September 10, 2026

Third Grade

Ms. Panella

Third grade has had a great start to the year! Everyone was excited about the new chapter books and jumped right back into our daily reading routine. We also had lots of fun in teams building problem solving and critical thinking skills solving a Gold Mine escape room.

In math we’re reviewing 3-digit addition and subtraction, +/- facts to 20, and telling time to the minute before we dive into learning multiplication.

In science and engineering we began a unit on rockets. Each student drew and painted a diagram showing the nose cone, fuselage, and fins and described what their purpose is. Soon we will build paper rockets and launch them, redesigning the shape and size of these three parts to see who can design the rocket which flies the highest!

Fourth Grade

Ms. Cayer & Mr. Walker

The 4th Grade has had an amazing start to the new 26-27 school year!! We started the year off with developing expectations for our classroom and our school, focused around safety, responsibility and respect. We also learned about each other through team building games and activities. 

Our EL module for the beginning of the year is Poetic Forms and Inspiring Minds. We have begun reading and working with the book Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, about a young boy named Jack and his growth with poetry. Throughout the book, Jack and your students will be introduced to many different poems. We have read the poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams and have listened, sketched, and discussed the poem. We also have been introduced to the elements of poetry used in this particular poem such as structure and sensory language. Our next poem of study is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.

We are excited to be learning and practicing cursive handwriting this year in 4th grade so you may see papers and homework focused on this new and fun activity! 

Middle School Math

Mr. Pooler

Hello middle school families and students! We are doing something new in math this year. I really want to work on some fundamentals, so you will be given a few problems to work on every week; this will be your homework.

Every Monday or Tuesday, you will be given a homework assignment and will have the week to complete it. I will mark this in Alma. This will also help many of you get ready for life in high school!

Middle School English

Ms. Simone

It's great to be back for another school year! Grades 5-8 spent our first week back reacquainting ourselves with parts of speech, syntax, and punctuation, using magnetic poetry tiles to build simple and complex sentences. Seventh and 8th graders were also introduced to active and passive voice, verbal moods, and types of sentences.

We have now moved on to our first texts: 5th and 6th grade are reading Northwind by Gary Paulsen, and 7th and 8th grade are reading some short stories. all around our themes for the year--how authors create a sense of place and society with language and literary tools.

Elementary Spanish

Profe Katie

¡Hola familias! It is so great to be back. This year, K-4 classes will continue to have Spanish twice per week, including one 45-minute class, and a Morning Meeting done bilingually/in Spanish. The goal of this is to expose students to language learning from a young age, and create an immersive, approachable environment in which to do so! We will read mini-books and picture books in Spanish, do conversational activities, play games, learn songs, and more!

Key phrases this week include: 

¿Cómo te llamas? (What do you call yourself?)

Me llamo... (I call myself...)

Middle School Spanish

Profe Katie

I am so excited for another year teaching Spanish to our middle school students. Like last year, grades 5-8 will have Spanish class 3x per week during Encore blocks. Students will be in an immersive, primarily Spanish-speaking environment, learning through acquisition-based methods that allow students to pick up Spanish naturally, over time, by hearing and reading it, and then eventually being able to express themselves! We will do lots of conversation activities, reading and comprehension work, games, songs, and more. If you haven't seen the Syllabus Homework, your child should have brought you by now--please ask them about it.

Key phrases this week include:

¿Cómo te llamas? (What do you call yourself?)

Me llamo... (I call myself...)

¿Cuál es tu ____ favorito? (What is your favorite _____?)

Mi _____ favorito es... (My favorite ____ is...)

Library

Mr. Herrick

Welcome back to the school year! I’m very excited to get things going in the library. I can’t wait to have students borrow books and get into reading! As a reminder, students can expect to return their library book before checking out another book. This ensures that books return to the library, that kids develop a good habit of returning books, and everyone gets to enjoy our books. It’s easy to lose a book in the house so please take a minute to look at my tricks for making sure books don’t go missing:

Some tricks for keeping track of your books:

📚 Have a specific spot for library books at home, like a bedside table or a basket or box by the door. 

📚 Don’t store your library book on a bookshelf with your other books: they like to hide with other books!

📚 When you finish a book, put it in your school back pack right away.

📚 If you forget to return a book, you can write a note for yourself and make it into a bookmark.

As we kick off a year of reading, I also wanted to share with you a list of books that The Newton Staff read this summer. How about you, what did you read? Send me your titles and authors! Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

One Planet

Ms. Erin & Ms. Julia

As One Planet kicks off, we have found students working on homework, playing games, and creating masterpieces out of Legos and Magna-Tiles. On beautiful days, we are able to take lovely walks to the pocket park. As we continue into the next couple of weeks, we will start creating birdhouses and book jacks, while middle schoolers start playing games like Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. There will soon be many board games in play. One Planet will also take advantage of the nice weather and will be seen playing on the playground. We will also soon see the Strafford cheer team begin practicing.

PTA

Randi Merchand &

Liz Spriggs

The PTA had their first meeting this week! We are currently looking to fill a secretary position to come to the meetings and take notes.

We will be holding the annual chrysanthemum sale this Saturday from 9-11 AM at the Red Barn. Mums are $13 apiece.

We are looking forward to some fun activities this year, and helping to send the kids to various plays and learning opportunities.