Wildcat Weekly!
Dear Wildcat Community,
We hope you are having a great summer and are enjoying the downtime and wonderful summer weather! We are hard at work here getting our school ready for the 2024-25 school year!
Planning and preparation continue. In early July, volunteers from the Presbyterian Church of Toms River came to Walnut Street Elementary School to paint several classrooms and bathrooms. Dozens of volunteers helped with this project and the work they did was absolutely amazing! We sincerely thank the many, many volunteers that came to help beautify Walnut Street. Also, thank you to our 5th grade teacher Mrs. Megan Myers for helping to organize this.
Our custodial staff are working hard each day in our building. We thank Mr. Combs and Mr. Baxter for their hard work in cleaning our classrooms, common spaces, and hallways. Walnut Street is already looking great!
Planning and preparation in relation to our schedule and student placements is also well underway. The process is challenging and the goal is to successfully balance the classes and to plan for variables related to student programming. Our goal at Walnut Street is to create balanced classes in which the students will thrive and receive the best education possible. Student placements will be available in Genesis sometime in late August. Once student placements are available to you, please understand that there will be no classroom switches for any reason. We are looking forward to another outstanding year!
While rest and relaxation is important for all of us this summer, it is important for our students to continue reading and doing math related activities during the summer. Students sometimes lose some of the academic gains they made over the school year during summer months. Please continue to encourage your students to read and do math work during the summertime. Below, you will find Ocean County Library summer resources.
Kindergarten Registration has been ongoing and we are excited to meet our newest Wildcat class! Please note that Kindergarten and New Student Orientation will be held on August 29. Kindergarten Orientation will begin at 9:00 AM and New Student Orientation will begin at 11:00 AM. At our orientations, our newest students and parents will learn about the school, tour classrooms and the school, and receive important information about our district and Walnut Street. If you are the parent of an incoming Kindergarten student or are new to our school or district, please save the date for this event. Also, please make sure your paperwork and medical information is up to date. This is vitally important because you will not be placed in a class until this information is given to and processed by the front office. We will see you there!
Don't forget to use the link below to visit our PTO website. During the course of the school year important information related to PTO meetings, events, fundraisers, and more will be available to you. Please consider getting involved!
Finally, please save the date: Back To School Night will be held on September 19. A letter explaining the night will be sent via ParentSquare in late August.
Another newsletter will be coming out in August. Until then, please enjoy the summer months and stay safe.
- Kindergarten Orientation: Thursday, August 29 starting at 9:00 AM (Letter forthcoming)
- New Student Orientation: Thursday, August 29 starting at 11:00 AM (Letter forthcoming)
- First Day of School: September 5
- Back to School Night: September 19 (Schedule forthcoming)
- Parent/Teacher Conferences: December 3 - 5
As you know, district and school communication are vitally important. Here at Walnut Street Elementary School, we use various means of communication. ParentSquare is a communication app that we use to get information out quickly to our school community. It is a great idea to download the ParentSquare app to your Smartphone and make sure you use banners, sounds, badges, and push notifications so you know a message was sent. ParentSquare also sends an email to you when something is posted and can also translate into any language. Please download the app today!
Finally, the school has an active Instagram Account that we post the many happenings at Walnut Street. This account has over 360 followers. On this handle, we post amazing pictures and video of the goings on during the school year. Please follow us on Instagram: @wsewildcats
Summer Reading Flier and Available Resources
As we all know, summer is an important time to refresh and recharge. However, it is vitally important to avoid the 'summer slide'. Summer slide is a term used to describe student learning loss during the summer months. At Walnut Street, we want to give you as many resources and materials to avoid student learning loss. Students have access to digital learning platforms such as iReady and Boost Reading.
Setting student family goals to read books over the summer to promote year round literacy is just one way to have students retain reading growth. Math growth can be maintained by doing fun family things over the summer such as cooking, baking, playing various board games, and practicing math facts!
The Ocean County Library has an entire page dedicated to summer reading. Please click this link to their website. There are also incredible summer programs offered. Please take advantage!
Please see the summer reading expectations for Toms River Reginal Schools below.
