Weekly Newsletter
February 3, 2022
News from Principal Emma Liebowitz
Events/Calendar
Wednesday, February 9 - 1:50 Release
Wednesday, February 9 - School Committee Meeting at 6:30
February 21 - 25 - No School - Vacation
Monday, February 28 - Local Education Council Meeting at 3:15
Link to Sanderson Academy calendar.
2021 School and District Report Cards
The Department recently made the 2021 school and district report cards available on the report cards website. The site also contains supporting documentation related to report cards, including a glossary and a sample report card cover letter, both of which are available in English and nine other languages.
As a reminder, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires that districts receiving Title I funds distribute report cards to all parents or guardians of students enrolled in district schools. The Department asks that districts distribute report cards to families by the end of February. For more information, including details about electronic distribution, visit the website or email ElementarySecondaryEd.Act@mass.gov.
Health Office News from Nurse Loranna
Beginning this Saturday, 2/5/22, we will be launching our home testing programs for students/families who opt in to this free service. With the addition of this new at home testing program, the “test to stay” program will end. Students/families who opt into this service will test each week on Saturday. You only will need to report any positive test results- to both the school nurse at your child’s school and the nurse leader/covid nurse Donna Weber. Every 2 weeks a test kit will be sent home with students, to equal one test per week. If you have any questions about this new program please reach out to Donna Weber, or myself.
Please continue to let me know of any out of school exposures that occur, as well as any symptomatic student’s. I will continue to support our school community by testing our students and staff as needed. We will continue “pooled” testing services every Tuesday, and any reflex (positive pool follow up) testing that is needed. The pooled testing program has been incredibly impactful and valuable; we have an excellent percentage of students and staff signed up- thank you!!
Preschool News from Mrs. Freeman
This week we talked about Groundhog’s Day and made predictions. Many preschoolers noticed the cloudy weather and predicted no shadow. Others predicted that the groundhog would see its shadow, hoping for more winter weather. Our week also included having fun in the snow, making groundhog puppets, exploring with materials on the light table, and experimenting with flashings to create shadows.
Preschool News from Ms. Melanie
For the month of February, we are celebrating 28 Days of Kindness. To prepare for this activity, we took turns sharing ideas of how we are kind to people, animals, and nature. During our brainstorming session, we shared some wonderful ideas about things we do that are kind--from helping someone who fell down, to feeding birds. Each day during this month, we will focus on one aspect of being kind. For the first day of February, we chose the idea of inviting someone to play and we found many wonderful examples of that happening in our classroom. On the second day of our 28 Days of Kindness, we added the notion of sharing. We will continue to add a new idea each day, identifying kindness when we see it, and working together to build a strong foundation of caring that we know will last well beyond the short month of February.
Kindergarten News from Ms. Sarah
Currently in reading, our theme is America, Then and Now. This week, we focused on two things that have changed a lot over time—transportation and communication. With the book Transportation, Then and Now we made a T-chart comparing modes of transportation from history and what they are like now. With the book Communication, Then and Now, we made a list of the special vocabulary words the author used to help us know when they were talking about long ago and when they were talking about present time.
First Grade News from Mrs. Wyckoff
First graders wrapped up their recent learning about the sun. We learned how important the sun is to life on Earth, and without it, “this conversation wouldn’t be happening” as one first grader pointed out. First graders learned that we receive light, heat and solar energy from the amazing sun. To showcase their learning, first graders created posters, which are displayed here in our hallway showing a variety of plants, animals and nature views. In math we have added many new workplaces which first graders are absolutely loving! The most recent workplace is called Double it where a team of two takes turns rolling a die (1-6) , doubles the number and covers that sum on their shared gameboard. As a challenge children can choose two dice (0-5) and double numbers up to 20. This is a fantastic game that supports first graders building strategies to add with sums up to 20.
Second Grade News from Ms. Robertson
The turning of the page of the calendar to the new month of February finds us changing our monthly Number Corner markers and activities. This month the calendar markers show the flags of various countries, which provides an interesting tie-in to our social studies theme on mapping. After seeing which country each daily flag represents, we identify the continent on which the country is located and learn a few facts about it. We also look for any patterns that the flags present, eventually identifying the common feature that each flag has the color red in it. We then determine if the flag’s red color makes up exactly half the flag, more than half of the flag, or less than half of the flag, which extends the work we did with fractions last month with our daily collection activity with tiles.
In addition to extending our mapping theme with the tie-in to the flags on our Number Corner calendar, we have been watching Mystery Science videos that have a focus on the earth. Our recent focus has been on oceans, where we viewed Mystery Science videos that explored the following questions: 1. How deep does the ocean go? 2. Why is the ocean salty? and 3. How are waves made in the ocean?
This week during our math class we revisited the folktale Jack and the Beanstalk and used it as a springboard for two math lessons that involved measuring with nonstandard units. Jack’s beanstalk produced extra-large beans of varying lengths and we used unifix cubes to find out how long they were. We also learned about perimeter, as Jack planted his beans in garden plots of varying sizes.
Second Grade Students Measuring the Lengths of Beans Using Unifix Cubes
Third Grade News from Ms. Carole
Third graders are extra proud of themselves this week as they have completely finished their Massachusetts wild animal research projects. Their hard work has paid off and is on display in the school library for all to enjoy. Since we will not be having any sort of family presentation of these products, you should feel free to stop in and peruse them at your leisure. You will find the dioramas of their animal’s winter habitation that they made in art class as well as their typed reports. The students had a great time reading their own reports as well as those of their classmates, and everyone learned a lot about the wildlife of our state.
Fourth Grade News from Ms. Laogy
We received our second update from Fletcher Farm this week letting us know how the heifer fourth grade adopted with Mrs. Lilly in the fall, Capri, is growing and changing. Over the next several days, we will explore the powerpoint that they sent us and enjoy some fun heifer inspired projects. The activity I am most excited to do with students is the Wild Milk Chase. In this project, students will go on a scavenger hunt around their home (using the internet is allowed too) to find products that are produced from milk. Students will create a display to showcase their findings.
Sixth Grade News from Mrs. Lilly
In ELA we have been taking all of the information that we learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to begin writing an essay based on his speech. We have been going through the writing process and most students are done with the prewriting portion and are moving on to their first draft. In math we have been refreshing our brains on how to add and subtract fractions. Once we wrapped our heads around those operations we moved on to multiplying fractions. Multiplying fractions requires students to take many steps to convert mixed numbers to improper fractions then make sure they write their product in the simplest form. This has been a great refresher of skills they learned last year. We will continue to practice all operations with fractions during our math intervention time as the year continues. We have also spent some time discussing taking on the responsibilities of completing their classwork and homework. As the year continues and they prepare for middle school, this is an important skill they will need to be successful in 7th grade.
News from Ms. Prew
Community Engagement and Enrichment 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