St. John School
Newsletter
Catholic Schools of the Diocese of Syracuse
Mission Statement
The Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Syracuse carry out the mission of Jesus Christ,
bearing witness while proclaiming the Gospel message. Together with families and
parishes, our schools provide an education rooted in the Gospel that is “living,
conscious, and active” including values and ideals that are in accordance with the
teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. We empower our students to live their faith
with compassion, integrity and respect for all life and the diversity of our world.
Our schools are faith-centered communities focused on promoting academic excellence
while developing a strong moral conscience and embracing Catholic principles to enable
students to meet lifelong challenges and demands in our rapidly changing world.
2/27/2015
Dear Parents,
Welcome to the month of March and may our days be a little warmer! It
will be a very busy month for us at St.John’s School.
We are helping our students to prepare their hearts for the joy of Easter
daily along with our weekly Stations of the Cross.
Registration/Reregistration Evening will be held on Wednesday, March
4th in the cafeteria from 3:00 - 6:00pm. Please make sure to get your
registrations in by March 4th or before to be entered in the PTG raffle for
$500.00 off your tuition. Refreshments will also be offered.
Best of luck to Francesca Garufi and Brady Wheeler-Nieman who will be
competing in the Regional Scripps Spelling Bee in Campbell, NY on
Thursday, March 5th. What a great experience for them!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Mary Ellen Kelley
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Mrs. Burr…..Hooray, We finally made it through a whole week without
a snow day! And what an exciting week it was!!! We reviewed the
letters Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo and Pp. Our kind koala project helped us
review the letter Kk. To review the letter Nn we made noodle
necklaces and read the book The Night Pirates. We practiced writing
the letter Oo and colored an octopus. Perhaps the most exciting of all
the letters were the Mm and Pp. Not only did we have a party for
Valentine’s Day but we also had pajama and movie day too. We had
popcorn, pretzels and popsicles for snack during the movie. On
Monday we will be celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday. We will have
show and tell on Tuesday instead of Monday. Please remember to
bring in a Qq item on Tuesday for show and tell. I hope you all have a
marvelous weekend!!!
~Mrs. Burr~
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4 Year Olds.....Congratulations to Corradino DiRenzo on the birth of
his baby sister Nina! Welcome back to all our friends! We held our
Valentine’s Day party which was so much fun on Monday. Thank
you to everyone for the delicious treats provided and to those
parents who came and helped us. We appreciate you all so much!
We introduced the letter Qq by reading the book The Quiet Quail
by Heather Feldman. We also read My “q” Book by Jane Belk
Moncure and The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. We sure
love our books! We made a quilt booklet and quilt squares for our
classroom quilt that will be hanging in our hallway soon. I am sure
it will be quite beautiful! After rescheduling our 100th Day Party a
few times due to snow days we were able to celebrate on Thursday
and what a celebration it was!
We had 100 balloons in our
classroom to play with, made 100 Day crowns, built castles with
100 Legos and 100 paper cups.
We counted 100 pennies,
participated in 100 day fitness fun and had special cupcakes with
Mickey and Minnie Mouse rings to wear. The children all brought
in items they made with 100 items and were they all amazing!!! We
all had so much fun! Next week is our special “Dr. Seuss Week”
with fun activities scheduled in honor of his birthday. Please be
sure to look at our class calendar every day. Show and Tell on
Monday can be anything related to Dr. Seuss. I hope you all have
a blessed weekend.
~Mrs. Fox~
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Transitional Kindergarten.....What a busy week! We came back from
vacation and celebrated Valentine’s Day with our friends. The
children did a great job passing out their treats and cards to their
classmates. We also celebrated the 100th Day of School! We played
lots of fun games includings: a cube toss (we had 100 seconds to see
how many cubes we could toss into a bucket), pepperoni pizzas (see
hallway), building lego castles with 100 legos and building 100 cup
castles! The children also illustrated what they would buy if they had
$100. I have truly enjoyed watching each any every one of them grow
and mature over the past 100 days. This week we also reviewed the
letters Mm, Nn, Oo and Pp. Next week is a big week too! The letters
Q and U will be getting married! We will talk about how these 2 letters
almost always stand next to each other in words. Don’t forget that we
have our special bridal shower show and tell on Monday! The
wedding will be Thursday. Have a super weekend! ~Mrs. Reibel~
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Kindergarten…… We had a very busy week finishing February work
and activities. The letter of the week was Tt and we met Terry Tiger.
