Weekly Newsletter
January 5, 2023
A Message from Principal Emma Liebowitz
Events/Calendar
Tuesday, January 10 - PTO Meeting at 7:30 - Virtual
Wednesday, January 11 - 1:50 Dismissal
Monday, January 16 - No School
Wednesday, January 18 - All School Meeting at 2:15
Wednesday, January 25 - 1:50 Dismissal
Saturday, January 28 - PTO Dance - Hollywood Theme!
Monday, January 30 - All School Ice Skating in Greenfield
Link to Sanderson Academy calendar.
PTO News
The next PTO meeting will be virtual this coming Tuesday, January 10th at 7:00pm. The link is https://meet.google.com/brr-tjcv-bae . If you are having trouble logging in, please email lindi.russell@gmail.com. All are welcome!
Also please save the date for an all school dance on Saturday evening, January 28th. The theme will be Hollywood! More information to come!
Mexican Exchange Program News
We are excited to restart our Mexican Exchange Student Program! Our Mexican exchange students will be arriving January 25 and departing on February 7. Seven Sanderson Academy students and one chaperone are traveling to Mexico from February 21 through March 7. We are planning speical activites like a dance and ice skating trip during the time our guest are here. We would like to thank Paraprofessional Anita Upright for her hard work on this project.
Health Office News from Nurse Loranna
Happy new year!! Please let me know if you have any winter clothing needs as I can help you with that! I do have some spares I keep in my office for anyone who forgets winter gear but it is best if they have something from home. It also may be a good idea to have a pair of pants kept at school in the event someone needs pants due to wet weather. Thanks!
Preschool News from Ms. Melanie
What a joy it is to see everyone again after our winter break! We have been talking about what our local animals do to get ready for a long, cold winter. We knew that some animals hibernate and sleep the frigid days away. We talked about how some animals adapt to the season, by growing warm, thick winter coats. We also knew that some birds fly south for the winter to find warmer weather and that is called migration.
We had a fun morning working with our third-grade buddies making a mural about the winter season. Working in teams, preschoolers first chose a slip of paper that had an idea for a winter activity or scene written on it. Paired with their third-grade buddy, the shared task was to create art work to represent what was written on their paper. Prompts like: “deer eating berries from a bush”, “kids skating on a pond”, “a bonfire”, “sledding” or “snowmen” resulted in wonderful brainstorming and creativity. The mural came out great! It is hanging in the hallway, just past the lobby toward the south wing. We hope you’ll stop by to admire it!
Preschool News from Ms. Freeman
Everyone is doing very well transitioning back from our winter break. Preschoolers are remembering our rules and routines. They are enjoying the company of friends, helping each other, and making great play choices. One of our favorite learning centers is the sensory table. Preschoolers are currently enjoying snow dough. To make snow dough mix 8 parts flour to one part baby oil in a bin, tote or other container. It’s a little messy, but soft and moldable. Add a little glitter for sparkle! Give it a try and have fun! The photos show our snow dough explorations.
Kindergarten News from Ms. Sarah
Our big focus this week was getting reacquainted with our kindergarten class family. We shared our hopes & dreams for wintertime at school. We revisited our class promise, values, and expectations that help us work together. We did a skit activity in which small groups of students acted out situations in which they were showing how to follow one of our class expectations and the rest of the group guessed which expectation they were presenting. And we reviewed our many routines that help our days run smoothly. It is so great to be together again after our week off from school!
First Grade News from Ms. Wyckoff
Happy new year! We hope you all had a fun and restful vacation. As we enter the year 2023 and return to school, we are reintroducing class expectations and daily routines. First graders spent a good chunk of our first day back sharing highlights from their vacation as well as the best part of their first day back. Many children said “being back with friends!” was the best part. First graders were thrilled to return to see many baby trout had hatched and feeding from their yolk sac. There are still many eggs to hatch, but for now we are thrilled that we will soon be able to observe the trout swimming around the tank. A BIG thank you to Ms. Stacey for taking care of our tank and eggs over winter vacation! Our magnificent thing creations are now complete! Check out some of the finished products below. If you happen to be here at school, take a walk down the prek/1st grade wing to see all the awesome writing first graders completed. Next we are moving on to space science!
Second Grade News from Ms. Robertson
As we usher in a new month and turn our calendars to a new year, we wish everyone in our Sanderson community a happy and healthy beginning to 2023! This new year finds our class finishing up themes from last year and beginning new ones. One such theme is our Second Steps unit on Skills for Learning. This week our last lesson in the Skills for Learning unit taught us about being assertive when we want or need something. The lesson on being assertive was introduced through a story and a discussion format. The class was shown a picture of a boy named Connor who was experiencing the uncomfortable feelings of being worried, confused, and frustrated because he did not understand a math assignment. The class discussion that followed focused on who Connor could ask for help and the ways that he can ask for help. Students were then given situations, such as leaving a jacket on the playground, and volunteers demonstrated how they could assertively ask for what they wanted or needed in a respectful, calm, and firm way.
Learning to ask for what one wants or needs in an assertive way, along with the skills of focusing one’s attention, listening carefully, and using self-talk to stay on task are known as “Skills for Learning” in the Second Steps social skills curriculum. Below are the posters we use in class to as reminders for the above Skills for Learning.
The next unit in our Second Step program is about empathy, where the class will learn to identify and understand their own feelings and the feelings of others.
A math theme we are continuing this month is collecting data and graphing, where we are building upon our previous work with picture graphs, bar graphs, equations, and story problems. Our daily calendar markers for January show either a graph (picture or bar) or equations related to it. For example, the marker for January 1st showed a picture graph of six dogs and four cats and the next marker had the related equation of 6 +4 = ____. This equation can then be used to generate questions about the graph, such as “How many second graders in all like cats and dogs?”
