Weekly Newsletter
May 23, 2024
News from Principal Emma Liebowitz
Read-a-Thon: May 31 - June 6 - Students will be receiving a recording sheet on Thursday, May 30. For each day your student reads, or listens to stories (including audiobooks) write the number of minutes. There are bonus badges that equal 10 minutes for each completed. Turn the sheet in on Friday, June 7th to be tallied. If the school reaches our goal (see below graphic), Mrs. Morey and Ms. Wilson will get turned into a sundae!
Opportunity to Offer After School Enrichement Next Year
Please complete the survey at https://forms.gle/MoSwK2bjq5Rwa8Ec6
Upcoming Events
Friday, May 24 - First Grade Trout Release
Friday, May 24 - Fourth Grade Book Launch at 10:00
Monday, May 27 - No School
Wednesday, May 29 - All School Meeting/Share the Music
Thursday, May 30 - Field Day (Rain Date 6/4)
Friday, May 31 - Art Showcase at 2:00 and 6:00
Link to Sanderson Academy calendar.
Library News from Ms. Wilson
SUPPORT THE LIBRARY - DONORS CHOOSE
The Sanderson Library is looking for your support! In the effort to grow our library collection and keep it exciting and relevant to students, the library is asking for your help. We are trying to raise $360 by Friday, and we are almost halfway there! Through a fundraising platform called Donors Choose, you can donate any amount that works for you. If you donate by Friday, your donations will be doubled up to $50! Just enter the promo code LIFTOFF at checkout. My goal is for every Sanderson student to find a book that they love, which means we need lots of different books! Thank you so much for your consideration. Click here to donate!
SECOND GRADE DRAW-ALONG WITH GRACE LIN
Sanderson 2nd graders had the opportunity to attend a live webinar with local author Grace Lin! Grace Lin is an internationally renowned author who has written dozens of award-winning books for children and middle grade youth. Lin, who recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of The Ugly Vegetables and the 15th anniversary of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, invited students for a Q & A and draw-along. It was also Grace Lin’s 50th birthday! She taught students how to draw a tiger. The Chinese character for tiger, students learned, is also the character for king! It was lots of fun.
Preschool news from Ms. Freeman and Ms. Becky
This week we read, Grow Flower Grow, by Lisa Bruce. It’s a story about a child finding a plant in a pot and trying to get it to grow by feeding it some of their favorite foods. Frustrated when the plant does not grow, they throw it outside where the plant gets plenty of sun and rain. A beautiful flower blossoms at the end. It was a great story to help us discuss what plants need to live and grow. We will use this information to help us plant seeds, care for plants, and work in our garden.
Preschool News from Ms. Melanie and Ms. Kylee
Preschoolers have been preparing the outdoor classroom for our end of the year celebration, where we host our families and share our outdoor learning space. Children have been picking up sticks and twigs and adding them to our leaf compost pile. We have also rebuilt our fort and removed all of the leaves that snuck inside.
Their final touch has been working on their fairy houses. Each child selected a plot of land in Fairy Village to build a special home on, with the hopes that fairies will be enticed and move in. They scoured the forest floor looking for the right materials to make the perfect home. Some of those materials included leaves found on the ground, rocks, sticks, pine cones, and various varieties of tree bark. The construction phase was magical as each child’s personality was displayed through their creation. The children were also so excited to have their third grade buddies come down to the forest to help them add on to their existing fairy houses. Ms. Carole provided a beautiful assortment of seashells for the children to choose from. They had so much fun collaborating with their buddies and adding some amazing touches to their homes. There is no doubt that these houses are the talk of the forest and fairies from far and wide will be coming to visit or move in!
Kindergarten News from Ms. Sarah, Ms. Veronica and Ms. Beckwith
This week in our math program, we introduced the concept of Fact Families as a shortcut for doing addition and subtraction. For example, if we know that a 2 part and a 4 part make 6 all together, it doesn’t matter which part we have, we know the missing part will make 6. And if you have 6 and take away either the 2 or the 4, what is left will be the other part. We played some games with people and animal figures to practice this concept. This was just an introduction and they will focus on this much more in First grade.
