Deer Families
Deer Hill School News . February 14, 2020
Dear Deer Hill Families,
Today at Deer Hill we celebrated Read Your Heart Out Day, an opportunity to slow down the pace of our curriculum and tap into the joy of reading for reading's sake. It is my hope that beyond this one day, an emphasis on joyful reading permeates our school. It is absolutely, positively true that explicit reading instruction has a critical role in our reading curriculum. However, developing those skills is not mutually exclusive to fostering a love of reading in and of itself. From our yearly Read A Thon, to our weekly Reading Rovers, to promoting choice in student book selection on a daily basis, students at Deer Hill not only read to learn but also read because it is fundamental to how we connect with the world around us (and it's fun!). I found that this blog post by Jennifer Gonzalez spoke well to this perspective while also offering additional resources if you're interested in a deeper dive on this topic. In an October newsletter, I asked you to bring joy to your reading time at home; in today's I'm sharing that we are committed to doing the same at school.
I hope that your February vacation allows for time with family, time for rest, and of course, time for curling up with a good book!
All the best,
Alex Sullivan
Principal, Deer Hill School
P.S. Our next newsletter will be published in 3 weeks on March 6th.
Coding Workshops
As a result of a grant written by 4th grade teacher Mrs. Corkhum and funded by the CEF, all Deer Hill students participated in coding workshops this week presented by John Giarratana from Stem Cell Robotics. John also presented to staff at our faculty meeting and will be offering professional development to interested teachers as an additional component of this grant. The goal of these student and teacher workshops is to introduce educators and students to basic coding concepts, and how technology can be included in teaching and applying content standards. In student workshops, the third graders worked on measuring and graphing temperature utilizing the built-in temperature sensor on the circuit and its LEDs as output to display temperature changes. The 4th graders were guided through a project that explored energy transfer with an infrared light emitter and a detector allowing the students to code devices that would communicate with each other. Lastly, the fifth graders made an interactive piano that used touch sensors laid out as a keyboard to generate tones at different frequencies (notes). The future is bright, and it's lit with skills such as these!
4th Grade Immigration Panels
After School Enrichment
Our After School Enrichment Program (ASE) has been a huge success! In our current session, students are participating in a variety of classes that include Sphero Coding, Folk Art Painting, Cartooning, Needlepoint, and K'Nex Challenge. The Kindness Squad is another ASE offering that is making a positive impact in our school and larger community. Kindness Squad members have made Valentines for seniors and are working with the Cohasset Food Pantry to launch a food drive in the coming weeks. We will have one more ASE session this year; sign up information will be available soon! For your reference, here are the remaining dates when ASE will meet this session.
Wednesday dates: February , 26th; March 4th
Thursday dates: February , 27th; March 5th
Read A Thon Recap
Our Read A Thon was an out of this world success! Top individual winners in each grade level are pictured below. Congratulations to Ms. Mosher's 3rd grade, Mrs. Parrell's 4th grade, and Ms. Kelliher's 5th grade for earning the most minutes read for their grade levels. ALL of Deer Hill should be very proud. . . collectively students logged 367,246 minutes of reading!
3rd Grade Top Readers
4th Grade Top Readers
5th Grade Top Readers
MCAS Calendar
Deer Hill is beginning to prepare for MCAS testing that will take place in the spring. Teachers work strategically to balance purposeful instruction with the need to familiarize students with the format and testing environment they will encounter with computer-based MCAS testing. MCAS calendar dates for all schools are now linked on the our Deer Hill Homepage. Deer Hill dates are also included in the Deer Hill calendar which can be accessed on our school website along the left hand side.
Deer Hill Dates
School Council: 3.12.20, 3:00
All Schools Chorus Concert @Deer Hill: 3.17.20, 7:00
All Schools Band Concert @CMHS Gym: 3.18.20, 7:00
Early Dismissal, Staff PD: 3.19.20, 12:40
Full Day PD, No School: 3.20.20
Early Dismissal, Parent/Guardian & Teacher Conferences: 3.25 & 3.26.20, 12:40
Flyers of Interest
Deer Hill School
Alexandra L. Sullivan, Principal
Email: alsullivan@cohassetk12.org
Website: https://www.cohassetk12.org/
Location: 208 Sohier St., Cohasset, MA, USA
Phone: 781-383-6115
Twitter: @DeerHillSchool