Holiday Concert – ORHS, Dec, 20, 2006

December Student

Council

One of this month’s fifth grade Student Council project will be collecting canned goods for the Ashburnham Food Pantry.  Fortunately, we have already received many donations thanks to Miss Cook’s Snowflake Run.  We would like to continue the food drive and will accept any other donations that you may have.  Please drop them off in the designated boxes in the front lobby.

The other December project organized by Student Council will be the collection of old cell phones.  Every cell phone collected will earn us $5 to be used for The Nature’s Classroom scholarship fund.  This fund helps those fifth grade students that may not have enough money to pay for this trip.  If your parents or any body in your family has an old or broken cell phone at home please consider donating it.

Thank you!

Dealing with Stress

Cont. from last week…

If you usually make a formal holiday dinner, consider ordering pizza this year and having a picnic by the Christmas tree. Your kids will probably appreciate this more (and might enjoy the food more!), and you will have more time to enjoy the special night with them.

If you usually spend days dragging your kids to the shopping mall to buy gifts, go online this year. Older kids will be able to help by picking items out, and younger kids will be much happier if they can stay at home while you're "shopping."

Get everyone involved. Once you've made your list of priorities, get everyone involved. Too often, parents are running around like crazy trying to make everything perfect for their kids but don't get to spend quality time with them. Plus, kids will feel good when they feel they are an important part of the process.

If you've decided that your family wants to send out holiday cards, make it a family affair. Someone can sign, someone can seal, someone can stamp. Everything may not be done "perfectly," but that's okay. You get to do something as a family and also cross something off your to-do list.

Physical Education Sneaker Reminder

All boys and girls must wear sneakers during physical education class to allow for maximum participation as well as for the safety of all students.  Lately it has been observed that some of the girls have been wearing “Mary Jane Style” shoes.  These shoes unfortunately do not protect the top of their foot if another student were to step on them by mistake.  Also, the popular look for sneakers is to be worn loose with the laces tucked in.  These sneakers are dangerous to the student wearing them because of the lack of ankle support during running and other movement activities as well to other students because the sneakers tends to fly off.  Please have your student wear proper sneakers that protect their feet on all surfaces as well as them being able to be tied.  Thank you for your cooperation to ensure a safe learning environment.

Miss Cook

Phonemic Awareness: What it is/What it is Not

     A child’s level of phonemic awareness on entering school is widely held to be the strongest single determinant of success she or he will experience in learning to read or, conversely, the likelihood that he or she will fail. In fact research clearly shows that phonemic awareness can be developed through instruction, and further more, that doing so significantly accelerates children’s subsequent reading and writing.

     Research indicates that, without direct instructional support, phonemic awareness eludes roughly 25% of middle-class first graders and substantially more of those who come from less literacy rich environments. Further more, these children demonstrate  some serious difficulty in learning to read and write.

     Why is awareness of phonemes so difficult? The problem, in large measure, is that people do not attend to the sounds of phonemes as they produce or listen to speech. Instead, they process the phonemes automatically, directing their attention to the meaning and force of the utterance as a whole.

Phonemic Awareness is not auditory discrimination. Although phonological awareness skills require auditory discrimination, they go beyond the recognition that two sounds are different. Children may be able to hear phonetic distinctions but be unable to apply this knowledge at the phonological level (i.e. to recognize and/or classify sounds by shared features). As a result phonological tasks are more demanding linguistically and differ in their demands on memory, attention and vocabulary.

     Phonemic awareness is not the same thing as phonics. Phonemic awareness deals with the sounds in spoken words, whereas phonics involves the relationship between sounds and written symbols. Phonics deals with learning sound-spelling relationships and is associated with print. Most phonemic awareness tasks are purely oral.

MOM WAS RIGHT!  WASH THOSE HANDS!

Starting or keeping this good habit will help prevent the spread of a variety of diseases.  Do you know that good old soap and water even kills the HIV virus?  Thorough hand washing can help keep schoolchildren from bringing home the "disease of the week".

Good hand washing is easy to learn and do.  Lather with soap and plenty of warm running water.  Rub hands for at least 30 seconds.  Rinse well and don’t forget to use a paper towel to shut off the contaminated faucet handle.

Remember to wash hands:

*Before eating

*Before preparing food, and after handling raw meats or poultry

*After using the bathroom

*After sneezing or blowing your nose

*After playing with toys of kids who may be sick

*After playing outside

*After touching pets, especially reptiles

*After handling garbage or other dirty items

At Briggs we have made a real effort to give students the opportunity to wash their hands before eating lunch.  Students coming to lunch from their classrooms are encouraged to wash at the classroom sink or stop at the bathroom to wash before going to the lunchroom.

Students coming from the playground can use wet wipes or hand sanitizer to clean their hands before they get their food.

Please help your children by reminding them how important it is to wash their hands, remember example is the best teacher.  Many diseases can be avoided by washing hands, such as bacterial and viral infections as well as pinworm, a common childhood infection.

Lost and Found

We are starting new.  Everything has been donated.  Have you put your child’s name in their lunch box?

What is your child wearing to school?

It has been unseasonably warm, but we ALL know a change is coming.  Please help us out…coats and jackets are a MUST!  Please be sure to mark all clothing with your child’s name.

Santa Parade

There will be a Santa Parade sponsored by the Ashburnham Fire Department:

Saturday December 16^th 10 a.m.-12 p.m.

Ashburnham Town Hall

Free pictures with Santa

Free candy canes

Counselor’s Corner . . .

A word on bullying from Grade 4 . . .

All grade four students were attentive, active participants during classroom visits/bullying discussion.  Each class took part in role plays, raised important questions, and awareness around this topic. Michael (4G) shares an essay he wrote with us.

“At the anti-bullying assembly, I learned not to make fun of people even if you think it’s never going to get to the victim. I also learned that the people watching another person getting bullied are called the bystanders, and the people who are getting bullied are called the victims. I also learned that if you’re a confident bystander, you should go over to the bully and tell him or her something like, ‘That’s not cool’.”

Music News

 Last updated 12/17/06  by Tiffany Davis.