GES Grey Wolf Gazette
September 29, 2022
End 68 Hours of Hunger Program Information
Happy Fall!
Dear Greenfield Families and Friends,
Happy Friday!
The month of September has flown by! How have we completed our first month of school already! With 22 days down, we are fairly well settled into the routines of school again and are busier than ever learning together. We welcomed three new students to GES this week! Our second preschool class is settling in and will be welcoming new students over the coming months as well. We have lots of excited learners here this year and it's a joy to visit classrooms and see students engaged and happy!
The 4th graders and I brainstormed some ideas for our podcast and we will begin exploring the app we will use to create it next week. They are excited to get started on this project! Our goal is to release our first episode by the end of the month! Stay tuned!
Our K-4 students are finishing up fall benchmark assessments in reading and math to identify areas of strength and need. Over the coming weeks we will be looking at the results and developing plans to help inform instruction in the first trimester. Results from these assessments will be shared with families at parent-teacher conferences in November.
Please refer to the ConVal School Nurse Newsletter for information regarding COVID-19 exposures, school attendance after an exposure or testing for your child. You can find the newsletter here: https://www.smore.com/18ae4. Mrs. Slocomb is available during school hours to answer any questions you may have after reading the guidance.
UPCOMING IMPORTANT DATES-PLEASE CHECK AND ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR!
10/3-10/7/22: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker-don't forget your sneakers!
10/5/22: GES PTO Meeting at 5:30 in the Library. **Childcare will be available for those who need it!*
10/10/22: NO SCHOOL! Indigenous People's Day and Teacher PD.
10/11-10/14/22: Special: Art with Mr. Shapiro
10/17-10-21/22: Special: Library with Mrs. Aborn
10/24-10/28/22: Special: Health/PE with Mrs. Parker-don't forget your sneakers!
10/28/22: PIZZA PUMPKIN PALOOZA IS BACK! We are excited to welcome families back for our first all school event of the year! Details coming soon, but mark your calendar for 5:00-7:00pm for this exciting event now!
10/31/22: Annual Halloween Costume Parade to the Meeting House. Details will be sent home soon.
10/31-11/4/22: Special: Music with guest teacher Mrs. K!
11/2/22: GES PTO Meeting at 5:30 in the Library. **Childcare will be available for those who need it!*
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 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!
S.E.L Family Corner
Resources of the Week:
- Child Mind Institute's Family Resource Center - A website full of helpful articles on a variety of topics to help parents in supporting their children at home.
- Vroom has resources both on their website (at vroom.org) as well as on their app. They have everything from videos to tip sheets to information on supporting your children in meeting milestones and how to help them receive additional interventions if needed. They include fun activities you can do together to enhance your child's development - activities that can be fun past the age of 5 as well!
- Big Life Journal: Growth Mindset for Kids & Teens is primarily a website for purchasing their Big Life Journal products. While they are not free, their blog, found here, is free, and hosts many free printables for download. Additionally, you can add your email address to their mailing list to receive free parenting tips and printables by email each week! Their "Freebies Page" includes a place to sign up for these resources.
Articles of the Week:
- (From Child Mind) What to Do (And Not Do) When Children Are Anxious by Clark Goldstein, PhD
- "What is After-School Restraint Collapse? How to Help Your Child" As a school psychologist, dozens of families have shared with me that their child (or children) have a hard time transitioning once they come home - that the teacher seems to observe a "different" child than the one they see at home, a child who has a much harder time with their emotions when at home. Just today, I learned there's a real name for this: "After-School Restraint Collapse"! Motherly has some great tips in this article to help ease that transition at home and help your child with their emotions at home. I also appreciate the related articles linked within this site for support on other issues.
Family Activities:
- Start the 21-Day Gratitude Challenge (using this free printable from Big Life Journal) Using the prompts on the sheet, have a conversation as a family about the many amazing experiences you've had together as a family, even if it's only been for a short time. Connect over what you have been able to do together as a family, and talk about what dreams you might have for the future!
- Make a "Fall Bucket List"! Take time as a family to write down all of the fun fall-only things you want to do before the season is over (whether it's carving pumpkins, enjoying a cup of cider, or taking a walk to find the prettiest leaf!) Brainstorming together can help communicate our hopes and expectations with one another, and have even more fun as a family.
Please reach out to Mrs. Styren at kstyren@seresc.net or Mrs. Lofstedt at vlofstedt@conval.edu if you have any questions!
What's Up in Mrs. Hodgen's Kindergarten Class?
Kindergarten Math may seem to start out slow, but it's only because we want to build a strong basis of understanding for numbers 0-10. This week we have looked at linear, array, circular and scattered configurations for numbers 3, 4, and 5. We talked about hidden partners within these numbers. Then we learned about the meaning of zero and began writing 0-3.
Literacy work this week focused on identifying words that rhyme, producing rhyming words, and identifying the beginning sounds in words. We spent time in LetterLand learning about the letter Ff with Firefighter Fred and the letter Oo with Oscar Orange.
In keeping with our Fall theme, we read Welcome Fall Leaves, Fall, The Magical Yet, and Fall Leaves Fall. We finished Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus and voted to read Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business next.
Science has been all about fall and weather this week. Our special guest reader, Mrs. Mayer, who will visit us weekly, read us the story First Snow in the Woods that talked all about how the weather changes over seasons and how animals prepare in the fall.
We have talked a lot about goals that we can make for ourselves for the school year. We have also been continuing our work with the zones of regulation by identifying feelings by other people’s facial expressions and identifying how different situations will affect us and what zone we might be in if they happened to us.
Please reach out with any questions at lhodgen@conval.edu.
Have a fabulous weekend.
