SRES Eagle Times

Inspire, Create and Grow a Community of Lifelong Learners

Happy Friday SRES Families!

SRES students are kind! Did you know that at each All School Meeting Kindness Tickets are read (completed by students and staff) that call attention to specific acts of kindness in our school? Helping to clean up a spill, including a friend in a game at recess, words of encouragement, etc. are some of the recognitions that are given. Keep up the kindness SRES!

The next week is busy! See below:

Tuesday: White Elephant Sale!

• Please send in your child's form listing household family members.

Wednesday: Early Release

• Dismissal at 11:45am; lunch will be served.

Friday

• Winter Sports payment due!
• All School Meeting followed by an Options-based drill.
  
• Report cards go home.

PLEASE, PLEASE: Drop off/pick up

• Pull up to the first orange cone so we can unload/load quickly.
• Please be attentive as cars are moving forward so as to avoid accidents.

Looking ahead:

• Wednesday, December 21st: Early Release; special performance in AM!
• December 19th: Rockingham School Board Meeting
• December 22-January 2nd: No School
• January 3rd: School resumes
• January 10th: 1st day of Winter Sports!

Happy weekend to you all!

Your partner in education,

Laura Hazard

laura.hazard@wnesu.com

It’s once again time for our annual White Elephant Sale! For those of you who may be new to this tradition, it is a day where we set up a store in the school for students to shop for their loved ones!

This year the sale is taking place on Tuesday, December 13th during the school day. To help offset costs the PTO incurs for supplies; we suggest sending in a donation of 25¢ for each present that your child would like to purchase if you are able to do so. We also ask that students only shop for members of their immediate family in the household(s) they reside in, so that we can ensure that everyone has an opportunity to find appropriate gifts.

This week, your student brought home a letter with a yellow form attached that gives your child permission to participate in the White Elephant sale, as well as gift labels to be filled out at home prior to the sale. Please include the recipients’ names, their age, and their relationship to your child. This will assist us in helping students find what they are looking for. Please return the completed and signed form by Monday. If a signed form is not received, we will conclude that your family is choosing to not participate in this year's sale.

This month during SEL, I have started teaching The Zones of Regulation (Kuypers, 2011) curriculum to all classes. This curriculum teaches students to identify their feelings according to the four zones (blue, green, yellow, and red). Students are then taught tools to help them when they are in the blue, yellow and red zone. The goal is for students to learn how to regulate their own emotions and to deal with strong emotions in a healthy way. If you would like additional information or resources on this curriculum please contact me at school by phone or email! You can also check out this website: https://zonesofregulation.com/index.html

Students in K, 1 and 2 will be making "Zones Books" and will get to bring them home to share with families when complete (probably at the end of Jan). Students completed their "Blue Zone" page this week. Here are a few pictures of their drawings. The 4 main blue zone feelings are sad, sick, tired, and bored. When we are in the blue zone we have low energy and need to use a tool to help us feel better. Students chose 3 tools from the "Zones Toolbox" to paste on their blue zone page.

Students in 3rd and 4th grade played Zones Bingo to review the Zones and the feelings that fall into each zone. This week during SEL, students learned to identify the "Size of a Problem." Students learned that problems can be small, medium and large and our reaction to the problem should fit the size of the problem. When we react to a small problem in a large way it is very unexpected and makes those around us feel confused and uncomfortable.

Mrs. Fuller

(802) 869-2637

stephanie.fuller@wnesu.com

What a busy couple of weeks it has been! This seems like the fastest time of the year.

In Kindergarten math we have begun learning how to add two groups of numbers together. They are doing so well with this new skill. We have also begun to count to 100 every day!

In ELA we are working on writing about our pet reindeer. These Kindergarteners are doing an amazing job! They are working hard on listening to letter sounds. They have been practicing writing as well. I cannot wait to see this project come together!

We made new window decorations this week. Take a peek when you drive by!

☆ Reading: During our Interactive Read Alouds, we have been reading different folktales from different cultures such as Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile by Won-Ldy Paye and The Princess and the Pea by Rachel Isadora. We have been working on retelling the important events in the folktales by telling in order: somebody (the character), wanted (what they wanted), but (what the problem was), so (how the problem was solved), and then (what happened at the end). You can use the retelling hand below with your first grader to practice retelling the important events in stories they read at home!

☆ Fundations: We have been working on bonus letter words during Fundations. We learned that certain consonants (s, l, f, z) get a bonus letter after a short vowel sound in a one-syllable word (e.g. mess, fuzz, cuff, tell). We learned about the mnemonic “Sammy Loves Friendly Zebras” to help us remember the bonus letter rule.

☆ Math: The first grade mathematicians have started to learn about how to solve problems with unknown parts. We read “Peas and Carrots” story problems where we used orange and green cubes and plates with a part-part-whole model to show different combinations of a number. We also learned new math games for math menu time such as “How Many Am I Hiding?” and “Dot Addition” to practice combining unknown parts of problems to make a whole number.

