Great Things I Noticed Last Week
It will be hard to top last week because it was full of awesomeness, but we will certainly try during our last week of school. We got to meet with our families one last time, K went to the zoo and 1st grade went to the Ecotarium, we had an amazing visit from Dennis Mathew, the cafeteria staff have us a picnic lunch on a beautiful day, the middle school performed, we had fun talking about students during our final staff collaboration time, 4th graders shared their writing with kindergarteners, and somehow a dinosaur showed up in 2nd grade! Also in between staff collaboration time/retiree celebration and 2nd grade lunch, I managed to squeeze in my own 4th grader's celebration ceremony!
So many great moments this past week! We had another Walk to School Day. Looking forward to doing more of these next year. Thank you to all of our awesome specialists for hosting a fabulous Specialist Night! The families and students loved it! Hope staff enjoyed the lovely massages provided by the BVT students. This week we have a special room service surprise planned for all of you! It was so neat to see and hear all of the students cheering for the Seniors on their walk last week. I had the honor of attending graduation Saturday night, and I couldn't help but think about how quickly our students will be the ones walking across that stage.
You can tell that we are in our final weeks of school since there are so many events and photo opportunities! Also loved that I started the week with a meeting at the zoo with Brianna...can't wait for our MURSD/Southwick's literacy collaboration project the last week of July! I had fun visiting Miscoe with our 4th graders and on the same day touring the town by trolley with 3rd graders. I also loved being able to see some of our former Clough students perform in the Miscoe Moth, storytelling on stage. Spectrum News came to do a story about our podcasting group. 4th grade chorus did a great school concert, then joined with Memorial and put on an amazing concert in the evening. 4th grade student council did a great job finishing up a busy week with a wonderful Memorial Day assembly.
Loved seeing all the different decades being represented on Spirit Day! 80s, 90s, and even the 1880s! I have been meeting with small groups of 4th grade student council members to get ready for the Memorial Day assembly this Friday. I was excited to listen and learn from our visitors on Friday during the writing PD at Memorial. Looking forward to this research partnership over the next three years.
Another action-packed week! 4th graders got to learn about different instruments that they could play if they choose band next year at Miscoe. I think many staff members enjoyed Mocktail Monday...it's amazing what an umbrella and some maraschino cherries can do to brighten your day! We had K screening which meant we signed lots of new kindergartners onto the Clough team. Mts. Rutkowski's class was learning all about US Growth and the impact on different groups, thanks to the Investigating History pilot that Andrea is part of this year. They got to notice and wonder about an American painting after they spent time building up their background knowledge. I got to watch our preschoolers listen to a story about rain (perfect for the rainy day we were having) and then retell it with felt board pieces. In music, our 4th graders are getting ready to sing for us at the Memorial Day assembly. My own kids came with me to Multicultural Night and we had so much fun exploring the different cultures and watching all of the performances. Our K and 2nd grade SI classes did awesome on stage!
What a busy and fun week last week! Thanks to the PTO for bringing author Andrew Hacket to Clough. We definitely want to bring him back next year to maybe do some writing workshops with our classes. We had a successful first MA Safe Routes Walk to School Day. We will be doing another one at the end of this month. I caught some 2nd graders reading and researching together to become meteorologists. 1st graders were showing off their math skills. 3rd graders were doing math around the room - finding perimeter and area.
It was awesome to see everyone jump right back into learning after vacation! Kindergarteners were talking about digraphs, and one friend came up to me to tell me that he missed me over break! 4th graders were working on poetry and demonstrating an understanding of alliteration and assonance. I attended lots of great sessions, especially focused on writing, at the MRA Conference last week. Will be sharing several things with you over the next few weeks.
We had a busy week leading up to the break. Thanks for playing along with our neuro myth-busting game! We had lots of great community readers here on Wednesday. Our 2nd grade Spanish Immersion students put on a show for families and enjoyed a special toast breakfast. And we got to witness the solar eclipse at the beginning of the week! I even caught some Title 1 groups enjoying the nice weather and working outside.
