Principal's Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We held our very first school assembly on Thursday! K2-8 students came together as a school community to watch and learn from our Grade 8 students the importance of treating each other and the school building with respect. I am so proud of our Grade 8 students for leading the assembly as they acted out several skits that highlighted various scenarios on respect. In return, Grade 2 visited Ms. Stroia's 8th-grade class to thank them for doing the good deed of demonstrating respectful behavior at the assembly (see Grade 2 highlight below).

Wow! We have such a talented group of specialist teachers! It was a well-attended virtual event on zoom. Thank you to all our parents who attended Meet the Specialist Night. I am so proud of our specialist teachers for their commitment and dedication to our students.

Lastly, thank you Father Jonathan for teaching us this short but impactful prayer during Mass on Wednesday morning:

"Lord help me to see you in others. Lord help me to be you in others."

See you on Monday for Parking Lot Prayers (weather permitting)!

Have a restful weekend!

October 26th:

• Virtual Open House
  

October 28th:

• Costume parade at 8:15 a.m
• All students are invited to come in Halloween costume
• Halloween Celebration 4-6 pm
  
• EDP ends at 4pm
• PreK-K1 Progress Reports

October 31st:

• Dress-down Pajama Day school-wide

November 1st:

• All Saints Day Mass (full school Mass PreK-8 at 12:10)

November 8th:

• Brookline Public School is closed (bring lunch from home)

November 11th:

• No School-Veteran's Day
  

November 16th:

• Walk-Around-Wednesday

November 23rd:

• Thanksgiving Liturgy at 9:30 a.m. (PreK-8)

November 24th-25th:

• No School Thanksgiving Break

November 28th:

• K2-8 Report cards go home
  
• Parent-Teacher Conferences begin

St. Mary's had zero Covid-19 cases reported to us this week.

Please let me know if your child is being treated with antibiotics for an infection. This includes conjunctivitis. It is very important for me to know this information so I can keep track of the number of cases in our school.

On Friday, October 28 all students are invited to come to school wearing their Halloween costumes. Students in PreK through Grade 8 will all parade around the school campus immediately after arrival at 8:15. Parents are invited to stay in the parking lot and watch the Costume Parade! We do ask that students not wear any masks, face paint, makeup, wigs, or bring handheld costume accessories such as wands or swords, and also no weapons. Please also remember our youngest students so do not come to school with gory/bloody costumes. Thank you so much for your cooperation!

St. Mary’s Room Parents and Parent Volunteer Council members are hard at work in collaboration with the school administration on planning this year’s Halloween Celebration taking place on Friday, October 28 from 4-6 pm. EDP ends at 4 pm on Friday, October 28. There will be cars lined up for Trunk-Or-Treat, a Monster Mash-themed haunted alley outside, spooky music for dancing, yummy treats, face-painting, a selfie studio, and much more! This event is not possible without parent volunteers. Any parent can volunteer and sign up using these links to Sign-Up Genius. If you have Halloween decorations that you can donate or lend to the school, please send them in or drop them off in the Main Office clearly labeled with your name/grade and whether it is a donation or loan.

Sign-Up Link for General Volunteering Opportunities for the Halloween Celebration

Sign-up Link for Decorating the Monster Mash Alleyway

Lastly, on Halloween Day, October 31, all students are invited to dress down and wear their pajamas to school. Please do not bring stuffed animals that might get lost. Students return in full uniform on Tuesday, November 1st for our PreK-8 All Saints’ Day Mass at 12:10.

This week Middle schoolers have learned about Flamenco, traditional music from Spain. They went through its roots, sounds, dance movements, and learned about legendary flamenco artists such Camarón, Paco de Lucía and La Paquera de Jerez. Students touched, lifted and moved around carrying a "Mantón" which is a traditional piece of embroidered fabric used to dance flamenco.

All of them are working on "La familia" topic, drawing family trees and learning how to talk about family relationships.

Grade 6 are also working in "Aficiones" (Hobbies) and "Things you like" and how to talk about what the members of their families like focusing on the verb "gustar."

Seventh and eighth graders learned "family relationships" new vocabulary. We went over it playing "Humans vs zombies" using Gimkit platform and "Humans" team won this time. They are practicing possessive pronouns building sentences and most of them turned in their assignment this week, which was "To draw and write about a crazy fiction family tree" using celebrities, movie, and video games characters and willing be presenting next week in class.

To survive Thursday, all middle schoolers played "Trashketball" as a fun way to review the content of the week. Ask them about this game!

Using balloons, students learned about solids, liquids, and gases as they focused on volume, shape, and energy levels. They also participated in a digital simulation lab filling tanks with gas particles and seeing what happens to the gas particles when volume or temperate is increased.

The questions they answered were as follows

1. What happens when you increase or reduce the size of an object?

2. Is there more or less pressure?

3. What happens when heat is applied?

They also covered:

• Boyle’s Law
  
• Avogadro’s Law
  
• Amonton’s law
  

Grade 6 is learning about concepts in farming within early civilizations. Today, the class was challenged to create their own irrigation system to successfully distribute water.

Grade 5 learned about the greenhouse effect. Mr. Ferrari brought his students outside and observed the difference in temperature between a thermometer out in the open and a thermometer in a glass. They concluded that a closed environment in the sun could cause an increase in temperature.

Grade 4 participated in a weathering, erosion, and deposition lab.

The materials used: sheet pan, damp sand, straw, and ice cubes. Watering can, a pitcher of water.

Several of the questions they were asked to answer were:

1. How does the water impact the sand landscape?
2. What are 2 examples of weathering we simulated during this lab?
3. How does rain affect the landscape differently than the river?
4. How is weathering different from erosion?

Grade 2 had a special visitor this week! Ms. Casey read aloud "One Good Deed" by Terri Fields. After reading to the students, the class had a discussion on what it means to do a good deed. Students were then paired with partners and were asked to write/participate in a good deed towards each other.

Mrs. Fragola’s Grade 1 Compliment Circle. To foster a sense of community in the classroom, Mrs. Fragola and the students have a daily compliment circle. Each morning a student is selected. Everybody takes a turn to let that student know what they admire and appreciate about that person. As you can see, the student receiving the compliments was so thrilled that she reached out to give her classmate a hug.

Students in Ms. Tiney’s K2 class were engineers on Thursday! They read “Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins” by James Dean. After reading the book, they discussed the engineering design process and gathered their materials: large popsicle sticks, clothespins, and 5 small pumpkins. Engineers persevered to create a gate like in the book for their five little pumpkins! Students created three dimensional gates using their materials and were so proud of the result!

The three K1 classrooms were very busy on Wednesday demonstrating their knowledge of vertical, diagonal and horizontal lines building letters. This approach was done through music and hands-on activities. We were amazed with the students' great listening skills as they worked together to build "Mat Man" using their Handwriting without Tears materials. The students also connected many of their literacy lessons using their comprehension, artistic, and sorting skills.

Miss Porcello’s PreK Pre-handwriting lesson. Using a lesson from the new Handwriting Without Tears curriculum, Miss P’s students used wood pieces along with music to explore the shapes that make up the alphabet. They loved tapping along to the music with the Big Line, Little Line, Big Curve and Little Curve wood pieces. They were very engaged in following Miss P’s directions as they tapped the sticks on their different body parts. This was a great way to build their vocabulary. What a fun way to explore the shapes of letters using 3-dimensional objects!

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