Happy Friday!

As we wrap up another week, I wanted to take a moment to connect with you, which is one of my favorite parts of the week! We loved seeing all of the birthday tie dye in the halls for Mrs. Larson's special day! Way to go Wildcats, she sure felt loved!

I've been sending out my newsletters a bit earlier than usual to create some extra family time on Sundays. It’s really important to me to be available for questions and support, and I'm also learning to find a little balance between my role as a principal and as a mom. It's two of the best and hardest jobs!

This year has been busy as I teach a couple of classes and hope to provide additional reading support to some of our learners. I truly appreciate your understanding and patience with my responses, as well as your help in keeping our office informed with dismissal reminders, getting forms in, and following all of our procedures. Your love and support for our wonderful school mean so much to me.

In this newsletter, you’ll find some important updates, including:

• Options-Based Drill practice
• Soccer parking for 9/21
• GIS Read-a-Thon information
  
• Website updates
• A few other tidbits

As always, I’m here for you! My door and inbox are always open, so feel free to reach out anytime.

Mrs. H

We will have our first options-based drill on Wednesday, September 25th. I will be practicing sending out notifications of our drill through our app and it will be explicit that it's a drill.

I hope you received my text message this morning. We are saying goodbye to slime of all sorts in the building. It is causing learning disruptions and similar to toys, which should also be left at home. I also think about the number of germs slime must collect throughout the course one day! 😝

Thank you for your support in this!

There is a tractor display happening in our parking lot tomorrow between 10 and 2. Please park as close to the Bullis Farm as possible, in the bus loop, or in the first two rows of parking closest to the school.

Sep 9- 27: Grades 1-6 Universal Testing opens

Sep 23- Oct 4: Kindergarten Universal Testing

Sep 30: Cooperation Celebration 2:30 in the gym. Families are welcome!

Oct 10-11: No School

Oct 16: Open House 5:30-6:30

You can find the GISU calendar below in the Links section

Fundations (not a typo), is a structured program used in our schools that supports students' understanding of print concepts, phonemic awareness, and phonics.

Woah! Mrs. H...what the heck is all of that?!

Print awareness involves understanding how written language functions. It includes recognizing that print conveys meaning, similar to spoken words. Children with strong print awareness understand that symbols on a page represent letters, words, and sentences that tell stories, give instructions, or share information.

Phonological and phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds in spoken language, including rhymes, syllables, and phonemes (the smallest units of sound.)

Phonics is the ability to match the sound of spoken words to letters or groups of letters.

It's all pretty complicated, which is why attendance, a good night sleep, healthy snacks, and exposure to as many words as possible is so important. Phonics is a whole brain activity. The picture below shows the 5 steps the brain goes through to support kiddos' reading.

Check out these resources!

We are going to start a read-a-thon on 10/1/24 with our school! Our hallways will be lined with GIANT bookmarks that the kids will make (each student will have their own bookmark), and they will fill their bookmark with books they have read at school and home.

More information will be going out to families next week and we encourage you to read as much as you can with your kiddo(s)! Stay tuned and be sure to find your kiddo's bookmark at open house!

You can now access our family calendar from grandisleschool.org. At the top of the page is a link to our family calendar. We will update events there for families so check in often.

We will still have updates in the newsletter and on our calendar formats, but this offers an opportunity for easy access no matter what device you are on.

September Breakfast- Free to all families

September Lunch- Free to all families

Email: ahanlon@gisu.org
Website: https://www.grandisleschool.org/
Location: 224 U.S. Rte 2, Grand Isle, VT, USA
Phone: 802-372-6913
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grandisleschool.org

Attendance Form: https://forms.gle/ABSvVURCxvqbMfXw7