Monteith Elementary School 1275 Cook Rd.,

Grosse Pointe Woods, MI 48236

313-432-4500 313-432-4501 attendance

Shelley Keelean, Principal

Monteith Messenger Monteith Pledge

I will be respectful and kind to others.

I will practice responsibility.

I will always be safe.

Today I will DO my best to BE my best.

Kindness Matters

March 4, 2016

Dear Monteith Families,

March is a very exciting month of the year because we get to celebrate one of my favorite things to do… READ! Every day in school we celebrate the joy and enthusiasm of our young readers with the crea-tive ideas brought to the classroom by our teachers. This month we will have a few special activities to share the joy of reading. This week we had National Junior Honor Society members from Parcells come to read with us. Next week we will all start reading our One School One Book The Chocolate Touch by Pat-rick Skene Catling. Our Book Fair will be held the week of March 14th and PTO will be hosting a family event Milk and Bookies on March 16th! We would love to see all our families at the event. On the next pag-es of the newsletter you will find other great ways to incorporate reading activities into your everyday life at home.

Staying on the theme of reading I want to share with you a quote from one of my favorite authors

Roald Dahl, he states “If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sun beams and you will always look lovely.” I believe this to be very true especially when it comes our ever changing world of edu-cation. Sometimes it is very easy to get caught up in things that are not going right and we miss out on all the things that are going really well in our own school and community. A few kind and thoughtful phone calls and emails from some of our parents brought this to my attention. So I would like to take this oppor-tunity to share with you just a few of the many great things that are happening at our school and please feel free to share the good things with others: -During The Great Kindness Challenge week our students and families raised $1,248 to help with the Flint water crisis. Our Student Council also announced that they will be sponsoring the building a Buddy Bench for our playground. -If you don’t know each morning Mrs. Hartman and our fifth graders create video announcements every morning that you can view on our Monteith homepage. -Mrs. Frederick and our wonderful students participated in the Nationwide Event Jump Rope for Heart which benefits The American Heart Association and promotes a healthy heart! -Our Diversity Committee & PTO sponsored a wonderful event called Dancing Around the World that cel-ebrated different cultures and communities. -My family is excited to share with our Monteith family that coming this July we will be going from a fami-ly of three to four. George is very excited to be a big brother! Sincerely, Shelleyann Keelean

“ You get back what you give…so give kindness!”

Upcoming Dates for 2015-2016

March

4 3rd Grades to Detroit Historical Society 12:30pm

4 PTO Ladies Night Out 6:30-9:00pm Monteith Gym

8 Primary Election Day

9 Kick-off to One School One Book

15 AM School Only Dismissal 11:36am

14-18 PTO Book Fair

16 Green Bagel Day

16 Milk and Bookies & Book Fair Family Night

24 Report Cards Home

25-April 3 Spring Break

April

4 Classes Resume

7 Art Show 6:00-7:30pm

12-15 5th Grade M-Step Testing

13 Rizzo Recycling Presentations to Classrooms

13 Evening Parent-Teacher Conferences 5:00-8:00pm

14 No School Parent-Teacher Conferences 8:30am-8:00pm

18-May 27 NWEA Testing All Grades K-5

19-21 5th Grade M-Step Testing

20 Garden Club Visits 1st Grades 9:00am

21 Spring Concert at Brownell 7:00pm Grades K, 2, 4, and Choir

25 Tree Commission to Meet with 3rd Grades 10:10am

26-27 Grade 3 M-Step Testing

29 Instrumental Concert for Students 9:00am

May

3-4 Grade 3 M-Step Testing

3 Instrumental Concert 7:00pm at Monteith

4 Mrs. Allemon’s & Mrs. Liagre’s Class to Play at GPN

10 Transition to Kindergarten 11:00am-5:00pm

10-11 Grade 4 M-Step Testing

11 Kindergartens to Real Life Farm

13 PTO Family Walk-a-Thon 4:00-8:00pm

17-19 Grade 4 M-Step Testing

25 Speech Luncheon 11:36am

20 AM School Only Dismissal 11:36am

30 Memorial Day No School

31 Instrumental Teachers Meet with 4th Grades

June

1 All School Field Day

3 Field Day Rain Date

Service and Safety of the Month

Julia L. & Alana W. are the Service Members for the month of February. Lochlan K. & Ava H. are the Safety Members for the month of February. Thank you for your hard work to make Monteith a safe and great school.

Spring Vocal Music Concert

The Spring Vocal Music Concert will be Thursday, April 21, at 7:00 pm in the Brownell Middle School Auditorium. The grades performing are Kin-dergarten, 2nd grade, 4th grade and the 4/5 Choir. Children are requested to wear their Spring best dress clothes.

Green Team News: Thank you Monteith students, staff, and families for helping to earn our 8

th Michigan Green Schools rating – 4

th time as Evergreen – the highest rating! A special

thank you to Colleen Hughes for the many items she recycles for us, as well as getting our Friendship Garden going, and Kate Barr who organizes our Litter Critters! Green Team Reminder..Please go lights out March 19, 8:30pm-9:30pm to help celebrate the global event EARTHHOUR. http://www.earthhour.org/ Remember..IT IS EASY BEING GREEN, IF WE ALL WORK TOGETHER!

