Grundy Ave Newsletter
~ April 2017 ~
Dear Grundy Learning Community,
Welcome to Spring! I'm hopeful that the crazy winter weather is behind us and we can finally enjoy some warm spring weather. Please remember to dress your children accordingly, possibly layers as it is still chilly in the mornings and warmer in the afternoons.
We have just completed the NYS ELA Assessments for students in grades 3, 4 and 5. On May 2nd-4th the NYS Math Assessments will be administered. The 4th grade Science Assessment will be in June.
Our Superintendent Dr. Graham will hold his office hours at Grundy Ave from 9:00-10:00AM on April 27th. This is an opportunity for the community to come out and hear Dr. Graham discuss issues about district initiatives, budget issues and the continued improvement to our district. He will also take your questions. This informational session will be held in our MPR. All community members are invited to attend.
Please note that Sachem Schools will have Spring recess from April 8-16. April 4th is a half day in preparation for parent-teacher conferences. You will hear from your child's teacher if a conference is warranted. You can always call the school or email a teacher to set-up a conference at any time to discuss your child's progress at Grundy.
Our very active PTA has been quite busy with various activities that benefit ALL of the children at Grundy Ave. The PARP committee was very busy planning Blast Off to Reading during the month of March. The students had enjoyed many, many minutes reading good books! A final celebration was planned on March 21st where Petra Pets gave a performance for our students. We thank Mrs. Campo, our Arts in Education coordinator for all of their efforts in bringing into our school special programs and coordinating outside field trips for our students. These programs and assemblies are available to ALL students whether you join our fantastic PTA or not. The fundraisers you participate in and the generous volunteers at Grundy make this a very special place for our children to learn and grow. Thank you!
Believe it or not we are already discussing items on the June calendar! Our fabulous 5th grade is gearing up for their moving up ceremony and planning is underway with our 5th grade committee for end of year items. I guess it's true; time flies when you are having fun!
If you have any questions or concerns as we enter the final months of this school year, please reach out. I look forward to seeing you at our next school function or PTA event.
Enjoy the spring weather!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Amato
Readers Are Leaders DAy
Kindergarten News
Kindergarteners are becoming scientists! We used STEM activities to learn about Physical Science and how objects move! We celebrated one of our favorite authors, Dr. Seuss! We had a whole week where we read his books, dressed up as his characters and wrote about if we would like the Cat in the Hat to come to our house. We had special leaders in our community come to read to us where we learned about their careers for our Social Studies Unit. We are looking forward to learning about plants and more spring weather!
First Grade News
March was a marvelous month in first grade! We celebrated Dr. Suess’ birthday, participated in Readers Are Leaders Day and completed some fun STEAM projects! To celebrate Dr. Suess’ birthday, we started off by reading a non-fiction biography on the famous author in order to create a non-fiction writing piece. We learned so many fun facts about Dr. Seuss. We read several of Dr. Suess’ famous books and completed fun projects for each. On Readers Are Leaders Day we had visits from some fantastic leaders. Class 1-1 had a visit from Doug Smith, the Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Al Graph. He read Dr. Suess’ book titled, One Vote, Two Votes-I Vote, You Vote. He spoke to Class 1-1 about government and local community. He reminded our students of all of the ways that kids can help out in our community. Class 1-2 had a visit from Lynn Handler and her therapy dogs. The students enjoyed learning all about what therapy dogs do and how they help others in our community. Class 1-3 had a visit with Sensei Matt from Busto’s Martial Arts Studio. The students learned about martial arts and even got to see Mrs. Ribaudo break a board using her awesome martial arts techniques! Readers Are Leaders Day was such a fantastic experience for our first graders. Each leader spoke to the students about the importance of reading each day. Lastly, our first graders completed some super fun STEAM projects. Some of our projects included working collaboratively to create large towers of cups, designing and creating homes that might be found in Who-ville, creating oobleck and completing hands on One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish math problems. March was a fantastic month! We can’t wait to see all of the learning and fun that April has in store for us!
Second Grade News
Second Grade had a wonderful month of March with our Readers as Leaders Day and PARP Reading Program. We had a wonderful week celebrating Dr. Seuss birthday by dressing up each day. We really enjoyed interviewing our special reader and learning all about their different careers. We had wonderful time at our reading celebration. We loved to listen to all the puppets about what makes reading so important. A big thanks to our PTA for the kickoff goodies and celebration. Our St. Patrick's Day Party was filled with many yummy goodies and we even got to graph lucky charms and skittles. Thanks to our parents for helping make our party a big success! Learning about simple machines was amazing because we were able to make leprechaun traps with our families. We loved sharing them with our class and loved seeing them displayed in the hallway. Go Green! Spring is here! We are all looking forward to learning all about how to keep our Earth Clean next month!
