Happy Holidays

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday Break. Get some rest, relax and enjoy time with your families! I'll see you in the New Year! Nancy

PTO December Minutes

> PTO Minutes, December 2012 > > Convened at 6:05 > > Principal's Report: > December Highlights: > Adequate Yearly Progress work underway at SCS and at the CSSU level to address the corrective action required based on students with special needs > Alpha Play was a great success, congratulations to all who participated > Budget Meetings continue > congratulations to Emily Vigneault on the birth of her new baby, Aaron Matthew! > Professional development: Continued common core work during the in service days before Thanksgiving off site conference for some staff on "Understanding and Working with Developmental Trauma in Children", Schoolwide data analysis for Reading and Writing. > > Treasurer's Report > Accounts are in good standing > > Fundraising update > There are 4 local coupon books left, so far $440 has been raised from these > Hannaford's helps schools has ended, get receipts in to Alice by Thursday of this week, 13 Dec. > Holiday Fair was a great success for all teams and participants. 100+ tables were present, which is probably a new record. Fun was had from end to end. > Direct Solicitation Letter: to raise money for the PTO at year end, Alice has drafted a letter for team representatives to use in raising awareness of the PTO as a receiving organization for end of year donations. We are a registered non-profit and all donations are tax deductible. > Angel Fund: every three years the Angel Fund reaches out to the PTO to ask for members to champion cash donations to this great community resource. The Angel fund assists families in need who are identified through the work of teachers, staff, guidance counselors and social workers. Three years ago when the last push was made, 5% of SCS kids were on free and reduced lunch. Now, 15% are on free and reduced lunch. Consider this fund as another organization for your end of year giving. > Red Barn Fundraiser will begin after the start of the year. Great fundraiser of local products. Tasty local products too. > > Fund Spending: > Over $5000 dollars from the PTO was granted to teams and UA in November during the grant process. Grants were approved for more Kindles in the library, iPads for the music program, Brain Pop software for the entire school and more. In addition, other funding sources were found and pursued to total nearly $7000! Great collaborative experience in helping fundraising dollars go directly to work. > John Gailmor: Alice will contact John soon to begin arranging this event in April > Flynn Art/Dance series: Grant was put in this week for this program . Will know the status in two weeks. > > Other Business: > Open discussion about the two vote budget process. If anyone has any questions about it, please contact Dave Connery of the School Board. We need a small group of public relations personnel to sell this concept to town voters as a state requirement, not a gross increase in taxes. > Coat Drive continues. Donate all winter gear at the SCS Office. > > Mark your Calendars: > International Potluck Dinner, Friday 18 Jan 6-7:30 PM > Community Budget Forum: Tuesday 8 January, 7PM > "Anxiety in Children and Adolescents", a talk by SCS Parent, Elena Ramirez, Psychologist Doctorate, 15 January 6 PM > > SO SO SO MANY THANK YOUS THIS MONTH: > Mark Fragola for printing colorful Holiday Fair Flyers > Sharon Harkness, Leslie Borrok, and Courtney Tharpe for putting together the Holiday Fair > Jessamyn Walker, Valerie Richardson, Katie Kennedy, Deb Buley, Fiona Kovacik, Susan Dunning and everyone who helped setting up and cleaning up the Holiday Fair > Dave Kelly, Bob Miller, Randy Mushtare, the rest of the custodian staff and Allan Miller for all their help setting up and cleaning up the holiday fair. > Rita Daley and Teresa Shuptrine for the Holiday Fair bulletin board > > Next meeting: Tuesday Jan 8th 6 PM

Discovery Table

This week Colin shared his Discovery Table. He told us all about his trip to Belize. He had a wonderful map that he shared to show where he went during his trip. He also had a journal that he shared about his time there. The team was engaged with what he had to share and he did a wonderful job. It made us all want to go to Belize!!

