Open Door Food Pantry and EES third grade!

Our third grade students demonstrated our core value of caring today as they decorated bowls for the Open Door Food Pantry in Gloucester.  Please read about this wonderful fundraising event:

Empty Bowl Dinner 2014 Cruiseport Gloucester 6 Rowe Square Thursday, May 8 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Join us for an evening of food and hospitality. The meal is simple—soup, bread and a cookie. Guests can choose and keep a soup bowl handcrafted for this community event. The bowl goes home as an unspoken reminder that somewhere someone’s bowl is empty. Extra parking is available at Harbor Beach with complimentary trolley service to and from the event site. Tickets available at the door. $15 for adults and $10 for children under ten. Empty Bowl events are held nationally to generate awareness concerning hunger and to raise money for local hunger-relief programs. Proceeds from this event will benefit the Summer Meals andMobile Market programs. If you would like to make or donate bowls for this event, please contact us. Last year our attendance topped 1,000! If you would like information aboutcorporate sponsorship opportunities, please contact us.

Enrichment at EES! What a great day!!!

Hands on History (Denis Cormier) visited our 5th grade today.  The students were riveted as Mr. Cormier  went through the day to day life of a Minuteman and shared historical details that many of us never knew about this period in time.  Ask your students about this!  It was great.  Thank you to the 5th grade teachers and Kathy Goldman for arranging this!

What a special day!  Thank you to Beth Kelley and Finella Williams for arranging an inspiring visit from two members of the US olympic hockey team.  Alex Carpenter (forward) and Molly Schaus (goalie) met with first graders at EES today.  They shared stories from Sochi, experiences from their youth, and details about what it is like to be a girl hockey player.  These two young women were amazing and staff and students thoroughly enjoyed holding the medals and hearing their stories.

5th grade project

5^th grade students have been working on an interdisciplinary research project combining social studies, writing, library, and technology standards.  The final project was a glog (graphic blog) which is an interactive online poster.    They worked with Mr. Skiba, Mrs. Field, Mr. BT, and Mrs. Hardy on researching a colony to determine reasons why someone would want to move from England to this particular colony.  

Students did a great job on this project!

Information on Safety Drills and WIN time!

I recently communicated to parents that we would be conducting a “quiet safety drill” in the upcoming weeks.  The scheduled drill did not occur due to a snow day.  That being said, we will be conducting the drill in the next few weeks.  On Friday (March 7) we will meet with grade levels of students to demonstrate what a fire drill or quiet drill will be like during lunch.  The Safety Team at EES has been working on a protocol for when students are in the cafeteria and we are now ready to teach this to students.  The reason I am sharing this with you is to provide you with some context in case your child brings this up. The Safety Team is committed to doing this in a very developmentally appropriate way in order to lessen any anxiety. I know this is a difficult subject, but as we have learned all too often, schools need to have plans in place, plus time to practice them in a coordinated way.  The routine safety meetings have helped us to forge a great relationship with the Essex police and fire departments, which I believe is key to keeping our students safe!

         My second topic today is changes to WIN time.  We began an initiative known as Response to Intervention (RTI) about 5 years ago.  This is where we assess all students and provide them with “What they Need” (WIN) during a scheduled block each day.  I have heard concern from numerous parents about students who are not in a small group during WIN.  The thought is they are not getting targeted instruction at this time.  While I have been confident with the work that we have been doing with students during WIN, the staff at EES has heard this message and we are piloting a new concept.  We have decided NOT to use classroom teachers for intervention so that they can work with the remainder of the students in the class.  These students will receive targeted instruction from their own teacher in a variety of ways.  Teachers have decided to determine what these students need on a class by class basis, so if you are interested in knowing more you will have to contact the teacher directly.  We have data to show that RTI is working, but we continue to improve our model from year to year. I will be happy to report out at the end of the year as to how this change has worked for both students and teachers.

 WIN movement activities have been occurring due to the ongoing support from parent volunteers. It is great to see how much the children enjoy these movement breaks.  The newest addition is WIN Enrichment.  A wonderful EES parent, Rebecca Davis, came up with the idea of a creating a WIN Enrichment Cart, which has been stocked with great extension activities.  This cart is currently being piloted at third grade, with the intention of expanding to other grade levels over time.  Thank you to Rebecca for the inspiration behind this!