A new Number Corner activity that we are beginning this month is a data collection activity that has us exploring fractions and probability. When we did this data collection activity on January 3rd, we pulled 3 tiles (for the 3rd day of the month) out of a bag that contained 14 blue tiles and 14 red tiles. We then discussed how three out of the three tiles were red (3/3) and zero out of the three tiles were blue (0/3). We also discussed whether less than half of the tiles were red, exactly half the tiles were red, or more than half of the tiles were red, and concluded the activity by recording the data on a graph.
Third Grade News from Ms. Carole
This week we rang in the new year by writing our hopes and dreams on bells. These are wonderful expressions of good intention and wishful thinking. Each student wrote three things he/she would like to work on or improve on for the next year, and we wish them good luck on their endeavors!
Third graders have been busy learning about various regions of Massachusetts for a while now. They have each been assigned a partner and a region, and they are working together to learn about the geography of their region. They will begin making 3-D maps in the next few weeks in Art class, too. If you haven’t yet, then ask your child which region he/she is learning about and see what they can tell you about it.
With our buddies this week we created a “Wintertime Fun” mural which is now on display in the hallway. This was a fun, collaborative activity which we hope will bring back the wintery weather and all the fun of frozen landscapes. Feel free to stop by and see it in person if you can, but just in case you can’t, here are some photos of some of the details. Enjoy!
Fourth Grade News from Mrs. Lagoy
It was wonderful to welcome everyone back in 2023! We started our second module in our new ELA curriculum. In this eight-week module, students will explore animal defense mechanisms and build proficiency in writing an informative piece, examining the defense mechanisms of one specific animal about which they will build expertise. Students will also build proficiency in writing a narrative piece about this animal. In Unit 1, they will build background knowledge on general animal defenses through close readings of several informational texts. Students will read closely to practice drawing inferences as they begin their research and use a research notebook to make observations and synthesize information. Students will continue to use the research notebook, using the millipede as a whole class model. They will begin to research an expert group animal in preparation to write about this animal in Units 2 and 3, again using the research notebook. Students are really looking forward to their final performance task for this unit: writing a choose your own adventure book. In this task, students will write an introduction that describes their animal’s physical characteristics, habitat, predators, and defense mechanisms. In their narrative, they will describe an encounter with a predator and two possible defense mechanisms for survival. Students will be expected to use details and examples from their research to develop their narrative, including concrete words, phrases, and sensory details to describe their animal’s experiences and events precisely. I can’t wait to see what these amazing students create!
Sixth Grade News from Ms. Lilly
It was wonderful to welcome the sixth graders back after vacation! This is an exciting time as we are starting the last half of sixth grade! We began our week back by reviewing the expectations for sixth grade and reviewing information that we had learned about before break. We are wrapping up our final project with Percy Jackson where the students write a narrative about a new character being added to a scene from the book. After we finish that we will be starting their new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. We are continuing to discover more about our Earth and the changes that occurred over time. As well as learning more about the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia.
Library News from Ms. Wilson
Happy New Year, Sandersonians! In the library, we will kick off the new year by learning how the library can help us conduct research. First through sixth grade students will choose research topics to explore and find books about their topics using our online catalog, Destiny Discover. Older students will learn how to find information using online databases such as Britannica, Gale, and Pebble Go, which are free and available to all students in the Mohawk district. Students will present their findings through presentations, on bookmarks, info cards for the library stacks, or fliers for public spaces. I look forward to seeing what students decide to research! I also look forward to exploring some nonfiction books with the preschoolers, and continuing to practice library navigation with the kindergarteners. This winter I am also starting a 5th and 6th grade lunch-time MCBA (Massachusetts Children’s Book Award) book club, which I hope will be a great way to connect through books while staving off those winter blues.
News from Ms. Prew
How to Support Students at Home: Productive Struggle
Students learn better when they figure things out on their own.
Guide with questions, don’t just give answers or show steps.
Give them time to play around with ideas (even if they are a bit off course).
Provide informative feedback. This is when you can help them get back on track.
Praise perseverance in problem solving.
Music News from Hannah Cherry
Hello!
My name is Hannah Cherry and I’m the new music teacher here at Sanderson Academy and at Colrain Central School. I’m a first-year teacher and a recent graduate of UMass Amherst with degrees in music ed and clarinet performance. I’m excited to get to know you all and the school community!
Outside of school, I like to stay active as a music performer and some of my hobbies include reading, being in nature, coloring, and playing games (board games and video games).
If you have any questions for me or just want to say hi, don’t hesitate to send me an email or stop by my room on the days that I’m here! I’ll be here on Thursdays and Fridays teaching general music. Looking forward to meeting everyone!
- Hannah
News from Ms. Sue
Happy NEW Year!!! Welcome 2023! It was so great to see all of the Sanderson kids and staff this week…from all our discussion in Mindful Movement it seems that lots of time was spent with family, extended family, and friends during the winter break. We had fun this week with a bit of yoga, some breathwork using a bunch of my heart shaped rocks and recalling something we achieved/accomplished in 2022 and maybe setting a goal or two for ourselves in 2023!
Community Engagement and Enrichment Newsletter
CFCE News
Community News
About Us
Email: eliebowitz@mtrsd.org
Website: https://sanderson.mohawktrailschools.org/
Location: 808 Cape Street, Ashfield, MA, USA
Phone: (413) 628-4404
Facebook: facebook.com/SandersonAcademy