Forestdale School News

On Friday, December 22nd, Forestdale celebrated its 2nd Wellness Day, highlighted by a Jingle Jog run/walk. It was great to see all the families out participating and supporting thier students.

The celebration of Wellness Day for students and staff has been an overwhelming success. Focusing on the mental wellbeing of students and staff before holiday break helps everyone prepare for, what many identify, a stressfull time of preparing and financially manuevering through the holiday's.

Much of the holiday stress experienced by adults is internally detected by even the youngest of children. They will subconsciously adopt the stress/anxiety observed at home.

Although we look to my staff to help support students during this time, staff are working through their own stresses and anxiety preparing for their family holiday. Wellness Day has helped both students and staff relax their emotions before embarking on the holiday break.

Activities during Wellness Day include: REACH Ceremony (Positive student character traits recognized by staff), Jingle Jog, arts and crafts, games, physical activities, sensory/relaxation, and reading.

2nd grader Hunter Lima-Carty (right) was the overall winner of the Jingle Jog and 2nd grader Aubrey Ellis (left) was the first female finisher. Thank you to all the families who came out to support their students!

Jingle Jog Photos

Students at Forestdale received a surprise welcome from Santa on Thursday, December 21st

First and second grade students perform their version of the Nutcracker on Thursday, December 21st in front of family and friends. Students were under the direction of retired Sandwich Public Schools physical education teacher Elena Novero.

Kindergarten REACH award winners.

Gr. 1 REACH Award Winners

Gr. 2 REACH Award Winners

There will not be school on Friday, January 12th due to All Day In-Service Professional Development for staff and Monday, January 15th in observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Students will return to school on Tuesday, January 16th.

Late this Fall, Forestdale School assessed all students in Kindergarten thru Grade 2 with an early literacy universal screening assessment.

Early literacy universal screening assessments, mandated for all students in K-Grade 3 by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), are used to assess skills that may predict future reading difficulties. These skills include alphabetic knowledge, phonemic awareness, word reading, reading comprehension and rapid automatized naming. Skills are assessed differently depending on a student's grade level.

In Kindergarten and 1st Grade, student's were assessed using Early Bird, which is approved screener by DESE. Early Bird is given to each child by a teacher or staff member. The assessment takes 60 minutes to complete in Kindergarten and 30 minutes in Grade One.

Grade 2 used iReady Diagnostics to assess students. Using additional tasks with the iReady assessment, qualified this to be approved by DESE.

We will be notifying families of students who scored "significantly below benchmarks" and discuss how we are supporting your student in the classroom.

Early literacy universal screening is an important tool to help promote each child’s success as a reader. We are grateful for your continued partnership. Please contact your child’s classroom teacher with any questions about their progress.

The Social Work Team

During the month of January, we will be continuing our December activities in Physical Education. Here are a couple photos from gymnastics and drumming.

Grade 2 students will be exploring Earth Science. Students are introduced to different types of landforms. They explore the many ways water and weather change and reshape the Earth. Hands-on labs have students working with partners and table groups on experiments designed to show the difference between weathering, erosion and deposition. Students also design and create models to show how water changes the land and how to slow or prevent erosion.

Grade 1 students explore light and sound for Term 2. Students explore how light and sound travel. They work together to see the effects sound vibration can have on rice grains. Students also create different sounds using metal spoons and plastic rulers. Light is explored through flashlights shining on or through a variety of materials. Mirrors are used to reflect light onto targets of different heights. Students also work with pinhole boxes to discover how light is necessary for us to see.

Grade K students continue to explore force. We continue with push and pull then explore magnetism, gravity and friction through a wide variety of hands-on labs. Partners are challenged to create the tallest tower of single-stacked cups and then cups towers with a wide base. They work with simple catapults to launch ping pong balls. Magnetism is explored using a wide variety of different types of magnets. We end with K'nex engineering challenges to create simple machines.

In the library we are highlighting the following books/ authors this month: biographies, winter, Steven Kellogg and Kate DiCamillo. If there are authors you are unfamiliar with I highly recommend these highlights for all ages K-2. There are many great authors but I carefully select ones that really have a wide variety and will appeal to more of our students. Big categories like biography may have several excellent series within the category such as Who/ What was, I am or Ordinary People Change the World, Little People, Big Dreams and the You Should Meet, Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists and Composers Series are some of the best biography series for young children.

Robots, Robots, Robots!

In kindergarten, students are learning how to sequence commands(forward, backward, turn right, turn left) to get “Beebot” to its destination.

First Graders add a little more complexity with the robot, Botely, integrating 45* turns and loops that help “Botely” perform challenging tasks like guiding a ball into a goal.

In second grade, we learn more detailed algorithms, changing parameters in our ipad coding app “blockly”, that help “Dash” robot work its way through an obstacle course.

For the month of January, our amazing artists will continue to work on self-portraits and scratch-foam ink printing. Thank you to everyone who has made donations of yarn, fabric, paper products and crafting materials to the art room. If you have items you'd like to donate, or times that you could volunteer in the art room, please reach out to Nicole White at nwhite@sandwich.k12.ma.us. (Please note that anyone who wishes to volunteer in the classroom must complete and submit a CORI background check form to our main office. The process generally takes 2-3 weeks.)

-If you still have the pink emergency card that was sent home, please review the front and back, make any changes if necessary, sign the back and return it in your child's folder. If you no longer have the copy we sent home, please contact the nurses office and we will send home a new copy.

-If you received a vision or hearing referral and have already followed up, please send in documentation to the nurses office. If you have received a vision or hearing referral and have not followed up, please contact your child's doctor and send documentation at your earliest convenience. If you have questions regarding these referrals or need a copy, don't hesitate to contact us.

-We are seeing an increased number of children for snacks in the nurse's office. While we will never refuse a snack for a student, we do have a very limited supply. The most common reason we are hearing is students are eating all the food in their lunch boxes at lunch time. We would encourage parents to place the snack time food in a separate area of the backpack if possible.

-As the winter weather approaches we would like to remind everyone to make sure the children are dressed appropriately for the cold weather…warm coats, hat, gloves etc. We have a small supply of winter gear in the nurse's office for those who forget theirs.

-Just a reminder, please keep children home with fevers and vomiting until they are 24 hours without symptoms. If the child is on antibiotics for a contagious illness, they must be on medication for at least 24 hours before returning. All contagious illnesses should be reported to the nurses office.

Thank you!

Friday, January 12th

Monday, January 15th

Sandwich Elementary PTA serves the children and families of Forestdale and Oak Ridge schools by providing events and fundraising opportunities to support the educational needs of the children of those schools. Please consider joining!

2023-2024 PTA MEETINGS

Tuesdays at Forestdale School Library

• January 9th 6pm
  
• February 13th 6pm
• March 12th 4pm @ Oak Ridge
• April 9th 6pm
• May 14th 6pm
• June 4th 6pm