We read stories about George Washington and Abe Lincoln and wrote
facts we learned about them. We learned four new sight words be,
saw, his and her. In Math, we started a new unit dealing with
subtraction. We solved unknown expressions and equations using
the minus sign with no unknown. In Religion, We learned that we are
in the Lenten season and we are preparing for Easter. The children
will be going to the Stations of the Cross on Friday during Lent.
Thanks to all the parents who helped out at the Valentine’s Day Party!
Some children are in need of crayons and glue sticks.
Have a great Weekend!
Mrs. Newins
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First Grade.....It's good to be back and into our routine. I hope
everyone had a restful vacation. Let me begin by congratulating
Farmaan Pannu and Landon Pancoast for representing our first
grade class in the school Spelling Bee that took place before the
break. They went through many rounds competing against second
through sixth graders. A great big "Thank You" goes out to Mrs.
Pancoast for organizing our Valentine celebration, and Mrs. Sarra and
Mrs. Yuhnick for hosting the party. Also a thank you to all our families
for sending in treats for us. They boys and girls really enjoyed our
celebration especially the BINGO game. As we begin this holy season
of Lent the boys and girls should have brought home a calendar filled
with daily activities your child can do. Our goal during this time is to
get closer to Jesus through prayer, good works and fasting so we are
ready for Easter Sunday. Finally thank you all for helping your child
pick out and prepare a poem for our class poetry recitation. We had a
variety of poems and the boys and girls did a great job presenting
them to the class. I thank Mrs. Ballard for being our judge. Have a
great weekend and hopefully we will see some good weather soon.
Mrs.Vaverchak
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Second Grade… Where is the time going? I can’t believe that March
begins on Sunday! I hope that everyone had a nice relaxing winter
break last week. Now we are back to work! Ms. Savage and I have
designated March as “Manners Month in Second Grade. We will be
concentrating on using good manners when we eat, receive things
from others, and when we engage in active play. The children should
start using phrases such as “no, thank you”, “yes, please”, and “your
welcome”etc.. Please try to reinforce these phrases at home as well.
The children who show good manners will be asked to lunch with Ms.
Savage and myself. We will be walking to the Park Diner on Conklin
Avenue together. when your child is chosen, if you could send in $3
and return the permission slip as soon as possible.I will be picking 4
children every Friday for lunch on Monday of the following week.
This weeks winners are Sophia Burr, Reece Goodman, Sfrien Elizyai,
and Maddox Cleveland. In Religion, we began our discussion on
Lent. We talked about how Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts
for 40 days. We also said that Lent is a time when we try to grow
closer to Jesus and we should treat people with love and respect, the
way Jesus did. In Math, we worked on strategies for decomposing
tens and hundreds. Some strategies were using numbers bonds to
break down bigger numbers and other strategies were using our
place value chart and disks to solve the equation. It took a little while
for the children to remember how we subtracted from before the
break but I think we’re back in the hang of it. In English Language
Arts, we worked with comparing and contrasting characters, settings,
and themes in stories. In Spelling and Phonics, we learned about rcontrolled vowels such as ar and or. In Grammar, we worked with
linking verbs. I would like to thank you for preparing your child to
recite their poem for the class. Everyone did a great job!
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Pencek
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Second Grade…Good-bye February! Hello March! Spring is in sight!
l don’t think winter wiIl give up easily, but I believe we will see Spring
in the not, too far, future! I hope you and your children had a
wonderful Mid-winter break. It has been hard transitioning back into
our classroom routine and the 2 hour delays have not helped. So
while we have been making progress, it has been a bit slower than
usual. In math we have been revisiting using the Arrow Method of
adding and subtracting some of the students say they understand it
better now as well as using Mental Math strategies. Others do not
find this their favorite way of adding and subtracting and that is okay.
As long as they understand the process and can slug their way
through it, we can’t ask for more. In Language Arts we have been
working with Linking Verbs is, am, are, was, and were. Our reading
skill this week has been comparing and contrasting characters,
settings and themes in stories. The spelling pattern for this week has
been the r-controlled vowels -ar and -or.
Have you noticed an increase in your child’s manners as of late?
