Pelham School Press

Happy New Year! I hope Pelham families enjoyed the winter break and our return to a winter wonderland. As I greeted staff and students this morning, I found that most were eager to get back to the school routines and the new learning expectations for the rest of the year.

Students in each classroom are making resolutions and goals for the new year. Many of these personal goals require that students work harder on their schoolwork. One perennial area of concern is homework. As a parent I know the strain that homework can place on families and family time. Yet, as a teacher I know that students don’t have enough time in school to do all the practice work, reading, research, and studying they need to be successful learners. Although there is no easy answer, I’ve attached to this week’s Press a homework checklist for parents to review and a sheet on helping your child get organized. However, please contact your child’s teacher if your child is spending more than one hour on homework in grades 1-3 or more than two hours on homework in grades 4 - 6. Immediately, write a note to the teacher if your child is unable to do homework assignments

Please note the many events and holidays on the school calendar. January is a very busy month for students and teachers; they are beginning new units, assessing progress to date, and setting goals for the rest of the year. One of those goals for students is to come to school prepared to learn each day. That means getting to bed early enough for at least eight hours of sleep, eating a good breakfast, and setting aside time for reading and homework each day.

Tonight, the Pelham School Committee will begin discussion of a five year plan for Pelham School. Parents are urged to attend. Rena Moore

AGENDA FOR REGULAR Meeting of PELHAM School Committee

6:00 PM, THURSDAY, January 7, 2010 in the Community Room

1. WELCOME: Call to Order and Minutes

2. Announcements and Public Comment

3. Principal & Superintendent Update

4. Unfinished/Continuing Business

5. New Business—5 year Plan for Pelham School

6. School Committee Planning

7. Adjournment

This is an open meeting; all parents and community members are invited to attend.

mark your 2010 calendar!!

Movie Night is scheduled for January 14, 2010.

Join your friends at the Pelham School gym TO SEE ALiens in the attic

Aliens in the Attic (2009)

PTO Family Movie Night Thursday Jan 14^th 6:00 Pelham Gym/Cafeteria

Movie is Free, popcorn and baked goods for sale. Bring pillows and blankets<![if !vml]><![endif]>

An adventure/comedy about kids on a family vacation who must fight off an attack by knee-high alien invaders with world-destroying ambitions. At the same time, the youngsters work hard to keep their parents in the dark about the battle upstairs.

Rated PG for action violence, some suggestive humor and language. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775552/

Safety Reminder: Parent, please note that students are not allowed to have knives at school for any reason. This policy is stated on page 20 of the Pelham School pages of the Pelham School Handbook, with further explanation on page 20 of the district pages in the Pelham School Handbook.

Pennies for Peace! Thank you for your donations! We counted 20,095 pennies, and I turned them into a cashier’s check (along with another $8.70 of various coins that were mixed up in all those pennies) for the Pennies for Peace organization over the break. This has been an amazing experience for the children and me. Giving just feels good. Tying it to math lessons just makes it all the better!

We ended our Mexico unit with a fiesta! Students decorated the room with tissue flowers and cut tissue flags known as papel picados. Ms. May had taught the class the Mexican Hat Dance, which they performed. We sampled some foods from Mexico and had fun learning first hand about fiestas. Your children absolutely loved the cinnamon sticks steeping in the crock pot of hot chocolate!

We had a fabulous field trip to visit Elizabeth Chilton and Michael Sugerman at UMASS. The students and adults thoroughly enjoyed the experience of sampling some activities that archeologists engage in. This related so well to our Mexico unit.

We have begun a new unit in math called Perimeter, Angles, and Area. We have reviewed the length of units of measure such as inch, foot, yard, centimeter, and meter. We are working on understanding perimeter as the measure around the outside edges of a 2-dimensional figure and area as measurement in square units. Our investigations will explore geometric moves, identifying attributes of triangles, angles, and quadrilaterals. We will continue our work on place value of numbers up to 1,000.

The children have been adding strong word choice in the form of dynamic verbs into their writing. They recently completed and shared pieces based on playing in the snow. Unbelievable! This class’s writing skills are improving by leaps and bounds.

We have been reading fractured folktales. These are tales based on the traditional stories but broken apart in hilarious ways. The Three Little Javelinas is one example. Ask your child to tell you about it. We are now taking a crack at writing our own fractured folktales. We’ll incorporate what we have learned about traditional literature, organization, voice, and word choice. I am looking forward to reading their finished pieces.

Thank you so much for the donations to the classroom of tissues, markers, stickers, snacks, and plastic sheets for our writing portfolios. We are fully stocked now!

The fourth grade is exploring the wonderful world of geometry. Students have already created and drawn their own structures. Using pattern blocks, each child made a mini creation and worked hard to represent it on paper. The challenge was in being accurate. The class has been working on a number of region filling puzzles using pattern blocks. Soon we will be using tangrams, geoboards and other math tools to help us unlock the mathematical properties of geometric shapes.

Our look into Pilgrim culture is coming to a close. Next, we will be doing an author study of Mildred Taylor. The books we will be reading are The Friendship, The Gold Cadillac, Song of the Trees, and Mississippi Bridge. The stories come from either tales Mildred was told as a child or are experiences from her own life. Each story conveys important ideas around growing up, learning to stand up for yourself and the importance of family. Students will build up their vocabulary practice summarizing and analyzing the stories.

In writing, students have become very aware of how important capital letters, end punctuation, and sentence fluency are when presenting a finished piece of writing. Throughout the process of writing, children have been taking time to use spelling references to ensure they turn in the best work possible. We have completed a variety of writing activities where complete sentences and thorough, thoughtful answers are needed.

We continue to probe into the magnificent world of geography. Understanding legends, keys, and symbols is central to comprehending what maps are telling us about our world. Students have studied special maps that enable them to look at desert, plains, coastal, and mountain regions. I was impressed by how much knowledge they brought with them from the earlier grades. We will continue to practice identifying the shape of each state and the characteristics of each region in the United States. As an extension activity, students will begin memorizing capitals.

Our new science units will be magnets. We will do a series investigations that reveal many of the wondrous properties of magnetism. Building on our understanding of electricity, we will construct electromagnets

A reminder about cold weather and snow. If your child is planning on playing in the snow, they need snow pants, winter boots, and winter jacket. Bundle up! Tony Shaw