Cornwall News

Dear Cornwall Families,

What a wonderful week to be at Cornwall School! It started a bit messy, with no school on Monday, but then (even with the excitement of winter break coming) students, faculty and staff settled in on Tuesday and worked diligently away for the rest of the week- and had fun doing so! On our travels throughout the school, we saw (among other things) Kindergarteners developing design skills and hand-eye coordination by building with cardboard, 2nd graders creating fairy tales, 3rd graders designing pickle cars, and of course lots of math and literacy instruction! The weather allowed for some comfortable (if pretty muddy) recesses, and of course, Friday saw one of the major events of the year at Cornwall School: Winter Crafts! Please look toward the end of this newsletters for pictures from the event!

Thank you to all of our volunteers for setting up stations and walking our students through making lovely winter crafts- the variety was really impressive! Also, a big "thank you" to FOCS for heading up wonderful events like these- the Cornwall community is fortunate to have such engaged parent leadership!

Cornwall School also had a important visitor during Winter Crafts. Incoming Superintendent Dr. Wendy Baker stopped by, along with several school board members, to check it all out and visit the school community. Dr. Baker doesn't officially start until July 1st, which makes her engagement and visiting all the more notable! It was great to have her join us.

Please read below to learn more about what's going on at Cornwall School. And have a great week!

- Bjarki and Mike

• Friday, 12/22: Winter Break begins: No school
• 12/22/23-1/1/2024 Winter Break
• 1/2/24 School resumes

Our second graders have been engaged with our Sharing the Planet unit where we have been reading a wide variety of fairy tales. We have now begun writing our own fairy tales and students have been very courageous during this time of learning new things! In math, we have been spending a lot of time working with “Jack and the Beanstalk” by measuring Jack’s garden beds and even measuring and selling beans for Jack!

Our class had a special guest last week, Dr. Cagney Coomer, who came in to do a science experiment. The students were able to make their own crystals! They have shown great knowledge from the lesson they had with Dr. Coomer as their crystals have continued to grow throughout this past week. We are thankful for her visit and the experience it brought to the classroom!

Each week, we will highlight some questions that can help children share some details of their week with their parents. This week's round are for Mr. Hirsch's class:

Were your “Some Kind Of Courage” predictions correct?

How and why do we round large numbers?

What does globalization mean? How can a pencil explain globalization?

We will be holding parent-teacher conferences between January 16th and February 9th for families to meet with teachers to discuss their child's January progress report. ACSD teachers are putting the finishing touches on a revised progress report that will show student progress towards grade level standards and the IB Approaches to Learning. Report cards will be sent home on January 12th. Teachers will be reaching out in early January to set up conference dates and times for all families.

If you are looking for help with gifts for your children for the holidays there is a HOPE Holiday Shop in Middlebury where parents can shop for free for new gift items for their children. Parents can stop by the HOPE office on 282 Boardman Street in Middlebury to fill out a short form and set up an appointment for that same day to shop. The Holiday Shop will be open until December 22nd, 2023. If you have any questions feel free to contact Tammie Johnson at tammiejohnson@acsdvt.org or call HOPE at 388-3608.

As discussed in last week's newsletter, our students enjoy recess immensely, but we always exploring ways to have it feel like an even more consistently safe space for all students. One change is to add more adult oversight, which we have done and continue to think about how to do better, but another is to actively engage the students in thinking how they want recess to be, and how they want it to look, sound, and feel. When we come back from Winter Break we will be devoting much of our first "All School Meeting" of January to reviewing expectations for recess, and even making some new ones as a group if the school community feels they are needed.

Sometimes there are changes to the school menu. You can always click here to find the latest one.