Lion’s · 2016. 5. 17. · January 2016 Lion’s Pride 3 So much learning is happening at King!...
Transcript of Lion’s · 2016. 5. 17. · January 2016 Lion’s Pride 3 So much learning is happening at King!...
Happy New Year from the Principal’s Office!!
It seems amazing to think that we have bid farewell to yet another year in 2015 and
have now welcomed 2016! The thought of a new year always brings hope for new
promises, new plans and new resolutions!
As we move into the New Year, just a few reminders for families as we welcome the
month of January:
Please be sure that your children are dressed appropriately for the winter
weather. ALL children will go outside every day as long as the “feels like”
temperature is 25 degrees or higher. It is important that they have boots, snow
pants, mittens/gloves, hats, and a warm jacket to be able to play in the snow.
If they do not have snow clothes, they will need to remain on the blacktop to
play. It always helps to keep an extra pair of socks in your child’s bag in case
they are needed. Please let us know if your child may be in need of any of
these items.
Please remember that school officially begins at 9:30 each day. Students who
arrive after 9:30 are considered tardy and need to report to the main office
before going to their classroom. Parents should accompany their children to
main office to check them in. Of course, it is always recommended that
students arrive at school between 9:15am and 9:25am in order to be able to
begin the day with their classmates without feeling rushed or anxious.
Unless of an emergency, no changes in dismissals will be made after 3:00pm
each day. Please notify the school in advance of this time so that children can
be appropriately informed. We cannot guarantee that adjustments requested
after 3:00pm will be transmitted to your child in time for dismissal.
If you have a preschool child who will be 5 years old by September 1, 2016,
please be sure that you have pre-registered him/her for Kindergarten for the
next school year. It is important that all students are pre-registered, even if
they have siblings that already attend one of the elementary schools. Please
see the district website for pre-registration information.
As 2016 arrives, please accept my heartfelt wishes for a Happy and Healthy New
Year!! I am excited about what the New Year will bring for our King Community!!
Best Regards,
Kim Taylor
Principal
From the Principal’s Desk
JANUARY
14 STEAM Exhibition;
6:00pm
15 NO SCHOOL
18 NO SCHOOL
22 PTO Movie Night;
6:30pm
29 Elementary Report
Cards
January 2016
This newsletter is provided solely for the benefit of those parents of children attending the George P. King Elementary School in Framingham, MA. The contents are for
informational purposes only
Lion’s
Pride
A newsletter dedicated to communicating the highlights
of our growing school community.
FEBRUARY
11 Early Release; 1:20pm
13-21 February Vacation
January 2016 2 Lion’s Pride
Kindergarten Corner Stacey Adelman, Ashley Deschenes, Sabrina Gravanti, and Jennifer Levitan
SAVE
THE DATE!!
Friday, January 22nd
King PTO Movie Night
6:30pm
The Kindergartners have been very busy experiencing the Engineering design
process! The children were presented with two separate problems they needed to
solve. The first was “How can we get the Gingerbread Man across the river
without the fox?” The second was “Can you build a house the Big Bad Wolf
cannot blow down?” By asking, imagining, planning, creating, and improving
each team of students was able to engineer a solution to both of these problems!
We know the Kindergartners are very excited to share their learning with you all
on our big Exhibition night!
These activities connected with our math unit on 2 dimensional and 3
dimensional shapes. The Kindergartners used their knowledge of shapes when
they were creating their boats or bridges for the Gingerbread Man and the house
for the 4th
Little Pig. They also explored with Geoblocks (3 dimensional
building blocks) in the classroom to build houses and traps for the Gingerbread
man.
The children are excelling and growing their literacy skills in both Reading and
Writing. In Readers workshop, we've been busy learning all about patterns in
books and how they can help us. We have also introduced reading partners and
the children are learning how to work with a partner to help each other read.
Writers Workshop officially launched and the children have been busy learning
the new routines. They all have their own writing folders to keep pieces they are
finished with as well as pieces they are still working on. They are encouraged to
stretch out and sound out words and write every sound they hear. Additionally,
they've been learning how good writers plan out what they want to write about.
It's been incredible to watch their growth in both Reading and Writing. With
January here, we anticipate seeing even greater growth in the coming weeks as
the children become more confident in their literacy skills.
THANK
YOU!!!
Many thanks to all
the students and
families who were
kind enough to give
cards, notes, and
gifts to me for the
holiday season. The
gift cards, wonderful
notes, pictures, and
treats were much
appreciated and
came in handy over
the vacation week!
Thank you again for
your kindness!!
January 2016
Lion’s Pride 3
So much learning is happening at King! This Curriculum Update, I am going to focus on the learning that
is happening in Fundations and Writing Workshop. In Fundations (our district-wide decoding, reading
and spelling program) students are working on tapping and blending words, reviewing letter formation
(both upper and lowercase) and reading and writing grade level sight words.
