WILSON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL  OCTOBER NEWSLETTER 2015

The Japanese say, if the flower is to be beautiful, it must be cultivated.Lester Cole

What a gift it is to love books. Everybody must love something,

and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and

unfailing returns as books and a garden.

-   Elizabeth von Arnim

Introduction: October Activities Fire Prevention Week Spanish by Mrs. Kilduff Mrs. Bryan’s Kindergarten Class Summer Reading Winners Peer Mediation Hopkins’ First Grade Red Ribbon Week Mrs. Zrowka: First Grade Mrs. Gajano’s Third Grade Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Schork: Kindergarten Mrs. Gammoh’s Third Grade Classroom

October is one of our busiest times of the month. We celebrate the Week of Respect, Red Ribbon Week and Fire Prevention Safety during the week of October 4th. On Friday, October 9th our PTO acknowledges “Spirit Day”. It is a day celebrate our fire department and the Week of Respect. Students are able to wear the color red for Fire Safety or yellow to represent the Week of Respect. On Friday, our Sayreville Fire Department visited Wilson School. The children learned many lessons via videos in the auditorium and examined many aspects of Sayreville’s emergency vehicles. A beautiful lunch was provided by our PTO for our fire department. What a wonderful day.

During our week of Respect our teachers designed lessons which related to respectful behaviors, character traits and developing a positive culture at Wilson School.

Students enjoyed a wonderful fall day learning about fire prevention! “May I have a turn?”

Mrs. Davis was asked to climb the ladder! The children are so excited to see this happen. Unfortunately, Mrs. Davis prefers to take photographs instead, (smile).

TEACHING SPANISH AT THE ELEMENTARY LEVEL

Bienvenidos! Welcome!

Mrs. Kilduff is pleased to be joining the Wilson School team. She will be teaching 3 rd grade Spanish. Mrs. Kilduff is joining us from Truman School, where she taught kindergarten, first, second and third grade Spanish for 15 years. She has been enjoying teaching her students various topics such as greeting words, colors, shapes and numbers. Students have learned songs and they been answering questions about daily routines in Spanish. In fact they made a color book in Spanish. Mrs. Kilduff is looking forward to teaching them so much more and having a successful school year.

MRS. BRYAN’S KINDERGARTEN CLASS

Mrs. Bryan’s class has been learning letter formation and the sounds of these letters. One way we are developing this skill is to use connecting cubes to form letters and then we practice writing them. We also use paint dabbers, Play Dough, and play sand. For the letter p, we used pumpkin seeds to create the letter. We’re having lots of fun!

Summer Reading Winners - Pizza certificate for our students….Summer Reading Contest Winners from Wilson!! Our students participated in a summer reading program which was led by Mrs. Stueber, Elementary Supervisor. Students read leveled books and completed a summer reading log. The highest amount of reading minutes were accumulated. Student winners are listed. Each student received a pizza certificate.

Heather Farrelly  Wilson 1st Sabrina Brown Dan Toye Wilson 2nd Sofiya VerstlyarAdrienne Visone Wilson 2nd Jane Lee

Carrie Gammoh Wilson 3rd Alexis RoxasDanielle Puzzo Wilson 1st Jack SullivanColleen Reagan Wilson 2nd Jolin KimKerry DiStefano Wilson 2nd Timur LjubkaJessica Gajano Wilson 3rd Elijah JungJamie Allen Wilson Kdg Jacob ZiobronMichelle Stuto Wilson 3rd Isabella Negron

HALLOWEEN SAFETY

Our parents received an informative flyer regarding Halloween Safety this week. It is posted on our school’s webpage. Although students enjoy going door-to-door and receiving treats, as adults we must continue to engage our students and children in conversations about “safety”. At Wilson School we recognize the importance of taking appropriate safety steps which are necessary during the Halloween festivities.