I was tied up with MCAS and meetings on a delay day so not so many pictures this week. But I loved working with the 4th grade student council to help roll coins and count some of the money from our coin war fundraiser! Thank you Mrs. Welch, Mrs. Walsh, and Mrs. Zalusky for helping us. I managed to pop into Mrs. Pilkington's class and caught some students working on digraphs.
We had two great enrichment programs from the Discovery Museum last week. 2nd graders enjoyed learning all about the states of matter. And our kindergarteners had fun digging for dinosaur bones and other hands on activities. Thank you to the PTO for funding these awesome programs. We had our last podcasting enrichment meeting for this session. Jen Hall and I are working on merging the different recordings together for 3 episodes of "Clough Speaks Up." Can't wait to share them with all of you. Thank you to those of you who were willing to be interviewed by the kids for our podcast!
I was excited to spend some time listening to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona speak to over 400 principals from across the nation last week. And we advocated for increased funding, mental health support, and the educator pipeline at Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Thank you Brianna for creating our awesome Bookflix display with lots of great book recommendations from all of you! As a result of the Global Citizens work on ILD, we are collecting food items and hygiene products for the Mendon Food Pantry during the month of March. On Friday, I spotted several little leprechauns in school, getting ready for St. Patrick's Day! And we said goodbye to Jack on Friday. How are we ever going to know when to shut the doors?!
It was a busy week complete with a full PD day! Hopefully you enjoyed your sessions and the vertical team work we did last Tuesday. If you haven't filled out the feedback form, I included the link under the week at a glance section. Loved seeing our PK friends have a visit from the Zoomobile! Also enjoyed watching 3rd graders coding, 2nd graders working with money, and K students learning about heart words. Our 4th graders were having fun learning about dialogue and punctuation as well as reading and checking for understanding and developing theories with primary sources in social studies. I will miss being in your classrooms for part of this week.
Thank you for thoughtful discussions last week during our data meetings where we looked at iReady results. I felt like I was in a lot of meetings last week, but those meetings with teams were my favorite ones. As a result of all the meetings, not as much time for me in classrooms. But I did manage to catch a few great things going on. Jen Hall and I have been having fun trying out our new podcasting equipment with an enrichment group. Can't wait to share what they have been recording and to have more students experience podcasting! 1st grade enjoyed the Discovery Museum's presentation about light. Thank you to everyone who was flexible with schedule changes. And I am glad that everyone got to experience a sidewalk safety lesson from MA Safe Routes to School. Looking forward to planning some walk to school days with our community.
I wanted to share some of the blank slates that people decorated in January. I have seen many of yours displayed or on your desks when I have been in different rooms. Here are a few that people shared with me. And then underneath that awesome visual slideshow, I have included pictures from last week. I am still smiling when I think about the excitement that we saw from kids on math night. Especially when they got to snap a photo with Jiji!
Wow, last week was a busy week! Between chorus concerts, K info night, dress as a leader day, and of course...the Harlem Wizards game! And somewhere in between all of those things, kids were working on decoding, trying out different watercolor painting techniques, ACCESS testing, and more!
A short week, but still lots of great things going on! I caught some 2nd graders reading in all different spots. Our SI 2nd graders were having fun with Kahoot. Lots of indoor recess, yet some students decided to play school during recess! Western Wear spirit day meant lots of cowboys and cowgirls around the building. We received a grant from MUEF and our podcasting equipment started arriving last week! We also had several proud Choose To Be Nice award winnes.
Lots of exciting things happening at Clough throughout the week! It was nice to start the week with our school families. Motoko came to help 4th grade kick off their writing study. She shared some Japanese tales. We did not get the grant this year to have her as an artist in residence, but she came and gave us a free presentation. The Acton Discovery Museum was here experimenting with sound with 4th graders. 3rd graders were caught playing lots of math games. I happened to pop in and watch Mrs. Welch's mathematicians hard at work. And we ended the week with some crazy hair!
