Ashaway School Students Make Their Mark!

Ashaway School participated in 

International Dot Day!

Our wonderful new art teacher, Miss Guastini, and I helped our Ashaway School students to participate in International Dot Day!  This event is celebrated in schools around the world and encourages everyone to "make their mark"!

In library class I shared Peter H. Reynolds' book The Dot, a story about a girl named Vashti who "CAN'T DRAW"!  Vashti's teacher provides just the right encouragement that leads her student to discover the artist within her.  We discussed how each of us can be the positive influence in someone else's life and how important encouragement can be!


In art class Miss Guastini talked with the students about the importance of "making your mark".  She encouraged the students to believe in themselves and to have the mindset of positivity; rather than getting hung up on worries, be excited to jump into a new challenge!  She introduced a variety of materials and processes so the students could exercise their own creativity and, like Vashti, create dots of their very own!  Like our students, each dot each unique and special in its own way. 



Third grade used warm and cool colored pastels to create an interesting design using shapes and lines.  Then they used a hole punch to select the part that they wanted to showcase for their dot!

Together, we created a beautiful mosaic unlike any other!

"I see mine!"

The students were so excited when they found their dots on the board in the hallway outside of the library.  Please stop by to take a look during Open House on Wednesday, October 2nd!

Poetry Out Loud 2019

The day started out dark and rainy, so this year's event was moved indoors to the CMS auditorium.  Fortunately the dreariness outside had no affect on the sunny dispositions of the excited students waiting to perform!

Mr. Gencarelli photobombing our fourth graders!

Backstage and ready to go!

Backstage the students were buzzing with enthusiasm as they waited for the 6th annual Poetry Out Loud event to begin.  Coordinated by Hope Valley principal Mr. Gencarelli, this wonderful evening celebrates these young poets and gives them an opportunity to share their work aloud with an appreciative audience.  Some pieces made us laugh out loud while others moved us with their sincerity.  All of them were original and we were impressed by the students' creativity!  Thank you, Mr. G, for another successful and heart-warming evening!

How Teachers Are the Best

By Ruby, Grade 2

Teachers put time.  Teachers put effort.

Teachers teach us.

Good things, boring things, all things cool.

Teachers - kind, wonderful people.

I’m thankful for my teachers.

 

Softball

By Harper, Grade 2

Playing softball is so much fun!

You get to throw.

You get to run.

You get to slide.

You can run, but you can’t hide!

I can’t wait ‘til I can play.

Especially in the month of May.

The weather then seems just right.

The sun gives off the perfect light.

All the parents stand and scream.

Everyone cheers for their own team.

Softball is my favorite game,

So look for me in the Hall of Fame!

 Fourth Grade is Near

By Lily and Keelyn, Grade 3

Fourth grade is near, did you hear?

3rd grade is starting to disappear

It was fun, but now it is done

Mrs. Moffitt and Mrs. Bliven have  brought so much fun.

Concentration, multiplication, reading, math, and science rotations

Science, technology, engineering and math

These things help us move along our learning path.

Next year we will be the oldest of our pack

Our younger friends will follow our tracks.

Big or small we will help them all

As we set good examples walking in the hall.

Fourth grade is near, did you hear?

3rd grade is starting to disappear

As the end grows close we will miss our teachers and friends the most.

We look forward to 4th grade and all that we´ll do

Good-bye grade 3...we will miss you!

  

Well done, Ashaway School poets! Thank you for sharing your talents with us!

Rooster Games 2019

Click any picture to enlarge!

Last week we held the 11th annual Rooster Games!  Fourth graders who read at least 5 of the 20 books nominated for the Rhode Island Children's Book Award qualified to participate.  I'm thrilled to report that this year every single fourth grader earned a spot on a team!

I always kick off the games by presenting Champion Reader medals to the students who read every single book on the list.  This year we had an all-time record: seven students earned the title!  (That's over 20% of our fourth graders!!!)  I'm so proud of them for this remarkable accomplishment!

This year's Champion Readers!

Clockwise from upper left: Team Purple, Team Yellow, Team Blue, Team Red, Team Green and Team Orange!

The morning was so much fun!  We had lots and lot and lots of games (one student admitted he was getting tired!).  Three of the games are set up on Google Slides.  They are projected onto the large screen above the stage, and the students collaborate with their teammates to come up with the answers.  Then they use marker boards to display them and earn points.  Students match pictures from each book to their titles in the Illustration Round, and they answer multiple choice and short answer questions in the Question Round.  In the Object Round they identify which book a displayed object represents.

Students write their answers on marker boards during the Google Slide rounds.

Two of the rounds are "table games".  Students are given a stack of title cards and have to match them to the very first sentence in each book and then to the names of characters from each book.

Students work together to match up cards during the "table top" rounds.

The charades round requires the teams to find an out-of-the-way spot in the gym.  The students take turns acting out words for their teammates to guess.  Doing so earns the team a point, and then they can earn a bonus point by identifying which book the word represents.  This game is always the one that most kids deem as their favorite.  (Mine, too!)

These kids did awesome at charades!

Team Purple earning points during charades!

