Summer Street Beat

Dear Summer Street & Lynnfield Preschool Families,

Last week our students participated in the Hour of Code with the help of several LHS students - a favorite annual event organized by our Ed Tech Department and LHS teacher Ms. Coates. If you haven't read it yet, here is a wonderful news article highlighting the event. This collaboration between schools is just another example of the excellence Lynnfield Public Schools brings to our students, regularly!

Please read on for important information and updates (including a March Counselor Corner from Ms. Hunt) - view this newsletter in your browser to ensure everything comes up completely!

In partnership,

Karen Cronin

It is time to schedule spring conferences! Please remember the following guidelines:

• One conference time is allotted to each family.
• Conference time slots are 10 minutes each (this will allow for an equitable opportunity for every elementary school family, regardless of the number of children in a class).
• If you have multiple conferences to attend, please leave 2-3 conference slots in between each child's conference that you attend.
• Google Meet (virtual) options are available. To ensure the transition between conferences is efficient, we ask that the first conferences of the day be reserved for virtual conferences. The remaining time slots will be for in-person conferences. **This is clearly noted in the sign-up; thank you for being mindful.
• If the available time slots do not match your needs (for example, you need a virtual conference, but only in-person conferences are left to choose from), please contact your child’s teacher. We will accommodate your needs for the type of conference you require.

To sign up for conferences, please go to this Conference Sign-Up link. Make sure you look at the tabs on the top; teachers are organized by grade level. The sign up will close on March 17th at 9:00 AM.

Since the last Summer Street Beat, there is one more issue that was raised to my attention which can unintentionally cause the back-up on Summer Street to be even longer at dismissal time. If you are traveling southeast on Summer Street (passing the school on your left hand side), and you want to enter the parking lot with a long line of traffic waiting, kindly go past the school a few blocks and take a u-turn to be able to take a right into the parking lot. When we have a back-up of traffic right in front of the school, the buses can not exit the parking lot, which delays our loading of the students. Thank you for your attention to this detail! The rest of the reminders from a few weeks ago are copied again below.

• During arrival & dismissal time, only buses are allowed in the bus loop
• That bus loop is one way
• Yield to buses entering & leaving
• Please stay off your phone the entire time you are in the parking lot
• Do not stop on the crosswalk
• Stop when crossing lights are flashing or when the crossing guard is in the crosswalk

Recently, an LHS student reached out to me, on behalf of the group of students that are working on their Civic Action Project. The goal of their project is to make town meetings in Lynnfield more accessible to working Lynnfield residents. In order to achieve this, the first step is to garner feedback from surveys to Lynnfield students, staff and parents. All responses will remain anonymous. The answers from this form will be incredibly helpful as they complete their project. They are appreciative of your time!

Parent Form

Our School Council met at the end of February, and reviewed drafts we had written for an updated elementary Student Handbook. Our next meeting in March will be a joint meeting with the Huckleberry Hill School Council, where we will share what we have accomplished, and review their submissions. Our plan is to generate edits and revisions of all entries across both teams, with the final future step of a submission to School Committee.

The initial stages of learning to read can appear mysterious to many people! I read this summary of an article recently, and thought it might shed some light on these building blocks of literacy, and how they appear when reading with your children at home.

(from the Marshall Memo, #1074)

When and How to Teach Print Awareness

In this online article, Timothy Shanahan (University of Illinois/Chicago) responds to a teacher’s question on how much attention should be paid to print awareness (a.k.a. concepts about print), including a child’s recognition that:

- Print, not pictures, tells the story;

- Print represents words;

- Words are made up of letters;

- Words are separated by blank spaces;

- Print has an orientation and directionality;

- At the end of a line, you go to the beginning of the next line;

- Words don’t include numbers;

- The front and back covers of a book have different purposes.

Some of these are essential to the mechanics of reading, says Shanahan – directionality and what to do at the end of a line. Others are conceptual – that print tells the story, not pictures. And others get picked up as children learn to read – the front and back covers of a book.

Shanahan got a vivid demonstration of conceptual print awareness reading to his 3-year-old daughter. When she covered a word with her hand, Shanahan stopped reading and she said, “Why did you stop? What’s the matter, Daddy?” He explained that he was reading the words and couldn’t see the one she was covering. She asked in a puzzled voice, “You read this?” He said, “Yes, those are the words that I read.” During their next few reading sessions, his daughter tried covering words to see which ones he was reading, laughing gleefully when she got it right and he stopped.

“To tell the truth,” says Shanahan, “I was as surprised as she was. She was astonished that those black squiggles were what was read, and I was flabbergasted that this brilliant product of my genes, who I’d read to hundreds of times, had no idea that print told the story.” Children develop all kinds of theories about what the squiggles mean, including that each letter stands for a word or syllable. “The idea that multiple letters are needed to represent most words is not immediately obvious,” says Shanahan. “The purpose of blank spaces isn’t immediately apparent either.”

Once children have a “concept of word,” that expedites their phonemic awareness, and knowing consonant sounds facilitates the development of the concept. These realizations don’t proceed in a neat, orderly sequence, says Shanahan. Phonemic awareness and phonics are intertwined, each contributing to the other, and novice readers need both, perhaps in different sequences, as they read along with decodable texts and are exposed to lots of texts with word repetition.

Parents and teachers pointing to words as they’re read is very helpful for developing print awareness, as is talking about text the way Shanahan did with his daughter. Language experience is also powerful – children dictating an idea, the teacher or parent transcribing, and then reading it back multiple times, with children reading along, pointing to the words.

“Is Print Awareness Part of the Science of Reading?” by Timothy Shanahan in Shanahan on Literacy, February 8, 2025; Shanahan can be reached at shanahan@uic.edu.

Sports for Life (SFL) is announcing registration for a special event, which will take place at New England Disabled Sports at Loon Mountain in Lincoln, NH, from March 21st to 23rd, 2025.

About Sports for Life

SFL is designed to introduce first-time winter participants to adaptive sports in a supportive and engaging environment. Over two days, participants will receive hands-on instruction and experience the excitement of skiing with New England Disabled Sports. More information, and an application to participate, can be found here.

• Wednesday, 3/5: Early Release- AM/DLP PreK 11:00 dismissal, SSS 12:00 dismissal, no PM PreK
• Wednesday, 3/12: Music in Our Schools Night, 6:30 PM, LHS
• Thursday, 3/13: PTO Meeting, 7:00 PM, APR **change in date**
• Thursday, 3/20: Early Release- AM/DLP PreK 11:00 dismissal, SSS 12:00 dismissal, no PM PreK
• Thursday, 3/20: Parent-Teacher Conferences, 12:30-5:30
• Thursday, 3/27: PastaPalooza, 5:30, LHS

Grade 4

April 1st: ELA

April 8th: ELA

April 14-16: Make Up Testing

May 6th: Math

May 13th: Math

May 19-21: Make Up Testing

Grade 3

April 3rd: ELA

April 10th: ELA

April 14-16: Make Up Testing

May 8th: Math

May 15th: Math

May 19-21: Make Up Testing

Email: cronink@lynnfield.k12.ma.us
Website: https://sss.lynnfield.k12.ma.us/
Location: 262 Summer Street, Lynnfield, MA, USA
Phone: (781) 334-5830
Instagram: @principalcronin