Shaping Futures
Together
March
2017
From the Principal’s Desk
March has arrived and hopefully warmer weather will continue to dominate the
forecast!
Please remember that when you are dropping off your children in the morning to
be aware of any school buses. If buses have their stop signs out and lights flashing,
you are not to pass them in the parking lot. This ensures the safety of children as
they disembark. Thank you for your patience and attention to this matter.
The following is information about Kindergarten Registration: Children who
were born in 2012 or earlier are eligible for kindergarten during the 2017-2018
school year. It helps our planning if kindergarten registration forms are submitted
by the end of March. Of course, because kindergarten is required in Connecticut,
we will accept registration forms at any time. Students who are attending Eastford
Elementary School’s preschool do NOT have to re-register for kindergarten. If you
have neighbors, friends or relatives in Eastford who plan to send a child to
kindergarten in the fall, please encourage them to register as soon as possible.
There is a registration form available in the school office and online for
kindergarten. (http://www.eastfordct.org/registration)
The following is information about Preschool Registration: Children who were
born in 2013 or 2014 are eligible to register for the Eastford Preschool Program. If
you are interested in enrolling your child and you have not submitted a
registration form, please do so as soon as possible. If you have questions please feel
free to call the school office.
All students in grade five and eight will be taking a Connecticut Mastery Test
in Science. Grade five and eight will both take the test in April. The Smarter
Balanced English Language Arts and Mathematics tests will be spread out over 4
to 5 weeks. Students in grades three through eight will begin working the week
of May 1.
Mrs. Melissa Lessard will be the track coach this year and Mrs. Julie Fox will be
the assistant coach. The track team will begin practicing on Monday, March 27.
The track team is coeducation and open to students in grades five through eight.
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March 2017
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Students are required to have sports physicals if they wish to participate. Please
refer to our school website (www.eastfordct.org/domain/106) for the requirements
regarding sports physicals or contact Mrs. Guillette, the school nurse.
On Tuesday, March 21, we will have a family evening with an Internet Safety
Presentation by Jason Allen for parents. Children will be participating in
supervised activities during the presentation. There will be a flyer coming home
with more information for families to sign up so that we have sufficient supplies
for participants.
As always, feel free to contact staff if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Heather Tamsin
PTO News
We collected $407 in Box Tops this past turn-in date! Kindergarten had the most
Box Tops turned in and will be celebrating with a pizza party sponsored by the
PTO! Congratulations and thanks to everyone who turned in Box Tops!
We have some upcoming fundraisers to tell you about. You will see more
information coming home about these fundraisers within the next week.
The Braided Pastry and Lyman Orchards Crisps is back! Order forms will come
home March 6 with a return date of March 20. These will arrive just in time for
Easter. Pick up will be April 3between 3-5 PM.
We will be doing the Original Works fundraiser again this year! Students will be
creating their works of art in Art class and everyone will bring home an order form
if families are interested in ordering items featuring their child's art work. Order
form packets with art work will be sent home March 10 with a turn in date
of March 27.
We will be sponsoring the spring Book Fair from April 3-7. This book fair will
feature Buy One Get One Free books and will be open late on Thursday, April
6 during conferences. Any volunteers for setting up, taking down, or working
during the fair hours are always welcome!
Our Next PTO meeting is Tuesday, March 14 at 6:30 PM in the EES library. Hope
to see you there!
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March 2017
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Greetings from the Music Room
Believe it or not, students in grades pre-k through four have already begun
practicing for their Spring concert, which will be Tuesday, May 16th at 2 pm. Our
theme this year will be “Enjoying the Outdoors” and will feature the following
songs:
Pre-k and kindergarten: Mister Sun
Purple Light
The Ants Go Marching
1st and 2nd Grade:
Happy Wanderer
Zip-a-dee-doo-da
Rockin Robin
3rd and 4th Grade:
I Love the Mountains
Just Like the Sun
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Also featured in that concert will be the 3rd graders playing recorders. This class
has been playing recorders since December and has been doing an excellent job. As
a class we are about half way through our lesson book, with many students
diligently practicing and playing even more advanced songs on their own to earn
recorder karate belts. Keep up the great work 3rd graders!