☆ Writing: Students have started our “how to” writing unit! Each student drafted a list of different things we already knew how to do in school, at home, outside, and in the kitchen that we could teach someone else how to do in this unit. In this unit, students will write a “how to” story by writing steps for how to teach something that they already know how to do really well to their readers. We will start to draft our how to start next week!

☆ Social Studies: Students started to learn about holidays around the world! First graders made their own passports and suitcases, and will be learning about different holidays and traditions in different countries around the world. We traveled to Mexico and learned about the holiday “Los Posados” that they celebrate and the “Legend of the Poinsettia”.

Reading

• Second Grade Readers have been making connections to books they have read. They are practicing sharing their connections orally and in written form. They have also been working on identifying the lesson of a fiction story.

Writing

• Writers are practicing using C.U.P.S. (capitalization, understanding, punctuation and spelling) in their writing. They have been writing about different traditions they do during this holiday season.

Phonics

• Second graders started looking at words with suffixes and learned how to decode how to read these words and understand what they mean.

Math

• Second Grade Mathematicians have gotten their hands on 2D and 3D shapes. They explored the differences between these shapes and how to identify them using the different attributes. Next up we will be learning about fractions.

Theme

• Second Graders just started getting themselves ready to take off and explore different countries and how they celebrate holidays in their cultures. They learned the differences between countries and continents and how to describe where we live. We will be visiting 3 other countries to research their holidays!

REMINDERS

• Please remember to have students bring a water bottle every day and make sure they have a healthy snack!

Math: The third graders have been learning about data collection and representation. They began by learning about line plots and bar graphs. They learned how to label them and analyze the data once collected. Next week, the students will create their own questions and create bar graphs for the information they collect from their classmates.

Reading: During interactive read alouds and small group work, students have been studying the “author’s message” of different books. They are learning how to reflect upon what the author wants people to take away from the book after completion. During Word Work, students have been studying how to make both regular and irregular nouns plural.

Writing: The third graders have been working on memory stories. They worked on recounting specific details of an event and putting them in chronological order. They will peer edit to help each other make their stories stronger.

Social Studies: The third graders have learned about different countries within each continent as well as where the countries are in relationship to each other. They have also started to discuss the words, “sphere” and “hemisphere” in terms of the Earth itself. Next week, the students will study lines of latitude and longitude.

Hello From Fourth Grade!

• In math, we can use a variety of strategies to solve multi-digit multiplication. We have practiced making multiple towers, doubling and halving, cluster problems, and modeling the area model with base-10 blocks. We have had excellent conversations around when it is appropriate to use each method as well as which method is most efficient. We will use these strategies to move us into partial products and finally the standard algorithm.

• Reader’s Workshop has us learning about December celebrations around the world. So far we have read about St. Lucia’s Day, Las Posadas, Hanukkah, St. Nicholas Day, and Yule. We are finding that celebrating light during the dark winter months is a common theme. We are creating symbols for each holiday and even learned how to play the Dreidel game!

• In writing, we are beginning to learn the process of procedure writing. A few fun activities have included making a class list of adjectives, choosing an item to describe and letting our classmates try and guess what it is, building with pattern blocks, giving explicit directions, and seeing if our classmates can successfully match our original block design.

• In Social Studies we have learned the regions of the US and practiced labeling. We will be continuing this geography practice by learning the abbreviations.

• We are wrapping up our Tuesday groups with Mr. Francis and Ms. Wade. Our last one will be Tuesday, December 13th. This past week the boys built straw rockets and collected data. We found that our multi-purpose room isn’t big enough for our powerful designs!

Text is varied and it is everywhere!

When many people think of learning to read, storybooks certainly come to mind. Nursery rhymes and poetry are great for young readers too. Many people learn to love reading with comics, comic books, and graphic novels. Please consider non-fiction too, like atlases, magazines, books about animals, vehicles, or any personal interest. There are fun books of lists, jokes, quotes, song lyrics, and interesting facts. Text can be found on signs, posters, product labels, and manuals. Encounters with text like this develop vocabulary, decoding skills, and a better understanding of your health and environment. You can even read when watching TV by turning on closed captioning. Games and crafts have written directions. Collectible card games are especially filled with text. There are even some video games rich with dialogue and engaging written story lines.

What’s the most important thing? Show your developing reader that reading is important and interesting. Show them text is everywhere. Tell them what you think and know about it. Show them how you can learn and be entertained through text. Eventually you’ll spark an interest. They’ll notice more text, and they’ll try to read and understand it. Reading is reading, encourage it in all forms!

Ms. Loretta Rose

Interventionist

Children in all the grades are learning about the traditions of cultural holidays that happen each December.

