MRE Update
mid-October 2019
Dates to Remember
Report Card Update
The elementary report card has been updated for the coming school year.
The primary goal of report cards is to provide information regarding students’ progress with respect to both content standards and habits of learning. Standards are written benchmarks that explicitly state what students are expected to have mastered by the end of the year. Teachers use multiple measures to assess children’s performance in each area. The hope is that, by the end of the year, every family has a comprehensive picture of a child’s learning and growth over the course of the year.
As a school and district community, we encourage students to cultivate a mindset that emphasizes learning as a continual process. It is important that the reporting process mirrors the current practices and messages that students receive in our classrooms. In addition, research indicates that students achieve the greatest growth through targeted and specific feedback.
With this in mind, students’ progress will continue to be reported using an updated standards-scale. The updated scale provides specific feedback regarding students’ progress with respect to the end-of-year standards at a particular grade-level. The report card has also been reorganized to reflect our focus on supporting students’ social, emotional and academic skills. You will see that work habits and comments appear earlier in the new version of the report card. Additionally, in order to focus on student growth and feedback related to the standards, letter grades will no longer be used in grade 5. Standards-based reporting facilitates more informed conversations about each student’s strengths and next steps for learning.
To provide more information regarding the end-of-year expectations for each grade, a 2019-2020 school year parent guide for standards-based reporting will be posted on the Nashoba Regional School District website by the end of the first trimester.
Parent/Teacher Conferences
Parent Teacher conferences will be held on the afternoon and evening of October 24th and a full day on October 25. We will utilize an internet-based appointment booking system to schedule conferences again this year called Pick-A-Time. This online sign up feature will allow parents to schedule conferences from any computer with internet access beginning Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. To schedule a conference please, use the following link. https://pickatime.com/client?ven=11604938
Specialist Updates
Health
K-2 Fire Safety
· Know 2 ways out
· Family meeting place
· 9-1-1
· Stop drop and roll
3 Fire Review and Purple Pinky Day
· Final fire review and quiz
· Rotary club donates dictionaries
· collect $ for purple pinkie day to help with polio vaccinations
4 Self Esteem
· How you feel about yourself
· Being unique
5 Setting short term and long term goals
· Goals
· Setting short and long term goals
PE
K and 1: Dance- moving to a variety of rhythms and beats including fast and slow, strong and light.
2 and 3: Kicking and dribbling skills including kicking for distance, passing, and starting, stopping and changing directions while dribbling.
4 and 5: Kicking and dribbling games- Playing a variety of small sided soccer-like games.
Music
Music with Mr. Rossley: Grades K, 2-5
Kindergarten - Exploring steady beat, echo/greeting songs, Music alphabet, explore personal space while moving to different music tempos, introduction to high and low pitches
Grade 2 - Hello There echo song with solo singing, decoding duple rhythms, xylophone playing to Engine Engine # 9, combining performance with a steady beat on rhythm instruments
Grade 3 - Steady beat leader game, Orff song Ty-Dee-Oh - perform melody on xylophones with steady beat on rhythm instruments, begin learning notes of the treble clef
Grade 4 - Learn/sing Keep Your Head Up, explore counting rhythms using chair game activity, reinforce note reading skills using computer program clef notes
Grade 5 - Sing Nature’s Classroom songs, review counting multiple measures in 4/4 time signature, hand jive team building activity
Music with Miss Belhumuer: Grade 1
In 1st grade music, students are learning how to ...
- warm up our voices and sing with a healthy, light tone. Ask your 1st grader to show off their "singing voice" to you!
- move musically and expressively to classical composer Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals.
- play rhythmic instruments to demonstrate dictated patterns.
- listen to stories through songs. Ask them about all the animals in the meadow story!
- sing the tonic, or "home note," to a song. This week, the tonic is sung with the help of a "Sea Lion!!"
Library
In Kindergarten we will read Little Red Hen stories, including The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza and Holy Squawkamole. We will discuss how helping out friends and families makes us feel.
In grade one we are reading and comparing boy/girl tales. We will read Sleeping Beauty and Sleeping Bobby. Also, Cinderella and Prince Cinder.
Grade two is reading books from the mystery genre. One of our favorites is Baby Monkey, Private Eye by Brian Selznick.
Grade three is reading Aesop Fables and discussing the moral or lesson each short story tells us.
Grade four is studying books by Author/Illustrator Chris Van Allsburg. Also, students are using chromebooks to practice using our library catalog.
Grade five is reading Ken Burns’ Grover Cleveland Again. This non-fiction book introduces students to information and fun facts about our presidents.
Technology
Seesaw is a Digital Portfolio. Students in all K-5 classrooms will be adding work from technology, other specials, and their homerooms into their portfolios. Parents can download the free parent Seesaw App and connect to their students journals to experience their students learning. Signin information has been distributed. Grades K and 3 parents/guardians should be on the lookout. All other grades received information during Open House. Please signup and participate by liking and leaving comments on their work. It’s also a great conversation starter about what they are learning in school.
Also, for Grades 3-5, these students would benefit greatly from 5-10 minutes of typing practice whenever possible.
Kindergarten has been working hard on practicing their mousing skills. They have drawn pictures of Apples to coincide with their trip to the Apple Orchard using our authoring program called Wixie. This past cycle we, also, used the Seesaw App on Ipads to draw pumpkins. These will be shared with parents/guardians who download and log into the Seesaw Parent App. Keep a lookout for more information from your homeroom teachers.
Grade 1: In Seesaw students created pictures of community helpers and included instruments they use. Their second project was to write a sentence and draw a picture in our online authoring tool called Wixie. The picture was about “Things we do in the Summer”. This picture will be part of a larger year long project about Seasons.
Grade 2: started the year with a Seesaw Project describing “All About Me” using emojis. These projects have been shared with parents/guardians in Seesaw. Their second project which they are currently completing is in Wixie and will be shared though Seesaw when they are done. The students drew pictures of houses and then learned how to turn them into software stickers. These stickers are being used in a larger project where students write sentences using cardinal directions.
Grade 3 now have logged into their Google accounts and started the year creating two projects in Seesaw. Their first project was an “About Me” and the second one was about Digital Citizenship. Soon they will be starting Pilgrim research and a Google Slideshow.
Grade 4 is also using Seesaw this year. Their first project was an “About Me” . Grade 4 is now learning about becoming Internet Awesome Digital Citizens (using Google’s Internet Awesome Curriculum). We have talked about how to be Internet Strong and Alert. And we have been creating a book in Book Creator about these topics.
Grade 5 is also using Seesaw this year. We completed one project that was an “About Me”. We have also begun some of the Digital Citizenship lessons and will be transitioning into learning about Drones and Colony Collapse Disorder of Bees and how drones may be able to help..
Follow me on Twitter, I often post news, links and pictures on my feed at @aakdikmen
Art
- How do I know when I am done?
- How do I turn my mistake into an opportunity?
Kindergarten & Grade 1
Essential Question: What is a design made of?
Artist Connection: Paul Klee - Designing with crayons and markers
Grades 2 & 3
Essential Question: How do we use observation and shape awareness to draw what we see?
- Observation drawings of stuffed animals representing our families
Grades 4 & 5
Essential Question: How do we use observation and shape relationship to draw what we see?
- Observation drawings of still life objects
Nature's Classroom Lost & Found
Mary Rowlandson Elementary
Reporting an absence, email: MREAttendence@nrsd.net
Email: jfrommer@nrsd.net
Website: https://rowlandson.nrsd.net/
Location: 103 Hollywood Drive, Lancaster, MA, USA
Phone: (978) 368-8482