It was a busy first week back from break! The Harlem Wizards assembly was lots of fun and loved giving out kindness awards. Don't worry if your student you nominated didn't get one; I will be giving more away over announcements over the next weeks. Hope you enjoyed filling your blank slate. Can't wait to have the paras and office staff create theirs this week. Friday night at the Railers with MURSD was tons of fun! The chorus did a great job and it was an exciting end of the game. The Railers won in a shoot out!
In the whirlwind that was the week before break, I took lots of photos but slacked on posting them to our school social media sites. Going to send out a photo collage to parents and guardians to share all the moments. But here are some from our successful book swap on the last day!
Lots of great things happening throughout the school last week. 4th graders were working on determining theme and understanding equivalent fractions. Mrs. Clark's 2nd grade class had a special virtual author visit. Preschool made potato latkes and an awesome gingerbread house! Thanks for all the fun participation with our Merry Swiftmas Holiday Eras Tour. One more week to go!
I definitely made up for the previous week when I wasn't able to snap many photos! So much packed into one week. Starting with a half day PD day where we got to collaborate with Memorial on writing rubrics and some of our student council members presented at School Committee! I enjoyed popping into several classes and covering some breaks for lucky winners. I even was lucky enough to be a sub 2nd grade teacher....didn't catch any photos of that, sorry.
Being out one day sick and then focusing a lot of my time on supporting a student, apparently I forgot to take many pictures last week. Going to make up for it this week! I did manage to snap some pictures of the Chess Wizards first meeting. The kids had a blast learning about playing chess during this after school program.
We packed a lot into a short week! Thank you to everyone for helping our family meetings go smoothly and for helping to create our beautiful gratitude turkey. Breakfast and BINGO was a huge hit! So many Clough families joined us and everyone had fun. We had our principal for the day, Olivia. She just might take my job! Hopefully everyone enjoyed time with family and friends during the Thanksgiving break.
I can't believe it! We made it through an actual 5 day week last week! And we packed a lot of learning and fun into it. Student council started us off with positive post it notes on lockers. Loved seeing our 3rd grade winner be Cafeteria Manager for a Day! 2nd graders were doing bean counting and word building. And we finished the week with a whole school assembly and gave out our first Choose To Be Nice awards. It was so awesome to see the students cheering for their friends!
It was a different kind of a week last week, but we still managed to pack a lot into the three days we were in school! Finishing the week up with cardboard creation day which was amazing and exhausting. A big thanks to the parents and high school volunteers who came to help our young cardboard designers.
- Halloween, conferences, half days, play day, and more, oh my! It was quite a week last week. Thank you all for bringing your best for our kids and families every day. I appreciate you for making sure to build those important connections with our families during conferences.
- So many awesome opportunities this week! Student council had their first meeting, K students exploded pumpkins, 4th graders read to K students and asked them comprehension questions, 1st graders showed off their number sense, and 2nd graders had fun reading aloud to friends.
- This past week was full of lots of great things happening in classrooms. I was glad to be back in the building! Kindergarteners learning vowel sounds, picture day, nice weather to play on the playground, read alouds, and more! I have been working my way through classrooms and last week I was in a 3rd grade class talking about Choose To Be Nice and having more students take the pledge with me.
- Another busy week at Clough. Very exciting to have the Teaching Channel here filming in Mrs. St. Pierre's room. Also saw lots of great Fundations learning happening in 1st grade!
- Clough was hopping on Wednesday and Thursday night at our Curriculum Nights! Thank you everyone for sharing your classrooms with our families.
- Lots of great things happening in the first full week of school. The author of the book This is a Story saw my post about choosing that book for my staff ID badge and he sent us 10 copies of the book! Was excited to give one to each PK-2 class. I was also excited to get into several 4th grade classes to start having kids take the Choose To Be Nice pledge and sign our banner. Friday's Clough Classic was a good distraction for me, although my golf game is still pretty terrible.
- It was a hot one, but we made it through! Here are some photos from our second week of school...
