We have two summer learning opportunities for our elementary students for 2023!

It is time to register your child for Summer Learning. Please use the following link to sign your child(dren) up by April 7th. An early registration will ensure that we have the staff and resources to host a robust summer learning program.

Explore and Expand Summer Learning Program is for rising 1st through 4th graders! This four-week long program is designed to support student learning by bolstering school-year skills and helping to fight summer learning loss. Students will receive 1.5 hours of academic support from ConVal Certified Teachers and Tutors. An additional hour of the program is reserved for enrichment exploration, including drumming and cartooning residencies.

Additional Details

• July 5 through July 27

• 3 Mornings a Week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday)

• 9:00 am - 12 pm

• Location: Peterborough Elementary and Antrim Elementary

• Transportation will be provided

• Class Size for Explore and Expand: 15 students to 1 teacher

• Classes/Groups will be mixed grades

Middle School Summer Academy is offered to rising 5th and 6th graders! This four-week long program is designed to introduce students to middle and high school learning opportunities while bolstering school-year skills and helping to fight summer learning loss. Students in the Middle School Summer Academy have the opportunity to participate in a Residency, similar to Explore and Expand or participate in the high school Theater program.

Additional Details

• July 5 through July 27

• 4 Mornings a Week (Monday through Thursday)

• 9:00 am - 12:15pm (12:15 allows students to participate in the Theater program)

• Location: ConVal High School

• Transportation will be provided

• Class Size : 15 students to 1 Teacher

Similar to last year, all summer programming is free including transportation and lunch. Please note that we are working to increase the number of buses so that there are additional common pick-up and drop-off locations for students. We will work closely with town summer Recreation Programs to coordinate so that children may participate in both rec. programming as well as ConVal summer learning.

Please reach out with any questions!

Best,

Amy Janoch

Director of Learning Recovery

ajanoch@conval.edu

Dear GES Families and Friends,

Happy Spring! March has certainly had it's share of ups and downs as far as the weather is concerned! Last week's storm sure packed a punch and ensured we'd all get the most out of our snow shovels and winter gear! The warmer temps this week have made a dent in the snow on the playground, but I'm guessing it'll be a few more weeks until we see bare ground again! Please be sure to send your child to school with snow gear-especially boots! With the snow melting more each day, the playground is wet and muddy. Boots keep feet warm and dry!

As a reminder, Town Voting was rescheduled to Tuesday, March 28th at the Greenfield Meeting House.

Next week is our K-4 Circus Residency! We are excited to learn and play with Troy Wunderlie as he brings out our inner circus performers. Join us for the grand finale on Friday, March 31st at 6:00pm! You don't want to miss it!

The School Board approved the final day of school for students. Our last day with students will be Friday, June 16th. This is a half day and dismissal will be at noon. Speaking of end of year celebrations-our 4th graders will perform the play Pirates of Grammar Island and celebrate the end of their elementary experience on Wednesday, June 14th at 6:00pm.

I've included important dates through the end of the year below. We will be adding events in the coming weeks, so be sure to check the newsletter and website each week so you don't miss anything!

UPCOMING IMPORTANT DATES-PLEASE CHECK AND ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR!

3/27-3/31/23: Special of the Week: PE/Health with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!

3/28/23: DON'T FORGET! Town Voting Day at the Greenfield Meeting House! Please be sure to visit the polls!

3/27-3/31/23: CIRCUS RESIDENCY WITH TROY WUNDERLIE! K-4 students will participate in a week long residency that culminates in a family performance on Friday!

3/31/23: CIRCUS PERFORMANCE at 6:00PM! Students should arrive NO EARLIER than 5:45PM. There will be circus novelties and popcorn available for purchase that evening!

3/31/23: Trimester 2 report cards will be sent home with students today. Please check backpacks!

4/3-4/7/23: Special of the Week: Music with Mrs. Neillsen

4/5/23: GES PTO Meeting at 5:30 in the Library. Free childcare is available.

4/10-4/14/23: Special of the Week: PE/Health with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!

4/17-4/21/23: Special of the Week: Art with Mr. Shapiro

4/24-4/28/23: APRIL VACATION-NO SCHOOL!

5/1-5/5/23: Special of the Week: PE/Health with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!

5/8-5/12/23: Special of the Week: Library with Mrs. Aborn

5/15-5/19/23: Special of the Week: PE/Health with Mrs. Parker. Don't forget your sneakers!

5/22-5/25/23: Special of the Week: Music with Mrs. Neillsen

5/24/23: SPRING CONCERT PERFORMANCE at 6:00PM! Mark your calendars now! Come and enjoy a musical performance by our K-4 students!

