Mr. Ward’s Message:
Freetown Elementary School hopes all families and friends of FES had a restful, peaceful, joyous, and memorable holiday season as well as a great start to 2024. With that said, our school wide goal this week and next is to ensure that our students maintain a safe learning environment. One that uses rituals, routines, and appropriate responses to create and maintain a safe physical and intellectual environment where students are free to take academic risks. As one can imagine coming back to school after a holiday vacation can be tiresome and/or filled with anxiety. Please know, we can reassure you that in a short time our scholars will be ready to make 2024 an exciting year filled with lots of learning.
Last Friday, January 5th, Senator Michael Rodrigues visited Freetown Elementary School after making a generous donation to the Freetown Elementary School PTO. The donation was used to purchase sturdy soccer nets for the “Big Toy” Playground on Memorial Drive. The reason for the purchase of the soccer nets came from the voices of the Grade 3 Student Council members. The students voiced and advocated for soccer nets for the recess yard as opposed to making “imaginary” goals using the fence. Thank you to the students for voicing their hopes and a HUGE THANK YOU to Senator Rodrigues for donating the money to purchase such items.
Gentle Reminder...As we prepare for the winter season we will continue to use the Thrillshare Communication System to provide families with the necessary school cancellation and delay information. In addition to Thrillshare, we will utilize the school website and all local media outlets to communicate information in a timely manner for our families in Freetown and Lakeville.
Upcoming events:
January 8: PTO Meeting beginning at 6:30 PM
January 15: No School - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
January 24: School Council Meeting beginning at 8:15 AM
January 29 - February 2: Scholastic Book Fair Week
January 31: Scholastic Book Fair Family Night
February Vacation Week will take place the week of February 19-23. School will resume again on Monday, February 26th.
PTO Corner:
PTO meetings will be held in person and virtually. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 8, 2024 from 6:30 - 7:30 PM. The meeting invitation is outlined below for those families who would like to attend virtually. Hope you will consider joining the FES PTO.
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 504 427 3489
Passcode: FESPTO
FES PTO website is...https://freetownelementarypto.weebly.com/
Attendance Matters Weekly Update:
Goal: 94% of the FES student population will attend school daily.
The final daily student attendance rate for the month of December was 92%.
Goal was not quite met! However, it is a new month and new year so let’s bring the joy of school and being present at school to the forefront of our work.
January’s Daily Student Attendance Percentage:
Week of January 1-5 (Excluding 1/1 & 1/5): 96%...YEAH! We are well on track!
Grade Level Happenings from the Week of 1/1 - 1/5:
Preschool: This week in preschool we shared our New Year’s resolutions. This week’s projects included New Year’s party horns, hats, and fireworks. We reviewed the letters learned thus far as well as shapes and numbers.
Kindergarten: Everyone was so excited to share their tales from the holiday and vacation. We reviewed routines and expectations and discussed the new year and what it is to make a resolution. In Wonders, our letter of the week was Oo. For phonemic awareness, we practiced this sound in both the beginning and medial positions. We also continued with both segmenting and blending. In math, our lesson was adding within 5.
Grade 1: Happy New Year! This week we began learning about glued sounds with ng and nk along with digraphs th and sh. For comprehension we read about Martin Luther King, Jr and discussed leadership. For writing we began the How-To writing unit. The students will be writing about things they know how to do and share it with others. In math this week we worked with teen numbers. In science, we are learning about communication and ways to communicate (light, sound, etc.).
Grade 2: This week in second grade in reading we worked to determine an author’s purpose in writing a text. We talked about how authors write to persuade, inform, or entertain. In phonics we worked on combining open syllables with other syllable types to make multisyllabic words. We also learned that “y” makes the long /e/ sound at the end of multisyllabic words. In math we started to learn strategies to subtract 2-digit numbers with regrouping. In writing we started a new unit on narrative writing. In science we started to talk about properties and states of matter.
Grade 3: This week in math, students were introduced to writing, drawing, and reading fractions. In reading, students were introduced to a new essential question: what do we know about Earth and its neighbors? Students started reading short stories that explore this question. In writing, students have completed an MCAS practice that required them to write a journal entry from a character’s perspective. In social studies, students began a new unit about the Puritans. They learned who a Puritan was and how they lived.
Physical Education: Students finished their 3rd lesson of bowling including the grade level grip & stance, delivery and alley position responsibilities. Second and Third graders kept score while bowling using a modified scoring sheet. First graders kept score in their heads with each pin worth one point. Kindergarten students reviewed their expectations and practiced bowling with two rolls each turn independently. Friday classes had a fitness day.
Music: This week, students K-3 have started the 6th and final week of their unit on improvising. Grade 1 and Kindergarten will continue to improvise with arioso type songs. 3rd grade is also starting with their recorders soon!
Library: During library class this week, kindergarten students joined their Google Classroom and worked on an assignment where they dragged and dropped images onto squares to design a city. First grade students listened to a fiction and nonfiction book about winter. Students created winter scenes on Google drawings and filled out a graph and accompanying sentences about the number of winter items in their drawing. Second and third grade students worked on a media literacy activity and analyzed covers from children's books. Students responded to writing prompts about book covers on Google Slides.