NEWS FROM WES

• Friday, January 17th: Second Week of Winter Workshops
• Monday, January 20th: No School
  
• Tuesday, January 21st: PTO Meeting, WES library, 4:30pm
• Monday, January 27th: WCUD Board Meeting at WES, 6pm
• Tuesday, February 4th: Kindergarten Concert in Gym, 6-6:30pm (snow date 2/5)
• Monday, February 10th: WCUD Board Meeting at WUHSMS library, 6pm
• February 17th-21st: February Break, no school

For the complete WES events calendar, click here.

For individual classroom news and events, click here.

For all WCSU school board and committee meetings, click here.

Woodstock Elementary School students have earned 15, 000 pennies for being safe, respectful, and ready to learn! To recognize this achievement, there will be a school wide Rainbow Day celebration Wednesday, January 15th. Students are invited to dress in rainbow colors, write rainbow poems, draw rainbow pictures, or to find other creative ways to bring rainbows to school next week.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon well after students had gone home for the day, Ms. Greene and Ms. Kurash were hard at work in a fifth grade classroom with several reading and writing curriculum and teaching resources spread out in front of them. They were discussing a trend they saw among their students: students in fifth grade are skilled at finding the theme of a short story or picture book but have less experience gathering evidence from across a larger series of events, such as determining the theme of a novel and supporting that theme with evidence from throughout the text. Ms. Kurash shared a discussion she had had with a few students about the book, Sign of the Beaver. The students identified a theme of the text, but were not yet synthesizing all the events from the text to come up with a more cohesive, complex theme. Ms. Greene and Ms. Kurash discussed how they might combine their study of the Revolutionary War with a historical fiction text to have students think about broader themes in the book and in the historical time period. The themes they want to engage students in are relevant to current events students are hearing about daily as well. When teachers provide students with purposeful, creative learning experiences relevant to their lives, students are engaging in Deeper Learning. Here is a link to a great summary of Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's recent book about engaging students in deeper learning: In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School.

We currently have three job openings at Woodstock Elementary School. All job postings can be viewed and applied for on SchoolSpring.com. The basic descriptions and links are below:

1. Part time (20 hours per week) Special Education para-educator working in the lower grades (hours approximately 9:30am-1:30pm daily)

2. Part time (20 hours per week) general education para-educator providing general supervision and duties with the possibility of some classroom support (hours approximately 9:30am-1:30pm daily also)

3. Part time after school program assistant (hours 2pm-5:30pm approximately 17.5 hours per week)

Please let Ms. Mills know if you are interested, have any questions, or know anyone who may be a good fit and is interested!

Parents / Guardians,

It is a pleasure to see all the students back after break and hope everyone had a healthy, happy start to the new year. As you know, school is a place where lots of things get shared and students have close contact with one another. As we head into the thick of winter, I would like to remind everyone of some tips for keeping our students healthy.

• Make sure your child is getting adequate sleep. Establish good bedtime routines such as a shower or bath and a book then bed. Turn electronic devices and TVs off a least one hour before bedtime. Remove TVs from bedrooms. Elementary school children should be getting 10 hours of sleep a night.
• We enforce no food sharing at school. Please remind your child of this rule.
• Proper nutrition helps boost immune systems. Make sure your child is eating well balanced meals that include fruits and vegetables.
• Remind your child to keep their hands out of their eyes, ears, nose and mouth and to cover their coughs and sneezes with their elbow.
• Proper hand washing with soap and warm water for 20 seconds is one of the best defenses against illness. Have your child wash his or her hands when they return home from school. Overall personal hygiene including a daily shower or bath is also very important.
• Keep your child home if he or she is ill whenever possible. This includes an uncontrolled cough, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, nasal discharge that is not clear. When in doubt, contact myself or your child's pediatrician for guidance.

Please remember that head lice is a nuisance and not a disease. If your child is noticed to have lice at school, a teacher will discreetly send him or her to me to be checked. The child will not be sent home immediately but must be treated at home before returning to school. Research no longer supports school wide lice checks or "blanket letters" be sent home. Lice does not jump or fly and does not live long off of a "host". The very best way to prevent head lice is to teach your child to avoid head to head contact with other students and not to share hats. If you need assistance / advice on how to deal with head lice, please contact me.

I hope everyone has a healthy, happy 2020!

Jamie Sudol MEd, RN, NCSN

Saturday, January 18, 2020

7-11 PM

Woodstock Inn & Resort

Live music from The Tricksters

Locally sourced farm-to-table fare

Silent and live auctions

The Winter Celebration is a fun evening for the adults of Ski Runners and is our most important fundraising event. Proceeds directly benefit all of our programs: Alpine, Nordic, and Friday, as well as help us support the WUHS Ski Team.

Buy Tickets

All grade level concerts are held from 6 - 6:30pm in the WES gym.

Kindergarten: Tuesday February 4th, snow date: Wed. February 5th

1st Grade: Tues Feb 25 snow date Mon March 9
2nd Grade: Wed Feb 26 snow date Wed March 4
3rd Grade: Thurs Feb 27 snow date Thurs March 5

4th grade - 12th grade Band Showcase Tues March 10, snow date March 11 held at high school gym

4th Grade Tues March 24 snow date March 31
5th Grade Wed March 25 snow date April 1
6th Grade Thurs March 26 snow date April 2

May Day Wed May 27, rain date Thurs 28 10 - 11am in WES Playground

Email: mmills@wcsu.net
Website: www.wes.wcsu.net
Location: Woodstock Elementary School, 15 South Street, Woodstock, VT, USA
Phone: 802-457-2522
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wesvt/?ref=bookmarks