Third Grade News
The third grade students enjoyed celebrating Dr. Seuss’ birthday! We read many books like Fox in Socks, Thidwick the Big Hearted Moose and Green Eggs and Ham and created art projects and stories to go along with our reading. We invited Beth and Scott to our school for a Musical Journey Through Books. We sang songs, listened to folktales from around the world as well as reviewed our geography skills. Our PTA provided a wonderful program called Petra Puppets. Students interacted with a cast of bizarre characters including The Brain, Pierre Lobsterre, Demento and Gus The Word Bird. We celebrated reading and practiced our skills with punctuation. We are very excited to continue reading above and beyond as we are in first place in the Blast Off to Reading PARP challenge! Our classes will begin the Non Fiction Reading unit by reading books and searching the internet for information on an animal we have chosen for our report. In math we are currently learning about clocks and telling time, perimeter and area. We are very excited to get back outside for recess! Welcome Spring!!
Fourth Grade News
The fourth-grade students are having a blast with their STEM projects. For St. Patrick’s Day, the students were challenged to make a penny bridge measuring 3 cm long by 3 cm high! They worked in groups and had to plan, use trial and error, and revise their plans accordingly. Check out the awesome jobs completed by some very talented future engineers!
Fifth Grade News
The 5th graders have had another great month at Grundy. We have been very busy! We began our month with a very successful fundraiser at McDonald’s for McTeacher night! Way to go Grundy!
We have been reading and logging our minutes for the Pick A Reading Partner (PARP) program. In an effort to give our students new reading material, we had our annual 5th grade book swap. Students were feeling lucky on St. Patrick’s Day as they donated and selected new reading materials from their peers. Petra Puppets visited us with a funny and informative program about how “reading feeds our brains!” Keep reading 5th graders! We have had some special programs this past month as well. We were fortunate to learn more about the scientific method while watching Allen Kronzek perform magic tricks! He was amazing and had our students hypothesizing the whole time! Our students loved practicing some of his tricks in their free time.
We were able to visit Seneca and see their fantastic performance of “Lion King Junior.” It was so wonderful to see some of our former students and friends and see all of the hard work that went into the production. Excellent job Seneca!The fifth graders are currently wrapping up the program, “Too Good For Drugs” presented by the YMCA. We have learned a lot about self-esteem and making good choices.
The culmination of our current nonfiction writing unit is creating biographies about individuals that we admire. We have been working very hard on collecting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing about our subjects. We can’t wait to share our writing at the Fifth Grade Wax Museum on Budget Day - May 16th (more information as we get closer).
Pennies for Patients
A big THANK YOU to our Grundy families and staff for being so generous and helping to raise money for cancer care and research. We raised $1405.00 with our pajama day fundraiser!
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s mission is to cure blood cancers and improve the lives of patients and their families. It’s special communities like ours which help to make that possible.
Thank you again!
Mrs. Bruno
STEM
Think about it: children are curious and constantly ask questions. They keenly observe the world around them and are good at connecting ideas. They sketch and draw a lot. They astutely observe others’ behaviors.
Children like to build models, break them down, and then begin again. They like to experiment and try new things. In a nutshell, children are great natural learners — just the kind of learners we need for successful STEM work (or any work, for that matter).
What is STEM? Science...Technology.....Engineering......Math! The students and staff here at Grundy Ave have been learning more about his exciting initiative. STEM builds skills such as problem solving, collaboration, planning, and analytical thinking. We have incorporated this concept of natural learning into our day. Through our library time in the computer lab, we have introduced the Hour of Code to our students, getting them involved in coding and the potential careers and opportunities that include coding. Free play and building with blocks and Legos is very popular. Our second grade recently had students design and create Lepruchaun traps! And our staff recently had a blast trying to see who could build the tallest spaghetti tower with tape, string and a marshmallow! Exciting things are happening at Grundy Ave. See the video below for more information!
