DAVIS THAYER NEWS
January 9, 2018
Happy New Year!
Dear Davis Thayer Families,
We would like to welcome everyone back from the winter break as well as our additional 2 day snow holiday. We hope that everyone was able to enjoy the time to relax and participate in some memorable activities with family and friends. The staff and I are rested and have enjoyed seeing the children back in school. As I visit classrooms, it seems that the students have seamlessly returned to school routines and learning in their classrooms.
As we begin this New Year, I want to ask families to be mindful of re-establishing the necessary routines to ensure that your students are in attendance and on-time each morning to get each school day off to a great start. In addition to morning routines, we also ask our families to continue to be mindful of early dismissal habits as well. Although there are times when an occasional early dismissal is necessary for an appointment or urgent family need, early dismissals should be minimal as this loss of instructional time can certainly affect a student’s performance. As always, we appreciate your support as our teachers and students strive to maximize their instructional time shared each day.
I look forward to our students achieving great things in 2018!
Warmly,
Kathleen Gerber
PrincipalFire Safety Presentations
Second Grade Essay Writing
1st Grade Mix It and Fix It Word Work
3rd Grade Studies Weather
4th Grade Using Place Value Disks
4th Grade Family Fun Friday
Dr. Ahern Visiting Students in Grades 3-5
The "Bobcats" First Performance at DT
DT Goes Global - Marco Visiting the Hulbig's Home During the Snow Storm
ECDC Preschool Program - Now Enrolling
The Franklin Public Schools ECDC Preschool Program
Now Enrolling for Fall 2018…Lottery to held on February 28th!
Applications now available on the principal’s blog, http://www.ecdcprincipalpage.blogspot.com/ and on the ECDC website http://franklinecdc.vt-s.net/pages/index
The F.X. O’Regan Early Childhood Development Center (@FranklinECDC) is committed to offering preschoolers here in Franklin an opportunity for high quality developmentally appropriate learning in an environment that encourages diversity, cooperation and understanding. Our building and our curriculum have been designed to meet the complex needs of students with and without disabilities and help them develop the necessary readiness skills to prepare them for kindergarten. Our curriculum is aligned with the MA state frameworks for Literacy, Math and Social Emotional Development as well as the NAEYC standards for teaching and learning. Our teachers are highly qualified public school certified in early childhood, special education or a combination of both specialties.
Students who enroll attend ECDC participate in our “integrated” preschool model. In these language-based classrooms, children of all ability levels, with and without identified special needs, are taught together in an environment that nurtures peers as partners in learning. Research has proven that linking children of varying ability levels actually enhances the growth and development of all the children. Each of our classrooms maintains a low class size, maxing out with 15 students, with a Massachusetts certified teacher and at least one highly qualified educational assistant.
Franklin residents who turn 3 by August 31st are eligible to register for the integrated preschool program at ECDC.
Families interested in scheduling a tour at ECDC can call the main office @ 508 541-8166 to contact Kelty Kelley, ECDC Principal via email @ kelleyk@franklin.k12.ma.us.
Star Staff
All of our staff play an important role in the lives of students, families and the community. This year we will recognize an outstanding staff members at Davis Thayer and highlight their achievements.This recognition is being established to recognize outstanding people for their dedication, professionalism and work. Those receiving these awards will be nominated by administrators and colleagues for excellence in their classroom and/or in the school.
We would like to share with you the staff that have been recognized since our last newsletter.
Ms. Doherty - Art Teacher
Ms. Doherty's colleagues shared the following thoughts: "She has a lot of energy and is very inspiring to others! We love what we see of her art lessons. Her bulletin boards would make any teacher envious but also inspire them!"
Mrs. Ladd - Speech Pathologist
Mrs. Ladd's colleagues share the following thoughts: "She is always a team player. She is a problem solver. She is very flexible with her schedule and is always willing to do what is best for children. "
Mrs. Diez - 2nd Grade Teacher
Mrs. Diez's colleagues share the following thoughts: "Mrs. Diez is always available to help her fellow teachers with technology issues. She is very flexible and persistent putting other's needs first and never giving up until she finds a solution."
Mrs. Renaud - 5th Grade Teacher
Mrs. Renaud's colleagues share the following thoughts: "At meetings it is observed that parents are overjoyed with her teaching skills and how great their children are doing in school. She can and does reach all children on their individual level with genuine compassion."
Davis Thayer School Report Card
We are pleased to share an overview of our school’s “report card”. Report cards answer important questions about a school's overall performance and contain specific information about student enrollment and teacher qualifications, student achievement, accountability, how a school is performing relative to other schools in the district and the state, and the progress made toward narrowing proficiency gaps for different groups of students.
In this report you will find the following important information about our school:
How do our school's teachers and classrooms compare to the district and the state:
This section of the report card provides information about the students and teachers in our school as compared to the district and the state.
How does our school's achievement over time compare to the district and the state :
This section of the report shows how our students are performing on the Next Generation and Legacy Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests as compared to the district and the state.
How is our school doing overall:
Students at Davis Thayer Elementary School participated in 2017 Next-Generation MCAS assessment. Districts that administered this assessment are not assigned an accountability and assistance level this year.
