Weekly Newsletter
October 21, 2021
News from Principal Emma Liebowitz
Below you can see a picture of our 2021-2022 School Rules. Two representatives from each class came to series of meetings to combine their classroom rules into the school rules. The representatives had a chance to share and gather ideas from their classmates. Each representative signed the document. Copies are in each classroom and in shared psaces throughout the school.
Events/Calendar:
Thursday, October 28 - Sugar Rush 5K in the morning
Thursday, October 28 - Costume Parade and Celebrations
Monday, November 1 - No School for Students - Staff Professional Development Day
Tuesday, November 2 - Picture Retakes
Thursday, November 4 - 12:30 Dismissal for Caregiver-Teacher Conferences
Friday, November 5 - 12:30 Dismissal for Caregiver-Teacher Conferences
Monday, November 8 - LEC at 3:15
Thursday, November 11 - No School
Saturday, November 13 - Local Goods Distribution Day
Wednesday, November 17 - 1:50 Dismissal
Wednesday, November 24 - 12:30 Dismissal
Thursday, November 25 and Friday, November 26 - No School
Wednesday, December 1 - 1:50 Dismissal
Link to Sanderson Academy calendar.
News from the Office
Health Office News from Nurse Loranna
We will be starting our pool testing program tomorrow! This will be done in classrooms with guidance/assistance from the nursing team, students in grades K and up can do the swab themselves if they feel comfortable and with supervision. Tests will be sent out and results should come back within 24-48 hours. You will not be notified of results unless there is a positive pool then those within the pool will be re-tested. If a pooled sample generates a positive result, each individual in the pool will have a second anterior nasal swab to perform a BinaxNOW test at the school.
– If results from the second individual test are negative, the individual will continue to perform their regular duties without any limitations.
– If results from the second test are positive and the individual is a student, the student’s caregiver will be notified of the need for immediate pick-up.
– If results from the second test are positive and the individual is a member of our district staff, the employee will be notified immediately and asked to leave the school building.
**The District Nurse Leader/COVID-19 nurse and/or the local Board of Health will contact the caregiver/individual to review isolation requirements for the positive person per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH), and DESE policies.**
Here is the link where you can sign your child up: https://www.cic-health.com/consent/ma?district=Mohawk%20Trail
Click on Consent Now
Choose your student’s school in the drop down menu
Click on Sign Consent Form For a Minor
Library News from Ms. Robin Wilson
Books have been circulating fast in the library, which is wonderful to see! Please help your student remember their library due date so they can check out 1-2 new books when they come to the Library. I also encourage you to talk with your students about what they are reading, or better yet, read with them!
Library Book Due Dates:
1st Grade: Tuesday
2nd Grade: Monday
3rd Grade: Friday
4th Grade: Wednesday
5th Grade: Wednesday
6th Grade: Monday
Scholastic Book Fair 2021
The Sanderson Library will be hosting a Scholastic Book Fair from November 2 - 12. The Scholastic Book Fair is a wonderful opportunity to add new books to your home collection while raising funds for new books for our school. Students will be invited to browse the fair with their class at scheduled times, and will be able to purchase books or create a “wishlist” of books that will be given to parents and caregivers. Parents and caregivers are invited to shop in-person during Parent Teacher Conferences, but the “virtual store” will also be open from November 2 - 12. We will accept multiple forms of payment, including eWallets (Scholastic’s easy payment method) at the fair. Stay tuned for more information!
Book Fair In-Person Hours:
Thursday, November 4 12:30 - 8:00
Friday, November 5 12:30 - 5:00
If you are interested in volunteering to help with the book fair, please contact Robin Wilson at rwilson@mtrsd.org. Thanks for your consideration!
Preschool News from Mrs. Freeman
This week we welcomed a new friend into our classroom. We talked about how introducing ourselves, an invitation to play, and a classroom tour may help a new preschooler feel welcome.
We also read stories by Lois Ehlert. Ms. Wison read, Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf in the library. She helped us think about the life of a tree, leaves, and the beautiful colors in fall. In our classroom we read, Leaf Man. Preschoolers noticed the illustrations were made using leaves, and there were many leaf animals throughout. This inspired us to create our own creatures using leaves and other natural objects found outside.
The photos show preschoolers working on their leaf projects. The project shown is a bird.
Preschool News from Ms. Melanie
Our apple dolls are made and are drying beautifully! Soon we will be able to dress them in their costumes, just in time for Halloween! We hope to have them displayed for everyone to see before they go home to stay.
It’s pumpkin time! We have begun enjoying a variety of activities with a pumpkin theme--always a fun time! Got extra sugar pumpkins? We would gladly and gratefully accept donations of sugar pumpkins for our classroom--one or more would be perfect! Thank you!
We have been noticing the change in the weather and the vibrant colors appearing in the leaves of the trees in our outdoor classroom. On Monday, our outdoor classroom was covered in a carpet of newly fallen leaves. Our third-grade buddies came and helped us rake all those leaves and haul them to our compost pile. Many hands do, indeed, make light work and, working together, the third graders and the preschoolers had our outdoor space looking spiffy in no time! Lots of good cheer and camaraderie echoed throughout the woods on this wonderful day! Thank you to our buddies for another great memory-making adventure!
Kindergarten News from Ms. Sarah
This week, we had our annual fire safety presentation with Firefighter Mike! Students practiced procedures like the low crawl to get under smoke and stop-drop-and-roll if you get fire on your clothes. We also learned about how to call 911 for emergencies and got to see Firefighter Mike with his big suit on so it’s not so scary if we see a firefighter in real life. We transformed our dramatic play center into a fire station and the kids have been enjoying playing rescue and exploring some of the safety ideas we learned about in our safety presentation.