- Enjoy the slideshow of pictures from our first week back...
- Take a peak at another great week...
- It was busy week last week full of all different events...from our final staff collaboration time to senior walk to a hot picnic lunch to mindful moments in preschool to a Friday night graduation!
- The 4th Grade Student Council did such a great job planning and leading our Memorial Day assembly! And so glad we were able to pull off the surprise guest for 2nd grader, Alexis. It was awesome to see some of our students and staff honoring and remembering special family members.
- Thank you to the kindergarten team, Nurse Tara, Amanda Farley, Denise McGovern, Kim Bliss, and Julia and Tracee for all your help with kindergarten screening. We have lots of great new recruits that are joining the team next year!
- Downstairs we were meeting the future of Clough, while upstairs our 4th graders were learning all about the next stop on their educational journey, Miscoe! The life cycle of a Clough student continues.
- Our kindergarteners have become readers! This class that I walked into was excited that they had worked up to 15 minutes of independent reading time.
- Multicultural Night - Passport to Global Citizenship was a huge success this week! Food trucks, dancing, exploring different cultures, games, puzzles...so much family fun!
- On the same night as Multicultural Night our very own Mr. Hanson graduated from his admin leadership program! And guess who spoke and celebrated all of the members of his cohort?!
- Mrs. Welch and her 2nd grade crew was working on some of those tough digraphs like /gh/.
- Saw some pretty impressive self portraits being done my some 2nd grade artists.
- Thank you Maria for working with the 3rd grade classes to introduce them to their hallway lending library!
- Caught this awesome moment during sewing enrichment! I feel like we would all be happy if we could just have Tara and her mom spend a day teaching us to sew!
- I think we all agree that the PTO's special treat was amazing! Loved having the Shishkaberry Truck visit us last week!
- Did you know that our 4th graders helped Channel 4 with the weather report on Friday? So awesome that Andrea helped bring real life science to our students. And then they got to learn from a meteorologist after being part of the morning news!
- Thank you teachers for engaging in great discussion and work around literacy instruction with Memorial teachers on Friday. It was great to be able to bring both schools together.
- A huge thank you to our awesome specialists for putting on a successful Specialist Night on Thursday! The gym was packed with families and the kids had so much fun visiting all the stations and viewing all their artwork. So many parents commented on what a great night it was!
- Have you seen the garden beginning to take shape? Thankfully Kyle's after school crew has been working hard on it. And our amazing school nurse spends time on the weekend working on it. Last weekend, some Clough friends decided to help Tara out!
- 4th graders had a chance to learn about some different instruments from the Miscoe teachers.
- I caught Mrs. Leone's students recording some weather report clips after researching different types of weather...future meteorologists?!
- I want to play! Always a fun time in preschool with our three year olds.
- Mrs. Hopkins was doing some small group reading with an eager group of 2nd graders.
- On Cinco de Mayo, Mrs. Walsh was sharing information about mariachi bands with 3rd graders.
- I caught Mrs. St Pierre's mathematicians jumping right back in after returning from vacation week.
- Mrs. Marques K students were so excited to try out some new alphabet rainbow pop its during their small group work in reading!
- I enjoyed popping in and hearing 4th graders working on their ukelele skills in music with Mrs. Walsh.
- It was great to spend time listening and discussing literacy with reading experts from Memorial and Clough on Friday. And loved that I caught this joyful moment when Brianna was gifted a book from Mr. Schu and he took a minute before rushing off after speaking to sign her book!
- It was a busy week leading up to spring break. Loved being able to celebrate our 4th graders' writing! We are grateful for the grant from MA Cultural Council that brought Motoko into our school as a writer in residence.
- Popped into Mrs. Pilkington's kindergarten class during literacy stations. It's been awesome to watch our K students become readers!
- 4th graders doing some watercolor creations in art with Mrs. Stone.
- 2nd graders working hard to create a consonant sound map with Mrs. Farley. I learn something new every time I watch Mrs. Farley teaching!
