting a Food Truck Decimal project after students complete their STAR Progress Monitoring Testing next week.

We have just started reading the book Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. This book is written in free verse poetry about a young girl living in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. It explores the challenges people face and the resilience they show in the face of these challenges.

In math class we have just completed Topic 2, solving equations and inequalities. Next we will begin Topic 3. We will be learning about integers, rational numbers, and absolute value. We will start by learning about positive and negative numbers on the number line. Throughout this chapter we will be working with fractions and decimals.

In science class, we are continuing to learn about the human body. This week we completed a simulation of the digestive system using bread and Sprite. We will have our first assessment on Wednesday, November 6 and are continuing our unit with an in class group project. Students will create posters to review each of the 7 systems we covered in class. Once they are completed students will present their projects on the different systems to the class!

We are starting a new unit about the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia! Expect another Mr. Nicky (history music) video, a fun, hands on project at the end of the unit, and two Nat Geo Giant Map Activities. The whole school gets to see North America the first week in November. The 6th grade will get to explore Asia and map river civilizations and the spread of the 5 major world religions right before conferences.

Bridgewater State University CASE is letting us borrow their National Geographic Giant Map of North America next week for some fun activities. Fourth, fifth and sixth graders will get to explore the continent, play games to learn geography in a fun way, and bring history to life. Please make sure your child has non-holey socks to protect their feet and the map on their assigned day. Thank you!

6th graders completed their second homeroom challenge on 10/26. Students completed different relay races! We raced to see who could get the hula hoop through the entire homeroom line, who could pass the ball to each student and lastly, relay races holding the ball flat on our palms. Congrats to Mrs. Mills' homeroom for winning this homeroom challenge!

4th-Grade Howard students are exploring the concept of Improvisation. Students understand that this concept is not only relevant in music, but there are situations in their day-to-day lives when they need to improvise. Fourth-graders are practicing improvisation in the classroom by speaking, singing, and playing instruments.

Our 5th-Grade students are focusing on the musical instrument families, and will gain an understanding of "why" and "how" instruments are placed into these separate categories. They will also be exploring some basic folk dances and learning about the cultural and historical significance of dance.

In 6th-Grade, students are working on a self-directed project called the "Soundtrack of my Life." Students are creating personalized "soundtracks" of 8 to 10 songs which are meaningful to them. They will be reflecting upon each song and explaining why the song is meaningful to them and what they like about it. Another component of this project for students to create personalized "Album Art" to complement their soundtrack.

4th: Learning about catapults and engineering their own to compete in the "Punkin Chunkin" where they will test their catapults for accuracy, power, and ability to knock over a tower.

5th: We are doing our own mock "Shark Tank" where students become entrepreneurs and create their own inventions. They will create a prototype, advertisement, and speech to present their ideas to the "Sharks" (aka their classmates)

6th: Students are researching and learning about the various types of bridges. They will then pick the bridge they believe to be the strongest and recreate it through STEM materials. Their bridges will then be tested by seeing how much weight they can hold

We are off to a great start of the year at Student Council. We celebrated our first theme day on Halloween with our annual costume day. We are happy to continue this longstanding tradition.

Our canned food drive was a huge success. The school collected over 1000 items. Thank you to everyone who donated and supported this great cause. Here is a picture of the food pantry picking the items up.

We look forward to more fall activities. Stay tuned for our next theme day announcement.

We had a Blast at Senior Center Game day on Oct. 9th. Check out our pictures! We also just filmed our video contest for International Leo Day. Our theme was #LeoTop10 and we chose to do the top 10 things we love about being a Little Leo. The video is due Nov. 1st and we will find out who wins Dec. 1st.

We have started the Little Leos annual coat drive. You can donate gently used winter coats or new coats any size. You can donate from 10/23/24 until 12/10/24. These coats are donated to the Anton’s Coats for Kids Coat Drive which gives to the homeless and people who can't afford coats. You can drop the coats off in the bin at the office. Thank you! (By Noelle Gauthier)

Dirty Thumbs have enjoyed beautiful weather for our first few walks to Vineyard farm. We have toured the farm and met lots of personable animals. They’re showing us how they want to be handled, and we are finding our inner animal whisperers! It has been so rewarding to enjoy exercise, laughs, and sunshine together.

Unified Bocce is wrapping up their season. You're invited to come cheer the WB Bocce Bosses at the Unified Bocce Jamboree on Monday at the High School. See the flyer at the end of the newsletter for more details!

This is Liliana Morales and Liliana McCormick. We interviewed Sue Morrison, our custodian at the Howard. In the interview we learned that Mrs. Morriaonn is a wife, mother, and grandmother. We also learned that she has worked here at Howard school for 15 years and also used to drive buses in North Attleboro. Another thing we learned about is that Mrs. Morrison likes to ride her motorcycle and garden! She doesn’t really have a favorite movie or show but she does enjoy watching stuff that involve police and shows like Judge Judy. Lastly, she grew up in Middleboro, went to high school there, raised her kids in north Attleboro, and is now back in Middleboro. As you can see, Mrs. Morrison is a hard worker and a great custodian!

Hi. We are Valeria Oyakawa Solis and Leilani Vallee - Hollister and we interviewed Michael Corriea. Mr. Corriea is the school music teacher. He went to Somerset High School and Massachusetts University for college. Also, Mr. Corriea’s favorite subject was Science. Something he is looking forward to this year is building guitars. His favorite hobby is building things such as guitars with his hands. He has a wife from India, no kids and no pets. His talent is to pay attention to details and try to make things as perfect as possible. Last but not least, Mr. Corriea wanted to share with us that he enjoys being a music teacher at West Bridgewater and he likes working with children/students.

Hi, I am Brayden Daleba, and I am Jacob Ayad. We interviewed Cheryl Buttrick. Mrs. Buttrick works in the cafeteria over at the Howard school. She went to East Bridgewater High School and Framingham State and her favorite subjects were ELA/Reading. Growing up she wanted to be an interior decorator. She is married and has two kids and two cats. Some of her favorite hobbies include reading and hanging out with friends and family. What she is most interested in this year is her son’s baseball season to cheer him on. As you can see Mrs.Buttrick has a very interesting personality and is very supportive and kind to both her family and friends.

Hi, we are Zyair Gray and Ryan Beady and we interviewed Mrs. Nelson. First, Mrs. Nelson went to school at Brockton High School and then UMASS Dartmouth. During that time her favorite subjects were Science and English. This year Mrs. Nelson will be going on a trip to Spain with her family. Mrs. Nelson has one boy and one girl, who are both in college. She has a dog and cat. The cat is named Stumpy because he has three legs. She has been married to her husband for almost 29 years. When Mrs. Nelson was growing up she wanted to work for NASA. Mrs. Nelson's favorite books are any type of mystery books. She also loves the TV show LOST and her favorite movie is Sleepless In Seattle. Her favorite hobbies are anything to do with nature. Thank You, Mrs. Nelson!

P.S. Happy Halloween

Tenderheart Bear showing her Care Bear spirit on Halloween, repairing a student costume.

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper - 5 minute introduction

Happy Halloween from your Howard main office staff: Ms. Mando, Ms. Giuffre, Ms. Nelson, Ms. Lacoste, and Ms. Delano.