The Principal's ROAR

Thank you all for coming to the Parent Teacher Conferences this week. It is such an important opportunity to hear how your child is doing in both academics and social situations. I enjoy the time getting to know parents, now that I have gotten to know the children. Please know that I am happy to connect with any parent to explain or listen to feedback.

Thank you also for all of the families that shared the addresses of the Veterans in your family. The letters will be in the mail today. If you missed that email and would like to add an address, we can get letters out on Monday also.

We have not yet delivered the food from our food drive, so you still have time if you would like to share a box or can!

Monday 11/9 at 6:30 is my next Together at the Table event. This month will be a Math Night! Parents and community members will join me in my classroom for an explanation of why we do what we do, and how we do it. Children will be in another room playing math games with staff members. Parents will be joining the children to play and then take an age appropriate game home with them. This is one of my favorite nights of the year and I hope you are able to join us! Reach out with any questions.

Due to the short weeks we have in November, our special schedule is different. This week and next (both 4 day weeks) we have PE. The following week and the short week leading up to Thanksgiving, will be Library.

November 24 is the end of our first trimester. Report cards will be going home on December 4.

This time of year the weather can be changing daily so I want to address our recess plan. We are outside unless it is below ten degrees, or pouring rain, or a “cold day rain”. A sprinkle or light mist means we are outside. We do not use umbrellas out at recess, as they pose a safety hazard. Raincoats are great, as are leaving a spare outfit, like old sweats, at school.

We were very excited to write letters to the Veterans. Some we knew, some we think we knew, and some we knew because some observant students had noticed a Veteran license plate! Kindergarten supplied us with cards that they colored.

We have begun a unit on Opinion Writing. Our first piece was “Do you think we should have homework?” They have pretty strong opinions about this and not all of them agree with me that they shouldn’t!

On Wednesday and on Friday, Kara from the Harris Center came to visit. We learned about how the body shape, wing structure, and tails affect how each of the birds we talked about flew. We talked about migration and their food preferences and the connection between the two. We had a migration game on the field. Kara brought in 4 mounts for us to observe up close. She brought an Osprey, a Broadwing Hawk, Red Tail Hawk, and a Peregrine Falcon. We had a lot of questions about taxidermy. Does anyone know a taxidermist? Could be someone we want to interview. Many, many questions came from that portion. Hands down, the highlight of the week.

We are still working on kindness and being respectful leaders in our room. Recently I heard of an idea that I thought would be great for us. Because of my dual role at FES, covering my share of duties gets tricky. I now have 4 students from my room that cover my lunch duty. There are still 2 other adults in the lunch room, but they can help open ketchup packets, pick up spilled milk (there is a lot of that!) keep track of how many kids can use the bathroom at a time, and just generally visit with the younger students. We still have some logistics to work out, like is it something we earn? Is it something we decline if we don’t want to do it? Stay tuned as this evolves.

If you think that you will be coming to math night on 11/9, would you let me know? I would love to have a few of my students helping to teach some of our math games to families. Not a big deal, but would be helpful.