“The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.”

-Elbert Hubbard

Dear Grand Oak Families,

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and is off to a great start of their New Year! I have been very impressed at how quickly the children have transitioned back to school during the short week. During my visits to the classrooms I have been very happy to see students that were focused, engaged and really working hard. Thank you to all of our families for quickly getting back in your routines to ensure our kids can be successful!

This week we were visited by a team from the Friday Institute to see how our classrooms worked and how our students learned. They are working on an article on personalized learning and they interviewed teachers, students and observed classrooms. They were very impressed with Grand Oak!

As we enter the 2nd half of our school year it continues to be important to keep school as the center of what we do. Please make sure your students have a consistent location to do their work and that you are holding them accountable for completing it accurately. When our children know that the school and home are working together they see the importance of their learning. Also think about taking the time (if you haven’t already) to come up with some individualized academic goals for your children. We talk about goal setting at school and it would be great for this to transition to the home as well. Try to get them to come up with the ideas with your guidance. Remind them that these are not “wishes” but goals to strive for. Once you have 1-2 goals right them down and work as a team/family to decide how you can meet them. As you create your plan make sure to have “checks” along the way to affirm great progress and build incentive toward reaching their goals. I know all of our OWLS CAN DO IT!

Have a warm weekend and take time to enjoy your kids and read a book.

Respectfully,

Mr. Giovanelli

I will be sharing information and ideas from a book entitled 180 Days of Manners by Forrest and Menger. Our focus will be on good manners and how they should be used in all that we do J:

1.  Good manners are kind and respectful actions toward others and yourself- Practice waiting and holding the door for older people to enter the room before you to show respect, use words like “please” and “thank you” with friends and adults, and listen patiently when teachers, parents and classmates are talking to them. What great ways to show manners and to respect for those around us!

2.  Hurtful teasing IS NOT good manners- Though we have all made this mistake at one time or another in our lives we must work hard not to. Talk to your children about always using kind words with peers, not joking about or hurting classmate’s feelings, or making fun of someone’s siblings of family. We must be a true community and to do that we must support each other each day J.

Parents Information:

v  As the weather continues to get colder make sure to send warm coats, gloves and hats for your children. We will continue to go outside on most days.

v  As the temperature gets colder, the number of car riders that we have each morning increases. Please try to drop your child off at the school between 7:45 and 8:05 each day. Our line gets increasingly congested during the last 10 minutes of arrival time. This extra time in the morning will be beneficial for your children and allow them to get off to a great start each day.

v  Just a reminder that there will be a ½ day of school on January 13th, no school on January 16th (holiday) and then again on the January 24th (teacher workday).

v  If we have any closings of school due to inclement weather we will post this information on our Facebook page and you will receive a phone message from CMS. In addition you will be able to access information from the CMS website and local news and radio outlets.