Implementation of the Lucy Calkins Writing Workshop model is a focus for all elementary schools in
the district. We have been lucky to have our Teaching and Learning Alliance consultant visit to observe
and present about Writing Workshop. Our focus has been on individual writing conferences with the
students. During these conferences, teachers focus on the writer’s purpose or goal of writing. Students
are also working on making their writing readable (just as we read author’s stories in Reader’s Workshop)
by writing all the sounds they hear in words, adding finger spaces, punctuation and capitalization.
At home, there are many ways that you can inspire your young authors. Encourage your children to write
and draw about what is most important to them. Help them to sound out the words (do not worry about
proper spelling). Model storytelling of your own ideas and brainstorm with them ideas that they can write
about at school.
If you have any curriculum questions, please feel free to email me: [email protected]
Mandarin Chinese Serena Chen, Mandarin Teacher
All of the Mandarin classes have been going very well over the past few months. The students are so eager to learn a
new language. We have had a good time learning numbers, families, body parts and colors.
Students at both the Kindergarten and 1st grade level began the school year learning greetings. Everyone knows how
to use “nǐ hǎo你好” to greet me. We learned a greeting song to help remember greetings to end this topic.
Then we moved into our number unit. The kindergarteners learned the numbers from one to ten. They know how to
count in Chinese and read the Chinese characters. They even tried to write the Chinese characters. They also learned
a Chinese number Kongfu exercise. We had a lot of fun doing that.
The 1st graders reviewed and learned the numbers from 1 to 30.
Next, we moved to our family members unit. The Kindergarteners mainly learned the words while 1st graders
reviewed the words and learned some sentences. After that we learned the body parts and colors. We learned the
Chinese words many different ways. We sang songs in Chinese, we used Chinese letters to play games, we did a lot
of coloring and labeling, and we saw some videos and listened to electronic Chinese story books.
We also experienced some Chinese culture, like the Mid-autumn Festival in late September, Face-painting of Peking
Opera and snowman paper-cutting.
Curriculum Update Allison Barbary, Academic Coach
January 2016 4 Lion’s Pride
News from Grade 1 Elise Malkin, Mia Mulvey, Michelle Renna, Christine Tache
Happy 2016 from First Grade!
The conclusion of 2015 brought with it many exciting accomplishments for our first grade students. We have
completed Module 1 in our math curriculum, so our students are successfully finding sums and differences
within 10. We have now moved on to Module 2, in which we are beginning to practice adding and subtracting
within 20.
In Writer’s Workshop, our students have been creating their small moments stories and bringing their
characters to life by adding dialogue, movement, and feeling to their pieces. Readers’ Workshop has also been
moving along quite nicely and so many of our first graders are excited to share their developing reading skills
and new found love of books and being a reader! It is exciting to listen to them and note the great progress that
so many of them of made since the beginning of the school year.
December was also a very exciting month for our S.T.E.A.M projects. Goldilocks, herself, delivered a letter to
our classrooms seeking our help in building a chair that is JUST RIGHT for her! The students have been
eagerly collaborating as they moved through the Engineering & Design process in order to Ask, Imagine, Plan,
Test, and Improve their chairs in their teams. We will proudly be sharing these projects with all of you at our
upcoming S.T.E.A.M Exhibition on Thursday, January 14th! We look forward to seeing you there!!
Artists’ Corner Holly Lafave, Art Teacher
Kindergarteners have been working on making their artwork standout the last 2 months by making Van
Gogh’s sunflowers 3D and popping off the paper. They learned how to cut a square into a circle, transferring
drawing skills to cutting and collage skills, and continued to make secondary colors through exploration of
techniques in color mixing. Artist month allowed our young students to paint within the lines to copy one of
Kandinsky’s most famous circle artwork and conclude with marbling to make the secondary color purple. The
“big deal” however, was the use of clay to make winter owls. The cute batch of textured, bisque fired owls will
be painted in the near future. Until then, we want to show you our festive and playful “catching snowflakes” art
work, coming to our bulletin board soon!
In the recent weeks, King first graders celebrated Artist month by recreating works of artists Keith
Haring and Vincent Van Gogh. Exciting painting, drawing, and disguise work was done to give
the impression that students were the original “Postman.” We spent the end of Fall and beginning of Winter
working with secondary colors for this and other projects, which lead nicely into making color choices on the
collaborative work with the STEAM chairs they created in their classrooms. First graders have symmetry and
drawing to look forward to in art class as they create their own symmetrical shapes turned cartoons!
I want to thank students for the great work on using AAB patterns to make our paper chain, an AB pattern to
make the 3D snowflakes, their artist skills to create various types of snowmen- at night, collaged, group drawn
and built from boxes as well as 2 strong horses, a giant sleigh and the winter wonderland scene for the Winter
Assembly! Their decorations brought the songs to life!
