March 20, 2015 - Week 27

Happy Friday Roderick Families!

Term II report cards were sent home today.

Thank you to all the families who were able to join us this morning for our second Positive Referral breakfast of the 2014-2015 school year.  The Food Service department provided coffee, juice, and a variety of delicious treats for everyone to enjoy.  Thank you to them for all of their hard work organizing this event.  Lastly, a huge thank you to all of the students who continue to demonstrate outstanding character.  We are so proud of you for making such great choices each and every day!

On a visit to Ms. Phipps' fifth grade room this week, I had the chance to see the students working cooperatively learning a new reading comprehension strategy called Really???  

The children were doing a great job!

Thank you to Kevin in Mrs. Farrell's class for sharing his awesome spelling sentences with me this week.

Our Student Council is shown above with the $100.00 check our school will be donating to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  Thank you to all who donated to this project.  Special thanks to Lukas Williams (Grade 5) who created this idea, our Student Council, and our PTO for facilitating the project.    

Congratulations to our DI Teams! They performed very well last weekend. Thanks for making Wrentham proud. 

This year’s DI Wrentham Wildcats are from the following grades and Teams;

6^th Grade Team Brown: Creature Feature Middle School Level – 2^nd Place

Harry, Seth, Peyton, Brianna, Keeling 

5^th Grade Team Anderson/Barros: Creature Feature Elementary Level – 4^th Place

Kylie, Tyler, Julia, Dylan, Zachary, Will, Kylie

5^th Grade Team Tobichuk/Spada: The Improv Games – 2^nd Place

Jack, Sam, Cooper, John, Max 

5^th Grade Team Brengel/Bartlett: Creature Feature – 2^nd Place

Jacob, Nicolas, Camden, Zachary, Sean

5^th Grade Team Hepburn: The Improv Games – 1^st Place

Randy, Flynn, Michael, Quinn, Tyler, Jordyn (3^rd Grade)

3^rd Grade Team McFarlane/Mellman/Sansoucy: Creature Feature Elementary Level – 1^st Place

Isabella, Shea, Hannah, Callie, Chloe, Rebekah 

3^rd Grade Team Garstka/Crisafi: Feary Tales – 4^th Place

Nathaniel, Maggy, Dominic, Julia, Luke, Sarah, Brady 

3^rd Grade Team Cahoon/Mooney: Feary Tales 1^st Place

Shaylee, Larry, Skyler, Brianna, Carson 

Next week begin our Spring 2015 ELA MCAS Administration for our fourth and fifth graders.  Grade six will begin on April 1st.  Thanks for making sure the students are well rested, in school on time and ready to take the MCAS test on their MCAS days!

Next week we will begin our tenth annual March Madness Foul Shooting Contest.  This contest is open to all fifth and sixth grade students.  This year's tournament begins on Tuesday, March 24th.  Please contact Mr. Adam Moon with any questions.

The next PTO meeting will take place next week Tuesday, March 24th at 7:00 PM in the Delaney teachers' lounge.  There will be samples of the Mixed bags to see 

(Spring Fundraiser). Great products this year!! 

 Also, the PTO is need of donations from local business for the staff appreciation raffles.  If you would like to help out, please email us at wrenthampto@gmail.com

 Congratulations to this week's Positive Referrals!  Thank you for making our school such a great place! 

Principals' Coffee - Friday, March 27th

On Friday, March 27th we will be hosting our third term Principals’ Coffee.  During this time, we will talk about the process we will use for placing students in classrooms for 2015-2016 school year. This Principals’ Coffee will be held on Friday, March 27th at 8:30 AM in the Vogel Auditorium.  Please note that if you are stuck for child care, please feel free to bring your little ones.  We hope that you will be able to stop in after you drop off your child(ren) on this day.  Food service director, Mrs. Judy White Orlando and her staff will be providing refreshments for this presentation.



Balloons for Mr. Moon

Raffle tickets will be sold starting Monday, March 23rd and will be on sale up through Thursday, March 26th.  Students can purchase raffle tickets at lunch in the hopes of winning a prize.  Some of the prizes include being the PE teacher for your class, an extra PE period for your class, lunch with Mr. Moon, and other great prizes.  Tickets are $1 each or 8 for $5.  


Mrs. Farrell's Grade 4 students were working together this week to create a division word problem based on a division equation. They needed to solve the original equation, check their work, write a word problem using the equation, write the equation with labels and lastly explain their answer of they interpreted the remainder.  Great job!

Congratulations to the Spurs and the NY Liberty for winning the After School Basketball Championship last night.  Thank you to all of the Roderick students who participated in the after school basketball program and helped make another memorable season.  

Congratulations to the Grade 6 students who defeated the Wrentham staff last night.  Patrick from Mrs. Haughey's class hit a three-pointer with 20 seconds left to go to secure the win for the students!

