Weekly Newsletter

It was great to see so many families at Open House last night! The students were excited to show you their learning spaces. Please note that Picture Day is this Wednesday!

I would also like to offically welcome Mark Wurtzel as our new classroom music teacher!

The first couple weeks in the library have been great! Pre-K through 6th grade students have been practicing library expectations, reacquainting themselves with the space, and of course checking out books! It is so exciting to see kids of all ages eager to read. Our Reading Specialist Mrs. Morey wrote about the benefits of reading each day. One way to generate excitement for reading is by asking your child what they checked out on their library day. You can ask them why they picked it, what they like about it, or even suggest that you read it together. If your child is in PreK or K and does not bring their book home, you can ask them what Ms. Wilson read in the library that day. Simply showing interest in your child’s reading material can be a way of encouraging your child to keep reading. Here is a reminder of each class’s library day:

Monday - K, 3, 6

Tuesday - PreK

Wednesday - PreK, 4, 5

Friday - 1, 2

MCBA Book Club

The 4th, 5th, and 6th grade MCBA book club starts on Tuesday, September 24th. It will take place in the library during lunch. Our first audiobook will be The Best of Iggy, by Annie Barrows. I read a “teaser” to the 4th and 5th graders today and they wanted me to keep reading!

Preschoolers continue to learn about the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly. When looking at the caterpillars, students noticed a pattern. They saw yellow and black stripes. For an art project, they made their own caterpillars with two colors of their choosing to make an AB pattern. To practice this concept even further, the children played a pattern game at small group time. They were paired up with a partner, each child has six circles of one color to make an AB pattern together. It was amazing to watch them problem-solve and work together to make their patterns.

Our four classroom chrysalises are almost ready to hatch. The children run in each morning and stop at the science table first for a look before going off to play. They are becoming Monarch butterfly experts!

We have been starting to extend our morning meeting to include whole group sharing and the calendar and weather routines. We have also been learning about the literacy read aloud centers--the listening station (for listening to books on CD), as well as the computer station with the read aloud program One More Story. We also learned about the literacy program on the ipads (Lexia). We have continued to add to the art center, and will be introducing the stapler, clear tape, and multicolored masking tape. Students have enjoyed making multi-media creations! Outside play continues to be a favorite at choice time as well!

First graders are now well settled into their first grade year! We have now learned all routines, procedures and plans for self control along with our Hopes & dreams and class promise. With the compilation of these various tasks we are now fully immersed in our math, ELA, social studies and phonics learning! In EL (our ELA program) first graders are learning all about tools and how tools help us to do a job such as digging a foundation for a house with an excavator, using tongs to flip over hot dogs on the grill or measuring flour using a measuring cup. Children are quickly identifying the best tool for the job,for example you wouldn't sweep the floor with a paintbrush, but you would use a broom and you wouldn’t cut the grass with scissors, but you would use a lawn mower! In social studies we are learning about American symbols such as the American flag, The Bald eagle and Statue of Liberty to name a few. We are reading stories about America and learning some patriotic songs such as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee. In upcoming weeks we will learn what it means to belong to a group and what it means to be a citizen. In math we are focusing on counting by 2s, collecting data on favorite popsicle flavors and working more with ten frames and tally marks. We end our day with a closing circle where children are asked to think about their day, one thing they enjoyed or a highlight. When your first grader arrives home, ask them some of these questions to learn more about their day: “What’s something new you learned?”, “Who did you play with during recess?”, “What made you smile today?”, “How did you show kindness today?” Thank you to all the families who visited during our open house last night! It was wonderful to watch your children’s faces light up when they had the opportunity to show you around our learning space and all the things they enjoy about their time at school!

Third graders have been settling into the expectations and learning the routines of third grade. We have harvested many items out of our gardens, some of which are on display in the foyer. We used our basil, onions, and garlic to do our first cooking activity - pesto. Everyone tasted it, and many came back for seconds and thirds! We have also been getting to know our preschool buddies in Ms. Melanie’s class. Last week we took a walk with them and played “Duck, Duck, Goose,” and this week we met them in their outdoor classroom and helped build fairy houses. It is magnificent to see the third graders taking care of their new buddies and making sure they have what they need. In math we are brushing up on addition and subtraction facts which seem to have gotten rusty over the summer vacation. In writing we have been focusing on the parts of a sentence and writing sentences about our hopes and dreams, about ourselves, and about our garden items.

