North Tiger Beat
September 2021
Welcome September!!
Teachers have also been spending time establishing routines and rituals to set up their classroom environments for success. Over the next few weeks, teachers will be assessing students in areas of reading, math, and writing to help set their own goals for the next few months. Once all the data is in from the beginning of year assessments, classroom teachers along with interventionists will be working with students targeting areas and skills to help students make gains.
Thank you to our families for helping prepare our students to return to school and working as a team with us. I can't emphasize enough that your partnership is important to us. When parents support us and help us implement the necessary measures and guidelines, we can spend our time focused on working directly with our students and ensuring a positive learning environment for them. Please, please, please continue to help us minimize transmission of COVID in our school by keeping students home if they have any symptoms. If your child has any symptoms, please keep them home and call or email the school nurse. COVID can show up in children as mild symptoms. Please keep our school nurse up to date with any cases you may have in your home where your child may be a close contact. We continue to ask for everyone's cooperation on implementing the necessary guidelines of wearing masks, frequent hand washing, and hand sanitizing. We will keep updated cases on the COVID-19 Daily Dashboard on the district website. Visiting this link provides information about each school's new COVID-19 cases and associated close contacts. This chart will be updated daily for each school when a school experiences a new case.
I know my newsletters can be lengthy at times, but it is my way of making sure you have all the information that you need to help us have a successful school year. We have a lot of great things happening here at North and we want you to know how important our families are to us. Please don't forget to write down the important dates indicated below. We have a Boosterthon Fundraiser, early release days, and a professional development day over the next few weeks. Next week we have our virtual open house. Details are below.
If you are interested in being on the school council. please send me an email at paula.manchester@somersetschools.org. Our school council reviews our student handbook and our school improvement plan.
Have a great year!!
We took advantage of the nice weather and had our first staff meeting outside Wednesday.
Important Dates
September 14th, Virtual Open House 5:30-7:30
September 17th, Early Release 12:30 (bag lunch to be provided)
September 21st- PTO Meeting 6:00-7:00
September 29th, Early Release 12:30 (bag lunch to be provided)
October 4th-8th- Rainbow Spirit Week- More info to follow. Get your colored outfits ready!!
October 11th - No School
October 27th- Early Release 12:30 (bag lunch to be provided)
October 29th- November 10th- Boosterthon Fundraiser
November 2nd- No School for Students - Teacher PD
November 10th- Fun Run
November 11th- Veteran's Day-No School
Back To School Gateway - Please update
The link below has directions on how to update your child's contact information. It is important we have up-to-date information every year. You did receive a couple of emails with this information. Here is again. Please fill it out!! This will make Mrs. Fogg very happy!
Information For Tuesday, September 14th 5:30-7:30
This year's Open House or “Back to School Night” is scheduled for Tuesday, September 14 th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.
This year’s event will be a little different from the previous years - this year we will be virtual!
Parents are invited to attend sessions for their child’s teachers via zoom; these sessions will
provide important information about the school, curriculum, and individual classroom
expectations. Please note that any questions you may have that are specific to your child should be asked of the teacher through a note, email, phone call, or you can email your child’s teacher to set up a meeting.
Tuesday’s Schedule:
5:30-5:50 - Prerecorded video/presentation from Principal
6:00-6:25 Session #1
6:30-6:55 Session #2
7:00-7:25 Session #3
On Monday evening, you will receive an email from me with the zoom links with staff names and email addresses. To access a teacher’s zoom meeting, simply click on that teacher’s name and your computer will launch the zoom meeting.
Each teacher will be doing (3) 25-minute presentations. They will be the same presentation, just at a different time. This will allow you to meet different teachers if you have multiple children. You will also be able to attend other sessions to meet your child's specialists and meet our related service support staff.
All of our Specials (Art, Music, PE, Technology, and Health) will present their session together.
Our Related Services Providers (Speech and Language, School Psychologist, Occupational Therapist, School Adjustment Counselor, and Nurse) will also present their zoom meeting together.
Breakfast and Lunch
Breakfast is "grab and go" and free for all children. As children walk into the building they have the option to grab some breakfast items, milk, and juice they can eat in their classroom.
Lunch is also free for all children for the rest of the school year. The lunch menu is always posted on the Somerset Public School Website. https://somersetps.nutrislice.com/menu
Snacks are extra and can be purchased on your child's MYSCHOOLBUCKS account.
From The Nurse
Welcome Back!
If your child has been exposed to Covid-19 outside of school and is a close contact, please notify the Health Office as soon as possible to determine when it is safe to return your child to school.
