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November 30, 2010 Herricks UFSD

KindergartenOn Wednesday, November 3rd and Tuesday, November 9th, the kindergarten classes took their annual trip to Christopher Morley Park to extend their ongoing unit in science on plants.  Each child was given a leaf template as a guide and was instructed to find and collect five different kinds of leaves.  Each child identified and collected an oak, maple, sweet gum, birch and tulip leaf.  On the nature walk, the children used their senses (another kindergarten science unit) to become aware of the variety of wildlife and plants, and the signs of the changing season.  At the beginning of this trip, the children were given an opportunity to peek into the

home of the famous author, Christopher Morley.

The trip ended with a snack and a chance to play in the new and improved playground.  Thank you to all of the parents who came on this trip and assisted the children and the teachers. 

Searingtown Happenings

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First GradeThe month of November was especially exciting for the first graders, as their families

were able to join them in the classroom for several fun activities.  During American Education Month, Ms. Kohart and Ms. Morin’s classes hosted publishing parties to show off their final pieces of personal narrative writing.  The students bedazzled their parents with a self narrated photostory of their finished small moments.  The students work every day in writing workshop to learn different crafts of writing as well as techniques to revise and edit their pieces.

                In Mrs. Hess and Mrs. Recinos’ classes the students invited their families in to share in a traditional Thanksgiving feast.  During their parent’s visit the students

preformed a play showing their knowledge of this special American holiday.  The students were especially excited to show off their costumes and share just how thankful they are for their families and friends.

            Our growing readers and writers turned their focus to characters.  In reading students learned the reasons good readers pay attention the way their characters feel, the things they say, the actions the do and the way authors use various traits to describe the people and animals in their stories.  The students transferred this knowledge to their writing as they composed realistic fiction pieces.  These stories were especially fun as students let their imaginations run wild,

creating characters of their very own to write stories about.

            Overall, November was a fun and exciting month!  We hope everyone has a wonderful start to the holiday season!

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Searingtown's Second Graders have had a very busy November! Learning about multisyllabic words, trick words, suffixes, basewords, compound words, vowel teams, glued sounds, digraphs, and words of the day during our daily Fundations lessons has been incredible. Implementing the Columbia University Teachers College Reading and Writing Project curriculum, the second graders have been writing Small Moments. Studying our mentor author, Kevin Henkes' writing style, has made the children's personal narratives even better by adding dialogue, figurative language, and detailed, descriptive language. After peer/teacher conferencing, revising, editing and finally, publishing, an author’s celebration was enjoyed by all. Mathematically speaking, the students learned place value to 100 by counting using tens and ones, number words, comparing numbers, skip counting on the hundred chart, even and odd numbers, and ordinal numbers through twentieth. They also learned to count money by using pennies, nickels, dimes,

quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins. Problem-solving strategies, skills, and applications are being incorporated into the daily lessons too. Through experimentation, our second grade scientists continue to observe the changes between liquids, solids and gases with the Interactions Unit. Learning about Election Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving made our social studies lessons very informative. Nutrition was the perfect topic for our Health lessons. In addition, Mrs. Finkelstein, our social worker,

has been teaching the B.A.B.E.S. Program to all the second graders. B.A.B.E.S. stands for: Beginning Alcohol Basic Education Services. Some of the vocabulary words

that the second graders have learned are: alcohol, myths, recovering, decision-making, and peer pressure. Having the parents visit the classrooms during American Education Month was very special too.

Second Grade

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Third grade

This month the Third Grade classes were lucky enough to enjoy time at school with a parent or special person. Each class took part in a different activity to share with their loved one. Mrs. Nielsen’s Class continued their exploration of the United States by reading the book Scrambled States of America and creating United States “Creatures” by cutting out some of the states and organizing them in a way that created a dog, a train, and even a peace sign. Mrs. Soriento and Mrs. Grogan’s class will take part in a nutrition lesson and really showed their loved ones their ability to make healthy choices. Mrs. Corgan’s class celebrated their wonderful Personal Narratives by sharing their hard work with a Writer’s Celebration- Great Job Writers! Mr. Fran and Mrs. Irish’s class took part in a special Math and Science lesson. Mrs. Smythe’s class built Thankfulness Trees with their parents. These trees were sent home to decorate their homes during the holiday season. As you can tell, the third grade is a spectacular place- filled with a variety of learning adventures.

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Fourth Grade

Fourth Graders had a lot to be thankful for in November. For one, students had the opportunity to meet with author Nancy Ellis Horowitz who shared with them her love of writing and her inspiration for her wonderful stories. Secondly, students were captivated by the performance of “Virtually Me” sponsored by our generous PTA. Then, on “Mix-it-Up Day” fourth graders had a great time meeting new friends while they searched for hidden treasures on the playground during recess. American Education Week also took place in November and parents, friends and family members came to visit students in their classrooms to see all of the exciting learning that is taking place.

Lately, you may have noticed that Fourth Graders seem to be more awake

these days. In fact, they are! They’ve learned that good writers need to live “wide-awake” lives. They’ve been quite busy filling their writers’ notebooks with all of their observations and ideas; and are well on their way to writing some wonderful personal essays.