5/26/23: NO SCHOOL-Teacher PD Day

5/29/23: NO SCHOOL-Memorial Day

5/30-6/2/23: Special of the Week: PE/Health with Mrs. Parker

6/5-6/9/23: Special of the Week: Art with Mr. Shapiro

6/12-6/16/23: Special of the Week: PE/Health with Mrs. Parker

6/14/23: 4TH GRADE CELEBRATION AND PLAY PERFORMANCE AT 6:00PM. Details coming soon!

6/16/23: LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! This is a half day and dismissal will be at noon!

Registration for students residing in Greenfield will be held on Tuesday, March 21, 2023 or Wednesday, April 12, 2023 at Peterborough Elementary School.

Please share this information with any families you may know that don't currently receive our newsletter!

Students in Ms. Trish and Miss Lee's PS1 class learned about how healthy food and exercise keeps our body healthy. We pretended in our”grocery store” and had fun making food choices to buy. We read books about our bones, our brain, and our muscles.

We learned a lot about owls and had fun pretending to be owls flying silently while hunting for their food. We went to the school library and the librarian read us a book called Little Owl and we did an owl project. We picked out books to bring back to our class.

We have started a unit on our 5 Senses. We are making a book about them and finding various ways to use our 5 senses to learn about the world around us.

The afternoon group is busy continuing with our Letterland letter sounds. We also practice math operations with various counters and learn different ways to manipulate numbers. We have practiced writing the numerals. Our enrichment lessons have included social emotional learning and handwriting practice and learning the sounds that birds make.

This month students in Ms. Colleen, Ms. Tracy and Ms. Sonia's PS2 class has been talking about healthy foods, what's good for our teeth and our body, talked about healthy habits, and how to wash the germs from our hands.

We learned about different kinds of owls with the Harris Center, foxes and their baby kits with Mrs Aborn in the library, and red-winged black birds and what they sound like and look like. We have talked about community helpers and where we see them in our community.We celebrated St Patrick's Day by making art window shamrocks and loved playing in the snow.

We have been working on being good friends, sharing, being kind, and how to use our words and ask for help from adults. Our afternoon 4 year old class is working on writing their first and last names and learning our Letterland characters, letters, and sounds for V, W, and X this month. .

• Math: Kindergarten is working on addition and subtraction up to 10. We have also been working hard to understand the concept of teen numbers being a group of 10 and more ones. An example would be that we call the number 13, ten 3.

• Literacy: In literacy this week we practiced reading and spelling words with beginning l-blends and beginning r-blends as well as some new tricky words like are, said, and from. We are starting to put our great sounding out skills to good use when reading whole paragraphs and stories! We read a story about Gil and he got lost in the lab when his lamp turned off. We read about Glen and Sal the slugs who like to rest in the plants.

• Science & Social Studies: We are learning all about animal needs right now. So far we have talked about animals needing food and shelter.

• Read Aloud: I’m Not Just a Scribble, Frank and Laverne, Follow the Moon Home, Experiment #256, Spring goes Squish. We also started a new chapter book, Junie B. Jones and Her Big, Fat, Mouth. They love to hear all about Junie B. and how she acts at school and how she handles her big emotions.

• SEL: We are working on being a problem solver and naming the problem without blaming anyone. I am seeing the work they are putting in with Mrs. Lofstedt during our weekly lesson, reflected in the behavior every day.

• Math: First grade has been working on adding bigger numbers using the concept of adding our ones to our ones and tens to tens (24+10 breaks into adding 20+10, then 30+4). Friday we also started using a new tool called a tape diagram and we used it to organize the information we get from a word problem.

• Literacy: In literacy, we wrapped up our study of words with silent-e patterns including words that end with -ce or -ge like race and cage. We practiced writing topic sentences that use language from the question with Mrs. LaChance and then tried it out on our own when we wrote about rainbows.

• Science & Social Studies: In social studies we learned about Clara Barton and Georgia O’Keefe in honor of Women’s History Month. In science, we began our unit on light and sound. We learned how they make funny sounds in movies and cartoons. We also tried it out ourselves with a fun experiment called the head harp. Give us a piece of string and we can show you how it works!

• SEL: We talked about perspective taking this week with our read aloud Laverne and Frank. We will continue our work with perspective taking more next week.

• Read Alouds: Clara and Davie: The True Story of Young Clara Barton, Laverne and Frank, Spring Goes Squish, Experiment #256, Mel Fell, and Knuffle Bunny. We are in chapter 7 of Charlotte’s Web. The gosling’s just hatched and Wilbur finally has a friend in the barn.

• Math: Second graders spent the week practicing addition of three digit numbers with regrouping more than once. We are becoming masters of this math skill more and more each week! Some students have spent time learning foundations of multiplication skills by making equal groups and beginning to create arrays.

