St. John School
Newsletter
St. John the Evangelist School
Mission Statement
St. John the Evangelist School is a Catholic learning
community in which students, staff, and parents respect,
affirm, and support each other.
St. John School fosters academic excellence from Early Childhood through 6 th grade in a
Christ-Centered
atmosphere that emphasizes Christian love.
Through education and the daily living of our faith, each
child will be empowered with the intellectual and moral foundation on which to build a
successful future.
9/19/2014
Dear Parents,
The last full week of September promises to be a busy and special
week for all of us at St.John’s.
Our opening liturgy will begin our week in prayer and song led by
our 6th grade students. Please plan to join us at 9:00am on Monday,
September 22.
Curriculum Evening for the parents of Kindergarten - 6th grade will
be held on Monday evening, September 22 at 6:00pm. Please refer to
the attached flyer for details. Don’t miss this informative opportunity.
PTG will be hosting our Doug’s Fish Fry/Bake Sale fundraiser for
the school on Friday, September 26 and volunteers are needed.
Have a wonderful fall weekend!
Mrs. Mary Ellen Kelley
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Mrs. Burr…..What a great week! We were introduced to many new
activities! We had our first show and tell, used “Do A Dot” paints,
stamped with apples, cooked and even had our first fire drill.
Everyone had a lot of fun sharing their Aa item for show and tell. We
read Ten Apples On Top by Dr Seuss, The Icky Sticky Anteater by
Dawn Bentley and Animal Strike At the Zoo by Karma Wilson. Thank
you for sending in the apples for the applesauce we made. We had so
much fun making it and it was amazing! Please remember to bring in
a Bb item Monday for show and tell. Enjoy the weekend!
~Mrs. Burr~
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4 Year Olds.....We had a beautiful week learning about the letter Bb.
We read Smelly Bear and then made our own coffee smelling bears!
We enjoyed eating Teddy Grahams with our bears during our teddy
bear picnic. Boy, did our bears have fun! We painted beautiful
butterflies with balloons and made buzzing bumble bees! It was a
blast blowing bubbles right in our classroom too! Next week we will
introduce the letter Cc. Please remember to bring in Show & Tell on
Monday. I hope you all have a great weekend filled with many
blessings!
~Mrs. Fox~
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Transitional Kindergarten.....It has been a beautiful week in T-K! We
have been learning all about the letter /Bb/. We shared our show and
tell on Monday and worked in our writing journals to practice writing
the letter /Bb/ and draw a picture of something that starts with /Bb/.
We had lots of fun making bubble bears with blue paint! We made
some cute bats to hang in the hallway and searched for little bats in
the sensory table. The children had the opportunity to graph our toy
bears and they also sorted gummy bears (and of course tasted them
too!). Some of the stories we read this week we're: Bubble Bear,
Stellaluna, Bear Snores On and Bear’s New Friend. Next week we will
learn all about the letter /Cc/. Don’t forget show and tell on Monday
and index cards are due Tuesday! Have a wonderful weekend! ~Mrs.
Reibel~C
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First Grade.....Mrs. Vaverchak and Miss Morgan
It’s been a busy week! We've completed our reading skills review,
took a placement test, had individual screening completed by our
reading specialist, Mrs. Pinter and are set to begin the first unit in our
reading series. Look for your child’s reading folder on Monday. The
boys and girls also learned how to use the computer program, RazKids on the classroom iPads. It is a great way to practice listening,
fluency and comprehension skills. In math we are working on a
variety of strategies to master the combinations of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and
the difference between an equation and an expression. We are also
learning the RDWW method of solving word problems. Ask your child
what those letters mean. This week we started the Think First, Stay
Safe program which is part of our Religion Curriculum and the
diocesan Protecting God’s Children Program. The program focuses
on lessons and strategies to keep children healthy, happy and safe.
Finally, thank you for sending in the fee for the extra classroom
resources. Hope to see you at our curriculum evening on Monday.
Enjoy the weekend!