Preparation for the Spring band and chorus concert, scheduled for Tuesday, May
23rd at 2 and 7pm, has also begun. This concert will feature the full 5th and 6th
grade classes, the Tuesday morning chorus (open to all 5th-8th grade students, we
meet on Tuesdays before school from 8:15-8:40), the band as well as beginner
instrumental students.
Students in grade 7 have been studying the Baroque era of music history. We have
learned about the life, career, and music of two prominent Baroque composers:
Bach and Vivaldi. We are currently working on a composition project inspired by
Vivaldi’s famous set of violin concertos The Four Seasons.
Students in grade 8 are finishing up their unit on the blues by taking the three
verses of lyrics they wrote in AAB form, and composing a melody to put them to
using the notes of the blues scale over the 12 bar blues chord progression.
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March 2017
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Art Roomers – Ms. Muller
and Designing Minds
Kindergartners came under the spell of sunset colors by hearing a read-aloud of
Tomie de Paola’s Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. Students created a primary
color tempera painting using a brush blending technique. The dried paintings
were cut into a series of shaped bands that were glued strategically onto black
paper backgrounds with yarn fringe. The final art looks like a woven blanket.
Next, we’ve discovered “cave art” and have made our own through the use of a salt
and watercolor special effect that results in “stone paper.”
First Graders delved into an old Chinese legend by studying the symbolism in
Blue Willow dinnerware. Students were impressed by the tale and enjoyed
comparing the book version and the story illustrated by the plate’s images. After
making their own narrative plates, students built some scale pagodas replicating
the architecture noticed in the plate art.
Second Graders experienced a tropical break from winter by focusing on the
qualities of the well-know clothing item called “Aloha” shirts from Hawaii.
Children fit, folded and assembled their own shirts part by part after patterning
and coloring them with bright oil pastels and water color paint.
Third Graders have been developing personal art with the purpose of being
prepared to have their art transferred to one of the many objects that a PTO
fundraiser will be sponsoring in a couple weeks.
Fourth Graders will be involved with their PTO art project for a couple classes just
like grade three.
Fifth Graders will be doing the fourth annual LampScape project where they apply
landscape drawing skills to a lampshade and then craft a fired clay base. The
resulting landscape/lampshade project will become a useful home object with the
addition of a tea light.
Sixth Graders and visitors to the downstairs hall are enjoying the display of large
realistic butterfly kites based on actual species of Lepidoptera chosen by the
students. There was an impressive outcome of bisque firing/glaze firing clay mugs
that has also rewarded the students.
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March 2017
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Seventh graders have been very productive since the mid term mark. Their
“Transformations” art allowed them to broaden their skill sets so that a familiarity
of lines, patterns, color combinations, texture and shapes was sharpened in the act
of abstracting a highly realistic microscopic organism and developing that image
into a complex graphic depiction.
Examples of Kindergarten Cave Art
Left group, top to bottom: Leah’s, David’s, Aaron’s
Right group, top to bottom: Aiden’s, A-ris’s, Abigail’s
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March 2017
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Grade Six Butterfly Kites and Cups above
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March 2017
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Alexis Buell’s and Milliealexis Sutherland’s Transformation Art above
Henry Driscoll’s and Tavian Santos’s Transformation Art below
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March 2017
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Math News – Mr. Socquet
Grade 8 – Students are in the process of completing their work with polygons.
They have learned how to find the measure of both interior and exterior angles of
polygons. In the next lessons they will be exposed to the Rule of Phythagoras for
right triangles. They will encounter real world problems, which can be solved by
applying this geometric formula. From the Rule of Pythagoras they will derive the
distance formula, which can then be used to find the distance between points on
the coordinate plane.
Grade 7 – Students are presently working on two step equations. They are using
the additive inverse property, and the multiplication and division property for
equations. Multi-step equations will be next on the agenda. For these equations,
students will have to apply the distributive property. When students complete
their work with equations, they will move on to solving inequalities. This will
include one step, two-step, and multi-step inequalities.
