Cliffwood School Parent Newsletter
March 2019
Principal's News
Dear Cliffwood School families,
I would like to thank all of our parents/guardians who attended parent/teacher conferences earlier this week. These meetings are key for strengthening the home-school connection and supporting our students' learning. As the school year moves forward, please keep communicating with your child's teacher about his/her progress. I encourage all parents to:
- Regularly check your child's grades online.
- Talk daily with your child about his/her day at school.
- Keep asking questions to your child's teacher (e.g., Is my child performing at grade level? What do you see as his/her strengths? How could he/she improve?).
- Ask the teacher what you can do at home to help your child learn.
- Think about ways you would like to become involved in your child's learning and discuss with the teacher.
- Make a plan for what you and the teacher will do (and how often) to support your child.
Have a great Spring and stay Cliffwood Proud!
Mark Van Horn, Principal
Staying safe online is key!
It's no secret that our kids are increasingly using technology. Our students are using tech devices at home, at school, when traveling, sometimes for hours each day. While these devices give our young people tremendous access to information and resources, there are also things online that can be scary and/or dangerous to our children. We have Web filtering software here at school but no program is perfect and many students' home devices may not have these same security measures. That is why it is so important to know what your child is doing online and monitor their usage. Also, having conversations with your child about online safety is extremely important! To make these talks easier, please click the link below to access resources with info about staying safe with apps, games, websites, online "friends", sharing personal info, and more.
Click the link below to view info from the National Online Safety site.
McTeachers Nights a big success!
I am so Cliffwood Proud of our terrific teachers/staff and our great community! As you know, Cliffwood's teachers and staff recently participated in the McTeachers program, working at McDonald's for an evening to raise money for Relay for Life/American Cancer Society. I would like to thank all of our families here in Cliffwood and across MARSD for their support. Our Cliffwood families raised $480 and our district's families raised a grand total of $3,455.18. Great job!
Welcome back Mrs. Liguori to our Art room!
If your child has Art class on Mondays or Wednesdays, their teacher will be changing. Ms. Lepre will be leaving for a period of time (and we wish her well) and your chlid's new Art teacher will be Mrs. Liguori. Mrs. Liguori worked here last year as an Art teacher and we welcome her back to our school! You can contact Mrs. Liguori at jliguori@marsd.org. If your child has Art on Fridays, Mrs. Christie will remain their Art teacher.
Check out the Cliffwood PTO newsletter
Please click the link to view our PTO's latest newsletter. Be sure to check this each month and THANKS to our PTO for sharing this! https://www.smore.com/5f248
Make sure to follow us on Twitter!
Twitter is used to share out school news, photos, and more to the Cliffwood community. If you use Twitter, you can follow @CliffwoodProud. If you don't use Twitter regularly, our tweets are also embedded onto our school's home page so check there or click this link.
Lunch menu for March
Click below to view this month's lunch menu!
Cliffwood celebrates Kindness!
A big THANKS to our school counselor, Mrs. Levine, for organizing Cliffwood's first Random Act of Kindness Week. In addition to themed days, our students and staff participated in various activities throughout the week to promote kindness. Some of these included:
- Creating friendship bracelets for the students at Ravine Drive and Strathmore in an effort to spread friendship and kindness across our whole district.
- Engaging in morning meeting discussions, greetings, and activities that focused on kind acts both inside and outside of school.
Star Student news
Our February Star Student awards night was postponed due to weather. At our next Star Student meeting on 3/20, we will be recognizing those award winners for January (Perseverance) and February (Kindness). We will start at 7:00 p.m. in our cafeteria. See you then!
We get excited about reading!
Cliffwood's learners celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday and Read Across America week. Between 2/25 and 3/1, we had various activities to bring the celebration of reading and literacy into all of our classrooms. I would especially like to thank all of our special guest readers who visited and read their favorite stories to our kids!
March Dates to Remember
Please mark your calendars for these upcoming school events:
- Field trips to Rutgers Geology Museum - 3/11 and 3/15.
- PTO Movie Night (Ralph Breaks the Internet) - 3/15 in the cafeteria.
- CogAT testing in grade 2 - 3/19 through 3/21.
- PTO school store during lunches - 3/14 and 3/15.
- Star Student awards - Wednesday, 3/20 (recognizing students for January and February)
- PTO pizza bingo - 3/22 in the cafeteria.
- Spring picture day - 3/22.
- Garden Club meetings (making pizzas) - 3/12 and 3/27.
Contact Me
Email: mvanhorn@marsd.org
Website: http://marsd.org/Domain/465
Location: Cliffwood Avenue Elementary School, Aberdeen Township, NJ, United States
Phone: (732) 705-5600