CSA’S Corner: A Message from Dr. Maranzano October 14, 2016

LEBANON BOROUGH SCHOOL“Where great things are happening”

Wildcat Broadcast

Lebanon Borough Families,

Fall is in full swing at Lebanon Borough School! The onset of fall weather has everyone excited about this beautiful time of year and all the glory that nature has to offer us. Our Walking School Bus event last week was well attended with about 30% of our children participating. Parents, grandparents, faculty, and the State Police all made it possible for us to have a very safe walk through town. All of the grade levels at our school are working hard to reach their academic objectives. Even though it is early in the school year our teachers are pushing the children to high expectations. This past Monday our faculty participated in a full day professional workshop titled “High Yield Instructional Strategies” designed to extend our understanding of highly effective teaching practices. The PTA met this week and I presented them with an overview of our PARCC test scores. Lebanon Borough met or exceeded the New Jersey State average scores in thirteen of sixteen areas, and did so nationally in fifteen or sixteen tested areas. This reaffirms the progress we are making in our mathematics and English Language Arts studies. Students are participating in physical education classes, enrichment classes, music classes and art classes. Student artwork is on display in my office and will soon be seen in other areas of the school. All of the children are increasing their technological skills and knowledge thanks to the IPads and advanced lessons at all grade levels. The world our children enter as adults will require thorough knowledge in technology, and we are preparing them to be self-directed learners so they can meet the challenges ahead. I am proud of our teachers and students for embracing new technologies such as the Google Classroom initiative and know that the activities our children are experiencing will serve them very well as they progress through school.

Regards,Dr. M

MAIN OFFICE MEMOTO: LBS FAMILIES FROM: MRS. DRISCOLLHere we go! We have many upcoming events. Pumpkin carving is Friday October 21st at 6:30, Pizza Hot Lunch is Wednesday October 26th, the Tricky Tray is November 18th, and the Holiday Concert is Thursday December 15th. Don’t forget to sign up for conferences November 7th, 8th, and 9th. Before we know it the holidays are going to be here!!

Regards,Mrs. Driscoll

NURSE’S NEWS:

Bully-Free Zone: For the month of October the staff and students focus on themes of RESPECT. Anti-violence awareness week begins Oct. 17th and Red Ribbon week begins Oct. 24th. For more information consider these websites: 

www.stopbullying.gov

www.imdrugfree.com

www.kidshealth.org

Nurse’s News: Oct. 29th is National DEA Prescription Drug Take Back Day. You can take your unused medications to;Readington Township Police Dept. from 10am- 2pm. 507 Rt. 523 Whitehouse Station or

The Hunterdon County Justice Center M-F, 8:30am-4:30pm 65 Park Avenue Flemington

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for more info go to:www.nationalbreastcancer.org

www.komen.org

Mrs. K

PTA News:Pizza Hot Lunch is Wednesday October 26th . Flyers will be forth coming!Volunteers for the Tricky Tray, November 18th are needed.

STUDENT COUNCIL

Congratulations to our new Student Council leaders. Let’s make it a great year!

Yankee Candle orders are due Wednesday, November 2. Thank you for your support!

Mrs. Dulovich & Mrs. Sarnoski

LEBANON BOROUGH SCHOOLClassroom News

PRE-SCHOOL : This week in Pre-School….

In preschool we have been learning the letters C and D. The themes have been family and fire safety.  In the early birds we played a family matching game, colored and read family mini books. We made C’s out of cotton balls and dotted our D’s. We made cloud play dough as a class in speech and OT group. We talked about how the dough felt with Mrs. Culcasi and Mrs. S helped us mix it. For fire safety week we watched a video and did a sort on what was hot and what was not. We have also been watching fire truck themed colors and counting videos. We introduced the number one this week. In the late birds we build our families with printed out outlines of people.  We learned how to play memory with numbers, and practiced writing out letters, numbers, names and shapes in shaving cream on the table.  We made cloud dough as a class and have been able to play with it in our sensory table during playtime.  While making the cloud dough Mrs. Culcasi, our speech teacher, was helping the students engage in conversations about the dough we were making.  During fire safety the students watched a video on what to do when they hear the fire alarm and another video on fire trucks.  I brought in some fire gear (boots, helmet, 2 hoses) for the students to play with.  

Ms. Anderson & Ms. Snedeker

KINDERGARTEN:This week in Kindergarten we covered….We have been busy listening and identifying rhyming sounds and beginning/ending sounds of words. We have also been practicing pounding; tapping and writing down the sounds we know to spell words. The children are great at recognizing if a story is realistic fiction, animal fantasy, or fantasy the three genres we have discussed so far!  We have also been learning the parts of story-identifying characters, setting and sequencing events and parts of a book-front cover, title page, author and illustrator.  In Math, we have been learning how to write the numbers 6-9 in words, numerals, and pictures. This month, as a school, we have been focusing on RESPECT.  We have read various books dealing with this topic and discuss how to be respectful in school, at home, and in our community.  This week we also learned about Christopher Columbus in honor of Columbus Day.  The class decided they would not want to be on one of his ships for 70 days, even if they would find the New World!

