Principal's Weekly Newsletter

Dear Families,

As Catholic Schools Week approaches, we are launching our Value Proposition, and parents who attended Coffee with the Principal got a sneak peak! After several productive meetings, a small sub-committee of our Board of Specified Jurisdiction created the following value prop for St. Mary of the Assumption School. "Rooted in Brookline Village, St. Mary of the Assumption School is a diverse and global community of kindness and conscience that is committed to spiritual and intellectual growth, moral development, and academic excellence." This phrase is essentially what we talk about when we talk about St. Mary's to our friends, family, and neighbors. We encourage our parents to incorporate this phrase and language when discussing St. Mary's within their community.

Thank you to our Parent Volunteers who began preparations for Catholic Schools Week! Parents, don’t forget to grab your appreciation coffee and donut on Tuesday, January 31st between 7:30 and 8 a.m. There will be multiple stations at the front and back of the school to accommodate both Early Childhood families, walkers, and families who drive and drop off. We cannot wait to celebrate you!

I look forward to seeing many of you at the 11a.m. Mass on Sunday! Have a restful weekend.

Looking Ahead Dates

January 29th:

• Catholic Schools Mass Kickoff at 11 am at the Parish, hot chocolate and munchkins after mass (All families, faculty, and staff welcome! Students: please wear uniforms)

January 28th:

• Boys and Girls Basketball Game

January 29th-February 3rd:

• Catholic Schools Week

January 30th:

• Crazy Socks Day

• Vocations Assembly for Grades 3-8

• Boston’s Healthcare for the Homeless Assembly for Grades 6-8

January 31st:

• Wear your Culture Day

• Grab and Go Coffee and Donuts during Arrival from 7:30-8 am

February 1st:

• Red, White, and Blue Day (except middle school)

• Middle School Field Trip to Catholic TV

• Middle Schoolers announce Sock, Handwarmers and Canned Goods Drive at Full School Assembly (details to follow on donations)

February 2nd:

• Full Uniform Day

• School Mass at 8 am (Grades K2-8 and families welcome)

• Middle School votes for Student Council

February 3rd:

• Tropical Beach Day

• Faculty and Staff Appreciation Catered Lunch by Tatte

• Students vs. Teachers Basketball Game

February 8th:

• Parent Volunteer Council Meeting at 8 am (in person and via Zoom)

February 9th:

• Admissions Info Session-Online 11:30 am

February 15th:

• Walk-Around-Wednesday 9 am

February 17th:

• Carnival Breakfast Party

February 20th-24th:

• No School- February Vacation

February 27th:

• March Matching Challenge begins

March 1st:

• Middle School Family Meeting (Field Trip Zoom)

March 10th:

• Admissions Open House 9 am

Covid Cases: 3

Free Dental Care:

February is National Children’s Dental Health Month. Harvard Dental School is hosting an event for free dental care for children ages 1-17.

It is called Give Kids a Smile day, and it will be held February 11th, 2023 from 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. Free custom mouthguards will also be provided to children. Translators for every language will be available.

• What: Free dental care to kids ages 1-17
• When: February 11th, 9AM-12PM
• Where: Harvard Dental Center (188 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115). Parking is available at the school for scheduled appointments.
• Call 617-432-1434 to schedule an appointment or to get more information.

Today during professional development our teachers were able to hone in and spend some time working with our new Bridges curriculum. In particular they learned more about how to critically analyze their assessments in order to inform and strengthen the academic environment.

Today our middle school team is working with True Robotics to introduce programming and coding into our middle school curriculum. Our teachers had the opportunity to build their own robot with just a screwdriver and a wrench. We are excited to educate and present our middle school class using this advanced technology to better equip them in the future.

Below you’ll find our staff doing some programming and learning a little bit about what our students will be doing in the upcoming months.

Thank you to all her parents for your wonderful support in the Silent Auction and Pub Trivia Night! A special thanks to the St. Mary's Facility Team, Parent Volunteers, Ms. Yajaira, Greg Coughlin and his restaurants: Old Magoun's Saloon, Longcross Bar and Kitchen, Blackmoor Bar and Kitchen, and Copper House Tavern, The Simovic family, the Elwood family, the Davies family, the Vien family, the Ellis Family, Nurse Wu, the Holley family, the McCready family, the Patt family, the Miller family, the D'Amore family, and the Probolus family for their gifts and support.

Pub Trivia Night was a huge success. We were so happy to host over 130 members of our community. The hall was filled with good spirits and celebration! We look forward to more events that bring our families together. Lastly, a huge thank you to our faculty members, Ms. Shannon Connors, Ms. Lynn Cafferky, Ms. Sabyrna Reyes, Ms. Kendall, Arkay, and Ms. Julia Whitten for supervising game night for our students and families!