• Literacy: We have been enjoying all of our March Madness books this week! We have been learning new vocabulary words and reviewing story elements and character traits. We also practiced reading and spelling words with the oo pattern, like smooth, goose, and cartoon.

• Science & Social Studies: This week we finished up our final drafts of our US Symbol essays. We also learned about heat conductors and insulators by conducting an experiment. We made mittens out of tin foil, cloth, and styrofoam. If we could tell the difference between a warm water bottle and cold water bottle with the mittens on, we knew the material was a conductor. If we couldn’t tell the difference then we know the material was an insulator.

• SEL: Tools for self regulation, dealing with jealousy, working as a team, being different doesn’t make you less

• Read Aloud: The Losers Club, Cranky Right Now, Norman Didn’t Do It, The Bruce Swap, Frida, The Girl Who Thought In Pictures

• Math: This week in math we tackled Topic B, Unit Fractions and Their Relation to the Whole! We learned that a unit fraction is the name for 1 equal piece. We used number bonds to break apart fractions greater than 1.

• Literacy: In literacy this week we read an article about a fascinating animal called the pink fairy armadillo. We used information from the article to write a paragraph explaining how the pink fairy armadillo is unique. We ended the week with a visit to Ms. Heard’s coffee shop for an open mike event. Everyone had the opportunity to share the bird books they worked so hard on! Keep an eye out for the books to come home early next week.

• Science & Social Studies: In social studies we continued our study of maps. We read the book “Me on the Map” and researched different maps that can represent us.

• SEL: This week we learned about 4 different types of conflict: a disagreement, a rude moment, a mean moment and bullying. We realized that these different types of conflicts need different solutions. We also realized that most of our conflicts during the day are disagreements or rude moments. That means they don’t require a huge reaction and can be easily solved.

• Read Aloud: We are loving March Madness! This is what we read this week!

• Author Matchup:

• Norman Didn’t Do It - 9 votes

• The Bruce Swap - 4 votes

• True Story Matchup:

• Follow the Moon Home - 5 votes

• Inky’s Amazing Escape - 5 votes

• Math: We are wrapping up Module 3. This week we learned how to solve division problems using the area model and the distributive property. Students continue to practice their multiplication facts, which are such an important part division.

• Literacy: We started our Poetry Unit in Literacy and writing this week. Students started reading Love That Dog by Sharon Screech, we have discussed what language is used in poetry, along with different types of poetry writing. Students continue to practice their skills of identifying text structure and comprehension skills through the reading of texts that focus on wild weather. We used our experiences with last week's storm to make connections to the text. In writing students will be working on a piece of poetry following the theme of Water Rising, the effects of planet warming and climate change. Our class will be attending the New Hampshire Drinking Water Festival, Water Science Fair and Poetry Contest on May 10th, and students will have a chance to submit a piece of poetry to the Poetry Contest.

• Social Studies: We are wrapping up our studies of early Colonial settlers this week. Students completed a research project comparing different elements of then and now.

• SEL: Our class this week focused on our roadmap of the day. Each day following our morning meeting we go over our schedule for the day. We talk about what is happening, and if there are any changes or bumps in the road where our schedule is concerned. Students reflected on what tools they can use when they are feeling dysregulated. At the end of every day, I had students reflect on their predictions and discuss what they noticed about their day. This will help students understand what activities are frustrating, or dysregulation, and what they need to be proactive during those times of day.

• Read Aloud: We are coming to the end of Island By Gordon Korman, it's a very exciting book about a shipwreck and a group of teenagers stranded at sea.

https://sites.google.com/conval.edu/lofstedt/home

• Kindergarten: · In this week’s lesson, your child learned that apologizing is one way to begin to solve problems. They practiced using the phrases, “I’m sorry. Are you okay? How can I help?” as a way to help solve problems. Ask your child to teach you the three parts of the apology they learned. Encourage them to apologize when the opportunity arises at home.

• 1st grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned to use body language and context clues to figure out when someone feels frustrated. They practiced looking at the person’s face and body, as well as thinking about what’s going on in the situation. They also learned about a new strategy for feeling calm when they get frustrated: slow counting. Encourage your child to notice when others around them feel frustrated. Have them practice using body language and context clues to figure out when family members, friends, or characters in books, movies, or on TV might be feeling frustrated.

• 2nd grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned that people can have different feelings in the same situation because of their experiences. Ask your child for an example of something that people can have different feelings about. Talk about the reasons people might have different feelings about it.

• 3rd grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned words for three degrees of happiness: content, happy, and excited. Ask your child to explain the differences between feeling content, happy, and excited.

• 4th grade: In this week’s lesson, your child learned that people can have different points of view about the same thing. With your child, discuss a time when you had a different point of view than someone else about the same thing. Describe how your experiences—what you’ve seen, heard, or done in your life—affect your point of view.

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.