GES Grey Wolf Gazette
November 6, 2022
End 68 Hours of Hunger Program Information
Happy November!
Dear Greenfield Families and Friends,
Happy November! I apologize for the delay getting this week's newsletter out! The SMORE website was down on Friday afternoon and the weather this weekend was just too darn gorgeous to be inside! Now that it's dark at 5:00, there will be more time for indoor activities! I hope you were able to get outside and take advantage of the unseasonably warm and sunny weather too!
We enjoyed our Halloween Parade on Monday! It was great to see so many families and friends along the route. The children love this event and enjoy getting to show off costumes before Trick or Treating!
Parent-Teacher conferences are on Tuesday, November 8th. If you have not already scheduled a time to meet with your child's teacher, please reach out via email ASAP to get a time scheduled. We look forward to meeting with you and sharing details about your child's progress so far. It's an important time for families to meet with teachers and ask questions!
UPCOMING IMPORTANT DATES-PLEASE CHECK AND ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR!
11/7-11/11/22: Special: Library with Mrs. Aborn
11/8/22: NO SCHOOL! Parent-Teacher Conferences will be held today. Teachers will be sending home information about signing up for conference soon.
11/11/22: NO SCHOOL! Veteran's Day
11/14-11/18/22: Special: Library with Mrs. Aborn
11/21-11/22/22: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!
11/22/22: STEAM DAY! Mr. Jeremy Griffus joins us again for a day of experimenting and fun! Ms. Jeannie Connolly will also be here to help students create lanterns they can bring to the Peterborough Lantern Walk in December! We will need volunteers to help with set up, supervision and support during activities and clean up! If you're interested in volunteering please email Karen Paul at kpaul@conval.edu.
11/23-11/25/22: NO SCHOOL! Thanksgiving Break
11/28-12/2/22: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!
12/5-12/9/22: Special: Art with Mr. Shapiro
12/7/22: GES PTO Meeting at 5:30 in the Library. **Childcare will be available for those who need it!*
12/12-12/16/22: Special: Library with Mrs. Aborn
12/19-12/23/22: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!
12/22/22: Solstice Day!
12/26/22-1/2/23: Holiday Break!
ConVal Holds Community Forum November 10
The ConVal School Board and administration will hold the district’s fourth ConVal Community Forum on Thursday, November 10, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Lucy Hurlin Theater at ConVal High School.
As with the previous forums, there will be topic presentations, followed by questions and answers from the community. Both in-person attendance and streaming viewing will be available, with questions being taken from both audiences.
The first topic will be the remodeling of the high school, Applied Technology Center (ATC, and the two middle schools.
The second topic will be ConVal’s new strategic plan, which affects the educational environment, practices, goals, and physical plant needs. This is a five-year strategic plan.
There are two changes being considered for this forum. The first is whether the district should provide child care for the community members who will be attending as in-house audience. The second is whether there should be a meet-and-greet get-together, with refreshments at the end of the forum for the community to informally meet with School Board representatives and administration.
The district is offering a survey to assist in planning for these new enhancements. Please click here to take the survey.
GES Nurse's News
It is very important to be aware of what food allergies are present in your child's class. If you do choose to send in treats for your student to share with the class, please ensure items are store-bought and individually wrapped, and take time to make sure to avoid any allergens that are present in the classroom. If you have any questions about Halloween celebrations in your child's class and/or food allergies, please reach out to the classroom teacher or myself.
Alaina Slocomb
What's Cookin' in 4th Grade?
We are in the home stretch of Because of Winn-Dixie. Students have discussed the conflicts and resolutions in the story. We continue to break apart the plot and work together to summarize each section as we read. Students have done a really great job demonstrating their understanding of different story elements throughout this novel study.
Our Social Studies work has us doing a deep dive into the culture and lifestyle of the Abenaki tribes of New England. We talked a lot about how they used the land and why they settled in different areas, i.e. the mountains, lakes region, or by the oceans. It was usually because of the natural resources that they needed in order to survive. We ended our week by creating a class mural of a Bear. The bear signified Power, Protection and Medicine for the Abenaki people. We enjoyed a rainy trip to the Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum on October 26th. Students will be sharing highlights about our trip in the next Gabbing with Grey Wolves podcast! Students also continue in the chore of paper recycling here at GES. The students organized the efforts and each Thursday they collect the bins, combine the collection and put it out for our gracious volunteers, the White family, to take to the transfer station.
Students are learning what tools we can use when we are feeling dysregulated. We talked about how when we are feeling tired, hungry, sad, angry or anxious it can be difficult to learn. Our Calm Corner is a place that uses these tools, and is a safe place for all students to take a couple of minutes, when and if they need them. We also discussed that not all tools are useful to people in the same way. Some students may need a minute to relax and breathe, other students may need a quick walk down the hall or a fidget to help them regulate and return to learning. It was a great class discussion and I am really proud of how supportive they are of each other.
Overheard in Third with Ms. Heard!
In Literacy this week we began our unit on fables. We read a collection of Aesop’s fables. Ask your student about their favorite fable and what the moral was! In writing students compared Halloween to Christmas and then wrote opinion paragraphs about which holiday was better. Students are learning the importance of revising and how to add more details to their sentences.