Mrs. Hodgen
First Grade Fun with Mrs. Barnes
This week we were working on addition word problems in Math. We were solving for an unknown total and an unknown addend. We have been using counting on, math drawings, and making equations to help solve for the unknown.
We talked about story elements like characters and setting, practiced reading and spelling closed syllable words with short vowel sounds and digraphs, and reviewed letter formation of most capital letters during Literacy.
We love reading books together. This week we enjoyed Say Something, Ish, The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, Do Unto Otters, and Our Class is a Family. We just finished chapter 8 of The Mouse and the Motorcycle! Ralph lost the motorcycle in the pile of laundry trying to escape from a dog!
We are wondering about and learning how and why some tree leaves change color when the weather starts to get colder during Science. We spent some time exploring the woods behind GES with our 4th grade Reading Buddies too!
We spent time learning what strategies help us do our best work in school? We are also learning about “manners” and how does using our manners us learn and have fun?
If you have any questions, please reach out at abarnes@conval.edu.
Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs. Barnes
Mrs. Goodspeed's Second Grade is Seriously Super!
We are continuing to work through our measurement unit in Math. Students spent time creating their own centimeter rulers and have measured different items in a variety of ways.
During literacy we reviewed open and closed syllables this week. Students worked on sorting syllable types as a whole group and independently. We have also been working on adding adjectives to sentences as well as identifying them in a sentence. We had an apple taste test and then used adjectives to describe our favorite apples. Ask your student which apple they liked the best!
Read Aloud books we enjoyed this week include Leif and the Fall, The Very Last Leaf, Apples in Fall, Be Kind, and Charlotte’s Web.
During our time with the folks from the Cornucopia Project students looked for a variety of colors in nature and enjoyed a snack from the potatoes that they harvested last week. We worked on creating an apple trapper for a STEAM project this afternoon as well.
We are always having conversations about kindness and respect. We also spent time discussing how our behavior can change the way others feel. We are learning how to pay attention to our friends and classmates words, expressions and body language.
If you have any questions please reach out at egoodspeed@conval.edu.
Have a super weekend!
Mrs. Goodspeed
Overheard in Third with Ms. Heard!
During Literacy this week we learned about the difference between concrete and abstract nouns. We also continued to practice identifying main ideas and supporting details. During writing we compared 2nd grade and 3rd grade opinion paragraphs and worked together to plan our first third grade opinion paragraph. We will be answering the question "What do you think the best season is?".
We continue to enjoy reading about Fenway & Hattie.
Science: We started our weather unit this week! We learned about the water cycle, and created our own water cycle in a bag.
This week we have been learning how to identify the size of a problem. A small problem only affects 1 or 2 people, isn’t dangerous and doesn’t need adult help to solve. A big problem affects a lot of people, is probably dangerous and needs adult help. Knowing how to identify the size of a problem helps us figure out how to best approach it and seek help if needed.
Feel free to reach out with any questions at rheard@conval.edu.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Ms. Heard
What's Cookin' in Mrs. Cook's Fourth Grade?
We started our Novel Study this week with Because of Winn-Dixie. Student are very engaged in finding out about this story of a young girl and her dog, named after a supermarket that he was found in. Ask them to summarize what we have read so far. We have also continued to build on our writing skills, how to add detail to our sentences and engage the reader with adding adjectives and adverbs to our writing.
We are getting closer to the end of Wild Robot. There has been some excitement with the Robot, Roz surviving the rough winter and Gosling coming back from her migration with lots of stories to tell.
Science & Social Studies: We finished up our introduction to different types of maps in social studies this week, we learned about how to find locations using longitude and latitude lines as well as what features different types of maps provide. We are moving back into Science. The fourth grade class has expressed interest in helping GES recycle paper. So they began planning their posters in order to present the idea to the whole school sometime next week. This was the students' idea, and they have done a great job working together to figure out what will need to be done and how they can convince the rest of the school to participate.
As a class we talked about how our behaviors, both expected and unexpected, affect the people around us. We discussed what it looks like to Be Kind, Be Safe and Be Responsible.
If you have any questions, please reach out at mcook@conval.edu.
Have a stupendous weekend!
Mrs. Cook
Classroom Counseling with Mrs. Lofstedt
Kindergarten: This week’s lesson was about focusing attention and following directions. Students learned about their “attent-o-scope” and practiced using it while following one-step verbal directions.
1st Grade: We learned about focusing attention and following directions. Students focused their attention to follow verbal two step directions.
2nd Grade: We read “A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue” by Julia Cook and discussed the four “Tattle Rules.” We went through a variety of scenarios to help students identify which were tattling and which were appropriate to report to a teacher.
3rd Grade: We reviewed what self-talk is and discussed how students can use self-talk to stay focused and ignore distractions. Students practiced this skill by working to memorize a phone number while other students in the class were playing a game with Mrs. Lofstedt.
4th Grade: We learned about the importance of listening with attention as a skill for both learning and in relationships with others. We watched a video of a student struggling with this skill and students identified how they could tell the student was not listening with attention. Students practiced listening with attention in a class activity of remembering the favorite colors and foods of their classmates.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Lofstedt
Library Time with Mrs. Aborn
Fall is the air! During library time this week students read books and created projects centered around leaves. Students made leaf creatures to go with the book, The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. I also introduced picture-writing with Mrs. LaChance. Students listened to the book, Sky Tree by Thomas Locke and did a crayon resist painting to go with it. The paintings were amazing. Now students will write about their pictures in their classrooms with Mrs. LaChance.
Have a great weekend and I will see you in a couple of weeks!
Mrs. Aborn
Local Events and Activities
COMING SOON!
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