- Loved Mrs. Poxon's writing model for opinion writing! It really is the best job in the world!
- We had lots of great community members come in for Community Reader Day! Hope the students enjoyed the visits and the books!
- I caught 3rd graders in Mrs. Naples and Mrs. Rondinelli's class working on a Massachusetts Project in Technology.
- Mrs. Marques' kindergartners displayed some of their spring writing in the hallway. Stop by and read their writing when you get a chance!
- Thank you for some really great discussion and work during our staff collaboration time on Thursday!
- Even though I wasn't in the building, people sent me pictures of different things happening during the week. 3rd grade had some important lessons on fire safety.
- Kindergarten enjoyed the science enrichment program from the Discovery Museum...learning all about dinosaur!
- Mrs. Marques class was having fun spelling all kinds of words!
- Mrs. O'Neil's class had fun practicing some fire safety skills.
- I also got a picture from some 2nd graders...they were working hard on their foundational reading skills...and missing their principal!
- What a fun week full of book love! I found some great book character costumes on Friday.
- These 3rd graders were focused on vowel teams when I popped in the other day.
- And these 3rd graders were rotating through some different literacy activities, including practicing identifying nouns, verbs, and adjectives with partners.
- Our Family Literacy Night Camp-In was a huge success! So many families enjoyed making book recommendations, fishing for sounds, reading in tents, and our most popular station...writing poems and stories together! Thank you to Brianna and Maria for helping organize this awesome night. Thank you to the staff who came and helped us run the event. And everyone left with a sweet s'mores treat and some helpful tips for how to read and talk about books as a family at home!
- I had lots of fun helping our Spanish Immersion 1st graders travel around the school in small groups looking for clues and leprechauns! Thank you to the many teachers who helped hide some of the clues in or around their classrooms!
- I didn't really take many pictures on Friday, but I did enjoy all of the good conversation that happened across schools and grade levels! Hoping you found Friday's PD insightful and impactful.
- Our kindergarteners are doing amazing work in foundational literacy skills. Loved popping in and hearing them think about the /c/ and /k/ sounds at the beginning of words and what vowels are following them.
- Caught these 4th graders after they had read a great book about measurement and were charting the different ways to measure length, volume, etc.
- We only have one more official session with Motoko, our writer in residence. I am so excited to see the final trickster tales that our 4th graders are creating!
- I had so much fun making positive phone calls home with these awesome 1st graders on Friday afternoon. Best way to end the week. The parents were so happy and the kids were so proud of themselves!
- Thank you for your thoughtful discussions and work during staff collaboration time last week. And thank you to Evan for facilitating our time together. Still so much to talk about and digest around emotional dysregulation, de-escalation techniques and compassion fatigue!
Clearly I need to get back into the swing of snapping photos during the week! Or I was tied up in lots of meetings during the first week back after vacation. I didn't have too many photos from this week.
One of our awesome 4th graders, Layla, was the Clough student selected to receive a special achievement award from DESE for her performance last year on MCAS. I love when I get the job of surprising students!
One of our awesome 4th graders, Layla, was the Clough student selected to receive a special achievement award from DESE for her performance last year on MCAS. I love when I get the job of surprising students!
During Read Across America Day, I found these two kindergarten friends dressed as twins!
So many great moments during the week before vacation! Our first ever Book Lovers' Breakfast was a huge success! Thank you Brianna and the PTO for helping organize this. Check out the video below with pictures from the event.
Friday's "All Around the World" Spirit Day was something new and we saw lots of different countries represented.
And play day on the half day was another fun experience for our students before break. I am actually leading a book study (you don't have to have read the book) on March 2 and March 9 with DESE, all about the book Purposeful Play. If you are interested, the sessions are 3:30-5:00, and I can share the registration link with you...just let me know!
So many great moments from last week. I know I shared lots of photos and video clips in the Inspired Learning Day videos. Thank you all for supporting the Student Council Disney Day spirit day! I think the students (and the staff) had fun dressing up in all different ways.