ELA – Mrs. Lessard
Seventh & Eighth Grade
During the month of February, students in grades seven and eight self selected
famous speeches to analyze. Here is a list of speeches students are analyzing:
 “Ain’t I a Woman” by Sojourner Truth
 “You’re Not Special” by David McCullough
 “Farwell Speech” by Lou Gehrig
 “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” by Steve Jobs
 “What It Takes To Be Number One” by Vince Lombardi
 Malala Yousafzai’s speech to the United Nations
 Chief Joseph’s surrender speech to the United States government
Students used the acronym SOAPStone to help guide their analysis. As a result,
students analyzed the following:
 Speaker – who is the speaker? How does the speaker's age, gender, class,
and education help you understand their point of view?
 Occasion – What is the time and place? What current or historical
situation prompted the writing?
 Audience – To whom is this speech directed? What assumptions exist
about the intended audience?
 Purpose – What is the message? Why did the author write it? How does the
speaker convey this message?
 Subject – How does the speaker present the subject – stated or inferred?
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March 2017
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
Tone – What is the attitude of the author? Is the author emotional, bias, or
objective? What types of details tell the author’s feelings about the topic?
How does the diction (word choice), syntax (sentence structure), imagery
(figurative language), help reflect the tone?
When analyzing the speaker, occasion, and audience, students had to do a little
background research, and when writing about the purpose, subject, and tone,
students had to use their own interpretations and find evidence from the speech to
support their opinions. Furthermore, students used GoogleDocs to complete this
assignment. Using GoogleDocs allowed students to share their work with me so I
could provide them with quicker feedback. Finally, students will begin creating a
creative visual to accompany their analysis.
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March 2017
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News – Mrs. Mead
Science We are looking forward to the start of spring, and the opportunity to get
outside on our nature trail, release our trout fry into the Still River when they
grow to fingerlings, and to begin work on the school garden. This year we hope to
change the garden space into a place for perennials, herbs, flowers that are easy to
collect seeds from such as sunflowers, and particularly plants designed to attract
butterflies and hummingbirds. If anyone has perennials that need splitting,
please keep us in mind; we would be happy to rehome a shovel-full of your favorite
low-maintenance plant. Please email me at [email protected] to let me know
what you’ve got.
Grade 3 students remove seeds from last summer’s sun flowers in order to replant
them at school this spring.
Grade 6 students investigate the
effect of mass on the speed of a
falling object to determine if both
heavy and light objects of the same
volume fall at the same speed.
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March 2017
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Grade 5 students collaborate electronically while creating an infographic about
sound using Piktochart.
Grade 8 students closely examine the interior of a pig heart, very similar to a
human heart, to identify the atria, ventricles, valves, septum, aorta, and other
parts in the cardiovascular system in the 7th and 8th grade unit on Human Body
Systems.
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March 2017
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Social Studies News - Mr. Kernan
A look into the past, to see the future…
In 7th grade Social Studies, students are beginning to learn about the Crusades.
This is a very exciting time in 7th grade. We can take so much of what we have
already learned in class this year and apply it to the Crusades. Since the Crusades
are a series of events in history, which witness the clash of some of histories
greatest cultures, we can see how different ideologies come into conflict with each
other. I am looking forward to helping 7th grade students understand how culture
clashes shaped the world we live in today.
In 8th grade, students are studying the Civil War. We have two major themes at
the time of this publication; one is learning how the Civil War evolved and how it
was won. Secondly, students are working on their research papers. The research
paper is a students’ attempt to demonstrate their knowledge of a topic pertaining
to the Civil War and his/her ability to support a thesis of their choosing through
research and written dialogue.
Sixth Grade News – Mr. Kernan
In Language Arts class, students will be reading many interesting stories in the
coming weeks. Our new unit asks the key question, “What are resources and why
are they important to us?” Throughout this unit we will discuss how different
generations can be resources to others, how we decide the value of different
resources, and eco-friendly resources. We have also been busy fine-tuning editing
and revising and reading comprehension skills in preparation for the Smarter
Balanced Test.
In planning for the Smarter Balanced Test, grade six has been reviewing many
math concepts. Soon, students will construct stem and leaf plots centered on a
question of their choosing. I hope that these projects will create many interesting
results! We will continue to discuss fractions, mixed numbers and decimals.