If your child is experiencing any of the following, please keep them home from school and contact their pediatrician and the School Nurse:
*Nasal congestion/runny nose (with another symptom)
*Cough
*Muscle aches/body aches
*Fever greater than 100
*Sore throat (with another symptom)
*Headache (with another symptom)
*Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea (with another symptom)
*Fatigue (with another symptom)
*New onset of loss of taste/smell
*Difficulty breathing/shortness of breath
Gaiter style masks and vented masks are not appropriate masks for school per the administrative policy. Please send extra masks with your children.
At home Covid tests are not acceptable forms of Covid screenings for school per the Dept of Education.
Covid testing is NOT done at school.
New physicals are required for all students in Grade 4.
If your child has a religious or medical exemption for vaccinations, a new letter is required at the start of every school year.
Only those students with physician-ordered mask exemptions are allowed to be unmasked in the building.
All screenings will take place this year. If you would like to opt your child out of BMI or scoliosis screening, a written exemption must be provided.
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Grade Level Happenings
Prek Insights
Insights I & II
Insights I & II classrooms have had a great start to the 2021-22 school year. This is a year of “new”, with many new faces around the classrooms. The students have spent the first week getting to know the new faces and places. We are all adjusting to routines and classroom expectations. The adjustment is going well! Students have been excited to see their teachers and their friends throughout the North community! We look forward to learning great things this year and for all of us to reach our goals.
Preschool
Kindergarten
Kindergarten is in our early days and we are focusing on how to be a part of our school community. Kindergarteners are learning new rules each day to work as a team and make new friends by accepting differences and demonstrating kindness. In Reading we are hearing stories and discussing important lessons learned. In Math students are exploring 2D shapes and basic counting from 1-5. Our Science theme for the next few months is learning all about the weather and sky so keep an eye out during the day and night and see what your family can notice. We are off to a wonderful start!
1st Grade
Welcome to First Grade!
We are so happy to be back in the classroom with our students! We are off to a great start to the new school year. This year will be filled with learning and lots of fun. The children are settling in nicely, as September is a time for learning classroom routines and rituals. We have been reviewing letter sounds and number writing along with number quantity. Our reading theme for September is Learning and Playing Together:School. The books we will be enjoying that are a part of this theme are First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg, Elizabeti’s School by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen, David’s Drawings by Cathryn Falwell, A Fine,Fine School by Sharon Creech, and Jamaica’s Blue Marker by Juanita Havill.
In math, we will be starting Chapter 1, Addition Concepts. We will use pictures to add, model putting numbers together, add zero, add in any order, and addition to 10. Homework will be given to reinforce the skills that were learned in the daily math lesson. Please take the time to review the daily math lesson work that is sent home as this will help your child to do their nightly math homework.
Science will begin with a unit called Sky Watchers. We will do many investigations and observations with objects in the sky, explore sunrise, sunset, and the seasons. We will then move into the Moon and its patterns, and finally, we will discover our place in space. We are looking forward to meeting everyone at our virtual Open House on September 14th from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM. It is going to be a great year! We are a rainbow of possibilities!!
2nd Grade
In second grade the students are adjusting to classroom routines and working on building community. We are embracing the Growth Mindset. A person with a Growth Mindset may do these things: embrace challenges, give their best effort, learn from feedback, believe their intelligence can change if they work hard, and become inspired by other people’s successes. We encourage you to continue this thinking at home. Ways to help your child with this are to guide discussion by asking questions like “What did you do that was difficult today?” Praise progress by saying something like :Wow! You must have really worked hard on this!” and remind them to keep trying even when things are hard. Remember, our brain is a muscle. The more we use it the stronger ( and smarter) our brain becomes!
3rd Grade
Third grade is underway! We have been working on establishing rituals and routines to meet third-grade expectations in the classrooms. In math, students will begin to round numbers to the nearest 10 or 100. Please help your children to be fluent with their addition and subtraction facts to 20. In science, we will explore earth science through investigations with water. In reading, students will engage in lessons to grow their independent reading habits. In social studies, third graders will use parts of a map to locate and describe Somerset. This year your child will use an agenda to record assignments/announcements. Please view it, and sign or initial daily to communicate between home and school. Welcome back!!!
4th Grade
Welcome back to a great year in fourth grade! We are all excited to get to know your children and begin the assessment process. During September we will be administering a series of benchmark assessments to gather data about your child. These data points will enable us to target our instruction to best meet our students' needs.
For math instruction this year we will be using Go Math and begin with concepts such as reading, writing, and comparing large numbers. Place value, addition, subtraction, and comparing and ordering large numbers are also early concepts we teach.