To improve student achievement in our school, we are devoting time and resources to improve our core academic instruction through professional development, increased instructional support, and dedicated time for teachers to collaborate at grade levels and with curriculum, special education, and English language development specialists to better meet all students’ academic needs.
We encourage you to become involved in helping us improve our school. Some of the ways you can become involved are:
· Encouraging your child’s learning at home
· Attending parent-teacher meetings and other special meetings
· Serving as a volunteer in our school or district
· Encouraging other parents to become involved
Below is a link to this document.
http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/reportcard/SchoolReportCardOverview.aspx?fycode=2017&orgcode=01010035&
If you have any questions, please feel free to call.
Next Generation MCAS Dates
March 29 - All Grade Levels - Infrastructure Trial
April 10 and 11 - Grades 4 and 5 English Language Arts
April 25 and 26 - Grade 3 English Language Arts
May 8 and 9 - Grades 4 and 5 Math
May 15 and 16 - Grade 3 Math
May 15 and 16 - Grade 5 Science
Core Values
The DT community works to live our core values by planning monthly whole-school assemblies. We will have our next school wide assembly on January 12th when 5th grade Bobcat Buddies will talk about the core value of Challenge. At this assembly Pennies for Patients, our next community outreach projects will also be presented. Stay tuned for more information about this project.
During the year, we will continue to recognize students and staff members who exemplify one or more core values with “scoop tickets,” by reading scoops over the announcements on Fridays, and by partnering with McDonalds to award certificates to randomly-chosen students at our assemblies each month. The bulletin board in the cafeteria which displays many of the scoops that have been awarded has been reset to start the new year. Please take a look if you have an opportunity when you are in the building. It is an awesome sight!
Social Emotional Learning- "We Ask Our Kids the Same Three Questions Every Night"
I recently read an article online on the Huffington Post about questions to ask our children each night. I frequently hear parents saying that their children don’t tell them much about their day. Mine don’t either but perhaps we aren’t asking the right questions. This article entitled “We Ask Our Kids The Same 3 Questions Every Night” by Meg Conely gives some great quick questions that you can ask your children every day. Having conversations about our day at school, work and with our peers helps develop our children's social-emotional learning as we all learn to navigate the environments we exist in. The questions that the author Meg Conely suggests are 1. How were you brave today? 2. How were you kind today? And 3. How did you fail today?
The first question she suggests asking our children how how they have been brave today. She talks about how this helps children to be courageous and to engage in small acts of bravery. Teaching our children to be courageous even in small ways will help them to take risks and we want our children to learn to persevere when things get tough.
The next question she suggests asking our children how they were kind today. This allows conversation about focusing on ways we can positively impact others. Teaching our children to be kind in small ways can help in big ways later on when they need to stand up for a friend when no one else does. She also talks about how being kind to others that are different than us is important as our differences can divide but can also sustain us. We read the book “Have You Filled a Bucket Today” by McCloud and Messing as part of the SEL curriculum here in Franklin. If you haven’t read it I would highly recommend it. It talks about filling others buckets with kindness and teaching our children to be “bucket fillers”. It really relates to both the first and second questions Meg Conely suggests asking. Ask your student if they have read this book as it is typically a favorite and can be a good conversation starter.
And the last question suggesting asking our children how they fail I feel is really important. We want to make sure our children are not afraid to fail. In order to succeed we will fail with our school work and with our relationships. She talks about in the article how mistakes and failure are not something we want our children to be ashamed of but to learn from. Asking this question in addition to the other two lets our children know that we all make mistakes every day but we can be brave and kind as well. We are all learning and can do better. The failures they first talk about may start as being silly or small, such as I forgot to brush my teeth or left my lunch on the counter. But day by day this question can lead some good discussions and make failure okay.
So, at this time of New Year’s resolutions perhaps you can join me in my resolution to find out more about my children’s day and for them to find out more about mine. We may not find out more about what they are learning in reading or math but we will get some insight on who our children are as people. Learning to be brave, kind and how to fail are all important in our social-emotional growth.
To read the article I am referring to please click the following link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/meg-conley/we-ask-our-kids-the-same-3-questions-every-night_b_11665530.html
Chrishelle Leonard, School Psychologist
News from the Nurse
Please review the following information:
From an unknown author:
“Mary had a little lamb,
She also had the flu.
And when she left her school,
Others had it too.
So anytime your child is sick,
Please keep her home with you.
Then the children in our school
Will be happier and healthier too!”
It is always challenging for parents to decide when to have a sick child return to school. If a child was sick during the night but in the morning says he/she feels better and wants to go to school, please keep that child home. The child’s symptoms will most likely return during the school day, he/she will be exhausted from lack of sleep, and the child will still be contagious to others.
In an ongoing effort to prevent the spread of illnesses, teachers will be reminding students to wash their hands and cough into their elbow. Please assist us with this at home by stressing the importance of this.
About Davis Thayer.......
Mrs. Gerber's contact information:
508-541-5263 ext 3710
Mrs. Wasik's contact information:
508-541-5263 ext 3719
Website: http://thayerelementary.vt-s.net/Pages/index
Location: 137 West Central Street, Franklin, MA, United States
Phone: 508-541-5263
Twitter: @DT_Bobcats