Red Ribbon Week Say “No” To Drugs

During the week of Monday, October 26th through Friday, October 30th our teachers led Wilson School by including daily activities for Red Ribbon Week. This is the oldest and largest drug prevention campaign in the country. We celebrated each day of the week by having students wear red apparel, sports jerseys or a team shirt, jeans and pajamas. Every day students had a fun way to show that they are against drugs.

100% Drug Free & Proud to Show It!!

PEER MEDIATION

Each year Mrs. Condurso and Mrs. Visone, our Peer Mediation Instructors offer training for a small group of students at Wilson School. The 2-day training began on Wednesday, October 7th. Students received a program overview. They discussed the meaning of “conflict” in school and the importance of “mediation.” Active listening skills activities along with role playing sessions support these students as they become “leaders” among their classmates. All of the students below are receiving a certificate for completing the training. What a beautiful picture!

Peer Mediation Training:

Two students are reviewing some of the interaction skits put on by their teachers, Mrs. Visone Grade 2 and Ms. Condurso Multi-leveled Resource Teacher.

Fall Food Drive The SUES Student Ambassadors are currently in the process of organizing a fall food drive to benefit both the Sayreville Care and Share and St. Vincent DePaul food banks here in town. All of our elementary schools are again able participate in collecting food with SUES. The food drive will run from October through November 15th with a tentative pick up date for the week of November 16th.

We are proud of our Wilson students for their contributions and service to the community. Character begins at home. At Wilson we also believe that “Education plus Character is the real goal of Education.” Martin Luther King.

Fall is in the air!The students in Mrs. Gajano’s class are very excited for Fall. We are looking forward to some of our Fall favorites, such as Halloween and Thanksgiving, apple picking, pumpkin picking, fall festivals, and so much more! Our class took a "Fall Walk" to observe signs of fall around Wilson School. We collected our ideas together to write a class poem about how Fall tickles our senses!

Fall is here!I feel the cool crisp air blowing gentlyI see colorful leaves of orange, red, and yellow falling from treesI hear the leaves rustling in the trees and crows going, “Caw! Caw!”I smell pumpkin pie baking in the oven and apples growing on trees in the orchardI taste candy corn, turkey, caramel apples, and popcornHooray for Fall!

K-1 is Learning a Ton!

Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Schork’s Classroom:The students in Mrs. Allen’s and Mrs. Schork’s class are on the road to learning the letters of the alphabet. They are starting to recognize the letters and their sounds. The teachers use a multisensory approach. You should hear the children sing songs about each letter! The sound of the children’s voices are exciting. Learning with music and technology is F-U-N!

MRS. GAMMOH’S THIRD GRADE MATHEMATICS CLASSROOM

In Mrs. Gammoh's class, the students are striving to become masters of solving word problems! Problem-solving is a major component to the 3rd grade curriculum, and students need to be equipped with the skills needed to analyze, solve, and explain a word problem.

Mrs. Gammoh has found that the first step to becoming a Master Problem-Solver is to memorize which key words are associated with a given mathematical operation. The students in her class now know exactly how to tackle a word problem because they frequently work with these special words that are the "keys" to successful problem-solving.

In the spirit of Halloween, students constructed their very own word problems, included the appropriate key words, and designed Haunted Houses with the problem on the back! Mrs. Gammoh made an answer key and the students had a blast passing around the problems, solving them and self-checking with their class answer key!

Mrs. Gammoh shows two pictures below as a sample of the beautiful work students are doing in her classroom.

Mrs. Hopkins Room 1-2

Data Walls

Data wall is a tool that can be used to measure student achievement. In my first grade class, each student will make a goal before each assessment. Students who score a 90% or higher on their spelling test will color a block on the data wall. In math and reading, I shade in the pass rate. As a class we will have discussions about our data and determine whether or not we met our goal. If we reach our goal, then we celebrate each other. However, if we do not reach our goal, then as a class will do a self-reflection by asking ourselves if we could have did something differently. As the teacher, I do a self-reflection to determine whether or not the delivery of

instruction was effective, what should be modified or reviewed. This offers the opportunity for me to provide remediation to students who have missed the goal and enrichment for those who have exceeded expectations.