I was so proud of our 4th graders who came to Monday night's School Committee meeting with me. They presented on our writer-in-residence and shared all about the writing they are doing with her. They were so excited to tell them how much fun they are having with writing trickster tales!
Once again, it was a week full of so many awesome things, especially ending with a great Friday spirit day and the visit with Ralph Masiello. Check out the video below from his visit.
So many awesome things happening last week, even with a snow day. I decided to put everything into a slideshow. Book tastings in the library, chorus concerts, student council making posters, 4th graders doing awesome reading work, growing a kindness garden....lots of awesomeness!
- I caught the 4th grade chorus rehearsing with Mrs. Walsh for their winter concert happening Jan 26. We will get to come together Thursday morning at 9:30 in the cafeteria to listen to the concert.
- 2nd graders were working on phonemic awareness and sound production with Mrs. Farley.
- 1st graders in Mrs. Johns' class were learning how to play an addition math game.
- Sra Moreno's class was working on skip counting and solving math problems in Spanish.
- 2nd graders were collaborating and learning some new vocabulary before reading a new book.
- Kindergarten students were learning about coding in technology!
- Our upstairs Jiji and downstairs Jiji are filling up with stickers...students have been excited to see their progress visually!
- 3rd graders were learning about several different watercolor painting techniques last week.
- I heard that Kyle gave a great PD session on executive function on Friday. I was sorry to miss it, but I wanted to share a picture of where I was...super proud big sister moment...I was in DC watching my brother being sworn in as a judge! So awesome to watch my dad put by brother's robe on him and see my kindergarten nephew watch his daddy being sworn in.
- So excited to welcome Motoko, a Japanese storyteller, to Clough! She will be coming to work with 4th graders on Wednesdays for 10 weeks thanks to a grant from the MA Cultural Council.
- Trax, the Railers mascot, stopped by to give kids high fives and pop into classrooms!
- Guess what...Kindergarteners are beginning to blend sounds to read words! Caught Mrs. Pilkington's class sounding out the different parts of CVC words and proudly reading them.
- Thank you to all who used their creativity Thursday during staff collaboration time to create their one word with Scrabble tiles or on a mug! I hope to come around and snap a photo of people with their finished project!
- Friday night our 4th graders did a great job singing "The National Anthem" on the ice before the Railers game. Kudos to our awesome music teacher, Mrs. Walsh, for organizing the chorus and helping them be successful! The singing was great and the game was a lot of fun with Clough families.
- The week before break is a blur...mainly because I know I was crawling through like many of you, battling sickness. Thanks for playing along with all the different 12 days before winter break fun!
- The Nipmuc jazz band and acapella group were awesome! Such a great concert for the whole school.
- Even without internet or phones, we still managed to have a fun last half day with everyone in jammies!
- I caught Mrs. Hardin's 1st graders working together to solve some math puzzles in ST Math....and using some resources posted around the room!
- Thanks for playing along with our elf fun last week! We tried really hard to keep them hidden, but you found them all...with the help of some students too!
- I popped into 4th grade on Friday and found students from Mrs. Keenan's class and Mrs. Rutkowski's class chatting in book groups...all about theme, character perspective, and more!
- We had our first Student Council meeting with the 4th graders who applied and were selected to serve as reps for their classrooms. We did some get to know you activities, and then they brainstormed some different activities that student council could do this year. They have big plans!
- Thankfully the day after our scheduled all school walk was a beautiful weather day! I actually met with a rep for MA Safe Routes to School last week and they have free resources and programs; we will be able to partner with them and provide some cool things for Clough. She was excited to hear about our all school walks!
- Loved popping into Mrs. Pilkington's class to hear her reading a story and discussing it with kindergarteners.
- Caught Mrs. Hardin's students stretching their math brains during Number Corner.
- I listened in to Mrs. Poxon leading students through an interesting discussion during morning meeting.
- Kudos to Mrs. Walsh and the 4th grade chorus for amazing singing at the mini concert on Friday!
