Dear Morse Street Families,

It has been a busy two weeks at Morse Street. We are now deep into our learning here at school, our workshops are all well underway. In addition to our Reading, Writing, Phonics and Math workshops, we also do component work to support the foundations of literacy and math development. Component work in literacy is shared reading and writing, interactive writing, interactive read alouds as well as handwriting. This week I received a wonderful invitation from one of our Kindergarten classrooms (see above photo).

During interactive writing, the students share the pen and create the ideas for a piece of writing. The above invitation is a great example of applying these skills for a real world purpose. When I joined the students in their classroom, they read their book that they created. The book is an example of shared writing. This process gives our early readers familiar texts to get them started as they learn to read print.

Safety Drills

This past week was ‘Fire Safety’ week. During this week each year we make sure we have a fire drill at school. Your children have experienced quite a few of these drills since school started as we try to get most of the required number completed early. Children know to remain quiet, line up quickly and follow their teachers directions as they leave the building and move towards their assigned gathering spot. In classrooms this week we also mentioned that some safety drills keep us inside and in that situation they would do the same thing: remain quiet and follow the teachers directions. In the coming weeks we will practice a couple of safety drills where students will stay in the building or leave if the adult in charge decides leaving is the best choice.

These safety drills are:

• Calm, orderly and non-sensory

• To ensure that everyone knows what to do in the case of an emergency

• To allow us to identify any problems that were not anticipated

These safety drills are not:

• Loud or scary

• Simulations of active shooters or scary threats

• To practice barricading, and countering a threat by throwing things

Should any student need extra support during or after these drills our teachers and school counselor always respond immediately and reassure students that they are safe and we are here to help.

Warmly,

Julie Nickerson, Principal