Visiting Thai Teacher

On Tuesday our team had a visit from Chalinee Samutphong, a visiting teacher from Thailand, who is spending the months of December and January in our classroom. Here is some background on her: My name is Chalinee Samutphong, and my students always call me “teacher Nina”. At present I’m teaching grade 10 students and they are 15-16 years old. I started working here in 2006 and I taught grade 7 and 8 in that time. This school is called “Wattana Wittaya Academy”the first boarding school of Thailand. There are only girls in this school, kindergarten, primary,junior and senior high school. At this school I have been teaching grade 7 – 12 for six years and I have terrific experiences about teaching here. Senior teachers, students and alumna sometimes teach me many things that I have never known before like having the good relationship, being the proper lady, and also being the mother role. I have the duty in the morning and in the evening about waking students up and taking of them to be neat in how to make a bed well, keep clean with their stuff reading books and doing homework in the evening.I can teach any age of students and I think I can manage how to teach them well because I have been teaching for ten years. Before I started working at Wattana Wittaya Academy I taught in my hometown before. I taught grade 7 for the first year, the students in the University for the Second Year, the vocational students and the girls in the boarding school. When I teach I always use the methods and the process that I have learned to create the lesson that make students are interested in. I like doing the teaching materials to have students train and practice by themselves like computer program “E-learning” and sometimes in class there are many students who aren’t smart and try not to pay attention to learn. I usually use cooperative learning method to make them work with friends and sometimes they are afraid to give or share opinion to the teacher but when they have group works they can do it very well. My special skills I have, using computer to make teaching materials from many programs, playing Thai instrument “Thai flute”, singing, playing volleyball, swimming, doing some Thai dancing, drawing and painting, acting about drama performance and cooking. I think my special skills I have will be useful for your students and I try my best to do it. I had the experience when I went to Canada last three years; I taught the kids how to play Thai children’s games and they were enjoyed so much. Yours faithfully, Miss Chalinee Samutphong While on our team she taught us how to say "thank-you" in Thai which is "Khob--Khun". She also taught us how to greet one another. To greet a boy and say hello you say "Sa-wad-dee-Krub". To greet a girl and say hello, you say "Sa-wad-dee-Ka". To greet a teacher you say, "Sa-wad-dee-Kru (the teacher's name)". The greeting is called "Wai" and they put their hands together and bow as they do it. We learned about the schools in Thailand as well. All students have to wear uniforms to school everyday. They start the day at 8 am and go to an assembly where they sing the national anthem. After the assembly they go to their classroom but they have to take their shoes off first. They have a 20 minute recess at 10:30 am. At 12:30 they get a lunch and break for an hour. They can purchase whatever they want for lunch and have a lot more choices than we do. Their day ends at 4 pm but every student has a job to help clean-up before they go home. We also learned a little about Thailand itself. We learned that their are 60,000,000 people in Thailand and that 6,000,000 of those people are in Bangkok. The King is called "Nai-Lhuang" and the Queen is called "Pra-Rajini". People bring food to the Monks each day because they are not allowed to cook. Thailand is known as the "Land of Smiles". The elephant is the symbol for Thailand. They have a special festival called "Loy Krathong" each November on the full moon. People float flowers to apologize to the Gods for using the water. They make a wish when they float the flowers which are called Krathong. At night they float lanterns into the sky and have fireworks.

A Visit from a Thai Teacher named Nina

Slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Week of December 3rd

I can't believe it's December! Where has the time gone. This week we have started talking about characters in our stories during independent reading. In Guided reading groups we are working on reading response questions and how we need to turn around the question and put it into our response when answering the questions. In writing we continue to work on our Information text books. They are coming along nicely. We are publishing these books and will share them with families after the Holiday break. In Social Studies we are learning about how the Iroquois Native Americans lived. We will use the information we learn about the Iroquois and compare it to our lives today. For our final project we will choose which time we would rather live in and explain our reasons why in writing or by creating a project. For math our core idea right now is that Mathematicians use strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems quickly. Together as a class we are coming up with generalizations to help us solve these problems quickly. So far we have come up with a generalizations for adding/subtracting zero and adding/subtracting one. We started adding/subtracting two and will finish this on Monday. To come up with these generalizations (I can use math to show why something is always true...)students solved some examples and then thought of what strategies they used to get their answers. Check out the examples below along with our new Generalization bulletin board. Students have come up with some generalizations about odd and even numbers as well. Your children are becoming advanced math thinkers. It's nice to see them come up with these generalizations on their own as opposed to just telling them.

Discovery Table

This week Theo shared his Discovery Table. He taught us about the water purification process. He focused on the filtration step. Over the weekend he built a device to filtrate water. He had several sections that the water ran through. There was a part with charcoal that it ran through. He explained that when they first tested it the water came out black and that he had to break up the charcoal into smaller pieces. There were 3 areas that the water filtered through including the charcoal. It was great to see the research he did on this process and that he took the time to build his own water filtration system. The students were very engaged during his presentation. Check out his pictures below: