Friday, February 27, 2015

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS









Dear Wawaloam Community, 

This community announcement is a sure sign of Spring! 

EWG Girls Softball is now accepting spring registrations for grades K-8, no prior experience is required.  Established in 1982, EWG Girls Softball provides our children a safe, fun and friendly environment to learn and enjoy the game of softball.  Registration forms are now available for print on the Community Announcements page of the EWG District website - let's get ready to PLAY BALL!!



Hopefully this week you received our GROWTH MINDSET FOR PARENTS brochure. This is an outcome from our School Improvement Team. We welcome your feedback and comments and we are always available for questions. 


We are looking forward to a lot of exciting events this upcoming week! 

The PTA has generously made arrangements for all of our classes to have a special presentation connected to our Science Curriculum! 

On Tuesday- Mystic Aquarium will be doing a special presentation for our Grade 1 students all about the seashore.  http://www.mysticaquarium.org/fun-and-learning/teachers-and-school-groups/grades-1-3


On Thursday- the ZOOMOBILE will be here from Roger Williams to talk about animal habitats with our Grade 2 students and on Friday- they will be doing another presentation on animals with our Kindergarten. 
http://www.rwpzoo.org/313/ed-guide

Also- Next week we will celebrate Dr. Seuss' Birthday! During all of our grade level meetings we will have special guests! Our local librarians will be coming in and we will be reading a Dr. Seuss book and distributing commemorative hats to all of our students! This year we ordered them in yellow and black- to emphasize our PBIS expectations! 




We will gladly accept ANY USED AND IN GOOD CONDITION SPORTING GOODS between now and March 18th! Look high and look low and consider donating items that are causing clutter for a great cause! Send these items in to the Wawaloam School office ASAP. 


Have an outstanding weekend- play outside (even just 15 minutes can make a difference)! 
Melissa Marino
@MelissaMarino9


Friday, February 13, 2015

Happy School Vacation Week!

Happy School Vacation!


OUR ICICLES!!! 

 
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY XOXOX

Report cards are coming home today with your child. Please take the time to review the progress that your child is making. At Wawaloam School, we celebrate the Growth Mindset- we believe that all children can learn and we have systems in place to monitor the progress of our students and plan for their individual learning needs. In the next paragraph, you will read about an example of how we collaborate to meet the needs of all students, your children may have already told you about this!! They know all about this amazing news!


We are excited to inform the population of Wawaloam School that sometime in the month of March you will notice a new addition to our student body! This one will have four legs and a tail!!! 
Through fundraising and faith, a family in our school has been granted the gift of a very special dog who will be working to help our Kindergarten friend, Lilly Steiner, have the best days possible! 

Her special dog will be here as a working dog and will be able to detect seizure activity in Lilly and will offer a sense of calm and comfort during her school day.This service dog has gone through intense training and has been specially matched to meet her specific needs. 

As a school, we are preparing our student body for this exciting new canine friend. In order to plan for this, we talked about how to behave around this dog and created our  school wide expectations for when you see the dog in our school. There is a short video clip from the Today Show with a student who presently works with a service dog and how the dog helps him.We shared this with all of our students this week and offered the opportunity for students to ask questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY1kcnhL0b0&app=desktop

We believe wholeheartedly in the “whatever it takes” philosophy for all of our students and we are very proud of the opportunity to support Lilly and her family with this outstanding miracle.  A special thank you to the Steiner family for giving us permission to share all of this information with you.

Speaking of meeting the need of children, Lineham Early Childhood Learning Center will be holding an OPEN HOUSE for those interested in the Preschool program. The date for this is March 27 and will be held at 9:15-10:00 for 3 year olds and 1:30-2:15 for 4 year olds. If you would like to attend, you can call 397-3771 to RSVP by March 20th. 

As we end this week and approach our school vacation, I would like to wish all of you a week filled with opportunities to enjoy each other. There are lots of FREE opportunities for making fun memories with your children.

The Exeter library will be open 10-8 Tuesday –Thursday and 10-5 on Friday and Saturday. They are  having a beach party on Saturday, February 21 at 2:00, games, music, limbo, crafts and snacks!

Brainwaves in South County Commons will offer free crafts 10:30-12:00 ages 2-8 Monday through Friday.