Science: In honor of Halloween, we studied the skeleton! We learned that our bones and joints give us shape, protect our insides and help us move. We even learned the scientific names for some of our bones!
SEL: This week, as part of our growth mindset unit, we talked about the importance of failure and mistakes. Did you know that Michael Jordan lost over 300 games in his career?
Read Aloud's we are enjoying include The Witches, and Aesop’s Fables.
Good News from Mrs. G's 2nd Graders!
In Literacy we are working on reading and spelling the soft c sound. When c is followed by an, e, i, or y it is soft. We continue to practice reading and spelling silent e words. We are also working on comparing and contrasting. This week we read two stories by the same author and talked about how they were the same and different. We are also working on taking our ideas from our writing planners and putting them into complete thoughts to create a paragraph. We are working on finishing up an opinion essay about the best holiday!
Science & Social Studies: We continue to track the phases of the moon. We worked on a delicious project to model the phases this afternoon. We spent time last week learning about Diwali and discussing how traditions in every family are different, but also similar.
Read Alouds we are enjoying include Creepy Carrots, Creepy Crayon, Duck for President, The Notebook of Doom, and Arnie the Donut
SEL: We are focusing on building our growth mindset- we can work hard to improve!
Mrs. Barnes' First Graders are Busy Bees!
Literacy: We are practicing reading and spelling words with beginning s-blends like swim and snap. We are pretty good at reading them but sometimes spelling them is tricky. We’ve also been working on building our reading fluency using sentence pyramids and short decodable paragraphs. Decodable text means we’ve been taught how to sound out and read all of the word patterns used in the story. We know good readers don’t guess or skip words. We even have a song about it! We are focusing on writing complete sentences with a subject (who/what the sentence is about) and a predicate (the did what). We learned more about nouns and how we use them for subject words when we write those good sentences this week using books from the Bear series by Karma Wilson.
Read Alouds we are enjoying included Skeleton Hiccups, Pumpkin Soup, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves, Little Boo, Bear Says Thanks, and Bear Wants More. We decided to read the second book about Ralph S. Mouse and we are starting chapter 3 of Runaway Ralph. Ralph is fed up with his little cousins and is running away to the summer camp up the road in hopes of lots of peanut butter sandwiches!
Science & Social Studies: We finished our study of the life cycle of pumpkins and physical traits of pumpkin plants. We also learned a little about Halloween traditions in other parts of the world.
SEL: We continued to focus on the size of the problem and how to get/use tools and strategies to support us when we are struggling to focus.
Hot Off the Press from Mrs. Hodgen's Kindergarten Class!
Literacy: This week we learned about Sammy Snake and the letter Ss with a trip to Letterland. We are now beginning to blend words with two or three sounds using the letters m, d, f, c, s, o, and i. We are grouping words by beginning sounds, matching rhyming words, and beginning to identify ending sounds we hear in words. Using an alphabet arc we’ve been practicing matching upper and lower case letters, putting the letters in order from A to Z, and finding the letter that represents the sounds we hear.
Science & Social Studies: This week has been all about Halloween, pumpkins and bats.
SEL: We have been talking about our emotions and how to identify how someone else is feeling by how their body looks. We have also been learning about the size of the problem. What type of problems can we solve ourselves and what problems do we need help from a trusted adult.
Read Alouds included Crankenstein, Trick or Treat Crankenstein, Room on a Broom, Bats on Parade, and Bear Says Thanks. We are also continuing to read Ramona the Pest. We are on chapter 3. It is fun to read about another student in Kindergarten and her great big emotions.
First Friends Preschool News!
Trish's class has been working with many math problems using pumpkins! We weighed and measured and compared sizes and textures of pumpkins and gourds. We studied bats and learned many facts. For literacy activities, we are using our puppets to act out stories and songs, plus doing beginning rhyming games. Our social/emotional learning has included the expression of emotions we may see in pumpkin faces. We enjoyed a nature scavenger hunt in the woods and got to plant bulbs with Carele, which will be exciting to see pop up in the spring!
Colleen's preschoolers have been learning about pumpkins-we talked about our five senses and made a list of our observations in regards to the inside and outside of a pumpkin. We had a great time decorating a Pumpkin to the book character, the Purple Cat from Brown Bear by Eric Carle. We also watched how crayons melt and mix together to make abstract art on a white pumpkin going from a solid to a liquid to a solid again. We learned all about bats and even pretended to be a bat outside with Jaime from the Harris Center. We have been talking about how to be good friends this week, as well as talking about the Zones of Regulation and our feelings. We planted bulbs with Carele and we are looking forward to seeing flowers come up in the spring.
Classroom Counseling with Mrs. Lofstedt
Kindergarten:
Week of 10/24: We started our unit about feelings. We watched videos and looked at pictures to learn about the facial expressions for happy and sad and compared the differences. Students drew pictures showing times they felt happy and sad.