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Second Grade… Mrs. Pencek
We have had another busy week in Second Grade!! We are all settling
in nicely to our classroom rules and behaviors. This week we started
our “Funny Bucks” incentive for good manners, taking pride in our
work, and following our classroom rules. I hand out a “Funny Buck”
whenever I see the children making good choices about their work or
behavior. On Friday I hold an auction for the children to buy “treats”
from my treasure chest that are auctioned off and the children used
their funny bucks to buy items they like. I have used this system in
the past and it is very effective.
In Religion, we finished Chapter 1 and took a Chapter 1 quiz on
Friday. We also started Chapter 2 “Jesus Christ Gives Us the
Church”.
In Math, we finished up Module 1 “Sums and Differences to 20” and
will take our End of Module Assessment on Wednesday of next week.
We will Start Module 2 “Addition and Subtraction of Length Units”
next week.
In ELA, we read the story “David’s New Friends” and reviewed
characters and settings, learned more about sentences in grammar
such as statements and questioning sentences, reviewed the short a
and i sounds in phonics and spelling, and reviewed photos and
captions.
I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday night. Have a great
weekend!
Mrs. Pencek
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Second Grade….Wow! The middle of September already! We have
had another great week in Ms. Savage’s second grade. We completed
our first Module and took the End of Module Assessment. We began
our second module which deals with concepts related to
Measurement. We will continue to review the strategies we learned in
our first module so that they stay in our minds. In Reading we
finished our first week in our second grade series. We read and
discussed stories related to school and making friends. Our Literary
stories we read. skill we worked on was identifying characters and
settings in the passages we read. In our grammar section we focused
on differentiating between statements and question sentences. Our
phonic and spelling pattern were the short vowel sounds of ‘a’ and ‘i’.
We finished our Fairy Tale section of the Listening Learning Strand
and are now exploring Tall Tales. We will be learning different songs
in music that correspond with the Tall Tales we will be hearing. In
Social Studies we explored the concept of citizenship use of our
Scholastic News. In Religion we spent the week learning about the
gift of the church from Jesus. We will spend next week learning
about using our instincts that God has given to keep ourselves safe,
as we explore Our Think First, Stay Safe Section. As you can see, we
are busy leaping into all kinds of exciting learning experiences.
Curriculum Night is Monday. I can’t wait to see all of you and share
with you all the fun things we do each day. Enjoy your weekend!
Many Blessings... Ms. Savage
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Third Grade…. Mrs. Ballard
Our days have been quite busy. We continued to learn classroom
procedures with a focus on carefully following directions. In Religion
classes, we used the diocesan required “Think First, Stay Safe”
program that informed us of several strategies to use to protect
ourselves and to preserve our own respect and dignity . Math class
continued to center around multiplication and division using 2s and
3s. The first mid-module test will be next Wed. In ELA, we worked to
improve our skills of determining the main idea and finding evidence
to support our thinking. Our writing activites involved our Social
Studies unit on map skills and finding our place in the world.
I look forward to the chance to discuss 3rd grade procedures and
curriculum at Curriculum Night on Monday! Mrs. Ballard
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ELA.....Mrs. Terela
Now that we have been drilling good practices of evaluating what we
read, progress is coming along in our Progress workbooks!
Highlighting key words and phrases in text as well as in questions
certainly is proving to be helpful. We have begun to use iPads as we
learn about September authors, including many well known names,
such as Roald Dahl(Sept. 13,1916), Tomie de Paola(Sept. 15, 1934),
and Stan Berenstain(Sept. 29, 1923), to name a few. Students have
signed up from a choice of about 16 authors. As you can see by their
birth dates, they have been writers for quite some time! We are going
to try to figure out where or how their writing inspiration originated. I
so enjoyed reading all our students' poetry from last week's writing
assignment. Soon they will be on display. We will begin portfolios
with their poems as a first entry for the school year. On Sept. 17th we
celebrated the 227th anniversary of the signing of the U.S.