We have been working hard at using them consistently. The first 3
newest members of the Good Manners Club for the 2014-15 school
year are Morgan O’Brien, Sarah Fiacco, Brian Smith, and Drew
Scoville. They will be going to their special luncheon on Monday,
weather permitting. Congratulations!
Finally, today we held our in class Poetry Recitation. It was
obvious that many of the children put a lot of hard work into their
presentation. Our classroom winners this year are Jonah Carlton and
Angelina Barton! Congratulations everyone for your participation and
hard work. Have a great weekend! Stay warm!…...Many
blessings….Ms. Savage
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Third Grade…. First, I want to thank all the parents who supplied
goodies for our Valentine's Day party. We had lots of tasty and
healthy choices, and no one left hungry! We appreciate all you do to
help us celebrate special days. This week found us learning more
about the seven sacraments in Religion class. We continue to discuss
the season of Lent as we prayed the Stations of the Cross on Friday.
In Math, we finished our module on area. During March, we will
improve memorization of the multiplication facts in our classroom
version of March Madness. By the end of the month, we will have
"Math " Madness" champions! ELA classes have led us to "read as a
writer" as we learned more about the word choices the author made in
Peter Pan. We learned how to use and to punctuate dialogue in our
own writing pieces. We continue to practice citing evidence to answer
questions from our reading. This seems to be challenging for some
students. We will continue to work on this important skill throughout
the year. Our next travel destination in Social Studies is to the very
large continent of Asia! Keep warm as you enjoy a great weekend!
....Mrs.Ballard
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ELA.....Mrs. Mary Terela
We are finding our new document camera to be helpful to display
documents and post journal writing assignments thus far. Soon we
will share writing pieces to edit together in the writing process. What
a useful learning tool! Reading informational text has been BIG this
week. We are underlining, circling, double underlining, highlighting,
and the list goes on as we cite evidence within our reading pieces! In
6th grade we have learned tons about blood: matching blood donors
and recipients, blood types, antigens, Rh factor, and lots more. We
joked about reading the classic tale of Dracula as a follow-up to our
new expertise! In 5th grade we feel like scientists as we delve into
Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. While there we have learned about
the science of bumper cars, sharing personal experiences along the
way! A disappearing penny experiment in our cooperative groups
has shown us the power of inertia. In 4th grade we are seeing earth’s
changes as seen through the power of erosion, tectonic plates,
continental drift, volcanoes, tsunamis; oh, and earthquakes too! Our
classroom poetry recitation was a delight as we shared poems from a
great variety of genres. We have seen how poetry can be fun as well
as entertaining. Hooray! We are heading into March, and right
around the corner, daylight savings time!
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Math & Science...Mrs. Rai
4th math-we are measuring, drawing and finding complementary and
supplementary angles.
4th science-we are finishing our unit on the body. There will be a test
next week.
5th math- we are looking at volume, perimeter and area.
5th science we finished our unit on earth science. Next is the galaxy.
6th math-we are reviewing graphing and writing inequalities.
6th Science we are moving into thermal and light energy after working
with potential and kinetic energy. In lab we made electromagnets.
I will be starting my Wednesday morning NYS assessment review
next week. All are welcome. I have contacted the parents of children
that it would be beneficial for.
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Social Studies, Current Events, Religion......John Kocik
4th Rel- We just covered the 4 main parts of the mass
4th S.S- The fourth graders are learning how N.Y. state was involved
during the Civil War.
5th Rel- Students where just tested on the rite of Confirmation
5th S.S- The Fr-In War is over and so is the honeymoon between the
colonies and England.
6th Rel- We are still enjoying the many stories in the old Testament. This
week we read about Samson, Soloman, and others in the book of Kings
6th S.S.- We are all in Greece. The students will be tested on Greece’s
geography, contributions and it gods.
Quote
You can always spot an educated person. Their views are the same as
yours.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------From the Health Office…..Pat Chirumbolo RN
I’ll be reminding you throughout the spring about health requirements for
next fall.
● Physical exams are needed for students entering K, 2 and 4 and
those who are new to the school. Physicals done in the 12 months
before the start of school meet the requirement. Please bring a copy
of the report to school or your provider can fax it to 772-6210.
● Students entering 6th grade need a Tdap booster immunization and
a second varicella (chickenpox) immunization if not already done.
● Students entering K need a second dose of varicella immunization if
not already done.
Please do your best to get these requirements met before school starts.
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