The West Greenwich Library will be open 10-4 Monday and Friday and 10-8 Tuesday-Thursday!

The Kettle Pond Nature Center in Ninigret/Charlestown is a little hidden gem. If the weather is decent, you could plan a short hike. On Wednesday they will have a Wild About Reading event. They will read a nature based story and do an activity to go along with the book at 10:30.

Last week I posted all of the opportunities that the Feinstein card offers to you like the Children's Museum and Mystic Aquarium.

Other inexpensive ideas are:

The Roger Williams Zoo is half price admission during the month of February and it is great to see the cold hardy animals in the winter setting.

Audubon Society asri.com  for the full calendar of events but I noticed that on Wednesday you can meet a live owl at the Smithfield location if you register on line. Admission is 14.00 for an adult and 7.00 for a child.

If you are at home, definitely check out Gonoodle.com. The kids will love it and you will LOVE that they are moving around and getting the Wiggles out!


Try to have an unconnected/ TV free day and see how you can plan for ways to stay busy and have fun. You could create a family art project, work on a “big” puzzle, have a family Lego competition, have an indoor picnic right in the family room, make cards or letters for special people like grandparents or elderly neighbors. Do anything that brings you all together, talking and laughing with one another!



Phonics Centers in Kindergarten

 Art in Kindergarten working on Painted Elephants and learning about India

 Rolling Sight Words and Recording the Data


Don't forget to begin to think about SPORTING EQUIPMENT IN GREAT CONDITION THAT COULD BE DONATED FOR OUR SPORTS RE-SALE EVENT! This is a good week to do this! We will start to take donations on Monday February 23. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. 

Have a great week off of school together! 

Melissa Marino
@MelissaMarino9

PS Be sure to check out our updated webpage!  ewg.k12.ri.us/wawaloam/

Friday, February 6, 2015

Wawaloam School News

 What is the buzz this week?

                                                                     
Today is day 99 of our school year! That means that our next school day will be day #100! We are thrilled and overjoyed with the number of families who participated in the opportunity to design a project at home! They are admired by our entire school community! On day 100, our whole school will be invited to take a walk to the cafeteria to really appreciate the time and creativity that went into these! I can't believe we are 100 days into this school year! We will accept projects on Monday (or Tuesday) of next week as well.

We are once again watching the forecast with a storm predicted over the weekend into Monday. If you have not done so, here is the link to have text alert messages sent to your phone or email. These come through as soon as a message is posted and you can sign up for the alerts by school district.

http://my.textcaster.com/asa/Default.aspx?ID=6d6b22e1-242f-46b3-ae4f-e01582e9a14c




*A quick reminder that this is the last day for the PTA BJ's membership fundraiser.
Join North Kingstown Youth Lacrosse!
  Open to Exeter and West Greenwich boys and girls Pre-K through Grade 8!! 
 www.nklacrosse.org



We are just about finished with our Mid-Year I-Ready Assessments for Grades 1 and 2. We are definitely becoming more and more tech savvy in our classrooms! The Enoboards and the visits to the computer lab are paying off! Our students are doing really well with logging on and navigating their way through the various online resources we are so fortunate to offer our students!! I thought I would share a few snapshots of what kind of questions students are faced with and what the screen actually looks like while they are taking the assessment. We have a great team of people devoted to ensuring that we have the support we need for the students during these sessions and the progress of this process has been pretty amazing. I am proud of the effort and perseverance of our students!                           

We are working together to make the Wawaloam School website more appealing, user-friendly and useful to all of you. The website is their for you!! Please take a look at it and tell us what you need to be able to access on that page. We are happy to work together to have your needs met. One parent has mentioned the lunch menu and we were able to shift the link for that to the top of the page. We have changed the entire set-up of the page worked as a team to make the decisions for what we want it to look like. We think and we really hope this is a positive shift. We are open to ANY AND ALL suggestions you have for creating a school web page that is used as a resource on a regular basis.

The government has issued a statement regarding safety during extreme cold. Please review the precautions and suggestions in this short document.   http://www.ri.gov/press/view/23968


Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, keep warm and stay safe. 
Sincerely, Melissa Marino
@MelissaMarino9