First Grade News from Mrs. Wyckoff
In language arts first graders are using a non-fiction passage called The Brightest Flower In The Garden to learn how to gather information after reading a passage. First, children shared their prior knowledge about sunflowers and wrote these ideas down on a chart. Each idea was placed under one of the following groups: “Sunflowers can…” , “sunflowers have …”, and “sunflowers are....” Next, we read the passage together as a class and then added newly learned information to our chart. The most surprising fact that students learned is that the sunflower seeds you might buy at the grocery store or gas station are sunflower seeds that have been roasted and will not grow sunflowers if planted! We finished our sunflower activity with a fun crafting project showcasing our knowledge about sunflowers. These are on display outside our room. If you happen to walk by, take a look!
Second Grade News from Ms. Robertson
This week finds us beginning a new story in our reading anthologies and a new module in our math program. As we start the story Julius, we are discussing the terms realism and fantasy. We are defining realism as the real-life details that make a story interesting, such as a child playing with their dog. With fantasy, the details also make the story interesting, but the details are exaggerated or so silly that they cannot happen in real life. Before reading Julius, we practiced using a glossary by looking up vocabulary words and discussing their meanings. Our next step will be to preview the story, with a focus on looking at the characters’ facial expressions for clues on how they are feeling.
To begin our new math module, we first made our own number racks. This math tool was then used in an activity called “Flash Attack”, where students were given a couple of seconds to look at a number rack to figure out how many beads were being shown. The objective of this activity was to observe a given number of objects and to look for groups of 5 or 10 within that amount without having to count. For example, the number rack below shows 13 beads on the left side. Students may see 13 as one group of 10 and 3 extra (13=10+3) or they may see 13 as two groups of 5 and 3 extra (13=5+5+3). Being able to recognize a small group of objects without having to count each object is a skill known as subitizing and this skill is important to number sense development.
Third Grade News from Ms. Carole
We have been busy this week with an assortment of tasks. We learned over the weekend that we have over forty rolls of wrapping paper to decorate for the Local Goods, which is great news! We started working on those right away, and it will be an ongoing project over the next few weeks. We also spent time with our Preschool buddies on Monday helping them to clear the fallen leaves from their outdoor classroom. On Tuesday morning we met with Firefighter Mike who talked to us about fire safety. He gave us packes of questions to answer which went home on Wednesday and are due back to school by next Thursday, October 28th. We are also gearing up for our big trip this Friday to the Quabbin Reservoir by discussing it as our Point of Interest.
Fourth Grade News From Mrs. Lagoy
We reached the end of the third quadrant in our whole-group reading book, Shiloh, this week, and enjoyed our first “read-in day” today. When we reach the fourth, and final, quadrant of our book, we get to read, without interruption, to the end of the story to enjoy the satisfying feeling of finishing the book. As we read, we think about how the author is going to “tie up all the loose ends” at the end of the story. During writing, we have been working on time order transition words. We listened to My Rotten, Redheaded, Older Brother, by Patricia Polacco, to help us identify time order transition words that we can incorporate in our personal narratives. We have also been carefully observing and drawing conclusions about an interesting photograph and will practice outlining a personal narrative about the child in the picture. Be sure to ask your kiddo about the picture and some of the interesting conversations we had when we were drawing conclusions. Could we draw conclusions about what they were doing? Could we draw conclusions about where they were?
Fourth Grade News from Mrs. Lilly
In math this week we have continued to review multiplication. We took a look at a multiplication table and reviewed how to use it. We quickly realized that we already know how to multiply by 0,1,2,5,and 10. From there we are able to break down larger, unknown multiplication equations into smaller, more familiar ones. We even learned a bunch of tricks for multiplying by 9. We also discussed what prime and composite numbers are. Each student was given a number and a poster. From there they made as many factor pairs as they could to determine if the number was prime or composite. Afterwards, we travelled around the room to other student’s posters to determine if their numbers were prime or composite.
Ffith Grade News from Ms. Johnson
Sixth Grade News from Mrs. Schreiber
Sixth grade has been busy starting our unit of the paleolithic and neolithic time period. We have also been learning how to write numbers as prime factorizations. What we have been enjoying the most are our breaks outside with the fall leaves.
News from Ms. Prew
As Mrs. Morey recently mentioned in regards to reading, our Fall math assessments are coming to an end. As staff members we will now look at this data and form groups and schedules that will best meet the needs of all of our amazing Sanderson students! Be on the lookout for notices in your children's Thursday folders. Some kiddos will receive extra support in the classroom and some kiddos will join a small group in my classroom. Please reach out with any questions! :) aprew@mtrsd.org
Mindful Movement News from Ms. Sue
With all the leaves falling in this season of change we have been doing a lot of breathwork using leaves! We have played Yoga Jenga and also a fun game with some big wooden dice that had us mindfully staying on our mats while doing poses and also some body break movements (tight rope walking, dance to a favorite song, bear walk) We sure have had a mixture of weather, cold & chilly with rain showers to the glorious warm fall weather we just had! Continue to enjoy this Autumn weather...
After School Opportunity
Save the Date: Literacy Event
The Mohawk Trail Regional School District, the Mary Lyon Foundation and It Takes A Village have partnered up to host Literacy night on November 17th from 3:30 to 5:30 in the high school cafeteria. This event is open to all students who are currently enrolled in preschool through 2nd grade in the Mohawk Trail/Hawlemont School Districts. A flyer with more detailed information will be coming soon.
Job Posting
About Us
Email: eliebowitz@mtrsd.org
Website: https://sanderson.mohawktrailschools.org/
Location: 808 Cape Street, Ashfield, MA, USA
Phone: (413) 628-4404
Facebook: facebook.com/SandersonAcademy