Constitution. We played a trivia game and saw a great informational
video which helped us to appreciate our basic human rights. Book
order forms for Scholastic Book Club have been sent home for
September. Many interesting titles are offered for reasonable prices.
These are optional and if ordering please write a check to Scholastic
Book Club along with your child's name on the order form. I look
forward to sharing our curriculum and routines with everyone who
can make it to our curriculum night next Monday evening at 6:30. See
you then!
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Math & Science...Mrs. Rai
4th Grade Science is working on kingdoms and classifications. They
did a lab on animal adaptations. In math the class is doing multiplying
and estimating.
5th grade is looking at exponents and order of operations. The cell
projects are due on Sept 29th.
6th grade is delving into percents in math. They are looking at
chemical and physical properties in Science.
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Social Studies, Current Events, Religion......Mr. Kocik
Good times at St Johns ! I hope the same for you.
4th grade Religion students will be active in discussing the 8
beatitudes.
5th graders in Religion class will be discussing the Paschal Mystery.
6th graders will be the leaders of our opening day mass on Sept. 22 at
9:00 in the church .
4th S.S.- We are still working on map skills, concentrating on N.Y.
State and the hemispheres.
5th S.S.- Will be entering the Mayans, Inca, and the Aztec empires.
6th S.S.- Students are about to visit the western region of the Fertile
Crescent.
Quote
If we have no peace, its because we have forgotten that we belong to
each other.
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TO GIVE PLEASURE FOR A LIFETIME!
Regarding INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC LESSONS: Mrs. Wood has four lesson slots
that she would like to fill on Tuesdays, after school.
Mrs. Wood is a highly trained music educator with a Bachelor of Science Degree
in Music Education from Crane School of Music and Master of Music in
Saxophone Performance from B.U.. She continues to attend yearly workshops to
increase her knowledge and enjoyment which have taken her from Woodstock,
Vermont, 19 years in a row, to Banff, Alberta. "There is always so much to learn
and to perfect as far as anyone's musicianship is concerned". In the past two
years, Mrs. Wood has given flute concerts which have included solo literature,
string Quartet pieces, piano/flute duos and as a member of a Jazz Quartet in Bay
Ridge Brooklyn in the Art on the Corner Series, Hudson Opera House, Hudson,
N.Y., Jazz Workshop solo vocal, flute, bari sax and big band features as part of
the Interplay Jazz and Arts Program, and a solo flute presentation in Strafford,
Vt., in a beautiful and acoustically wonderful 1700 Town Hall. In each of these
musical expeditions, studying and preparation has brought much satisfaction
and growth to her and to her audiences and has enabled her to work side by side
with some of the most accomplished musicians in the world.
To encourage the children to sign up for lessons for ONE WEEK ONLY, Mrs.
Wood. is waiving the registration fee and offering the lessons at $15 each.
This is hardly an opportunity to pass up! If you would like to do a Tuesday, after
school lesson with Mrs. Wood, who by the way, plays all of the instruments that
she teaches, send a written note into Mrs. Karen no later than September 28th.
Thank you.
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From the Health Office
It’s great to see all the new and as well as familiar faces here at
school. The nurse’s office has been pretty quiet, thankfully, these first
few weeks.
Reminders:
● Students in pre-k, K, 2nd and 4th grades need physical exams. If
your child had an exam with their provider in the last year,
please provide a copy of that report to the school. I’ll send home
individual notices for those still needing exams. We prefer your
child be seen by their own provider who has a complete history
and is familiar with your child but will schedule exams as
needed with the school doctor or nurse practitioner later in the
year.
● NYS requires up-to-date immunization records for school
attendance and I will send notices home for those still needing
immunizations.
● Most illnesses and infections that occur in school age children
can be minimized by appropriate handwashing, covering coughs
and sneezes, disposing of used tissues and allowing children to
recover from illness at home if they have fever, vomiting,
diarrhea, frequent coughing. I’ll send information home as
needed if we have several children ill with similar symptoms.
Best wishes for a healthy, successful school year for all,
Pat Chirumbolo RN
St. John’s School Nurse
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