What's Bruin at Pierce School?

Art

Next week Mr. Melle returns for Art.

Cooking Club

Pierce School is excited to offer Cooking Club with the Cornucopia Club! This is an opportunity for grades 3 and 4. Please fill out the survey by October 20 if you are interested!

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Thank you to....

We’re excited to welcome back the New Hampshire Dance Institute (NHDI) the week of October 20–24! Throughout the week, each class will work with NHDI instructors to learn a special dance routine.

To celebrate their hard work, we’ll host a dance recital on Friday, October 24, from 5:30–6:30 p.m. Families and friends are invited to join us for this joyful performance and see the amazing dances our students have been preparing. We can’t wait to see you there!

A big thank you to our amazing PTO for refreshing and expanding our recess supplies! Students are enjoying the new balls, sleds, and other fun additions to our collection. The PTO plans to continue building up our recess materials throughout the year, and we’re so grateful for their ongoing support in making playtime even more fun and active.

News from Ms. Besson

In Ms. Besson's class we have had some awesome guest readers including Mr. Burke, Mr. LeGraw and a student from Ms. Powell's class! We love having people read to us!

News from Ms. Powell

This week in science we looked at the life cycle of bald eagles and made booklets! In ELA, we worked on sorting our beginning short vowel sounds and in math we played a new center activity adding and subtracting numbers within 10 trying to get 5 in-a-row!

Yelling Fowl!

Ms. Suttons class is getting in the fall spirit. We have been learning about nouns, verbs and adjectives by using our senses. We felt fall objects in a bag and later wrote fall poems about what we hear, taste, touch and feel this time of year. To help illustrate our poems, we created fall mosaics to decorate the hall. We listened to the book, Fletcher and the Falling Leaves, a story about courage and loyalty.

Students also enjoyed practicing their math facts by playing the game “Roll A Pumpkin”. We are ready for some crisp fall weather!

4th Grade Happenings

This week, some students Ms. Besson's, Ms. Powell's and Ms. Sutton's classes. They reviewed

recess responsibilities while using toys, etc. during recess as well as picking up all toys and bringing them to the bins outside the shed at the end of recess. Fourth graders serve as shed supervisors and take out toys and sports materials at the start of recess and assist in collecting and organizing all toys at the end of recess. Thank you, shed supervisors, we all appreciate your assistance!

Another group went into classes to discuss the rules of a popular game called Jackpot - which is a football passing game. By sharing the rules of the game, all students will universally understand how to play the game safely and fairly.

In class, fourth grade reading groups have read and completed The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh. Their final project was to create a storyboard that reviewed the ELA standards of story elements and theme and included an art component. Figuring out the theme of a story is an abstract concept so the class discussed what they thought theme meant. Since it is a word with multi-meanings , we watched educational videos to help us understand that the theme of a story (song, movie, play, etc.) is the life lesson the author wants to convey.

We ended our four day week with story time with our kindergarten reading buddies. Enjoy the weekend!

What's on the Horizon?

Hello friendly faces!

During our first meeting in September we voted in our chair members: Melinda Adams as Vice President. Devon Hubert as Treasurer. Leslie Holcombe as Secretary, and Tanisha Lowell as President. Next we discussed the open house to include Crotched Mountain Ski Club sign up, and Melinda Adams will be running the program again this year! Please contact us if you have any questions about signing up, or have financial difficulties that might prevent your child from participating. Melinda and the team are working to help everyone attend this awesome program. We also voted to spend $500 on the toys for the students to keep in the shed and use at recess. We have ordered six sleds and many other items that will arrive on Oct. 10 from Ace Hardware in Antrim. If you have any gently used and safe kitchen utensils to use for sand play, please drop them off at the front office. Thank you to everyone who has supported Pierce School with your financial contributions.

How are we already in October?? Bennington Recreation is hosting a Trunk or Treat on October 25th, so come and visit us at our booth and enjoy the new and fun ideas Bennington Rec is creating.

Looking to November, mark your calendars for our HOLIDAY CRAFT FAIR being held on Nov, 15th!!!! Crafters can rent spaces for $25 and a donation to the raffle tables. Do not miss out on this awesome event!

The Pierce PTO can't do all this great stuff without your support. We look forward to bringing fun events, needed items, and support to our awesome school throughout this school year. Please join us at our next meeting October 8th at 6pm, entering the school at the cafeteria doors. Come to one meeting or come to many! You can contact us at ptopierceelem@gmail.com if you have any questions or ideas you'd like to share. We appreciate you all!

Tanisha M. Lowell

Pierce School PTO President

What's Happening in Title I

What a Fun time at Open House this week! Thanks to all the parents who attended the Annual Title l Meeting and gave your feedback! It is greatly appreciated.

Kindergarten Families... Be On The Lookout for a set of Alphabet Cards to use at home to practice learning Letter Names and Sounds. The cards will feature the Letters to Name, a Key Picture that your child can name and use to "unlock" the Letter Sound. A simple routine, repeated daily, for 5 minutes or so, will help your child (or children) learn these skills. For each picture, practice 1) Naming the Letter, 2) Naming the Key Picture and then, 3) Saying the Sound the letter/picture makes. At first, you can provide the Letter Name, Picture and Letter Sound, and then have your child repeat after you. Keep up the practice and watch your child shine with their letter name and sound knowledge,

If you have any questions, please email me at apope@conval.edu

and I will be happy to show you how I do this routine!

Along with the cards, I will send a tracking sheet for you to record your efforts.

When you fill up the sheet with all your practice opportunities, send it back to school for me to see. Your child (or children) can take a trip to the treasure chest and also show their work on our Literacy Leaders Wall of Flame!!

The materials will go home next week!

Enjoy!

Mrs. Pope

A Great Start!

Hello and welcome to Pierce Elementary School. My name is Sarah Kotwicki, and I am the school counselor at Pierce, Francestown, and Temple Elementary Schools. I am at Pierce three days a week: Monday, Thursday, and Friday. This year I will be supporting the Second Step curriculum with the classroom teachers. Second Step is a social emotional curriculum that focuses on understanding and recognizing emotions in yourself and in others. We will work on developing strategies to respond in healthy and productive ways. The Second Step program helps our students develop skills for getting along with their peers and finding success in school. In addition to these lessons, I will be meeting individually and in small groups with students throughout the year. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me any time. I look forward to getting to know your children and you!

Finding the Rhythm

Kindergarten learned about the beat in music and how to move to it and play it! It was fun to explore lots of different ways to respond to the music. They used scarves, instruments, and their bodies to show the beat.

The 1/2 class learned about steady beat and we practiced playing instruments along with the beat, using many silly poems, songs, and even our own creations!

The 2/3 class and grade 4 reviewed steady beat. They loved using the Boomwhackers to play along with songs. Circle games and movement games were a big success to help them learn about beat versus rhythm.

Understanding NWEA Assessments

Three times a year, students in grades 1–4 take the NWEA MAP Growth assessment. This growth-based assessment measures student progress and achievement over time. Because it adapts to each student’s abilities and understanding, it provides valuable information that helps teachers adjust instruction to meet individual needs.

The results include a RIT score, which shows your child’s performance in a subject area, and a percentile, which indicates how your child compares to students nationally.

If you’d like help understanding your child’s scores, please reach out to their classroom teacher or our Title I teacher, Amy Pope (apope@conval.edu).