FIRST GRADE:It was a short but busy week in First Grade. Our story, “Get the Egg” helped us talk about the animals we see in our neighborhood. We learned that people can help animals in many ways, but that we always need to be careful if they are not tame. In phonics, we are starting to break apart words into short syllables in order to read longer words. We learned about open and closed syllables and tried to break them apart using rules about vowels and consonants. First Graders have now finished two tough math chapters on tens and ones – and we are doing a great job on it! We are almost finished with our science unit on how scientists use tools and will start learning about the planets and the universe next.

This week in first grade has been….

Mrs. Petty

SECOND GRADE:This week in second grade…

We released all of our butterflies, so that they could begin their migration south. The students seemed to really enjoy raising the butterflies. Currently in science we are studying the animal kingdom.

In reading the class is learning about dessert plants and animals. The students began reading non-fiction texts about the Saguaro cactus and how animals survive in the harsh dessert environment. In writing the students wrote a brief report about their neighborhood environment.

In math we are working on reading and writing 3-digit numbers. We also learned how to write the number 1,000. We are working on place value and counting up and down by tens and hundreds. In social studies we are learning about our government leaders. We are also learning about the voting process.

~Mrs. Adamaitis~

THIRD GRADE:In third grade….Third Grade continues to be enthusiastic about reading and working with the Seniors at the Community Day-Center.  We have the unique opportunity to participate in reading activities involving singing patriotic songs we learn as text, and then sharing with small “theatrical presentations.”  Students get very involved with developing scripts, performing in small groups, and enjoy using voice and body language in new ways to portray characters from texts. Through these activities students have the opportunity to develop fluency and further enhance comprehension. This week we also made beautiful leaf projects aligned with sensory poems from a class nature walk. Observing nature helped us identify and use our senses. In math we have learned all about collecting and showing data through multiple graph styles. In science we are learning to be scientists by investigating questions and planning experiments that help us collect data to support strong conclusions. 

~Mrs. Corradi~

FOURTH GRADE:This week in fourth grade….Fourth grade has been really busy! Time is flying by!!

We have just finished reading the wonderful novel, Mr. Popper's Penguins. The students enjoyed it so much and were surprised at how much they did! We talked about how you really can't "judge a book by its cover". The vocabulary, idioms, similes, metaphors, old-fashioned language, and inferences in this novel helped us practice using context clues to determine unknown words. We also have become well practiced at looking up words with a dictionary and determine which meaning to use. Through the novel, we were also able to practice using more diverse dialogue tags and starting a new paragraph when a new speaker talks. Lastly, we were able to compare the movie to the novel and discuss why the moviemakers made the changes they did. What fun!

In Math, we are multiplying by 2 and 3 digit numbers. Students will be learning a variety of strategies. After teaching the strategies, I tell the students that they can choose which method they are most comfortable with. So far, as we master the strategies in Chapter 2, the students are finding it fun and are feeling super successful!

In Science, we have learned all about the Scientific Method. We have new vocabulary that we will begin studying next week. We have conducted two inquiries or experiments and are getting very skilled at following and using the Scientific Method. Ask your student about the gummy bear experiment - our hypotheses were right on!

FIFTH GRADE:This week in fifth grade….Here at LBS, we use the whole month of October to highlight “respect” as one of our Six Pillars of Character Education. The state of New Jersey designates the first week of October as a statewide “Week of Respect”, so that is always a nice “kick-off” to our month-long celebration of this trait. In 5th grade, we analyzed quotations, worked in groups to categorize various statements as “respectful” or “disrespectful”, and wrote a 5-paragraph essay explaining what respect is, how it can be demonstrated at home, at work, and at play, and why showing respect is important. Your child’s essay is in their Google Docs and accessible to them from any computer, so you might want to check out your child’s writing! We also read a very enjoyable book called, Enemy Pie, which has a wonderful message about how to turn an enemy into a friend. In Reading, we completed Unit 1, and took a Unit 1 Benchmark Assessment today. During this shortened week, while working on unit review skills, we also began reading a class novel, Bunnicula. This is a wonderfully enjoyable (non-scary) book about a bunny that is suspected of sneaking out of his cage at night and sucking the juice out of vegetables, leaving them stark white in the morning! While the book is fun and fantasy, there are quite a few challenging vocabulary words to learn, and also some interesting literary elements and techniques to study: personification, first-person narrative, flashback, and figurative language to name a few! In Math, we finished up Chapter 2 on division with 1 and 2 digit divisors and will be taking our chapter assessment next week. After that we will delve in to decimals in Chapter 3. In Social Studies, we learned about what many believe to be the most significant development in the history of humankind---farming. Though humans and earlier hominids existed for millions of years as hunter-gatherers, it is only in the past 10,000 years that humans developed the ability to cultivate crops and domesticate animals, allowing them to live in permanent settlements rather than leading a nomadic existence.

