GES Grey Wolf Gazette
September 23, 2022
End 68 Hours of Hunger Program Information
Happy Fall!
Dear Greenfield Families and Friends,
The first day of Fall was a blustery, rainy day! It's my favorite season, with mostly warm days and cool nights. I love driving to school each day watching the changing leaves and the mist over Zephyr Lake in the morning.
I apologize for the delay getting this week's newsletter out. I spent a whirlwind weekend in CT with my grandson visiting my family and the Mystic Aquarium. If you've never ventured down to Mystic, I highly recommend it! The Aquarium is lots of fun and the fall is a great time to go as it's not too hot or crowded. They have a nice outdoor exhibit area with Beluga whales, sea lions, seals and penguins. I hope you enjoyed the weekend too!
Thank you to all our families that donated items for the ConVal Fights Hunger Food Drive! We appreciate your help and support for local families in need.
At the start of every school year K-4 students participate in benchmark assessments in reading and math to identify areas of strength and need. K-4 students will be given the Aimsweb Early Literacy and/or Oral Reading Fluency assessments beginning next week. Students in 1st-4th grade will take the Northwest Measure of Academic Progress (NWEA-MAP) in Reading and Math beginning the week of September 19th. Teachers will use the results 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!
9/26-9/30/22: Special: Library with Mrs. Aborn
9/27/22: Lion's Club Vision Screening
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!*
10/11-10/14/22: 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.
What's Up in Mrs. Hodgen's Kindergarten Class?
This week we began our Letterland FastTrack lessons learning our capital and lowercase letter shapes and names during Literacy. We are practicing matching capital and lowercase letters, identifying beginning sounds in words, and building our phonological awareness skills using our Heggerty brain building exercises!
We enjoyed these books together: The World Needs More Purple People, The World Needs More Purple Schools, The Weather Detective, and Leaves. We are also continuing our chapter book, Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus.
During Science we are learning about the weather and the change of seasons and why leaves change color in the fall. We will be keeping weather journals for the next two weeks to see how it changes from day to day.
We finished talking about school rules and classroom rules. Our class really focuses lots of work on identifying emotions and helping students recognize where they are in the Zones of Regulation. We are starting to identify our emotions and learning which strategies help us if we are having strong emotions.
We are looking forward to welcoming another new student to our class on Monday!
Please reach out with any questions at lhodgen@conval.edu.
Have a fabulous weekend.
Mrs. Hodgen
First Grade Fun with Mrs. Barnes
Our work in Math continues to build on our work from last year, reviewing describing parts in numbers 6-10. This review is going quick and is helping to build up to new first grade concepts that will start working with bigger numbers. We have also been reviewing concepts that were looked at last year like 2D and 3D shapes, and introducing new concepts like money and time.
This week during our literacy time we began the NWEA Reading assessment and continued working on our Aimsweb benchmark assessments. We also reviewed reading and spelling closed syllable words with short vowel sounds and concepts like counting syllables, identifying vowel sounds, and sorting by vowel sound.
We are in Chapter 5 of The Mouse and the Motorcycle! We also enjoyed hearing Bubblegum Brain, The Magical Yet, Say Something during our read aloud times.
During Science we answered the questions What is a scientist? How can we be scientists?
We are learning about having a growth mindset and not giving up! Our vocabulary words this week were determination and perseverance. We set goals for our year together. We also continued learning about the Zones of Regulation by labeling our own feelings, practicing identifying other people's feelings based on body and facial cues, and learning how our feelings impact our actions and other people. We had our first lesson with Mrs. Lofstedt this week!
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!
During Literacy we sorted parts of speech (adjectives, verbs, and nouns) and began using and identifying each part in sentences. Students spent time writing about humpback whales and practicing second grade handwriting. We reviewed spelling rules for short vowels and continue to build our reading stamina. We will begin the Reading NWEA test next week.
We are enjoying Charlotte’s Web as our read aloud book right now.
Our work in Science focused on these quetions: What are the parts of a plant? Why do trees grow so tall?
We continue to talk about and practice working together. We are also reviewing skills for listening and focusing. Mrs. Lofstedt taught her first lesson this week about showing respect to others.
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 we read paragraphs and worked to find details that supported a given main idea. For example, what details in the paragraph support the main idea that seahorses are strange fish? We also worked on NWEA Testing during our literacy time. Students were able to choose if they wanted to start with reading or math.
Read Aloud books we enjoyed were Fenway & Hattie, and Cat Problems
We continued to explore how humans have modified plants based on our knowledge of how plants inherit their traits during Science. We played a game where we had to guess which fruits were related to each other based on the traits of leaves, flowers and arrangement of seeds.
Our Social-Emotional Learning focused on We identifying the size of problems this week. What makes a big, medium or small problem? How many people are affected? How long does the problem take to solve? Being able to identify the size of the problem helps us figure out the best ways to solve them!
We are excited to welcome not one, but two new students to our class on Monday!
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?
During Literacy we tried to answer the question “How does diversity bring people together?” What would the world be like if we all thought and did the same things? Students had great discussions about how diversity can be found through work, play, school and activities like soccer and gymnastics. We also discussed how to identify the meaning of words with prefixes and suffixes by finding the root words. We explored how to use dictionaries to find words and identify the parts of speech. We also reviewed how to sequence a story and what it means to summarize what we have read, in our own words.
We are about halfway through our read aloud The Wild Robot. Roz the robot has adapted well to living in the wild and taking care of her “child”, Gosling.
During Science we continued to focus on our classroom guest, Miss Frederick-she transformed into a butterfly and we got to see it happen! Mrs. Carele Mayer came in and explained about tagging Monarch butterflies and how this important step helps scientists learn more about them and their migratory patters. We were very sad to send Miss Frederick on her way and hope she has a safe trip to Mexico!
We shifted our focus this week to Social Studies. We looked at how to identify features on a map, what certain maps are used for, and how to find specific locations using latitude and longitude lines.
We talked a lot about kindness this week. We read the book What does it Mean to be Kind? by Rana DiOrio. We had a class discussion about the importance of being kind to not only those around you, but being kind to yourself. We talked about positive self talk and how we can work through hard things.
If you have any questions, please reach out at mcook@conval.edu.
Have a stupendous weekend!
Mrs. Cook
Classroom Counseling with Mrs. Lofstedt
I was so excited to begin my weekly classroom lessons this week!
Kindergarten: We learned about the importance of listening as a skill for learning. We read “Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen,” learned the four listening rules, and practiced our listening skills with a game of My Turn, Your Turn.
1st Grade: We discussed how listening helps us learn. We read “Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen,” reviewed the four listening rules, and practiced our listening skills with a game of My Turn, Your Turn.
2nd Grade: We talked about what respect is and why it is important. We read “A Little Respectful Spot” and students completed an activity identifying four ways they show respect.
3rd Grade: We learned about the importance of being a respectful learner. Students defined respect and practiced being respectful listeners during a partner activity. We read “A Little Respectful Spot” and students completed an activity identifying five ways they show respect.
4th Grade: We reviewed the definitions of empathy and respect and discussed the relationship between them. We read “A Little Spot of Empathy” and students completed a partner activity identifying ways to show empathy.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Lofstedt
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