  

A parent had emailed me this week requesting some information about the fourth grade writing on the upcoming MCAS.  She had asked if I could point parents in a direction that would assist them in seeing the expectations that the state has for our fourth graders.  I am including this link to help parents better understand the state's expectations.  

http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/student/2013/question.aspx?GradeID=4&SubjectCode=ela&QuestionID=26878  

If you click on the underlined numbers, that will take you to student work/expectations.  


Reading Across Wrentham - Update

Thank you for taking time to view the blog.  Enjoy your weekend!

Stephen S. Grenham

March 13, 2015 - Week 26

Hello Roderick Community!

The snow is melting and the days of indoor recess are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Yahoo!

As noted in Dr. Cameron's March 13th e-mail to families, the School Committee voted unanimously to make Friday, April 3rd a half day of school. Originally, this was not a scheduled day of school. 

Mrs. Fownes' class invited me into their room this week to watch them study algebraic equations.  The class was using Kahoot to work with this math.  What a lot of fun!

On a visit into Mrs. Kane's class this week, I observed students using place value strategies to multiply fractions. Great job, boys and girls!

On Thursday night, the 10 finalist from this year's Geography Bee were recognized by the School Committee.  Some of the finalists were in attendance on Thursday evening.Congratulations!

As a reminder...all parents dropping off children in the back of Roderick School are asked to please arrive prior to 8:20 AM.  Mrs. Fox is stationed at the back door to assist and greet students.  However, she leaves this area at 8:20 to begin her schedule and the doors are locked.  If you are running a little behind schedule, please enter through the Roderick front doors with your child and sign them in at the office.  Thank you!


Mrs. O'Toole and Mrs. Bevilacqua's class finished their unit on Simple Machines by completing their 2nd Annual Edible Machines Expo. 

Mr. Marshall's sixth grade class currently have their science projects on display just off the Roderick cafeteria.  They are fabulous!  

Principals' Coffee
On Friday, March 27th, there will be a Principals' Coffee in the Vogel Auditorium beginning at 8:30 a.m.  The topic of discussion will be the student placement process for the 2015-2016 school year.  Parents are encouraged to attend to learn about the process in its entirety.  In addition, Mrs. Wagstaff and I will be speaking about the parental input letters including acceptable and unacceptable input/requests.  We hope to see you there!

The annual Student v. Staff basketball game will take place next Thursday, March 19th in the Gibbons Gymnasium.  We hope you can make it!


As always, thank you for reading.
Have a fantastic weekend!

Sincerely,
Stephen S. Grenham, Principal

March 6, 2015 - Week 25

Hello Roderick Community!

On Monday, our school celebrated Dr. Seuss Day.  Thank you to our guest readers: Superintendent, Dr. Allan Cameron, Representative Dooley, Fire Chief McMorrow, Police Chief Anderson, School Committee Chairman, Ed Goddard, Mrs. Diana Greenberg, Dr. Judy Neville, Mrs. Karen McNamara, Mrs. Danielle Schmitz, Mr. Eric Greenberg, Ms. Claudia Schumacher, Mrs. Linda DeVore, Mrs. Wagstaff, Mrs. Stocking, Mr. Mike McGuire, numerous parents, KP Middle School Students, and KP Honor Students.  A very special thank you to Wrentham Public Schools' librarian, Ms. Karen Arnold and Mrs. Kim Lilja for organizing this wonderful day for our school. 

Ms. White's class spent some time this week researching for their country reports using our new Chromebooks.  

Also on Monday, the Wrentham Public Schools celebrated Family Literacy Night.  Thank you to all of the families who attended.  Special thanks again to school librarian, Karen Arnold for organizing a great evening, all of the staff members for hosting the activities, and the PTO for collecting and organizing the book swap.

Congratulations to Gina in Miss Phipps' class and Katie in Mr. Marshall's class for winning the $10 Barnes and Noble gift cards at Family Literacy Night.  They are pictured below with school librarian, Ms. Karen Arnold.  

Decomposition:  The ability to break down numbers into smaller equal values.  

A number is decomposed when you start with the number

,

    and you give the value of each digit in the number.

                      5,312 = 5,000 + 300 + 10 + 2

Decomposition starts in kindergarten and works through the grades. Although the use of decomposition will vary with each grade pertaining to the types of numbers each grade level uses.  If you ever think that a word/term would be beneficial to include please send it along.  

A very special thanks to Mr. Jones (Taryn's Grandfather) for visiting our school today.  Mr. Jones was here to speak to Mrs. Moon's students about life in the country of Chile.  

We still have about 25 calendars from our Calendars for a Cause spirit day.  We are adding one more week to see if we can sell them all.  Calendars will be on sale at the Roderick office up through Friday, March 13th. Calendars can be purchased for $10.00.  All checks should be made out to the Wrentham PTO.  All proceeds will be donated to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, (MSPCC).    

Thank you for reading this week's blog.  Have a great weekend! 

Stephen S. Grenham, Principal