Week of 10/31: We continued our unit on feelings and looked at the facial expressions for surprised and scared. We compared surprised and scared to happy and sad and looked for similarities and differences. Students then played a game using facial expressions to show how they would feel in a variety of situations.
1st Grade and 3rd Grade:
Week of 10/24: We continued our bullying prevention curriculum with a lesson about reporting bullying. After reviewing the definition of bullying, we discussed the importance of reporting bullying to a trusted adult by using the phrase, “I need to report bullying.” Students watched a video of a student reporting bullying and then practiced reporting bullying in small groups.
Week of 10/31: We continued our bullying prevention curriculum with a lesson about refusing bullying. After reviewing the definition of bullying and how to report bullying students watched a video of a student refusing bullying. We reviewed what it means to be assertive and students worked with a partner to practice refusing bullying using a variety of scenarios.
2nd Grade:
Week of 10/24: We began our bullying prevention curriculum this week with a lesson about how to recognize bullying. Students learned the definition of bullying, the types of bullying, and reviewed a variety of scenarios to determine if they were examples of bullying.
Week of 10/31: We continued our bullying prevention curriculum with a lesson about reporting bullying. After reviewing the definition of bullying, we discussed the importance of reporting bullying to a trusted adult by using the phrase, “I need to report bullying.” Students watched a video of a student reporting bullying and then practiced reporting bullying in small groups.
4th Grade:
Week of 10/24: This week we discussed how different people can have different perspectives about the same situation. Students looked at several images that can be seen from different perspectives (i.e. duck/rabbit) and we discussed the things that may impact why they see what they see first. We listened to the book “A Tale of Two Beasts.” Students completed a group activity identifying different perspectives for a single situation.
Week of 10/31: This week we talked about conversation skills and giving compliments. We watched a video showing a conversation and students identified mistakes made by the students having a conversation in the video. We watched a second video and students identified what was better about the conversation. Students were presented with two different scenarios and worked in small groups to think of ways to continue the conversation in those situations. We then discussed how compliments can be an important part of a conversation and students practiced giving genuine compliments to each other.
S.E.L. Corner
Hello everyone! This week is extra special, as it's the kick-off to National School Psychology Week, where we bring awareness to all the wonderful supporters of children's mental health, and THANK YOU for all you do to support these amazing children as well!
Resource of the Week:
- Good Inside Podcast - This is a great free podcast by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and parent herself, that talks all about how to believe in yourself as a parent - try some of the tips she provides, and try to remember that in those challenging moments, your kids are trying to communicate something with you, and we just need to teach them how to better understand why we need to listen. Dr. Becky has her own instagram, book, and website full of (sadly not free) webinars as well! (Such a great resource, I'm sharing it again!)
Article of the Week:
- Rise & Shine: Establishing a Stress-Free Morning Routine with Kids - Notice the article says "with" rather than "for." It is key to involve our kids in the process of developing an optimal morning routine. Routines are predictable and helpful to ensure success, plus they make our lives so much easier toward getting everyone out the door on time! Take some time this week to think about your morning routine, talk about what can be done the night before to make the morning easier, and give it a try! Even a small change can make a big difference and enable you to even enjoy some of that time in the morning before you part with your kid(s) for the day.
Family Activity:
- In honor of school psychology week, here are some coloring pages! Notice that each piece can be decorated, but when put together, the piece is even more beautiful! It's suggested that each member of the family color one part and then assemble together - illustrating that each member of our families is unique, and that when a family comes together, something even more special is shone!
Local Events and Activities
News from the Souhegan Valley Boys and Girls Club!
We regret to inform families that the SVBGC Before and After School program is not available at this time. The club is actively seeking staff for all their locations, including Greenfield and Antrim, but like many other employers in the region they have been unable to fill these positions. If you are interested in the program, you can place your child on a waitlist. If enough students enroll AND the club can secure staffing, the program may be able to reopen at the Greenfield location. Registration information can be found on the Club’s website www.svbgc.org If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact Catherine Kendall at ckendall@svgbc.org.
2022-2023 Calendar
Resources
Where to find ConVal District and GES News!
GES has a facebook page! You can find the link here:
https://www.facebook.com/Greenfield-Elementary-School-532738607668635
The ConVal School District has news blog to serve as a hub for the latest updates, information and news about the district’s schools, students, faculty, events and accomplishments.
The blog, ConValNews.com is integrated into the schools and District’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and will automatically broadcast news blog content onto these platforms, connecting directly with the district community.
With a clean, user-friendly and mobile responsive layout, the news blog allows for easy navigation throughout. It can be accessed on computers, cell phones and tablets. Community members can subscribe and be notified by email when new posts are published.
Parents/guardians, students, staff, and community members should still utilize the district’s main website, Convalsd.net, to access the District-wide calendar of events, contact information, school committee meeting notices and minutes, important documents and notices and to view general information about the district and its schools.
Connect with us!
Email: croy@conval.edu
Website: https://ges.convalsd.net/
Location: 860 Forest Road, Greenfield, NH 03047, USA
Phone: 603-547-3334
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Greenfield-Elementary-School-532738607668635
Twitter: @ges_royc