January 2016
Lion’s Pride 5
Library Corner Kate Kennedy, Library/Media Specialist
There has been a flurry of activity in the school library recently, as students prepared for January’s
Community of Mathematicians theme by cutting out symmetrical snowflakes to decorate the room.
Students also created mirror-image drawings and dot art to further explore the concept of symmetry. At
the computer center this month, groups are playing math games focused around counting, adding, and
logic. These games are also available through the King Elementary Library website, available at
kingschoollibrary.weebly.com, or through the “School Library” link on the King homepage. Try playing
the games at home with your child to help support their learning!
Books, of course, remain a major focus during library time. Students now have more choices, thanks to an
order of more than 200 books that arrived shortly before the winter break. The new titles include many
non-fiction books, including a science series, some books about crafts and origami, a few fairy tale
collections, and some biographies. In fiction, we have more picture books by popular authors such as
Drew Daywalt (The Day the Crayons Quit) and David Shannon (No, David!) as well as some chapter
books to challenge enthusiastic readers.
In addition to encouraging a love of reading and supporting the academic curriculum, we will be working
this month and for the rest of the school year on developing the five core values of King Elementary: Be
Caring, Be Cooperative, Be Respectful, Be Responsible, and Be Safe. We began the new year by
discussing the value of caring, looking for examples in books, and brainstorming ways to show caring in
the school library. Students who are “caught caring” during library time have been receiving certificates
and bookmarks as rewards to bring home. We are also working hard to learn how to take care of the
school library. Each week, library helpers assist during book checkout time by scanning library cards and
books. They also straighten shelves and perform other tasks to help keep the library running smoothly.
Speaking of which, it is very important that your child remembers to return his or her book on library day
so he or she can borrow a new book. If a book is lost, it will be assessed a fine so we can replace it.
The new year is off to a great start! A special thank you to parents who donated books through the
Scholastic Book Fair. If you would like to contribute to the library, please consider volunteering to help
out during your child’s library class or at another time. I can be reached at
January 2016 6 Lion’s Pride
Nurse’s Notes
Mrs. Linda Renault, School Nurse
When to Keep Your Child Home
Parents are often faced with a decision: should they keep their sick child at home or send them
off to school. The following guidelines should be considered when making the decision:
Fever: A child should stay at home with a fever of 100 degrees or higher. They may return
to school after they have been fever free for 24 hours (without taking fever reducing medicine
like Tylenol or Motrin).
Diarrhea/Vomiting: A child should be without vomiting for 24 hours and be able to eat at
least bland food and keep down fluids before they return to school.
Communicable Diseases: A child should receive 24 hours of antibiotics and be fever free
before returning to school with strep throat, conjunctivitis, or other communicable diseases.
Rashes: Common infectious diseases with rashes are most contagious in the early stages. A
child with a suspicious rash should return to school only after a healthcare provider has made a
diagnosis and authorized the child’s return to school.
Colds: Children may have several colds during the school year. If your child does not have a
fever and has enough energy to make it through the day they may attend school. Extra fluids
and rest will help their bodies fight infection. Students may carry a good supply of Kleenex
and a water bottle to help them feel more comfortable during the day.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
Your School Nurse,
Linda Renault
508-782-7595
January 2016
Lion’s Pride 7
PTO News
The King community came together in a big way in December to help raise funds to benefit our students. We completed four separate fundraisers - our popcorn drive, the 2nd annual King book fair , the Kelly’s Dine-Our Night, and the new King sweatshirts. In total, we raised over $4,130 with over $1,300 going directly to helping expand our library. This is an amazing result and a testament to the strength of the King community. Thanks to all the parents who have contributed via these events. A special thanks must go out to all the volunteers at these events - they simply don't happen without that help! Next King Elementary PTO Meeting - February 3rd, 7pm King PTO meetings continue to have great turnout from the King community. Please join us in the King cafeteria on February 3rd at 7pm to discuss current plans, curriculum and a wide range of topics. Movie Night! - January 22nd We're excited to announce our second Movie Night (postponed from November) following up on the tremendous success from our first one. Bring your sleeping bag and pillows and join us on January 22nd for a movie and popcorn! King Elementary is on Shoparoo! Imagine that you could scan your store receipts and automatically get a percentage of your bill donated to King Elementary. Shoparoo makes it easy for you help King - just download the app to your phone and scan your receipts! To sign up, just head over to www.shoparoo.com. Monthly Spotlight - Meet your PTO It has been exciting for the PTO to watch King Elementary grow and expand - but it also means that many people may not know the members of PTO Board. To help with this, each month, we’ll highlight a different PTO board member. Steve Ross. Co-Vice President Steve is a senior project engineer for Essilor working in Dudley, MA. Steve has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Lowell in Plastics Engineering. Steve's daughter Alexis is in Ms. Mulvey's 1st grade class. Remember you can always reach the King PTO via email - [email protected] or on our Facebook page!
January 2016 8 Lion’s Pride
King Fun Photos!!!