The Schofield Scoop

Hello Forestdale Families,

We had an amazingly successful Fun Run on Friday, October 18. While it was a bit breezy, the sun was amazing, and the temperature was perfect for running, walking, dancing, and just watching! Sadly, I was so busy running with the students that I got only a few pics from each group's fun run. On the positive note, I did log almost 20K steps that day, and got a whole day of sunshine with the students!

While the students have already completed the running portion of the Fun Run, the donation lines are still open for fundraising! To date Forestdale school students, families and friends have brought in $30,000. These funds, collected by the PTA, will help the PTA support all the fabulous programs and events for our students. At each $10K goal, the students saw a silly event put on by Forestdale staff. At $10,000, Mr. D and I dressed up as crayons one morning at drop off time. Don't worry, I've added photos below! At $20,000, the phys ed teachers created and participated in a crazy obstacle course in PE. We've just hit $30,000, which means that staff will do the 'Macarena' at our next whole school assembly. Keep those funds coming in - we appreciate all you are doing to help with this fundraiser.

I hope you enjoy this week's Scoop!

-Kara Schofield

This month I'm sharing our school and district focus on increasing student attendance, and decreasing chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is defined as a student missing 10% or more of their schools days in a year, whether absences are excused or unexcused. As a school, we had an attendance rate of 92.5 percent. The average number of absences per student was 12.6. 18 days of missed school is considered chronically absent. 60 students were absent over 10 days last year. 22 of our students were chronically absent (10% or more) and 2 students were absent over 20% of our school days. This data comes from the Department of Education School and District profiles should you wish to look at more detailed information.

Our current statistics are starting a fabulous trend! Our attendance rate to date (32 school days) is 96.77%. This means students are coming to school to participate in the rich student centered learning activities that the teachers plan for. Additionally, students are learning collaboratively with their peers- group work, partner work, turn taking, and a wealth of other learning activities.

Staring November 1, there will be incentives for school attendance. The grade level with the highest attendance rate for all of September and October gets to participate in a group special activity (hallway dance party or movie at lunchtime - just to name a few ideas). There are other incentives in the works to further encourage individual student attendance as well as ways to support students who have already accumulated a number of absences.

Please contact myself or Alyssa Pestilli or Sara Marshall our Social Workers if you need any assistance with getting your student to school on a regular basis. This is a team effort, and we are here to help.

I've kept the articles from last Scoop in the event you wish to read further information about attendance and chronic abseentism.

This week our full day Pre-K students took a walking field trip to Russo's. After the long walk, students got to go on the trucks, feed the chickens, and watch the dumptrucks dump dirt. Russo's also gave each student a pumpkin and sticker sheet to take home, as souvenirs from their amazing field trip. Thank you Russo's for providing such an enriching program for our littles.

The team/grade level colors were as follows:

Blue - 2nd grade

Yellow - 1st grade

Red - Kindergarten and PK

Students are doing so may different hands on math activities. Below you see students practicing math fact fluency and partner math games.

On occasion, students have some time to play in my office - as a reward, invited by a friend, or for many other reasons. These past few weeks I've had some K visitors, who had a great time with the legos on my table. A 1st grade student beat me in a game of floor checkers (check out that happy smile for winning the game!). This is such a nice, positive way for me to connect with your students! They seem to enjoy it as much as I do.

The last photo shows students and staff participating in our Bus Evacuation last week. All students who rode a bus to school last Wednesday practiced leaving the bus through the back door, assisted by two adults. The students sat down right at the opening, and then were brought down by the two grown ups. The bus drivers shared with the students that this was just a drill - just like having a fire drill where you practice leaving the building safely. This was just a practice leaving the bus safely. Students fully cooperated, and went right into school to start their day. This whole process with our 19 buses took less than 20 minutes! Many thanks to all who participated and help with this evacuation process.

Share feedback here: kschofield@sandwich.k12.ma.us Thanks for all your great suggestions and ideas.