This Week at Winsor

Growth Mindset Assembly

This morning, our school came together for a town meeting. The focus of our meeting was the development of a Growth Mindset. If you recall, in our last update, information was sent to provide our community an understanding of what a Growth Mindset is. In short, practicing a Growth Mindset means students develop self-efficacy, understanding that through effort, grit, and persistence, all challenges can be overcome. This is an expectation that we have of all students, fostered and nurtured by our team of educators. This powerful tool presents the brain as a muscle, one that grows and changes through effort and hard work. At Winsor, we challenge our students to evolve and grow as students, staying with challenging academic tasks, even when the correct answer may not be immediately evident. Please ask your child or children about today's town meeting.

Keeping Up With Kindergarten

Dear families,

Even with the short week, we have been super busy in Kindergarten! In math, we continued to review our teen numbers. We have been practicing writing them and figuring out what teen number comes next.

Last week, Ms. Staruch’s class studied the ocean! Students were very excited to research the ocean. We used the internet to answer some research questions we did not find in our book. Did you know the Orca, also known as the Killer Whale, is at the top of the ocean food chain? Even though it is called the Killer Whale, it is actually a dolphin! This week we read some fiction stories about the ocean and wrote our very own fiction ocean story. We have become experts at making sure our stories include a beginning, middle, and end!

Last week in Mrs. Lakeway’s class, we focused on Fluency. We practiced being accurate readers with our pointer fingers, reading at the right speed, using expression, and paying close attention to punctuation. One of our favorite videos to watch is Blazer Fresh’s- Don’t Read Like a Robo! For writing, we finished up our narrative which was based on a certain season. This week we are reviewing all of our writing skills so we can be prepared for our assessments.

It was so great to see some of our Kindergarten students recognized for being respectful, responsible, and ready at today’s Student Recognition Assembly! We are always watching for students that display these character traits!

This week’s/Last week’s Sight Words: did, want, now, soon, jump, be

This week’s/Last week’s Fundations Letters: Y, Z (We now have finished all our lowercase and uppercase letters!)

Learning and Fun in Grade One!

“Love is in the air………”

Valentine’s Day brought cupid into our classrooms by having each child write a diamante poem about a member of their family. These poems used adjectives and verbs to describe the person they selected. Everyone enjoyed a Valentine craft or playing games with our room moms on Valentine’s Day (many thanks to the moms for all your help and support!). Other activities included Valentine word problems, math, mini booklet, etc.

In Fundations, we completed our unit on long vowels - words with vowel, consonant, silent e (as in hope, safe, Pete, pine, mule, and rule). Your child should be comfortable reading and writing these long vowel words. A fun game to practice at home could be “Add the magic e”. Start with a short vowel word – cap – add silent e = cape, etc. Trick words for this week were: friendother, and another. Our next unit will focus on consonant blends and digraph blends.

In math, our students continue to practice adding and subtracting using two-digit numbers with and without regrouping. We have noticed that this concept is challenging for some students, be sure to practice at home and always start in the ones place. This should be automatic. Practicing addition and subtraction flashcards up to 20 would benefit all students, not to mention, it will aid in math fluency.

With almost 50 degree weather this past week, it felt like Spring! Could Spring be just around the corner??? Keeping our fingers crossed. Have a great weekend and as always we thank you for your support and commitment to all we do in grade one.

What's New in Grade Two

You will never believe what our sensational second graders are working on!!!

Independently or with a partner, they researched an animal of their choice and used several sources to gather information.

They visited National Geographic for Kids, Epic books, Google, Just Fun Facts, and many informational books from our classroom libraries.

As they gathered information, they recorded facts on a graphic organizer with specific headings to organize their information.

With this, each partnership or individual created Google slides. Our super, smart students learned how to insert Google images, change the fonts, increase and decrease their words and pictures, add additional slides, use spell check, and more. At this stage, many people have already finalized their slides and have written out presentation notes on index cards. Next week, we will start our formal presentations!

We are so proud of their hard work and enthusiasm about their projects. Next week, is going to be amazing!!!

On another note, 'tis the season' for indoor recess!

If you have any "gently used" board games, card games, coloring books, markers, crayons, colored pencils, puzzles, word searches, etc. at home,

that you are willing to donate, we would greatly appreciate it! Also, if your second grader has trouble tying their shoes, please have them practice frequently. We have safety and sanitary concerns about dragging shoelaces.

As always, thank you for all you do at home!

THRILLS IN THIRD

Even though we’ve had a short week, our third graders have been busy learners in all areas. Our math focus this week has been tackling challenging multi-step word problems. We are noticing how our close reading skills are very important to use when working on these types of tasks. Students have had to determine which of the four operations they need to use, what information from the question they need as well as plan out their steps for solving the equation and writing a complete sentence answer that matches the question and the work they completed to solve it. To support this work, we have also tried some challenging but fun President’s Day logic and reasoning puzzles as well. In Social Studies and Writing we have been learning about President’s Day and researching some of our Founding Fathers. Students have done a great job using multiple research tools to find information and we will compile all of our work into report writing next week. We ended this short week with some very fun “Fluency Friday” activities in the gym. Ask your child all about them! Have a great weekend!

Learning More in Grade 4

We hope everyone enjoyed the extra time off this week!

Students have continued to work on their animal books. Most of them are creating their final copies. They have enjoyed this research project!

In math, we worked on a performance task that asked students to solve a real life math problem. We modeled one with them, and then they applied what they have learned in chapter six to solving a similar problem independently.

Magnets, magnets, and more magnets! Students continued to explore and read about how magnets work! They have learned about their poles and have begun to test how far a magnetic field can reach.

Even though it was a short week for us, we got a lot accomplished!

The Fabulous Five

Got PBL……

The fifth graders are very excited about their project based learning adventure! They have been introduced to their next PBL which is a cross curricular collaboration between math, health, and ELA. PBL is an instructional method where students collaborate, problem-solve, and “learn by doing.” The same skills learned through PBL are also many of the skills sought in the workforce today.The objective of this project is for students to create and run a taco truck business while applying math skills, nutrition, research, and design into a real-world situation. By the end of this project, the students will create a unique business based on their own ideas, imagination, and application of skills. It is wonderful to experience their creativity and observe them working cooperatively and diligently with their partners. We can’t wait to see their final products!

Winsor musicians are eagerly preparing for our Spring Music Concert! The students are so excited to present a fantastic night filled with music on Thursday, March 14th at the Smithfield High School auditorium. The first half begins at 5:30pm and features grades K, 1, and 2. There will be an intermission at 6:15, and the second half will begin at 6:30 featuring grades 5, 3, and 4. This concert is a wonderful opportunity for all students of William Winsor to come together and show family, friends, and the community what we have been working on in Music. Please also mark your calendar for this Tuesday, February 26th! Smithfield is presenting its first ever 5th Grade Recital Night at Smithfield High School from 6:00 – 7:00 pm. All four elementary schools are coming together to celebrate 5th grade musicians. Winsor is proud to feature Nicholas Tarro on the piano, so if you are free, please come to support this excellent musician! As always, please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns about these upcoming performances. 

Please be reminded that the surveyworks portal remains open. You can find the link below:

https://surveys.panoramaed.com/ride/login

You should have received our school code via email earlier today.

Thank you and have a wonderful weekend.