East Read-Away for East Rockaway!

A message from the Reading Team-

From East to East Rockaway!

We are thrilled to report that once again, East School has done an outstanding job in helping their neighbors!   

East Read-Away for East Rockaway was a Read-A-Thon to raise money for RhameAvenue Elementary Schoolin East Rockaway, NY.  Rhame Avenue Elementary was badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy and many classrooms lost their libraries.  Our students read as much as they could for four weeks and were pledged by their families for each minute read.  During each week of the Read-a-Thon, East had a goal for the number of minutes to be read.  Many individual classrooms set their own goals and competed with other classrooms for most minutes read. A few classrooms even had 100% participation!  Many parents shared stories of how their children were suddenly reading before school, in the car, at restaurants and with flashlights under the covers!   Along with the at-home reading and pledges, we also collected gently used books to go directly to Rhame Avenue Elementary classrooms. 

In all, we collected more than 22 heavy boxes of books for Rhame's various classrooms and they were hand delivered by our reading and writing team.  The Read-A-Thon concluded with more than 340,000 minutes read by our students and staff and over $7,300 collected, going towards new books for Rhame Avenue Elementary.  That amount far exceeded our goal and the teachers in East Rockaway are thrilled with the generosity and passion of our readers and their families.  

   

*** Special thanks to our East literacy team - Karen Abramson, Robin Collins, Pamela Cullinan, and Jennifer Valiante - for all of their time, energy, and inspiration as they coordinated and led the East Community in this work. Thanks too to our ICT specialist, Rob Polley, for the technology links that kept the reading minutes coming in!

Español

For this latest entry of the East blog, we are excited to share with you a posting from Senora Roth and Senora Rizzuti, our FLES teachers at East … Read on!

¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?  Bien gracias.  

These are some of the phrases you may hear in the halls. The Fles (foreign language in the elementary school) program is flourishing at East School! This is the fourth year of the program and it has become an integral part of our culture. Not only is the curriculum based on social studies and science units but we also collaborate with art, music, P.E. and computers.

Based on our immersion style language instruction, students have class 3, 4 or 5 times each week depending on the grade level. In a typical FLES session, students participate in a developmentally-appropriate routine which includes: greetings, calendar and weather. Then they are engaged in curriculum related instruction. All classes make use of a variety of student groupings including whole group, pair and individual work, and at the older levels students keep a journal with written work. There are many songs and chants (which you may have heard around the house) that help the students gain confidence with the language and have fun!

Many of you have asked how you can extend the language learning at home. Right here on the East School web page there is a Spanish link. On this link you will find games that allow students to practice skills learned at school. Another way is to observe all the places you hear and see Spanish in the community. These are great ways to make real life connections and experience the language on a whole different level.

As always, we are grateful for your support and the opportunity to teach your children.

What a month!

From Science Fair to STEaM Night ... it has been a very busy February month at East School!

We saw more than 130 young scientists proudly displaying their experiments, research, and more at our East School Science Fair during the first weekend of the month. There was plenty of excitement, enthusiasm, and learning all around - from solar system models (Is Pluto a planet or a moon?) to diapers (Do you know which brand can absorb the most?), from making bread rise to the ever-popular erupting volcano (one of the favorite of my 4-year old son who was eager to accompany me at the Fair)! Thanks to all who participated and to those who came to view the work.  And a special thank you to Mr. Bothe for all of his work behind-the-scenes to support our young scientists throughout the year, to inspire curiosity in our students, and to make this annual event such a success!

And just a few days later, we filled the halls of East School with young mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and artists as part of our STEaM Night 2013. STEaM brings together Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics with integrated experiences and real-world connections. There was web design with some familiar faces popping up on new magazine covers. There was marshmallow-building (also a very engaging snow-day activity for all ages, as we soon learned in the Woleck household when we were homebound during the blizzard) and airplane design too. And there was also the creative-engineering challenge - "How can you make a piece of art that has at least one moving part?" What children (and adults) can do with paper, brads, metal rings, paper clips, string, and hole punchers is quite remarkable. Special thanks to Mrs. Main to make this evening happen for us!

I am thrilled to capture the memory of these wonderful February events (quickly becoming favorite traditions at East) here in the blog because writing about them brings a smile . . . these are the events that bring our East community together and remind us of the pure joy young children find in all kinds of learning. Thanks for being a part of this!

Take care,
Kris

Celebrating Our Community

Celebrating our community

It seems like an appropriate time to celebrate the community that we are both at here East and in New Canaan. Our first grade classes spent time this fall studying communities and our town of New Canaan as part of their social studies curriculum. As a culminating, authentic learning experience to their unit of study, each classroom collaborated as a community of learners to take on the role of park planners in our community. Their task was to suggest ways to create a playground at Irwin Park that could be used and enjoyed by the New Canaan community.

There were many problem solving opportunities embedded in this park-planning experience.  There were plenty of decisions to be made in the planning and the careful thought given to these decisions by these first graders was evident. For instance, the entrance to the park in one plan was carefully placed with parking a fair distance from where children would be playing on the swings and slides in order to ensure safety. The parks included trash cans, snack bars, bike paths, and more. The classes also included “rules” for different parts of their park, recognizing the role that such rules play in maintaining the safety of all citizens in a community. 