Family Connect Night
Introducing a new family activity at Grundy! We are implementing Family Connect Night for all students and parents. Family Connect Night will be designated as a “No Homework Night” and it will be celebrated the first Wednesday of every month. Students will not receive any written homework so that they can plan activities with their families without worrying about doing homework that night. I hope that all parents and students take this opportunity to spend quality time together. The only assignment will be for families to come together and share a fun, family-oriented activity. Activities can include board or card games, puzzles, charades or sharing photo albums and family history. Please share photos too! Email to lamato@sachem.edu. The choice is yours!
Let’s use Family Connect Night to make memories that last a lifetime!
Family Connect Nights for 2017
April 5, 2017
May 3, 2017
June 7, 2017
News from the Math Room
April is Math Awareness Month!!!
One of the ways Grundy is trying to peek the interests of our students in math, is by exposing the students to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities. Such opportunities will allow them to develop a passion for one of these areas that will most likely be a part of their future.
Some of the students had the chance to explore a STEM-related activity this month in math. The students were provided with a bag of materials and list of specific directions. They needed to communicate, cooperate, problem solve, fail, and revise as a team to be successful at the challenge.
The students thoroughly enjoyed the “non-conventional” way of problem solving and had an opportunity to shine in an area they often struggle in.
Please take some time to read about STEM education and try to create opportunities for your child to experience in either Science, Technology, Engineering or Math! http://engineeringforkids.com/article/02-02-2016_importanceofstem
PARP
BLAST OFF TO READING!!!
PARP at Grundy Ave was a huge success. The students really seemed to enjoy the finale
show last week. Petra Puppets did a great job engaging and entertaining the children. Each week the PTA had a raffle and chose one student from the logs collected.
Last week was a Sweet Frog gift card and the week before was Yogo Mania. This week's raffle was a gift certificate to the Spring Book Fair. The teacher whose class read the most will also receive a gift certificate to the book fair. They will also raffle off a few books to children who visited the Sachem Public Library and completed the form.
In the end, the children read 83, 586 minutes!!! We are so proud of them all. In addition, Fifth grade read the most with 18, 486. A HUGE Thank you to Kara DeSimone and Lori Kudrick for running this special event in our school!
News from Art and Library
The third graders are working on a collaborative project between art and library. During their library classes the children researched about a country; learning about the population, the country’s flag, favorite foods, and even the way each country says hello. In art class the students used the information they learned to create a travel poster. The students had to entice people to want to come visit the country. They had to make sure to include an image about their country and the facts they learned. Stay tuned to the hallways of Grundy to see what a great job they did!
News from the Buiding Leadership Team
BLT (Building Leadership Team)
Mrs. Laura Amato – Principal
Mrs. Tricia Troise – Teacher Member/Facilitator
Mrs. Melissa Lawler – Teacher Member
Mrs. Nicole Liuzzi – Teacher Member
Mrs. CarriAnn Berotti – Parent Member
Mrs. Tara Diamond – Parent Member
Mrs. Theresa Ponce – Parent Member
Grundy’s Building Leadership Team has been very busy organizing many wonderful events for the staff, students, and the community.
MIND ACTION COMMITTEE: Our Mind Action Committee is preparing for a wonderful event that will spotlight students’ writing. Each student will have a piece of writing showcased on Tuesday, May 16th in the evening. This committee will be meeting soon to finalize the details. We are looking forward to celebrating all of our students as authors.
BODY ACTION COMMITTEE: The faculty has been attending Zumba classes every Monday afternoon with our very own Zumba instructor, Mrs. Tammy Siffert. Fridays in March were filled with vegetables and fruits during snack time. This team will be supporting the special area teachers with a Fun Run on Tuesday, May 16th, as well as hosting a Bike Helmet Safety program after school on the playground. We also have a very special event planned for our students and staff. Kerboomkidz will be in the house on Wednesday, May 17th. Stay tuned for more information!
HEART/SPIRIT COMMITTEE: Our Heart/Spirit Committee had an overwhelming response to the Hat and Mitten Drive. Many students were able to benefit from our very generous community. This committee is going to be heading another amazing drive. Grundy is going to be creating our very own “September School Supply Stash.” We are going to be collecting school supplies that we will store and have ready for students that need a few things when school begins next year. This committee will also be meeting soon to finalize the details of this very special event. As always, thank you to the community for your generosity!
News from PE
This month all PE classes have been working on their volleying skills.
