Dear Parents and Friends,

Along with today’s newsletter, you should find a notice about the November trip to the Boston Mu-seum of Science for students in the equivalent of grades 1 to 6. Please note that I need to know by October 3rd if you plan to accompany us on this trip. We are able to subsidize the student cost be-cause of the money raised each year during the Sandwich Fair parking cars at the school. Please consider volunteering for a mere two hours on Satur-day, Sunday or Monday (October 11-13) between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. We will have a sig-nup at the school, or you can call Mrs. Adriance to have her add you to the list. Due to safety concerns, only students in the 6th grade are permitted to help collect money; only parents and staff may direct the cars to parking spots.

Your children have been working diligently this week on a new version of the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Pro-gress (MAP) reading and math tests. Each student takes a test tailored specifically to him or her, with questions determined by how previous questions are answered. These adaptive assessments are used by the District to help teachers target instruction to indi-

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Letter from the Pr inc ipal

September 19, 2014

Volume 17, Issue 2

SANDWICH CENTRAL SCHOOL

Family Newsletter

Important Dates

Sept. 23—School Board Meeting 6 pm

Center Harbor Town Hall

Sept. 24—Upper Multiage & 6th Grade Field Trip

to the Cold River

Sept. 30—Middle Multiage Field Trip to Mt.

Katherine

Oct. 3—Primary Multiage Family Math Morning

Oct. 3—Deadline for signing up to chaperone the

Boston Museum of Science Camp-In

Oct. 10—No school, Teacher/Paraeducator

Workshop day

Oct. 13—No School, Columbus Day Holiday

Oct. 16—School Picture Day

Mr s. Pet it t i ’s Pr imary Mult iage

www.interlakes.org/scs

Reading and Writing: The children have been practicing how to use their reading boxes during independent reading time and during Book Buddies. We just started Book Buddies with Ms. Littlefield's class last week. This is a time when the children take turns sharing their books with their reading buddies. The Word Wall has been introduced and children are practicing how to read and write the following words: I, a, at, it, the. They have been practicing how to form the let-ters "Tt" and "Ii" during handwriting. We have been doing many activities that revolve around rhyming words. Each child created his/her own rhyming book entitled, "Did You Ever See?" They also enjoyed learning the poem, "As I Was Walking". We used this poem to look for rhymes, highlight the letters and or words that had a "Tt" or an "Ii" in them and to find and read the new sight words found on our Word Wall. During Writing Workshop the children learned how to use their writing journals. I read various books to share with them how authors always think before they write and how that they write about things they know about. Afternoon friends have also started to unpack what a recount looks like and are beginning to practice recount writing in their weekend journals. Afternoon friends have also been working on Daily Edits. They are practicing how to make the first letter in the sentence a capital, adding punctuation to the end of the sentence, and to capitalize proper nouns (people's names, days of the week and months of the year).

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Ms. Littlefield’s Middle Multiage

Math: The blue math group has been working on developing math routines such as working with a partner, us-ing whiteboards, and telling time. We also continue to work on counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s from any number into the 1000s. In doing this the children are finding and using patterns in the counting which gives them better number sense. We continue to work on mastering the basic addition facts and have been playing many games to help learn these. Any help you could give your child at home to review and master these facts would be wonderful.

The orange math group is making their way through Unit 1 of our Everyday Math Program. This unit is mostly review, but we have been using this review to strengthen our counting, adding and subtracting skills. This will help us be ready for the rest of the units we will do this year. This past week we reviewed the use of empty number lines and we learned about reading and making pictographs. Many of the children in this group are still learning the basic addition and sub-traction facts. Your child would benefit from any help you could give him/her to master these facts.

Writing: I am so excited to see how much this class loves to write! We have been enjoying exploring many different forms of writing. Last week we worked on some fun narrative pieces. We all started with the same character, setting and common event then we wrote our own unique and individual stories from there. The children were amazed to see how different all of the stories were even though we started with similar elements. These stories continue to be a work in pro-gress, so be sure to ask your child about his/hers. Last week the children were also introduced to the Nature Journals we take outside to do some writing. Some children write poems, others write riddles, and some choose to just record their observations of the world around them. This week we also worked as a class to write a letter to Ms. Wyman’s class at ILES, asking if they would like to be our pen-pals this year. We will be sure to keep you posted.

Reading: We continue to develop our classroom reading rou-tines. The children have settled into our independent reading rou-tine and they look forward to this time each day. We finished our first chapter book read-aloud this week. Everyone enjoyed being immersed in the world of Gooney-Bird Greene. Our National Geographic Pioneer magazine has been the perfect way to ex-plore informational text. We have read two articles over the last 2 weeks. One titled No Bones About it and another titled Bare Bones. After reading these two articles, the children did a great job comparing vertebrates and invertebrates. As we continue to build classroom routines we will begin to have reading groups several days a week.

Science/Social Studies: We are all very excited for our upcom-ing hike to Mt. Katherine and we thank all the parents who have volunteered to join us!

Math: We continue to practice counting by 1's, 5's and 10's starting with 0. The children are using number cards to compare pairs of numbers and to order sets of numbers. One game we have been playing to compare numbers is Top-It. They also enjoyed playing Froggy Hop and Monster Squeeze which reinforce how to count and move on a num-ber line. Children practiced making tally marks to represent numbers. We have been making graphs to show, "The Pets We Own" and "Our Favorite Season". We have been practicing the days of the week and the months of the year. The children en-joyed exploring some of the math tools we will use this year: cuisanaire rods, pattern blocks, geo-boards, and base-10 blocks.

