Weekly Newsletter

All families should have received an email from Emma Liebowitz inviting them to sign up for holiday gifts if you are in need. If you need assistance with any part of the process, please reach out to me and I’d be happy to help. You can fill out the form to sign up for gifts here.

mwhitaker@mtsd.org / 413-628-4404 x 102

Greetings from the Library! This week in the library we have been reading and talking about elections. Students were also invited to take part in a mock election to select the next book character stuffie for the library. The candidates include the Pigeon, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and a taco-loving dragon (from the book Dragons Love Tacos). Students engaged in lively discussions debating the pros and cons of each candidate before casting their ballot. Stay tuned for election results!

In other news:

• November is Native American Heritage Month! This month we will be reading books featuring indigenous authors and illustrators.

• Not-yet-in-school kiddos and their caretakers are welcome to visit the library on Thursdays from 9-10. We have a couple regular families and we would love to have more!

We are wrapping up our apple and pumpkin studies, and what a wonderful time of learning, creating, and exploring we have had! One of our special highlights was dressing our Apple Fairy dolls. They turned out absolutely amazing! The children worked so hard on them, and they are so proud of their beautiful creations.

As we say goodbye to fall in our gardens, we have been busy putting our vegetable and flower gardens to bed for the winter. The children helped pull weeds and scatter seeds for new flowers that will hopefully greet us when spring arrives. We also took special care when spreading our milkweed seeds. We are hoping to create a welcoming space for many Monarch butterflies to visit and lay their eggs in our gardens next season. We can't wait to see what blooms and grows!

Looking ahead, we will be shifting our focus to learning more about ourselves, each other, and what it means to be part of a community. The children will be creating special, one-of-a-kind posters all about themselves! They will have the opportunity to share their posters with their classmates and teachers, helping us celebrate what makes each of us unique and special. Through these activities, we will explore friendship, belonging, and the many ways we are connected as a classroom community.

This week, we changed our focus from Science (learning about the world we live in) to Social Studies (learning about how people live in the world). This week’s topic was about communities in general and our community specifically. We learned about urban vs. rural communities and played a bingo game to discover what kinds of things are found in communities (such as restaurants, banks, parks, etc.) We now have community helper figurines in our block area.

To go along with our topic of community helpers, we had our annual fire safety presentation with Firefighter Mike. Students practiced procedures like the low crawl to get under smoke and stop-drop-and-roll if you get fire on your clothes. We also learned about how to call 911 for emergencies and got to see Firefighter Megan with her big suit on so it’s not so scary if we see a firefighter in real life. Our drama area is now set up like a fire station.

This week in social studies we are working to answer the question: How do groups make decisions? First graders learned that people 18 years and older have the opportunity to vote for who will be leaders in our communities across the United States. The United States of America is a democratic Republic which means the people have a say in how our country is run. We vote to choose leaders who make decisions and laws for us. First graders learned the vocabulary words: vote, ballot and election. On November 3rd we held our own election. First graders had to vote between two types of goldfish - pizza or vanilla cupcake. Before voting they had to hear from each candidate (taste each goldfish flavor of course!) Each student privately cast their vote in the voting booth, placed their ballot in the ballot box and received a very special “I voted sticker” after everyone voted we tallied up the votes and ended up with 12 vanilla cupcakes and 4 pizzas. The winner was the vanilla cupcake and pizza was the runner up! Everyone had fun and enjoyed taking part in an election!

Over the last few weeks second grade has been continuing to work on a map of the world! We have learned unique facts about each continent's landscape and important landmarks. After, we pick out one thing that stood out to us about the continent and make a picture of it. We are working on our last continent, Antarctica. In math, we’ve been learning about using number lines to add numbers. This is a new skill that allows second graders to begin two-digit by two-digit addition and have a clear way to show their work. In ELA, we “flew” to a new country, Bangladesh. We will learn about how students get to school during monsoon season and the creative ways their village solved this problem. Afterwards, we will begin to plan a problem and solution paragraph and write it collaboratively. Finally in our phonics program we have been focusing on learning a few suffixes such as: -es, -ed, and -ing. This is a review from last year, but this year we have more of a focus on the spelling aspect of it.

Third graders had a wonderful day of learning about the past and present of (as well as exploring) the Quabbin Reservoir on October 23rd. We enjoyed a presentation from a park ranger, a long walk across then under the Winsor Dam, a fine lunchtime view from the hilltop tower, and a wonderful galavant through old foundations at Hanks Meadow. The students knew a lot about the place before we got there, but it is hard for them to understand just how large it is until they have actually seen it in person. As the water level was quite low, students also enjoyed finding historical remnants at the water’s edge. We are extremely grateful to the parent drivers and chaperones who made the trip possible.