All of this work was undertaken with the goal to give the community a place to enjoy time and friends. Here’s to more of this wonderful learning in the year ahead!

Happy 2013!

Take care,

Kris

Let’s Talk Math!

There’s math happening each and every day at East School. Over the past few months, kindergartners have been working to keep track of their counting to be sure they don’t miss any items or double-count.  First and second graders have built a repertoire of number combinations to support addition fact development and they expanded their geometric vocabulary as they learned about features of both two- and three-dimensional shapes. Third graders learned to analyze a set of numerical data using line plots to tell you what’s “typical” or if there are any outliers (and they have been growing in efficiency with addition and subtraction strategies). Fourth graders are continuing to extend their fluency with multiplication and division; they have even begun to solve problems that involve “leftovers” or remainders.

But did you know that parents have been doing math too?

Danielle Legnard, K-5 Mathematics Coordinator for New Canaan Public Schools, and our own Laura Main, East School math specialist, joined the math specialists from South and West this fall to host a K-5 Parent Math Workshop. Elementary parents from across the district were engaged in doing math together through interactive number talks and performance tasks. Parents learned about the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and were provided an overview of the shifts and implications for the NCPS math curriculum. Key shifts were highlighted and the new state assessment timeline was shared. The session provided an opportunity for parents to engage in mathematical discourse and learn how to support their children at home. The audience was given resources for practicing facts, problem solving and making math a family event.

If you would like to read the entire Parent Math Workshop presentations please visit our website:www.newcanaan.k12.ct.us/k5math

Click on Parent Math Workshop

Take a look and try some of the math yourself! Please let us know if you have any questions …

Hope all enjoyed a terrific Thanksgiving with family – looking forward to a wonderful winter now!

Take care,

Kris

A Celebration of Learning!

We know this has been a difficult stretch of time for many families. We hope all are warm and safe, and we look forward to moving forward with the year together just as soon as we can. In the meantime, we thought this would be an especially important time to celebrate the learning and growing over these past few months at East. Read on to hear more about the Celebration of Learning held recently to do just that. Our East students are amazing!

In October, we held our first Celebration of Learning of the year at East. Celebrations of Learning (COL) are held throughout the year – six times this year – to spotlight and celebrate as a school community the wonderful learning of East. Each fourth grade class has an opportunity to host a COL during the year. They run it all – from the powerpoint and announcements to crowd management (yes, we have fourth graders who can quiet an entire Galley of students in a matter of seconds with a simple signal). Thanks to Mrs. Shouvlin’s fourth graders for all their work to make our first COL a huge success.

All aspects of learning are celebrated at COLs, from academics to the arts to social-emotional learning. In October’s COL, second graders treated us to a Spanish song learned in their FLES lessons. Fourth graders from Mrs. Vandall’s class rocked on stage to a Halloween song that was perfect for the season, and fourth graders from Ms. Gesualdi’s class shared what they had learned about peer conferencing techniques in writing class. Our kindergarteners got the entire school up and singing to the favorite “Bubble Gum” song that seems to be a rite of passage at East. Ask your child to tell you about Molly Awards and of course the East School song too!

We also celebrated the Artist Spotlight that is a feature of every COL.  Take a look below at the kindergarten and first grade artwork featured in this October’s COL - certainly, there is much to celebrate!

It is wonderful to be able to celebrate as a school community both the effort that our students give to their learning and also the staff members that support and grow them. We are already looking forward to our next Celebration of Learning!

East School Mileage Club

Have you heard about the East School Mileage Club?

It's the latest recess craze at East School! Organized by our East School guidance counselor, Ms. Beall-Gomes, the Mileage Club is open to all students at East School during lunch-recess. The field has been lined to mark a 1/8th mile lap. Students can spend part of their recess time walking, running, skipping, or hopping the loop, counting their laps along the way. Eight laps total one mile - East students of all ages will tell you that now! And for every mile, students receive a colorful foot charm for their Mileage Club chain so they can watch their miles accumulate over the year. Each Friday, students are invited to wear their Mileage Club chains and feet  at school to celebrate their miles and our Mileage Club community at East. 

(Please note that Mileage Club chains and feet should remain safe at home on all other school days – this is for safety, to avoid distractions in the classroom, and to prevent hurt feelings from lost chains.)

In just our first few weeks of Mileage Club, the data is impressive - 85 out of 125 fourth graders were tallied doing laps on the field one day last week! The miles are adding up already. Teaching assistants are lending a hand with supervision and we have a class of students that will be tallying the totals each Friday. It is a school-wide effort.

Why the Mileage Club? It continues our attention this year to School Climate initiatives. Recess can be an overwhelming time of day for some children; it's a busy time on the playground, yet an unstructured time. While it is wonderful for young children to have the open time, for some students, navigating the social environment can be challenging. The Mileage Club offers an experience that offers children an activity that they can join as an individual, with a partner, or with a group of friends. As a Mileage Club participant at recess, one child can walk alongside another and make a new friend. And with so many children happily engaged in their laps, fewer recess altercations or behavioral issues have been noted. All with health and physical fitness benefits as well.

This fall weather is a perfect time to get started (if we could just keep the rainy days away) - encourage your child to head on out to the Mileage Club for a few laps each day!