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Mr s. Beaudoin’s Upper Mult iage

Mr. Hil lger’s 6th Grade

Language Arts: There are many exciting things happening in the Upper Multiage Language Arts block. The class has done a tremendous job building stamina in the read to self and work on writing portions of The Daily 5. This past week, we launched read to someone. The students worked on three ways to partner read: I read, you read; choral read; and reading with different books. In addition, students have learned and practiced ways to check each other’s comprehen-sion while reading, and to help coach his or her partner with unfamiliar words and vocabulary. The class has been tak-ing the district-wide spelling assessment. The results of this assessment will help me plan word work activities during the Daily 5 time. In writing, the students are currently working on an on-going differentiated persuasive writing piece with the sixth grade. The goal of this unit is to help learners pick a topic of their choice, create a thesis statement, and support a point of view with reason and information in an organized paper. Mr. Hillger, Mr. Mathieu, Mr. Griffin, Mrs. Booty and I are guiding the students throughout the stages of the writing process. This writing project is an exciting step towards personalized learning! Math: This past week, the Rookies wrapped up naming and constructing geometric figures. During this unit the stu-dents learned about polygons and drawing concentric and congruent circles with a compass. One stand out activity from this unit was the introduction of drawing circles. Under the guidance of Mr. Mathieu, the class brainstormed ways to make a giant circle without the help of a compass out on the playground. With only a rope, chalk, stick, and team-work the class was able to make a full 360 degree circle! The Rookies will be exploring using numbers and organizing data in the upcoming weeks. Science and Social Studies: On Monday, September 15 the Green Mountain Conservation Group (GMCG) stopped by the Upper Multiage classroom to give a small presentation about the upcoming field trip to Cold River. Since Mr. Chap-man is the expert in the area of macroinvertebrates, the natu-ralists and volunteers from GMCG will be taking the lead dur-ing the field trip this year. Students are looking forward to wit-nessing real scientific field work in action. The trip is sched-uled for Wednesday, September 24 with the class about these tiny organisms!

Beginning Band Night, Grades 4-6

Thurs. Sept. 25, ILES

M/P Room

5:30 p.m. Percussion

6:15 p.m. Flute, Clarinet & Saxophone 7:00 p.m. Trumpet & Trombone

Math: The Veterans are currently working through the last third of Unit 1 in the Everyday Math program. They have been practicing their multiplication facts every day, and are getting closer and closer to “automatic”. In addition to their facts, they have been working on factors, prime numbers and divisibility rules. They should be ready for their first unit test by next week. The Sixth Graders have wrapped up Unit 1, which focused mostly on data organization and analysis. They were responsible for several types of graphs, as well as identifying data landmarks. The Sixth Graders have also completed their Unit 1 test, and have broken the ice on Unit 2. I was happy to see our Veterans and Sixth Graders col-laborate on our first FAI-TO victory. FAI-TO is an online math competition in which the kids compete with other middle school students from around the world. During this particular competition we faced off against Colegio Ferreira Master in Brazil. Way to go everyone!

Reading/Language Arts: We have been following Jason and Gareth through time, and around the globe, in Lloyd Al-exander's novel Time Cat. We have met some interesting characters along the way and have learned some thought provoking lessons. To compliment the story, each sixth grader is responsible for answering a variety of comprehension questions from each chapter. In addition to Time Cat, we have been trying to improve our grammar by focusing on sen-tence fragments, possessive nouns and commonly confused words.

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vidual students. We share the results with students to show them their progress and areas on which to focus. We send home a report each June that shows your child’s historical performance on these tests. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about them.

Next Tuesday’s School Board meeting will be held at the Center Harbor Town Offices beginning at 6:00 p.m. It will continue the “Round Table” format initiated last year where all attendees at the meet-ing will be welcome to participate in the discussion topics. The two topics for this meeting are All Day Kindergarten and Report Card Grading at the High School Level. I hope to see some Sandwich parents there.

We enjoyed a performance by Reverse Order yesterday -- a rock band of three musicians with a message about bullying. Students and staff danced the afternoon away to some surprisingly good mu-sic. The group is just beginning a 30 week tour of the United States, and will also go to Russia for two weeks in December. It’s always interesting to see how the students react to different forms of music. It was great to see so many getting into the mood and letting their bodies move to the music.

Next Friday we will have a visit from storyteller Angela Klingler. She will meet with students in Primary and Middle Multiage in the morning and then with Upper Multiage and Grade 6 in the after-noon. Angela is stopping by Sandwich on her way to Waterville Valley where the White Mountain Story-telling Festival takes place September 26 - 28. It looks like it would be well worth the drive over Sand-wich Notch into the Valley to take advantage of some of the events on Saturday, September 27. Google “White Mountain Storytelling Festival” for more information.

Enjoy the beautiful weekend!

Sincerely,

John Hansen

Principal

Letter from the Principal, continued

Social Studies: After establishing an ancient time line on our classroom bulletin board, the Sixth Graders quickly explored the Fertile Cres-cent and Mesopotamia. We have discussed the importance of artifacts, and even brought in some of our own personal belongings for inves-tigation. By next week we will be head long into Ancient Egypt, which always proves to be a time period of great interest.

Science: The decision was made to start this year with chemistry, and what better way to do that than with a little slime. Using the slime, we established safe lab procedures and made ob-servations about the chemical reaction we cre-ated. Currently, the sixth graders are working their way through atomic structure and understanding the Periodic Table of Elements. We have enjoyed making model of atoms and learning more about the physical world around us. Ask your sixth grader how many atoms are in a drop of water.