- It was great to cheer on the 8th graders during their Miscoe Walk for Giving!
- I noticed 4th graders in Mrs. Keenan's and Ms. Griswold's class collaborating to design turkey transport.
- Mrs. Farley was talking turkey while reading to the preschool students.
- Love seeing what people are filling our gratitude jars with...so many things to be thankful for.
- 2nd graders showed off their creativity when making balloon floats and having their own parade!
- We said goodbye to Denise Farrell last week and we all wish her well on her next adventure...retirement! I would like to welcome our new SPED secretary, Sarah Gowen. Sarah comes to us from Hudson with lots of great experience. Be sure and stop by to welcome Sarah when you get a chance!
- Students in our SI 1st grade class were learning about ficcion realista while reading about communidad.
- I caught 4th graders reading all over their classroom. They found comfy spots where they could continue to build up their reading stamina during independent reading time!
- I also found 4th graders learning about how to write about all the reading they are doing. Mrs. Willinski gave her class a model to follow and some writing resources to refer to in their reading response notebooks.
- I caught 2nd graders doing some informative writing about different animals they had read about.
- We have several new hires who will be starting over the next few weeks. In the nurse's office, we have finally hired a nurse assistant. Her name is Karina Saletnik. We have also hired a new recess monitor. Evelyn Sistak will be serving as a recess monitor 5 days a week. Evelyn's daughter is a 4th grader here at Clough. We will also have Pamela Devlin stepping in as a long term sub para while Kathy Porter is out recovering. Pamela was a parent and volunteer at Clough for many years.
- We had so many pictures from Cardboard Creation Day! Here's a video of just some of them...
- And so many awesome pictures from Play Day! Here's a short video with some highlights...
- We survived Halloween on a Monday! So many great Literacy O'Lanterns on display. Perfect weather to parade around outside and lots of parents volunteering in the school and cheering on our students outside.
- The principal for the day was a natural! I am slightly worried that I will be replaced by her. She loved visiting classrooms and cheering everyone on during our all school walk.
- So many awesome Literacy O'Lanterns continue to pop up at school!
- Caught some students working with Mrs. McGovern to write letters to their teachers about books they were reading.
- 3rd graders in Mrs. Ellis's class were reading an opinion piece about if Halloween should always be on a Saturday.
- Several Clough staff and parents attended DESE's Better Together Summit on Friday. One of the sessions I attended was one of my favorite presenters, Dr. Nicole Christian Brathwaite, a child psychiatrist. She presented on understanding the impact of stress on kids.
- PK and K Open House last Monday night was a success! People seemed to really like moving the date back to a later time in the year. Students were very excited to show their families all the hard work and show off how proud they are of their classroom spaces!
- 3rd graders in Mrs. Naples and Mrs. Rondinelli's class enjoyed reading and discussing The Proudest Blue. We now have multiple copies of this text in our leveled library!
- 1st graders in Mrs. Hardin's class had fun visiting the public library and checking out a book!
- I caught Mrs. Willinski's 4th graders utilizing the science room to work on weighing and measuring.
- Love seeing 1st graders having fun with FUNdations! Building words, learning about digraphs, strengthening their foundational reading skills!
- Thank you to everyone who helped and supported National Youth Confidence Day and our positive post it day! The students were so excited to discover their notes. And I love how staff and students continued to add positive notes around the whole school!
- Principal Corbett did a great job doing my job! He said his favorite part of the day was getting to go into every classroom...that's my favorite part of the job too! I think he was definitely tired by the end of the day. Can't wait to schedule our next principal for the day...Emmaline!
- We started to get some of the book donations from Logitech and I caught Brianna jumping for joy and clicking her heals together. We might have another opportunity to get people to purchase from Amazon wish lists. Might be a good idea to build wishlists so they are ready for the next person that decides they want to buy items for us!
- Love our new parking sign!
- Popped into 3rd grade during math and saw students working on using strategies to solve addition problems.
