ELMORE School News
September 12, 2026
Week 3
Dear Elmore School Families,
Our third week of school flew by! Students were back in the classroom after a long four day weekend for Labor Day. The children filled the room on Tuesday with tales of their weekend, which were filled with adventures of camping, trips to Montreal to see The Lion King, bike riding, talent show performances, fireworks, friends, and family! What fun!
We continued our Digital Citizenship lessons this week in preparation of unveiling our school ipads. Our focus this week was about how to responsibly search for information on-line and how to trust what you read online.
This week I also began Beginning of the the Year (BOY) assessment. Students took a spelling inventory this week which gives me information on the skills students are solid with and what they still need to work on. Next week we will being formal spelling and phonics instruction . Students will be grouped by skills rather than by grade. I also began administering our reading screener, Dibbles. I will use the information gathered from these assessments to build targeted reading groups.
During math, we are working through our first unit lessons, while building math menu routines. Students will be using a math menu which includes "Must Do's", and "Can Do's". to practice math skills and work independently or with a partner on solving math puzzles, and completing math centers. Students work on math menus while groups are getting direct instruction with me. 1st and 2nd graders are currently working on addition and subtraction within 50 using their own strategies to solve problems. 3rd graders are interpreting and creating scaled graphs.
We began reading homework this week. Thank you to everyone for supporting us with this at home expectation. The students did a great job filling out their reading logs and remembering to turn them in. In just our first week, students collectively read over 800 minutes at home! This is pretty remarkable given our class size!
On Friday, students learned about Patriot Day (9/11), with a focus on heros, patriots, and resilience. We began the lesson with a focus on vocabulary (hero, patriot, resilient). then we read a short article about Patriot Day and the events of September 11, 2001. Then students listened to two read alouds with a focus on Resilience. This Very Tree by Sean Rubin, is a lovely story written from a trees perspective highlighting resilience and regrowth. Fireboat: The Heroic Adventure of the John J. Harvey by Maira Kalman, tells of a old, once discarded, fireboat that came to action to help fight the fires in New York City in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Both stories painted the picture of resilience in a beautiful way. We ended the lesson with students writing thank you letters to our community / national heroes. Students wrote letters to soldiers, Doctors, firefighters, and police officers. I will be mailing these letters out to Lamoille Health Partners, Elmore Fire Department, Morrisville Police Department, and to an organization that gets letters to those serving actively in the military.
We began our PBIS (Positive Behavior Incentive System) reward system this week. Students will ear tickets for making good choices and following our school rules ( I can be Safe, I can be responsible, I can be respectful). We will end each week with Fun Friday where the students have extra play time and can shop at the "school store" using their tickets. This is a fun and rewarding way to end our week!
Lunch: School Hot Lunch will be available next week on Monday and Wednesday. See the Menu below for options. Meat sandwiches or PB&J are available Monday-Friday. Please send me an email at mailto:diane.nicholls@lamoillesouth.org with your orders for the week by 6:00 pm on Sunday.
Announcements:
- PE - Wednesday - students need sneakers!
- Library is Thursday - please return books!
- No School - Monday, Sept. 21 (Yom Kippur)
- Elmore School Open House - Thursday Oct. 1st @ 6-7 pm
- No School - Monday - Oct. 12 (Indigenous People's Day)
Have a wonderful weekend!
In Gratitude,
Diane Nicholls