Students will be able to interpret and compute quotients of fractions, and solve
word problems involving division of fractions using different methods such as
visual fraction models and equations to represent the problem.
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March 2017
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Physical Education – Ms. Tedisky
Unfortunately, Global Play Day (February 1st) was shortened due to a 2-hour snow
delay. The classes that did participate in the P.E. version certainly had a terrific
time! All students were allowed to choose any piece of equipment from my office,
which could be used the entire class or put in the “trade zone”. At one point,
basketballs, yarn balls, a football, beach balls and a birdie were flying
simultaneously during the 6th Grade class. Others preferred hula hoops; one
student was able to control 5 at once! Jenga, card games, coloring and Chutes and
Ladders were other activities various grades enjoyed. Not surprisingly, many
younger students chose scooters!
6th Grade Health
The Family Life unit is progressing nicely. The students recently read and
completed a handout on the article, “A Survival Guide to Your Body Right Now!”
Choices magazine (February 2017) described the various emotional, social and
physical changes your child is experiencing, due to puberty and hormonal changes.
Close-reading questions included, “What triggers the start of puberty?” and, ”Why
does your skin break out during puberty?”. A critical-thinking question was,
“Puberty starts at a wide range of ages. How do you think someone would feel if
they were at the early or late end?”. Many thoughtful and thorough responses
were written. A video entitled Kids to Kids: Talking About Puberty was presented.
In our discussion after the video, the students were very mature and vocal about
their opinions. I doubt that we’ll need the question box that was described in the
last newsletter!
8th Grade Health
There is an exciting new program offered to our 8th Grade students! Jeannine
Spink, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), President and EMS Captain of
the Eastford Fire Department, will be conducting CPR certification classes.
Assisting will be Lexi Lathrop, an E.E.S. graduate, who is a junior member as a
firefighter and Emergency Medical Responder (EMR). There will be serious study
and hands on skill practice to be certified, as well as mandatory attendance. We
feel the students are certainly are old enough to be conscientious about these
classes. Content of the class will include: Hands Only CPR/CPR for
Infants/Children/Adults, Defibrillation for C/A, Heimlich Maneuver conscious to
unconscious for I/C/A, and Rescue Breathing for I/C/A. In addition, Basic First Aid
/ Environmental Emergencies / Illnesses for all ages. The proper way to recognize
an emergency and call "911" via a land telephone line and cell phone will also be
presented.
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March 2017
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Social Worker - Mrs. Bergin
Invitation to Parents:
We are excited to invite all parents to join us on March 21, 2017, at 6:00 PM for a
presentation on Internet Safety. This timely topic will provide important
information for keeping children safer and give parents the opportunity to ask
questions. Our Presenter is Mr. Jason Allen, a Technology Specialist, who provides
Eastford Elementary with support and information. Mr. Allen, as a parent, also
has tips for protecting children’s access from unwanted sites and information.
Supervised activities will be available during the presentation for children.
Please watch for flyer being sent home soon so that you can reserve your seat for
this very important opportunity!
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March 2017
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Parents: please join us!
Tuesday March 21, 2017
INTERNET SAFETY
With Jason Allen, Technology Consultant
You will have the opportunity to learn more
about the ever-changing technology and social
media areas. Ask questions! Learn important and
timely information.
PRESENTATION BEGINS AT 6:00 pm
Dinner, children’s workshops, and childcare are
also available.
Please complete attached form and return by
3/17.
===============================================
=
INTERNET SAFETY
Family Name:
# Attending:
# for Dinner:
# for Childcare:
# Children’s Workshop
(Grinder, Chips, Beverage, Cookies available.
$10 per family).
Children’s Workshop Options: (choose one per
child for K-8 students)
Board Games
Decorate Bookmarks / Cards
Magic Tricks
Construct a Village
Magnets / Electricity
Creative Writing / Drawing
Origami
Legos
Container Garden
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Yearbooks
Includes PK through Grade 8
students and staff
$10
Cash or check payable to EES
Order forms due to
Mrs. Lessard by
Tuesday, March 28th
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Order Form
Student Name: __________________________________
Grade: _____
Number of Yearbooks: ______
Amount enclosed: $_____
Yearbooks will be passed out the last week of school.
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