- I would like to welcome a new staff member. Linda Faltaous will be starting on Wednesday as a Title 1 tutor. I am also interviewing this week to find us another recess/lunch monitor.
- Thank you to the specialists for focusing on all of the PBIS SOAR expectations. Last week they worked with students on hallway and assembly behavior. And thank you to Melissa, Brianna, and Becky for updating our hallway SOAR bulletin board. We want this to be an interactive board where kids will have a chance to color in our two posters. And we will be snapping polaroids when we catch kids soaring and posting the pictures to the board.
- Thanks to everyone for all the great dialogue during Thursday's staff collaboration time. The resources shared with each group are available for anyone to review. And I will be gathering the notes and using them for future work. Glad that Maureen and Cheryl were able to stop by and join us!
- I would like to welcome some new staff members! Becca Tepper is a new special education paraprofessional. She will be mainly working with 2nd grade. You might recognize Becca because her twins are in 1st grade here at Clough. I would also like to welcome Ana Mendes as our new 5 day a week lunch monitor. Ana is also going to be doing some subbing for us. And she is a Portuguese translator for the district so we are excited to have her as a resource for our students and families in the building! Hopefully next week I will be announcing our newest hire - a 2nd Title 1 tutor!
- Congrats to Erin Fater! At our para meeting, I spun the prize wheel and she won the principal's parking spot for October!
- 2nd graders were learning how to play a math game of bugs versus spiders to work on subtraction skills.
- Did you smell apple pie last week? It wasn't a trick, there really was some apple pie cooking going on in the preschool classroom!
- 3rd graders were excited to dive into some drawing books to get inspiration for their artwork.
- I got to kick off the year at Convocation for MSAA (MA School Administrators Association) on Tuesday. I am serving as the President this year and spoke to other school leaders about the importance of courageous leadership and how we can recruit and support more educators to consider becoming school leaders. Of course, I take every opportunity to share a good book...I shared the book When You Are Brave.
- Thanks to everyone who helped make our two nights of Open House a success! Parents were very excited to be back in the building this year!
- Loved being able to pop into all three kindergarten classrooms when they were reviewing their schedules for the day and doing Number Corner!
- A big thank you to the Mendon Seniors for delivering supplies to each classroom! They left us extra bags of goodies in the office, so reach out if you need something.
- Maria and I attended a co-teaching PD session at the high school. Fun fact...I used to teach with the two consultants! We worked together in Westboro 16 years ago, so excited to be reconnecting with them. They will be visiting Clough at the end of October to see what we are doing with co-teaching.
- Dr. Cohen popped into our 1st grade classrooms and saw students trying out different math manipulatives during station work.
- Mrs. Willinski did some different Dot Day activities with her 4th graders.
- A first for me in my educational career...I golfed! Thanks to the PTO for organizing this event...can't wait to hear how much money they raised and put it to good use in our school!
Thanks for a great four day week! I wanted to share with you a video I made from our awesome time together on the first day. I have watched it several times and all of your smiling faces definitely brings me joy!
- I popped into Mrs. Marques class and saw K students working together to make a friendship salad!
- Thank you to the specialists for helping to roll out KCR time with a review of the cafeteria expectations.
- Mrs. Moreno is getting to know her 1st graders as our new Spanish Immersion teacher. We are so happy to have you here!
I love to take photos and share with you so you can see what is going on in our school! I have the benefit of seeing into all of the classrooms and different areas of the school. This will be the section where I will post new pictures each week.
- Thanks to my photographer Julia for capturing a bunch of pictures during arrival and our assembly on the first day! And check out our countdown caught on video!
- Students did a great job coming together for the first time in a long time in the cafeteria, including K students who experienced the cafeteria for the first time! We will be going over cafeteria expectations during KCR time this week.
- PK staff did a great job welcoming new families and some returning families during their orientation. Loved that they were all wearing their "Find Your True North" pins...can't wait to watch our littlest learners on their learning journey this year!
- Mrs. Walsh and Mrs. Stone had fun connecting with their students during the first music and art classes with 1st graders.