In between each point-earning round, we kept things lively by playing a series of "lucky rounds".  I reminded the students of the character Toby in The Trail who spends a lot of time thinking about his "rotten luck".  So, just for fun, the students tried out their luck on five different games of chance in order to earn stamps on their papers.  The student with the most stamps at the end of the Rooster Games is the winner and declared the Luckiest Student of the Day!  

"Drawing Straws"
Students pulled a straw out of a cup.  If the tip was colored red they earned a stamp.  If it was green they earned two stamps!

"Egg Hunt"
Students pulled a plastic egg out of a bag and opened it.  If there was a cotton ball inside they earned a stamp. If there were two cotton balls they earned two stamps.

"Pick a Card"
Students picked a card out of a deck  If it was a red card they earned a stamp.  If it was a Queen they earned two stamps.  If it was a Queen of Hearts they earned THREE stamps!

"Marble Grab"
Students pulled a marble out of a bag.  If it was a red marble they earned a stamp.  If it was a green marble they earned two  stamps.

"Toss the Dice"
Students rolled two dice.  If they rolled a "1" they earned a stamp.  If they rolled doubles they earned two stamps.  If they rolled double 1s they earned THREE stamps!

This year we had a three-way tie for students with the most stamps, so we had to do a "marble grab" tie-breaker:

Behold our 

Luckiest Student 
of the Day!!!

 Of course, at the end of our Rooster Games

we needed to declare a winner!   

This year the accolades go to Team Green!!

Team Green: Winners of the 2019 Ashaway School Rooster Games!

There is no prize for being on the winning team.  I emphasize to the students that they are all winners by earning a spot on a team and getting to participate in all the fun.  Plus, our wonderful PTO provides the funds for all participants to enjoy a pizza party at the end of the day!!  As a result, all of the qualifiers win!

PIZZA!!!

It was a really fun event, and it couldn't have happened without the support of our fourth grade teachers, our parent volunteers, and our Ashaway School P.T.O.  My sincerest thanks go out to them all!

No TV Week 2019: Spuds in Space!

May 20th to the 26th was "No Time for TV Week" at Ashaway School!  (Although I realize we really should start calling it "Screen-Free Week".  A lot has changed since I started doing this program twenty years ago!) 

The rules were the same as always: students were challenged to pay attention to which activities they were choosing for their free time.  They earned points for non-screen activities, and they earned bonus points for each full day with no screen time at all.  Students who earned at least 100 points get a prize, and those who earned at least 100 points and had no screen time for the entire week get two prizes! 

This year, just for fun, I encouraged the students to exercise their creativity by decorating a potato to look like an alien, or anything else space related! (This extends our Reading Week theme "A Universe of Stories" while also urging students not to be “couch potatoes”!)

Students brought in their creations all week to be displayed in the library, and we all loved admiring their creativity!  We got lots of cool aliens, some rockets, a couple UFOs, an astronaut, and an asterism!!  (Click on the word if you need the definition; I didn't know that one until my student taught it to me!)

Neil Spudstrong!

UFP : Unidentified Flying Potato!

Since "A Universe of Stories" is also going to be the summer reading theme at the public libraries this summer, I asked Miss Heather at the Ashaway Free Library if she'd be interested in co-hosting a potato-decorating workshop.  She enthusiastically agreed, and on the evening of May 21st many children gathered in the library's new community room for "Potato-palooza!"  We had a blast, and I transported (not teleported!) the kids' incredible creations to our school library for everyone to admire.

Big thanks to Miss Heather and Miss Cheryl for co-hosting this fun event with me!

All this week students have been bringing back their papers to show how many points they earned by exercising their minds and bodies, and there are a LOT of them!  I'll be handing out the prizes next week for those who earned at least 100 points, but today I got to announce the 10 winners of the $10 gift certificates to the Savoy bookstore in Westerly!  While the deadline has passed for being included in the drawing, I will continue to accept participation forms from those who earned at least 100 points.  These students will be allowed to select something special from the library "prize basket" next week!
  

Congratulations to our ten lucky gift certificate winners!

Thanks to all the families who participated and supported their children during the week!  I am also grateful for the sponsorship of our wonderful Ashaway School PTO, who provides the funds for the gift certificates and "basket prizes"!  
 

Reading Week 2019: A Universe of Stories!

Reading Week 2019:

"A Universe of Stories!"

We enjoyed another amazing week celebrating readers and reading!  Events were planned for every day of the week, and we had a blast!  One of my favorite activities involved our students creating bookmarks to donate to the Ashaway Free Library.  ❤️

Students in every class were given a blank bookmark to decorate which included the library's hours.  At the end of the week, a big of group of the kids met me at our local public library to present them to the director, Miss Heather! 

 

 

The bookmarks are on display at the circulation desk for members of the community to choose from!  "A Universe of Stories" was our school's Reading Week theme, and it will also be Ashaway Free Library's theme for their summer reading program.  We hope that, by participating in this project, our students will be encouraged to visit the library themselves to see their bookmarks and experience this wonderful community resource.  (If you haven't stopped by recently, you should definitely visit and see their incredible new program space!) 

This student visited the library recently and found her own bookmark!

Do stop by the library soon!  In the meantime, here are some examples of the incredible designs our students created.  Enjoy!!

(Click any image below to enlarge!)