Fourth graders are really diving into our curriculum. All academic areas are well underway. In ELA, students are reading Love That Dog and many famous poems. For each section that we read in Love That Dog, students discuss what happened and how Jack felt about it. When we read famous poems, we identify characteristics of poetry. Your kiddo should be able to share some of the characteristics of poetry with you (lines, stanzas, rhyme & meter, free verse, imagery, repetition). They are also identifying the theme of the poem and are writing short summaries.

During ALL Block, students are making great progress on their Megawords lists and have started poetry writing with Mrs. Upright. All students have finished their 16-word poem. Be sure to ask your child what the subject of their poem was. Students are also reading Stella with Mrs. Upright.

We have spent the last three days of math building our Factor Wall. Students worked in pairs to make posters, showing all of the factor pairs for numbers 1-36. They took great pride in their work, and now we have this beautiful resource to use throughout the year.

In geography, we have finished the history and climate sections of our scrapbook. Students read an informational text, took 2-column notes, wrote summary paragraphs in their digital scrapbooks, and are working on illustrating each section. We will be moving on to land and water next.

During science, we created a working model of a human eye! Using that model, we discovered the basics of how our eyes work, and figured out some of the causes of vision problems. One thing you can do to support your child’s curiosity about this topic is to have a discussion about any family members or friends who wear eyeglasses (or contact lenses). In our lesson, we learned about why some people have blurry vision, but we did not discuss how some people have better near-vision (nearsightedness) while other people have better far-vision (farsightedness). This would make a great dinner table discussion!

Finally, in SEL we have been working on identifying comfortable and uncomfortable emotions and building our emotional vocabularies.

Fifth grade has been busy the last couple of weeks learning about human rights. The class is reading Esperanza Rising and is finding threats to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the story. Students are learning how to write summaries using various articles of the UDHR. In math, the class is exploring the concepts of multiplication, volume and surface area using manipulatives, ratio tables, and partial products. Students are also elbows deep into their research of their colonies and are creating visuals to represent their learning. In our Second Step program, students are learning how to manage their emotions by using the steps of stop, name your feeling, and calm down (by breathing, counting, and positive self-talk).

Please join me at the September LEC meeting: September 23, 2024 3:30 pm for the Annual Title I Presentation using this video call link: https://meet.google.com/fvo-crki-qmd

Right To Know: Per Federal Regulations, all parents/caregivers of students attending Title I schools, have the right to request, and the district will provide in a timely manner, information regarding the professional qualifications of their student’s classroom teachers, including, at a minimum:

1. Whether the teacher has met state qualification and licensing criteria for the grade levels and subject areas in which the teacher provides instruction;

2. Whether the teacher is teaching under emergency or other provisional status through which state qualification or licensing criteria have been waived;

3. Whether the teacher is teaching in the field of discipline of the certification of the teacher; and

4. Whether the student is provided services by paraprofessionals and, if so, their qualifications.

A school shall provide to each individual parent/caregiver:

• Information on the student’s level of achievement and academic growth in each of the state academic assessments, as required under Title I, and

• Timely notice that the student has been taught for four or more consecutive weeks by a teacher who does not meet state licensure requirements.

A huge thank you to everyone who visited our Open House Bake Sale. It was a wonderfully successful fundraiser for our young musicians. Many thanks to all of our band and orchestra families who baked and donated items for the sale and to our band and orchestra students who helped make signs, set up the table, run the sale, and do the clean up. It was a true team effort–just like band and orchestra!

In other news, the third-grade recorder class has been doing a lot of home practicing and it shows! They have learned their first songs and we have added our beautiful Orff instruments to our rehearsal time. We take turns playing either the recorder or a xylophone or a metallophone and when the group plays together, it sounds lovely!

And lastly, we are still accepting registrations for band and orchestra. We especially need clarinets, flutes, and strings (violin, viola, cello, bass). If any 4-6th grader would like to join us, please see Miss Julie for more information.

Keep practicing everyone–concert time will be here before we know it!