First Grade News from Ms. Wyckoff and Ms. April
This week first graders have wrapped up their sound and light unit. In this unit first graders learned about transparent, translucent and opaque materials and how light will or will not pass through them. We completed three investigations to help us understand light and sound better. The first investigation was placing items in front of the window to see how much light could pass through. Some materials were tricky as they borderlined between transparent and translucent. The second investigation involved rubber bands of various sizes. Children took turns plucking the rubber bands to think about what kind of pitch we could hear. The third investigation had children exploring more with ways to communicate using sound and light. Teams of two created patterns using a flashlight or drumsticks and had a key for yes or no. For example a “Yes” answer may have been tapping the drumsticks 5 times and a “No” answer was turning the flashlight on/off 4 times. Next up we will be moving into survival of living things.
Second Grade News from Ms. Lilly, Ms. Laura and Ms. Taylor
This week we wrapped up our math unit on money and patterns. We are starting our final unit on the metric system, fractions, and subtraction. In science we have continued to work on where rivers start, how floods occur, and what causes erosion. We’re also well on our way of working through our final ELA module learning about parts of plants and pollination. We’ve spent this week reading books and articles about pollination as well as assembling parts of a flower and looking at real flowers to see the parts up close.
Third Grade News from Ms. Carole and Mr. Luke
Now that the weather is decidedly hotter, third graders have been busy setting up the gardens for the summer season. This week they transplanted seedlings including cucumbers, squashes, and herbs. They also directly planted two types of corn. With our buddies this week we helped them spruce up their fairy houses with embellishments of shells and pine cones. You can see pictures of that above in Ms. Melanie’s news.
This Thursday we are excited to be going to Wilder Homestead with third graders from other schools to learn about life in Colonial New England.
Fourth Grade News from Ms. Lagoy and Ms. Upright
We hope all fourth grade families are planning to join us at our Book Launch/Poetry Slam on Friday, May 24, 2024 at 10:00 in our classroom. Students will be sharing their favorite original poem and will present their family with a published copy of Fourth Grade Poetry, our very own book! Guests are welcome to share a favorite (child-friendly) poem during the Poetry Slam. Snacks will be provided and students will be available for questions and autographing the books.
Fourth grade will also be running the bake sale at Arts Night on Friday, May 31, 2024. All money raised will be split between ServiceNet, the Ocean Conservancy, and the MSPCA.
Fifth Grade News from Ms. Johnson and Ms. Shero
Fifth grade had an amazing week at Keewaydin earlier this month. Students learned about natural science, local history, human impact, and land-use. Students lived and worked as a community in many ways such as doing a job, living in cabins, working in study groups, and eating in table groups. They participated in a mock town hall and night walks. Each study group created and performed a skit based on a topic of study from the week at the closing campfire. At meals, the waste food was weighed and graphed. There were discussions about what else was wasted (time, money, energy, fuel, etc) and how to reduce waste. Currently, students are taking on the role of reporters and are using the notes from their journals to write article about their week’s experiences.
News from Ms. Prew
The U.S. Math Recovery Council offers a Community Resource Hub with tons of courses, games, videos, blogs, etc. to support math learning at home. Click this link and on the left side you’ll see Resources for Parents. Enjoy! :) aprew@mtrsd.org
Reading News from Mrs. Morey
Friday is the end of the Literacy Data collection window. Teachers and specialists will use this data to measure student’s growth over the school year, and the effectiveness of interventions and small group instructional focus areas. This will also help us get a head start on next year’s literacy groupings. Our district is learning and perfecting how to be the most efficient and effective with literacy instruction. Students have worked so hard, you should be so proud!
Instrumental News from Ms. Julie
Congratulations to all of our band and orchestra members who participated in the Band Together concert at Mohawk last Thursday. It was a wonderful concert! Also–a big thank you to our small ensemble players, our orchestra, and our Third-grade Recorder Class who performed for the Senior Luncheon last week. We had a lovely turnout for this important event and our young musicians were very well-received and appreciated. We are in the midst of our concert season and things have come together beautifully. Thank you to all of our dedicated students who have worked hard to prepare and perform. We are looking forward to playing in our last All-School assembly and at Arts Night. It’s hard to believe that the year is nearly over!
Community News, Events and Job Postings
Check out what is happening in our area!
About Us
Email: eliebowitz@mtrsd.org
Website: https://sanderson.mohawktrailschools.org/
Location: 808 Cape Street, Ashfield, MA, USA
Phone: (413) 628-4404
Facebook: facebook.com/SandersonAcademy