The older students have learned about the Winter Solstice and how the Earth's tilt while traversing around the sun produces the waning light as we approach Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. We are learning about the traditions of holidays that celebrate light and family love in this dark time of the year: Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa.

The 4th graders broke into a spontaneous rendition of the song "Light One Candle",which they'd learned in school, as we prepared to read a book on the history of Hanukkah!

We will definitely read the classic The Night Before Christmas, the poem which popularized the story of Santa Claus in the US, before Winter Break begins!

Students have been expanding their basketball skills. We are working on how to pass the ball while moving our feet. Students know the importance of keeping their eyes and the ball, as well as having their hands in a ready position.In this picture, you can see first grade students working together on some new skills.

Kindergarten, First and Second Grades are busy at work, already in week three of our second term in First Steps In Music. Songs, fingerplays, recorded music and "move-its" are mostly all centered around a "winter" theme.

Kindergarten: Ask your student to perform the fingerplay "Two Little Apples" for you or show you how they keep the beat to "Peter Peter".

First Grade: Ask your student to perform the fingerplay "Mr. Turkey" or show you how to keep the beat to "Toast In The Toaster".

Second Grade: Ask your student to perform the fingerplay "I'm Going To Build A Little House" or sing you their creative response to "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?". We have had some great laughs with Second Graders singing their responses to this. One of my favorites... "I hear Grandpa snoring in my ear"!

Third and Fourth Grades have been super busy practicing playing instruments on cue. We have added barred instruments (xylophones, metallophones and glockenspiels) to our lessons. It is amazing to see and hear students successfully play instruments in Music! Third Grade has just begun the "reading" phase of duple rhythm (we always learn "sound before sight"). It is so exciting to see them being able to interpret written musical rhythms. Fourth Grade has just begun the "writing" phase of their 6/8 rhythms. They are learning how to draw dotted half notes and three connected eighth notes. They are picking it up very quickly!

Third and Fourth Grades continue to practice "move-its" (rote phrasing through movement) to Nutcracker movements ("Chocolate", "Chinese Dance" and "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy") as well as singing seasonal songs "Hey Ho, Nobody Home" (Third Grade) and "Oh How Lovely" (Fourth Grade). Both classes are singing "Light One Candle" and "Winter Wonderland".

On a side note, I was quite privileged to be able to lead the Third Grade morning meeting last week. We tried out the "spider web" greeting. We rolled the ball of string and said hello to the person we rolled it to. At the end of class, we made a spider web. The challenge was to go backwards and unravel the web. We were very successful! See the pictures below.

I truly enjoy working with the students at SRES! I am inspired every day by their artistic ideas and talent.

Mrs. Daigneault,

Music Educator

4th and 3rd Grade

Fourth and Third Grade have started their next school wide project involving hands and is inspired by a Henna artists named Karyn Alzayer! Inspired by her line work and designs, artists were challenged to create designs on a drawn hand that will be used to decorate the room! Students are also working in their own Sketch Books this year! We are using these sketch books to help plan ideas for future projects, and build our artistic skills!

2nd Grade

Second Grade has been hard at work creating textures on their castles and have moved to coloring in our castles! They are all looking amazing!

1st Grade

First Grade has been wrapping up their City at Night projects which we used construction paper to cut and glue our own city with! We will next be exploring Landscapes!

Kindergarten

These artists have been hard at working practicing their drawing skills and are finishing their Kings and Queens of Kindergarten Self-Portraits! We read the book King of Kindergarten by Derrick Barnes and created a drawing of our own head and shoulders showing ourselves as kings and queens! These artists have done an amazing job so far!

REMINDER

No After School Program on Wednesday, December 14th (Early Release) or December 19-21st.

Hello SRES ASP families,

My name is Tina White. I am the Site Coordinator for the After School Programs (ASP) at Saxtons River Elementary School. Our ASP runs Monday through Friday 3pm to 4:45pm. Students in ASP stay for the entire afternoon.

Beginning in January the After School Program at SRES will open up to Kindergarteners. This would begin the week of January 2, 2023 through a trial week. During the trial week ASP staff will determine if SRES ASP is a good fit for your Kindergartener at this time.

How the sign-up and trial week works:

1. Sign-ups will be on a first come first serve basis. If you would like to sign your child up for the trial process, please email me directly. My email is tina.white@wnesu.com. I will send you a sign up link to fill out.

2. You will receive a confirmation email with dates of the trial week.

3. Your student will attend ASP for that week.

4. At the end of the trial week ASP staff will determine if ASP is a good fit for your student and ASP will send an email with the final decision.

5. If ASP is a good fit and your student wants to continue with ASP, please confirm this with me.

I am looking forward to working with your kindergarten students.

Please let me know if you have any questions,

Tina White

SRES ASP Site Coordinator

Email: laura.hazard@wnesu.com
Website: https://sres.wnesu.org/
Location: 15 School Street, Saxtons River, VT, USA
Phone: (802) 869-2637
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sresvt