Wawaloam School- The Place to "Bee"!!!

Dear Wawaloam School Community,

Another fabulous week at Wawaloam School!! Fabulous......but bustling with activity! One week ago, we had Mr. Bill Plumley here working with our Technology Department to get our Enoboards (Smartboards) off of the trucks, these gentlemen have not stopped for one second over the course of this week!

Once all of the equipment was here, they worked tirelessly to get our computer lab up and running with 22 computers. In my opinion, they have moved mountains!! !We had to track down the right furniture, make sure we had the power and connections where needed and then proceeded to begin our first diagnostic online math assessment with our Grade 2 students. While it is not perfect and we are nowhere near finished with any of these projects......we are in a much different place than we were just one week ago!! If you would like to send a quick note of kudos to Mr. Plumley or Mr. Jeff Bain, you can reach them at:
bill_plumley@ewg.k12.ri.us   and  jeffrey_bain@ewg.k12.ri.us

I can not tell you how exciting it is to walk into the classrooms to see teachers using this new technology! I am sharing a picture of Isabelle P.'s tower that she worked on in Science today
and on the BRAND NEW ENOBOARD you can see the question projected to our budding scientists-
"What properties are useful for engineers to construct the tallest tower?" I am excited for our students to have access to this amazing resource!

  

Switching gears a little bit, I want to tell you about the book I am using right now with the students during our Weekly Meeting. I have not shared with Kindergarten yet but plan on it next week. I was inspired once again by the book Bullying Hurts/Teaching Kindness Through Read Alouds and Guided Conversation by Lester Laminack and Reba Wadsworth

The book is called The Pirate of Kindergarten by George Ella Lyon. The book touches upon the differences of one little girl who finds herself bumping in to chairs and we learn that she has double vision. After a screening with the school nurse and a visit to the eye doctor, she is empowered when she learns that this can be corrected with an eye patch. We were able to have a conversation about what we can learn from Ginny's experience and how some people helped her while others laughed. Again, it gave us the chance to talk about the importance of kindness, friendship and empathy. I would love to know if any of your children tell you about our time together. 

I am also sharing a resource I came across for parents and families that gives some great ideas for exploring creativity together as a family. This is the link if you are interested:

http://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/RtP_Creativity.pdf

I will end this week by adding this quick photo....which may be a little bit blurry because these Kindergarten friends were skipping down the hall this morning to bring attendance to the office. This is what we see around here most often....these are the sights that we cherish and I just wanted to freeze that moment and share it with you. 

Enjoy the weekend, 

Melissa Marino