Absences

Please notify the OFFICE (313-432-4501) when your child is absent. If you send an email to the teacher, please include the office personnel: patti.kwiatkowski@gpschools.org Thank you for your cooperation.

Kick-off event for

The Chocolate Touch

March 9 at

The Chocolate Bar Cafe

ONE SCHOOL ONE BOOK

In conjunction with Monteith’s One School One Book celebration, The Chocolate Bar Café has invited Monteith families to their café on Wednesday, March 9, from 4:00-9:00pm to enjoy chocolate. The Chocolate Bar Café in on Mack Ave. just north of Vernier. They have chocolate candies, cupcakes, ice cream and many more delicious goodies for the choco-late lovers. The Café is sharing 10% of all of the sales that evening with our school. If you need goodies for holiday baskets, gifts, or just want to enjoy the goodies available, please stop by on March 9 and mention Monteith’s The Chocolate Touch celebration. We hope you and your family enjoys reading and discussing together The Chocolate Touch. We are looking forward to the many planned activities for this year’s One School One Book.

Request for Rocking Chair If you have a rocking chair that you would like to find a new home for, we have a class-room teacher whose rocking chair broke. Please contact the office at 313-432-4503 if you have a rocking chair you would like to donate to our ERC classroom.

Due to popularity, students MUST pre-order their green bagels in their classrooms on

Monday, March 14th or Tuesday, March 15th.

Green Bagels will be available in salt and plain flavors only.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16th, bagels will be delivered to students in their classrooms. Cost is 75¢ each and as always,

proceeds benefit the Physical Education Program as well as other special projects at Monteith.

You MUST pre-order your bagel.

Dear Monteith Parents,

Once again Monteith Elementary makes an outstanding contribution to the annual Jump Rope

for Heart fund raising campaign. The American Heart Association, along with elementary

physical education classes across the country, sponsor this event to benefit the vital research

and programs made possible by the American Heart Association.

Monteith’s students jumped, shot baskets and even danced a little the week of February 2nd

during physical education classes.

As always, the hard work and continued support from many, many parent volunteers are truly

the reason for its success. The Monteith community raised a total of $7164.00 for this worthy

cause in addition to reminding our students of the importance of leading healthy lifestyles.

Thank you parent volunteers for “jumping” right in and helping out.

Thank you Monteith parents and families that gave so generously.

Thank you Monteith students for your hard work.

AND………………………….

A special thank you to Denise McCloskey and Nikki Payne for doing all the accounting and

distribution of prizes!! I feel very fortunate to be a part of the Monteith community.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Gail Frederick

Physical Education

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION 2015-2016

News from

March 2016

Please enjoy this month’s educational, informational, and entertaining websites and apps—“digital picks” suggested by your Elementary School Media Specialists. We hope you find our

reviews helpful, and we welcome your comments and suggestions. Skybrary by Reading Rainbow iPad/ Kindle Fire./Free

This app offers a huge library of books and video field trips to encourage your child’s love of reading. After the free offer, you must subscribe. Voted one of the best apps for children by Common Sense Media.

Faces iMake—Right Brain Creativity iPad $2.99

This app encourages kids to be creative by creating faces using collage. Beautiful graphics with an easy interface for children to maneuver. Project Noah iPad /Free

News-2 -You

iPad/1.99By Assistiveware News-2-You is a weekly newspaper for beginning readers and special needs students. Students can connect to the news through symbol-supported news articles, puzzles, games and recipes. The news stories provides information on reader-friendly topics.

Volume 4, Issue 6

Digital Picks

Media Specialists

Danielle Gostomski Kerby, Mason, Richard

Amy Hermon Maire, Mason, Monteith, Poupard, Trombly

Sherry Martin Ferry, Mason, Poupard

Cheryl Quinlan Defer, Monteith

Rachel Walpole Richard, Trombly

From your School Library Media Specialists

Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife. It is a platform for aspir-ing citizen scientists to document our planet’s biodiversity. Students use the phone app to document wildlife.

Library News March is Reading Month and also the annual Bookmark Contest! Please look on the website for our Montieth contest winners. Students here at Monteith are great readers and we have lots of new books for them to pick from. Kin-dergarteners are learning about sea turtles, 1

st graders learned about the Chinese New Year

holiday, 2nd

graders are beginning a biography unit, 3rd

graders are Dictionary Detectives look-ing up words and meanings, 4

th graders are using different online databases to research about

our solar system, and 5th graders researched a famous African American person and created

interesting word clouds about them. Check out the bulletin board outside of the library! All in all, it’s been a busy month in the library. We look forward to the March Book Fair, too! Mrs. Quinlan, Library Media Specialist, Defer/Monteith

Grosse Pointe South’s ArtFest 2016 will be March 16-19. This annual event features art work

by 500 South students for display and purchase, and it attracts more than 2000 visitors from all over the Metro Detroit area, and beyond! Monies raised from a percentage of art sales and a raffle go di-rectly to support art programs and scholarships at South, so please join us in celebrating and support-ing our students’ talents! ArtFest is open Wednesday, March 16, 8 am – 4 pm and 5 – 8 pm; Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18, 8 am - 4 pm and 7 pm – 8 pm, and Saturday, March 20, 10 am – 2 pm. Purchases are available for pick up on Saturday only.