Hello TES Families,
I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a safe and happy Thanksgiving. We have had several opportunities to reflect on the idea of gratitude and generosity at school this month. The first was our assembly kicking off our annual food drive. We will be bringing our donations to the Thetford Food Shelf tomorrow, but we are still collecting non-perishable food donations until the end of the month. Thank you to everyone who contributed!
We also had a chance to reflect on the idea of generosity during our recent Veteran's Day Assembly. This annual event gives us a chance to reflect on and show our gratitude for the generous sacrifices of our local community of Veterans. Thank you to all who attended and to all of our parents who served in the armed forces.
Enjoy the vacation and all of this early winter weather! I look forward to seeing everyone next week.
Warmly,
Colin McLaughlin
Important Upcoming Dates
*School Board Meeting Tuesday, Nov. 27th 6:30PM
*PTO Meeting Thursday, December 6th 5:35 PM-7:30PM
*Holiday Concert Thursday, December 20th
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Ms. Bette's Kindergarten Class
Ms. Bette’s “Friendship Train Stars”
Oh my where has October gone?
We learned many Nursery Rhymes and we will be reading many Tales in the month of November and December.
The children love to read from their book boxes each day. It is fun to watch them read with their “Bread and Butter” partners. They are so sweet and kind. They teach each other how to read, and they encourage their partner to do their best. I am a proud teacher!
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Mrs. Rogers' Kindergarten Class
Mrs. Rogers' class loves learning outside. Two of our favorite locations are in our Outdoor Classroom and in the school gardens.
Most Fridays you can find both Kindergarten classes sharing our love of nature as we explore, create, and work together in our Outdoor Classroom. Sometimes that requires climbing a tree to see things from a different perspective.
Last Friday we worked in the school garden cutting down sunflower stalks, pulling up plants and putting the garden "to bed for the winter." We would like to thank Cat for her help with our garden unit study.
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Ms. Kate's 1st & 2nd Grade Class
The first graders all have math class in Ms. Kate's room. Recently they have kicked off a new unit focused on learning their addition and subtraction facts. They are exploring the properties of addition and subtraction by using dominoes. So far they have learned how to play Domino Train, Domino Top Draw (played like the traditional card game "War") and Domino Add & Compare. They are really enjoying exploring facts with these hands on materials. They also have created some special Domino Flip Cards which help them better understand "Fact Families." This helps develop a better understanding of how addition and subtraction are related.
Ms. Kate's homeroom class had a fun time on Halloween with a "Masquerade Afternoon." They designed their own masquerade masks and then wore them all afternoon for some fun Halloween activities.
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Ms. Oliver's 1st & 2nd Grade Class
Students in my grade 2 math class are taking charge! Taking charge of Number Nook, that is. Each day, math students begin the period at our Calendar Grid, flipping over a new card for each day, making predictions, and noticing patterns. Students are now being given the opportunity to lead our calendar work, ask questions of their peers, and record students' answers. Kids are showing more excitement during Number Nook because of these peer-led lessons, and I'm hoping they are feeling empowered that they are capable in leading a section of math.
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Ms. Atherton's 1st & 2nd Grade Class
The first and second graders in Mrs. Atherton's class have finished writing their narratives and learned last week how to peer conference. While working in groups of three or four, students shared their narratives while their peers came up with one compliment and one piece of constructive feedback. Students could then choose how they wanted to adjust their narratives according to the feedback. The final round of editing is happening this week and students MUST make sure each sentence begins with a capital letter
and ends with an appropriate piece of punctuation.
We sure have some talented writers in room 104!
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Ms. Bradley's 3rd & 4th Grade Class
Third and Fourth Graders have been busy writing narratives. Each day we have lessons on the different elements that make a good narrative. Do you tell the story bit by bit? Does your writing have an engaging lead, getting the reader into the world of the story? After editing for spelling and punctuation the children will write a final draft.
This Wednesday, we invited our Senior Citizens into our classroom for a tea party, thanking them for their help with the Puppet Project. There was a lot of good conversations and goodbye hugs.
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Ms. Mousley's 3rd & 4th Grade Class
Ms. Mousley’s class has been spending a lot of time talking about kindness. We have created a wall of kindness where students can notice something kind that a classmate is doing. These are shared each morning during morning meeting.
Our class goal is to fill up the whole door!
3rd and 4th graders will be finishing up our composting unit next week. In our classroom we have been looking at our snacks and lunches and how much we actually compost and recycle. We will finish the unit with a visit from Cat Buxton, our compost expert. She will be teaching us about vermiculture and showing us her worm bin!
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Ms Bennett's 3rd & 4th Grade Class
Students in Ms. Bennett’s math class are studying multiplication and division. This is a division game called Division Capture. It helps students understand that division is the inverse operation to multiplication.
As part of the 3/4 grade composting unit in Ms. Bennett’s class, students complete an environmental lunch log, recording their snack and lunch, and thinking about which items can be reused, recycled, composted or must go into the landfill.
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Ms. Harrington's 5th Grade Class
The 5th grade has been working on a project focused on "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF." We worked on presentations to inform the kids in the school about UNICEF and what they do. In those presentations, we showed videos, slideshows, handed out collection boxes for trick-or-treaters, and shared what UNICEF does with the money kids raise. After Halloween, we counted the money everyone brought in, and shared our initial total with the rest of the school at an assembly. After that, we came up with questions about the money that we wanted to answer. Here's what we found out:
How much did TES raise in donations? $348.79
What could UNICEF buy with the money we raised?
697 packets of therapeutic food
or
174 packages of soap
or
69 UNICEF backpacks
or
49 volleyballs
What was the average money per box? $5.72
If 88.4% of donations goes to kids, about how much of the money that TES raised will go directly to children? $306.24
Over the past two years, how much money has TES raised for UNICEF?
$540.34
We've shared these findings on posters we've hung up around the school!
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Mr. LaRoche & Ms. Kendall's 6th Grade Classes
The sixth graders have finished their Ancient Greek City-State projects! Each group was assigned a city-state from Ancient Greece (ex. Athens, Sparta) and researched about what made that city-state unique. They created visual presentations in the form of posters, slideshows, and skits. The project was a cross-class team effort which had the students work in small groups to research, identify, and display information about their city-state.
The sixth graders are also working on writing their own original myths for our study of Greek Mythology. They planned out their writing using Aristotle's 3 Act Structure and incorporated the elements of storytelling. This has been a great venue for their creativity and we look forward to reading their completed stories!
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TES Library Book Club
On Halloween, Wed. Oct. 31st, several 5th and 6th graders gathered in the library to discuss October's book club book:
The Magic Misfits
by Neil Patrick Harris. Students admired the main character, Carter, who pledges to never steal anything, even though he is in the most desperate situation, with no family and no place to live! Students learned several of the magic tricks from the story and amazed their friends with their magic skills! Book club readers loved the Magic Misfits (Book #1) and wondered: Will Carter and his 5 Magical Misfits stay together?
Join us in the TES Library on Wed. Dec 5th
(
12:15 - 12:45 pm)!
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