Mr. Ward’s Message:
For the week of December 19-23 it will be Holiday Spirit Week at Freetown Elementary School. There will be different themes for each day of the week. The holiday themes are below. Please know this is completely voluntary, students do not need to participate. Our hope is to bring some cheer and fun to the holiday season while still learning.
Monday, 12/19: Holiday Accessory Day - Students are invited to wear their best and most festive holiday accessories (headbands, hats, necklaces, earrings, ties, etc).
Tuesday, 12/20: Pajama Day - Students can wear their pajamas to school.
Wednesday, 12/21: Holiday Sock Day - Students may wear their favorite holiday socks!
Thursday, 12/22: Holiday Sweater Day - Students can wear their festive holiday sweaters/shirts to school.
Friday, 12/23: Red and Green Day - Students are invited to wear red and green or holiday colors to school.
Upcoming events:
December 21: Grade 3 Holiday Choral Concert beginning at 7:00 PM
December 23: Early Release Day for students. Breakfast and lunch will not be provided.
*Holiday Recess will begin at the close of school on Friday, December 23rd. School will resume again on Tuesday, January 3rd.*
PTO Corner:
The next PTO Meeting will take place on Monday, January 9th from 6:30 - 7:30 PM. The meeting will be both in-person and virtual.
FES PTO website is...https://freetownelementarypto.weebly.com/
Attendance Matters Weekly Update:
Goal: 94% of the FES student population will attend school daily.
The September average student daily attendance was 95%. Goal achieved!
The October average student daily attendance was 95%. Goal achieved!
The November average student daily attendance was 94%. Goal achieved!
Let’s keep that momentum going into the month of December.
December 5-9: 90%...Did not meet the goal!
December 12-16: 86%...Did not achieve our goal!
Grade Level Happenings from the Week of 12/12 - 12/16:
Preschool: This week in preschool, we continued learning about Kwanzaa. Students made Kinaras, Unity Cups, and Bendera Flags. We began discussing Christmas traditions, such as Santa and decorating Christmas trees. We continued our study of the letters Q and K. We also continued graphing food donations on our classroom Giving Graph.
Kindergarten: This week in Fundations our letters were x and y. Our high frequency word was “and”. Our comprehension strategy and skill were visualization and setting in a story. In math, we introduced the concept of addition. In our expository writing, we discussed capitalization and descriptive details.
Grade 1: This week in first grade we reviewed glued sounds -am and -an for unit 5 in FUNdations. We learned about biographies and rereading to understand. For writing we are continuing to work on writing complete sentences and responding to a text. The students are learning to use evidence from the text to support their answer. For math this week we began learning about teen numbers. In social studies we are learning about holidays around the world.
Grade 2: This week in second grade reading we worked on finding the topic and relevant supporting details. In Fundations we learned about combining open syllables with other syllable types to make multisyllabic words. In math we used strategies to add 3 or more 2-digit numbers with regrouping. In writing we finished up our Realistic Fiction writing. In science we talked about quick and slow changes to land.
Grade 3: This week in third grade we continued to read stories relating to people working together to make a government work. In math we learned how to multiply by multiples of ten. Students were also assessed on the skills that were learned in unit two of math. In social studies students read about the Puritans and John Winthrop and compared this group of people with the pilgrims. In writing, students are learning how to write an opinion piece with a few fun holiday prompts.
Art: Kindergarteners created adorable evergreen tree landscapes with simple shapes. Grade 1 continues to impress with their understanding of symmetry as they create their cut paper shape monsters. Grade 2 continued to work on their African mask cut paper collages. Grade 3 is having a wonderful experience as they make cut paper carolers in their own likeness! These will be hanging in the auditorium to decorate for the 3rd Grade Holiday concert next week! Click here to visit the virtual art room for art songs, games, books and more!
Physical Education: Students have been participating in directional relays which require listening, running, and laughter!
Music: This week, students K-3 have started the 5th week of their unit on improvising. Grade 3 will be improvising movements in Mama Lama, Grade 2 will explore improvising using mallet instruments. Grade 1 and Kindergarten will continue to improvise with arioso type songs.
Library: During library class this week in kindergarten and first grade, students explored the KidLit TV website and chose a book to listen to. Students in first grade responded to questions about the book they listened to on Seesaw. Second grade students learned how to use the world atlas on Britannica School Elementary. Students chose a country, looked at a summary of an article on it, looked at its profile and answered a few questions on Google Slides. Third grade students learned about Empathy by completing a number of tasks on the Flocabulary website.