~Mrs. Gamberzky~

SIXTH GRADE:Hello Parents!Reading- Last week we learned about the Rainforest and how humans have been impacting the environment. This week we read a story called Hachiko and we also watched the movie Hachi (short for Hachiko). It was a sad story but we enjoyed reading it and watching the film. Math- Students have been doing great since we started fractions. They have been converting decimals into fractions. We have also learned how to multiply fractions.Science- Students finished up Learning about Matter. We enjoyed playing science vocabulary games like online crossword and wordsearch. If students have not handed in a current event project please make sure they do so!

Thank you!

~Mrs. Gibbs

SPECIAL AREA TEACHER UPDATE(S)

SUPPLEMENTAL SUPPORT SERVICES-

Students have been so busy using logical thinking, problem-solving, and team-working skills in Enrichment, Technology, and A.T.!!

In Enrichment, we continue to work on coding skills – they have learned and used the concepts of sequencing, looping, conditions (if…then), and de-bugging (finding a mistake and fixing it). I often have them working in pairs or small groups to share ideas and work cooperatively. The younger students have been using the app Kodeable, while the older students have been creating their own puzzles in National Geographic Puzzle Explorer (Yucatan and Nile River environments).

In Technology, I enrolled 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in a vocabulary enrichment website called Membean.com. They all signed up, took a pre-test, and began working on the vocabulary pages. It’s an independent activity, which uses many different methods for learning and remembering new vocabulary words and their meanings, as well as word parts. Besides being a great educational tool, the students are all really enjoying this site! We will continue to use it all year. We also used the apps Typing Fun (and practiced typing sight words), Choiceworks Calendar (to make a calendar page for October and our weekly specials schedule), and Murky Reef (which combines science, math, and reading). Kindergarten used a Kindergarten Learning Activities for Fall app, first grade used a grid to place stickers (learning the words grid and coordinates), and PreK used various apps for learning the letters of the alphabet and sounds they make + beginning writing skills.

In A.T., we signed up for Words with Friends EDU (a classroom version of the popular game), which is another way to practice word definitions and increase vocabulary. We created classes and began testing it out within the small A.T. classes. Now that we have it ironed out, we will sign up all students in grades 3-6. They are limited to having games between members of their own class, so no need to worry about the safety of being online with a stranger!

I continue to enjoy working with students in all grades either in-class or in small groups in my room. The needs of the classes might vary by subject, as well as day-to-day, but I’m always available to work with teachers as well as students to help everyone reach his/her potential!

Mrs. Turner

HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATIONThis week during Physical Education/Health Class…..Grades K-2 have been working on throwing/catching, and kicking/passing. Grades 3-6 are continuing their soccer unit. Students have been working on the fundamentals of passing, dribbling, and the give and go. In Health students have been learning about Respect, and Fire Prevention. Reminder Intramurals have started; if you are still interested in joining please send back the Intramural Form found on the school website. Check my webpage for any updates or change in the Intramural schedule. 

~Mrs. Zanet~

MUSICMusic Notes from Mrs. Thompson The Winter concert is scheduled for Thursday December 15th at 7:00pm. The concert will include the 5th and 6th grade band followed by an all school musical revue entitled “Once On A Housetop”. The theme of the show features chimney sweeps, who will be hired to clean the neighborhood chimneys. While doing their jobs of cleaning the chimneys in the neighborhood, they will learn about many of the holidays that are celebrated in December. Each week, the students will learn songs and dances to that will be performed in this show. The students in 5th and 6th grade will need their instruments Every Monday and Friday. The band will rehearse on Monday afternoons and lessons will be held on Fridays. The students in the 4th grade are off to a good start with learning their new instruments. Their lessons will be every Friday. Anyone who still needs help with obtaining an instrument, please feel free to contact me dthompson@lebanonschool.org so that I can answer any questions you may have about the instrument rental programs available. Please encourage your child to practice about 20 minutes per day. Practicing at home is necessary for success in playing a musical instrument. Also, please remind your child to bring his/her instruments to school each week.

ARTSUCH TALENT at LBS….!

Please check out Mrs. Koop’s web page for regular updates!

~Mrs. Koop~