In Reading our district has purchased a wonderful set of interactive read alouds and many high-quality children's books for small group instruction. These books are at many different levels, enabling us to reach each child at their level and help them grow as readers. We also have the online application, MyON, which contains thousands of digital books and "talks" to STAR (our reading benchmark). This allows MyON to suggest books within the child's reading level.
In writing the first trimester focuses on the Narrative genre. During writing time we will teach students the elements of narrative writing and have them practice each element.
In Social Studies the fourth graders will be learning about early explorers to the Americas and European immigration.
In Science, our students will learn about our earth's changing surface through a series of investigations using soil, rocks, and other organic materials.
We look forward to working with you to make your child's year a great one!
Mrs. Marum, Mrs. Mendoza, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Noons
5th Grade
In ELA, students will be reading fiction texts, learning about text structure, character’s point of view, and theme. In writing, students will be learning about narrative writing structure and begin the writing process on their own story. Social Studies will begin with the first permanent settlement in America, Jamestown, and learn about colonial life. In Science, we will review science process skills and begin our study of unit 1 Earth and Sun.
Intervention
We would like to introduce our Intervention Department. Denise Lee, Sue Carvalho, Abigail Aguiar, Amanda Paiva, and Sonya Calvano. We will be working with grades K-5. We will begin our benchmark testing in early September and continue into October, followed by data meetings in October. We are all very excited to get started and back to our regular routine this year!
5th Grade Band
A Note from the band director:
This year, grade 5 students have the opportunity to be in the band. I will be visiting the classrooms over the next week or 2 to go over the options with all the 5th grade students. If you would like to preview the slide presentation or review it after I visit your classroom please click on the link below.
If you are interested in signing up you will find a google sign up form on the last page of the google slide presentation (also below).
Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you,
Mrs. Christina Rausch
Slide Presentation
Google Form
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kTqH0giEdW-0ReufI7D3G_sgJGW4SJZpWObyD2rHC_w/edit
Drop-off and Pick-Up
Morning Drop Off Procedure
If you are bringing your child to school, please enter from the bottom driveway near soccer fields and drive around the circle near the maintenance area. When dropping off your child, please remain in your car and drop off on the right side (fire lane side). In order to keep drop-offs flowing, once your child has exited the car, please continue driving. Unless students are tardy, we ask that parents not walk their child/children into school. We need to minimize foot traffic on our grounds. Staff will be monitoring students as they walk into school. ONLY BUSES ARE ALLOWED ALONG THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING FROM 8:30-9:00.
Parent Drop-Off in the AM begins at 8:40. Please do not drop off before 8:40 as we do not have supervision before 8:40. School begins at 8:45 AM.
If your dropping off after 8:45, the child is considered tardy. Please park legally and walk your child into the main office. Your child needs to be signed in.
If you are dismissing your child early, please write a note in the morning. Your child's teacher will send the note to the office.
Parent/Guardian Pick-Up Procedure
If your child is a "parent pick-up", you will need a QR code that will be scanned. We dismiss students from the cafeteria who are “parent pick up”. Parents will remain in their cars and drive to the cafeteria following the route below. Students will be brought to the cars from the cafeteria after their QR code is scanned. To ensure safety, it is important that parents remain in cars and follow the traffic pattern. We appreciate your patience and understanding. Parent pick-up will begin around 3:16-3:19.
If you need more QR code signs, please email the office at birgit.fogg@somersetschools.org or Joan.fortier@somersetschools.org.
It is important to remain in your car, follow the traffic flow and do not park or block the road. Please be mindful of signs and fire lanes.
Please click on the LINK for map: Traffic Flow Map For Pick Up
Please don't forget to update your emergency contacts and "pick-up" contacts in the Back to School Gateway.
Practice Makes Perfect
Throughout the day we will continue to support, guide, and help our students develop life skills as well as their academic skills. To help us minimize cross-contamination and also to help foster important skills our children need, please practice the following skills with your child.
Opening up juice boxes and lunch items
Zipping up jackets
Buckling and unbuckling into the car/car seat
Tying shoes/sneakers
Washing hands with soap and water
Sneezing and coughing into their elbow
How to use tissues
sign up for the remind app
https://www.remind.com/join/drmanche
Receive updates and reminders through text messages. Click on the link and add your phone number. If you have signed up in past years, please sign up again this year as this is a new group I have created for this school year.
Helpful Habits for Back to School Season
Social Skills Grade by Grade
THANK YOU PTO
Thank you to our PTO for supporting our students and teachers. All the funds raised by our PTO comes directly back to our school. Please consider joining the PTO. It is a way to connect with other parents and work together in helping to support our school.
Please join us Tuesday, September 21st, at 6:00 for our first PTO meeting of the year. Here is the link for the meeting.