In math this week we finished our first unit of addition and subtraction. We are now underway to learn about multiplication and division. We will do this slowly, with an emphasis on understanding multiplication as the bringing together of equal-sized groups.

Students have been doing well learning the spelling of high frequency words and homophones so far this year as demonstrated in their writing. They have also been learning the details of how to write paragraphs that are designed to answer a question. We have been learning about various communities who have struggled to access books and education, and this week partner groups chose one remote place to learn about this challenge and solution.

With buddies last week we made owls using paper plates that are on display in our hallway. This week we worked on a mural of turkeys at the edge of a field and in a forest. This is on display in the school lobby.

This week we also worked on the tie-dyed shirts that families ordered through the Local Goods catalog.

We are seeking chaperones to join us on our next field trip. On Tuesday, November 24th, we will be heading to Historic Deerfield. If you are available to be a driver for this day, please let Ms. Carole know.

This week we started a new science unit. In this unit, students have uncovered a secret code that’s all around us: barcodes! We saw how a barcode’s unique pattern is made of two basic parts, black lines and white lines. Then we created our own two-part codes to send secret patterns across the room. It was a goofy good time—and it turns out that digital devices like cell phones send patterns of encoded information, too!

We also learned how sound is a vibration! Your child made a paper cup telephone to experiment with how sound vibrations travel. Something that your child might have found surprising is how well sound can travel through string, as long as the string is taut. You can support your child’s curiosity by inviting them to consider whether sound can travel through any material. For example, here’s a fun, easy experiment you can do at home: Will sound travel through the wall? Have them try holding a cup to their ear, just like with a paper cup telephone, but with the bottom of the cup pressed against a wall. Then go to the other side of the wall and talk. See if it works!

Sixth graders are currently learning about the neolithic era of human history in social studies. We are learning about the developments of agriculture and metallurgy, and how these advancements changed the way human communities interacted with one another. In math, we have been switching gears and are moving onto our ratios unit. Students are learning about how to express ratios in words, diagrams and numbers. We are additionally hard at work identifying themes of our book, The Lightning Thief. Students are learning about how to distinguish between theme and other important components of a novel such as the main idea and supporting details. I’ve been so impressed with the insightfulness and higher order thinking skills of all of our sixth graders as they practice reading deeper into a text to understand the big ideas an author is trying to share with us readers.

The Sanderson teachers recently participated in a routine that students use in the math classroom called, Which One Doesn't Belong? Something super cool about this routine is that there are no right or wrong answers. Students are encouraged to not only offer their thoughts about which one doesn't belong but explain why they think that. It invites students to share and listen to one another without too much pressure around mathematical vocabulary or computation. As the discussions continue, students organically become more mathematical with their thoughts and rebuttals. Check one out below. What do you notice? What do you wonder? Which one doesn’t belong, in your opinion? Why? Send me your thoughts & enjoy! :) aprew@mtrsd.org

As part of our Mediation training the sixth graders are working on win-win solutions where you get part of what you want. We used cookies to demonstrate how win-wins work when two kids want the same cookie. They decided to break the cookie in half; the one who cut the cookie in half needs to wait for the other person to choose which half they want. This is more fair and ensures the person cutting the cookie tries to break it evenly.

WIN-WIN solutions; you get part of what you want. This lesson can be used in school and home for arguing who gets the swing, the ball, or the best chair/seat. Taking turns, maybe doing rock, scissors to see who goes first and then alternate. Lose-lose is where no one gets the cookie, swing, chair, etc.

Happy Fall,

Jana

What does having Cooperation mean to you? Well as we wrap up this word next week with our Preschoolers, and finish the poster that K-6 worked very well together to bring their best understanding of this word! Working together - Taking Turns - Listening - Being Kind & Helpful - Having Respect & Self-Control is the collective definition as the kids discussed. Many small groups came together and worked collaboratively to create the work on this poster. Not everyone’s work was chosen to display, but we have 4 other words/posters to work on! Assertiveness is the next word that we will begin to work on.

Oh my the weather continues to be AMAZING!! We continue to be outside on the basketball court on Tuesday & Thursday. SHOUT OUT to the Ashfield Fire Fighters Association for supporting this year's 100 Mile Club, by helping to purchase the shirts and incentives for the 52 students that are signed up this year! Thank you for your donation, we appreciate you!