In Science, the crayfish will soon be leaving the fourth grade classrooms. The students really enjoyed this exciting unit on crustaceans as they studied their body parts and functions, observed their behavior and conducted humane experiments. Let’s just say, if you’re looking for a crayfish expert-you just have to find a Searingtown fourth grader!

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Fifth

Grade

This month all our fifth graders had the opportunity to mix it up and cooperate with all new friends during a special scavenger hunt during lunchtime, and during our trip to Brookville.

After lunch all students were divided into different color teams. They were then able to share some fun times with classmates they may not have previously worked

with. There was even an Aqua team! On the 9th, this spirit of cooperation was continued, as we went on our first field trip to Brookville for their Outdoor and Environmental Education Program. This program is divided into two specific themes: Survival Skills and Project Adventure. During both themes the children must work as a cooperative group to reach their goal. Sometimes this may mean

building a quick lean-to and other times it can mean how to get your whole group from one island to another without losing anyone in your group to the “dangerous waters” below.

Besides being a fantastic learning opportunity, the smiles, laughs and sense of accomplishment the children had was priceless!

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ART STUDIO

Just imagine!  Twenty students from Searingtown were selected to have their work exhibited in our local Barnes and Noble Bookstore!

I hope you were able to join the fun this weekend and support the Barnes and Noble Book Fair and Exhibit in the Manhasset Store, December 3rd - 5th.

Proceeds from the Book Fair will benefit our district's visual arts programs.

The landscape on this page is one of the pieces on display. Follow the link to my blog for more information and for a virtual gallery http://bit.ly/hs7BZ3 of the work of our 20 wonderful artists. Congratulations!

Our awesome music band, orchestra and chorus deserve only the best when it comes to their program covers. The amazing images on their programs this season are from fourth graders in Mis Benzoni's and Mr. Dugger/Thomas's classes! You can see one of the branching trees  designs

here. Copy and paste this link http://bit.ly/fDPMLA into your browser to find the Page on "Fresh art from the Studio", where they are displayed!

I have also a list of great Museums with children and family programs all year round in the NY metropolitan area.  You will find it quite handy for the holidays when you would like to do something different together. You can get to this page on the "Fresh art from the studio" blog by using this link!  http://searingtownartstudio.edublogs.org/child-friendly-museums

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LibraryKindergarten and first grade students enjoyed

listening to Thanksgiving stories, including I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, The Perfect Thanksgiving and ‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving and enjoyed many Thanksgiving-related activities on the Smartboard.

Second graders wrote a “sense poem” after listening to Cynthia Rylant’s wonderful book, In November. We also learned about why leaves change color in autumn.

Third grade was busy in the computer lab, learning to use our online encyclopedia subscriptions - Grolier and Worldbook. Did you know that you can access these databases from home? Ask your child about it or send Mrs. Kliegman an email to get the username and passwords.

Fourth and fifth graders have learned how to share and collaborate using Google Docs - an online app that we have just introduced to our research classes. Mrs. Benzoni’s, Ms. Alexander’s, and Mr. Dugger’s classes are using Google Docs for their Iroquois Research Project, On the Trail of The First People, while Mrs. Livingston’s and Mrs.

Redito’s classes will use Google Docs to work in teams on our Picturing America Project. The library received a grant from the National Endowment of Humanities and received a set of beautiful prints of incredible artwork depicting scenes from American history. The prints are hanging up in our hallway, please look at them when you are visiting our school!

The library also hosted author Nancy Ellis Horowitz in November. Fourth graders were thrilled to meet this former

Searingtown student-now author!

Mrs. Kliegman also met with parents in November to talk about Internet Safety, Cyberbullying and Digital Citizenship at the PTA’s “Coffee With the Principal” in November. If you missed it, check our “Parent Space” on the Herricks Virtual Library Site, available off the Searingtown homepage. There are many links there to learn about this very important subject.

Our online catalog, Destiny, allows us to collect statistics - the images below show the top ten search terms students use on Destiny and the top ten most circulated books. FYI, Diary of a Wimpy Kid has the been the highest circulated book in our library for 2 years straight!

Congratulations to Mrs. Bambrick’s class for winning the Library Shelf Elf Award!

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MusicSearingtown School’s young musicians are working hard to prepare for the Winter Concerts. We hope you will join us to see our Band, Orchestra and Choruses perform. Here are the dates and times of our concerts:

Wednesday, December 8, 2010 9:00 AM – The 4th and 5th Grade Band9:30 AM – The 4th Grade Chorus

Wednesday, December 15, 20109:00 AM – The 4th and 5th Grade Orchestra9:30 AM – The 5th Grade Chorus

In order to be admitted to the performances you will be required to present a ticket. Tickets and ticket information will be sent home one week prior to the concert.

CONCERTS WILL BE BROADCASTED LIVE ON uSTREAM ON 12/8/10

On Wednesday, December 8th, Searingtown School will broadcast the Band and 4th grade Chorus concerts for you to view from your computer. Band will start around 9am EST and 4th grade Chorus will begin around 9:30am EST.

This is a live broadcast using the free uStream.tv website, which means that it will only be available during the concert. We see this as a wonderful opportunity for those parents, family members and friends who cannot attend, to still watch the performance as it is happening.

In order to create a secure broadcast, the web page you will view the concert on will request a password once the feed begins. Please email Mrs. Forte, our Technology Integration Facilitator, using the email account to which you will want the web address for viewing and password sent.