Thank you to all families who have already completed their 2023-2024 re-enrollment packets. Please note that if the re-enrollment packet is not submitted by April 1st, your family's enrollment status will be considered withdrawn for the 2023-2024 academic year. If there are any extenuating circumstances regarding your family's decision to re-enroll, please make us aware as soon as you are able.

If you have already informed us that your family will not be re-enrolling, we ask that you still log into the FACTS/SIS Family Portal and select the "Will Not Re-enroll" option.

Beginning next week, students in grades 3 through 5 will switch world languages for the remainder of the year. Students have been introduced to either French or Spanish so far, and now they will swap to the other language so that by 6th grade they can choose French or Spanish to study intensively. Thank you so much to our talented teachers, Srta. Neville and Monsieur Raymond!

Monsieur Raymond's French class played a competitive game to help them learn parts of the body. Some of the vocabulary they learned included :

• le nez
  
• la bouche
  
• les yeux
  
• les pieds
  
• les oreilles
  
• les mains
  
• les cheveux
  

In PreK Spanish, students have started a new unit theme on colorful monsters based on the pop-up book “el monstruo de colors” by Anna Llenas. Students discussed emotions and colors in Spanish. They also began their own colorful monster books. Sra. Garcia made colorful jars with salt and chalk for students to investigate closer. Our youngest learners are learning so much in Spanish!

Winter clubs began recently and the girls’ basketball team has started strong! They are working so hard as a team to play together. They competed against area schools and love sporting their jerseys!

PreK students in Ms. Porcello’s classroom used created penguins using paint, construction paper shapes, and googly eyes. Students are developing their fine motor skills as well as making connections to the winter theme and cold climate habitats. Great job, PreK!

Grade 4 and PreK enjoyed centers and lunch together!

Today in K1 the children learned how icicles form and why some icicles get very long. They then pretended to be scientists and predicted which ice cube would last the longest when left at room temperature, sprinkled with salt, wrapped in fabric and wrapped in newspaper. The children were surprised to see that the ice cube wrapped in fabric lasted the longest. They took the experiment a step further and looked at an insulated lunch box and learned that our ice packs stay colder longer when placed in an insulated lunch box.

Here students in Mrs. Curley’s K1 classroom are working diligently on various center-based activities. They created shelters using magnatiles for their bears to hibernate in and sorted bears by size and color. These activities align with the Lynch Early Childhood Education math and social studies curriculum. Both PreK and K1 students received their report cards this week and had Parent Teacher Conferences to learn about their child’s progress. Excellent work, students!

K2 is practicing how to “build” a sentence and draw a picture to match their sentence. During Writer’s Workshop, students are writing sentences using the following components: A sentence begins with a capital letter, has space between the words, ends with a punctuation mark, and tells a complete idea.

K2 learned how to write sentences this week! They learned that sentence starts with a capital letter, ends with punctuation, has spaces between words, and tells a complete idea. They practiced writing in our journals and became illustrators drawing pictures to match or sentences.

This week, in first grade, students learned about and celebrated the Chinese (Lunar) New Year. Students learned about the significance of the color red being good luck and why a dragon is a common symbol during this holiday. Students also learned about specific animals that each represent a year, this year being the year of the Rabbit. This cycle repeats every 12 years. Our students are born in the year of the monkey and the goat!

Students in Ms. Connors’ classroom were highly engaged in Number Corner this week. Here the students each had an opportunity to closely examine the calendar pattern card. After all the students had their turn, they made predictions about what the image represented. The students then directed Ms. Connors in the co-creation of a graphic on the whiteboard. On Friday, January 27th, teachers from K2-5 will be participating in professional development to further their mastery of the Bridges Math Curriculum.

Fourth grade has been learning about how to grow close to God. They learned about the gift of a conscience, and how it helps us make choices. They went through and examination of conscience and learned how to reflect on how our choice have or have not show love for God, ourselves, and others. Fr. Bobby came to hear confessions for anyone who wanted to receive the Sacrament!

Grade five students are starting argument research in groups where they are reading articles on real-world topics to form opinions. The topics they are researching are whether animals should live in zoos or in the wild, whether humans are more dangerous to sharks or if sharks are more dangerous to humans, and whether we should research space more or the ocean more. Students are scanning non-fiction articles first to gather evidence.

Please find the links below to our social media pages. We have been constantly uploading posts and stories so if you are interested in seeing more of our day-to-day happenings, please follow us!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/st-mary-of-the-assumption-school

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stmaryschoolbrooklinema

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stmaryschoolbrookline/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/stmarybrookline