Kindergarteners and First graders have been volleying balloons. They have been working on their tracking skills and learning to strike the balloon with their hand. Students are getting a lot of practice volleying to themselves as well as with a partner. Most recently, the students have been working in stations using different size balloons and volleying at different directions and levels.
Grades 2-3 have been putting their volleying to good use. The students have been put on teams and have been working hard to apply their skills in game situations.
Grades 4-5 are also playing games. All classes are currently participating in an in-class Round Robin volleyball tournament. We are just finishing up the pool play and will be starting our championships very soon.
During the week of April 24th, a Yoganomics crew will be visiting Grundy to present their program to all of our students during their scheduled PE classes. We are really excited to bring the arts into the gym!
News from the Nurse's Office
** IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PARENTS OF FIFTH GRADERS **
VACCINES REQUIRED TO ENTER MIDDLE SCHOOL!
Tdap – a booster for the Dtap vaccine given in early childhood. Tdap is needed by all students at age 11
Polio- 3 doses needed unless the 3rd dose was given before age 4 then a 4th dose is needed
Varicella- must have received a total of 2 Varicella (chicken pox) vaccines during childhood
Please note for Tdap:
-If your child turns 11 before the end of the school year please send proof of Tdap vaccination to Mrs. Bruno.
-For those students turning 11 years old over the summer, please bring proof of Tdap vaccination to the middle school before the first day of school, the office is open in the summer.
-Fall birthdays will be tracked by the middle school nurse and the child will be expected to be immunized as soon as they turn 11.
Please note for Polio & Varicella:
-Check with your child’s pediatrician to make sure they are up to date.
Any questions please feel free to call Mrs. Bruno at 471-1820 x1.
Music Notes
March has been an eventful month for the music department.
Congratulations to Gianna Erbis, Dominic Morena, Thomas Koeppel, Lacy Bond, Madison Fenster, Sean Barker, Gavin Brooks, Bridget Walters, Anthony Vino, Isabella Buzzanca, Courtney Bianci, Patrick Burke, Abigail Callinan, Baylee Canet, Kaitlyn Herzberg, Michael Howard, Arya Mehta, Gianna Trepiccione, Stephanie Shaffer, Mia Ponticelli, Jenna Jacques, Jack Bandl, Tyler Napoli, and Anthony DiMenna for their incredible band, orchestra and chorus performance in Sachem’s Elementary Music Festival. All groups were absolutely amazing. Bravo!
Congratulations to Emily Nuey for her fabulous performance and representation of Grundy Elementary School at the Suffolk County Music Educators Association All County Festival. You sang beautifully and made all of us at Grundy proud.
One final congratulations to the following students who participated in the NYSSMA Solo Festival:
Wyatt Straub, piano
Abby Lombardo, voice
Sarah Magliaro, flute
James Callinan, clarinet
Anna Cotter, alto saxophone
Luke Campo, trumpet
Tyler Napoli, trumpet
Kaitlyn Herzberg, violin
Bridget Walters, violin
Arya Mehta, piano and bass
Giana Trepiccione, piano
Your hard work and dedication to performing music is truly remarkable and we are incredibly proud of you for participating in such a prestigious event.
News from the Resource Room
Students in Ms. Turner’s class have been working on their writing. Students are constructing sentences for fluency, meaning and style. They are learning to write strong sentences that convey their intended meaning and engage readers. “I am lucky” gave students the encouragement to organize and create meaningful pieces of writing.
I am Lucky to work with them every day!News from the Reading Room
Sharing poetry with children is a great way to highlight language. Poems include humor, interesting words, tongue twisters and alliteration (the same consonant sound at the
beginning of each word). Choral reading of poems, where more than one person reads the same thing at the same time, and rereading the poem several times also builds
fluency.
Practice reading poems at home together! Emphasize the sound of the words and the rhymes. Read with expression to stress the breaks and phrasing of the poem. Once a
poem is familiar to your child, take turns reading! First you read one line or one stanza, and have your child read the next. See if you can do that while maintaining the rhythm of the poem. Have fun with the colorful language and word play. Many popular poets for kids (for example Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky) have several of their poems online. These can be printed and used for rereading.
Follow us...
Email: lamato@sachem.edu
Website: http://www.sachem.edu/schools/grundy
Location: 950 Grundy Avenue, Holbrook, NY, United States
Phone: 631-471-1820
Facebook: facebook.com/GrundyAvenueelementarySchool
Twitter: @GrundyAve