W E D N E S D A Y  W E E K L Y
September 28, 2016
In this Issue


Upcoming Events
 
October 1
Green Apple Day of Service
10 a.m. to noon at WMS (weather permitting)
Learn More

WMS Homecoming 
1-4 p.m. on the soccer field (or in the gym in case of inclement weather)
All current and past families are welcome!
Please RSVP!
Learn More 


October 4 & 5
School Photos
Schedule TBA
Learn More 


October 6
MTAD Parent Workshop
"Montessori Education: A Logical Intervention for ALL Children"
7 p.m. at WMS

WMS Dads' Group Meeting
7:30 p.m., Iron Hill Brewery (at the Riverfront)


October 12
Yom Kippur

Homecoming
   
 
Message from 
Head of School Lisa A. Lalama
Read more from Lisa on the Montessori Message blog.

On Saturday, WMS's Alumni Committee will host our school's second Homecoming celebration! This is an event that we look forward to as we welcome back those students and families who have been such an essential part of making WMS the school it is today. 

This past week has been filled with reminders of what it means to be a part of WMS. Last week, when we were at Whole Food for the 5% Day, we met many people who knew about WMS and one, in particular, who attended WMS. He fondly recalled being a student in the Little Red School House in Arden and the friends he made there. He even recalled his teachers and remains friends with a few WMS alumni. It was wonderful to hear his stories. I ran into another former parent who said that each time she sees someone from WMS, it makes her feel so happy; her children's days here are remembered fondly. And yet another former student who is now in high school told me in the past week that he can't imagine having gone to any other school. That's powerful.

Homecoming allows us to connect with each other and hear about the "good old days." It gives us the opportunity to recall what made them so good, and it lets us reconnect, ask "What's new?" and have the certainty that WMS is a tie that binds us. We may move on to other schools, towns and experiences, but there is something special about being part of WMS. We hope that you will join us on Saturday to reunite with your WMS friends!



 
News & Notes News
News from the Learning Commons
 
The WMS Learning Commons, formerly known as the library, is up and ready for use!  We are very excited to invite the entire WMS community to come and enjoy our materials. We have made many changes over the last few months and are pleased to share a few of them with you.
  • Community Events - The Learning Commons is more than a library - it is a place for our community to gather. We hope that you've had a chance to visit the Learning Commons for an after-school read aloud this month. We would like to thank everyone that has come and enjoyed a story or participated as a guest reader. Watch the Wednesday Weekly and Edmodo for information about other upcoming events. 
  • STEAM Resources - We hope to continue to bring new learning experiences to our students through the Learning Commons. In the next few weeks, we look forward to sharing STEAM kits with our WMS patrons. These kits will challenge students and families to create, invent and problem-solve using card challenges and simple materials.
  • Library Database/Self-Checkout - We have updated our Learning Commons database from Spectrum to Librarika. This new database will allow patrons to not only search for a book, but also features a self-checkout option to allow patrons (including parents) to independently check out and return materials. Watch Edmodo for more detailed instructions in the coming week.
Of course, there are things about the Learning Commons that will stay the same.  All classrooms will still have a reserved library time once a week where students will continue to enjoy a read aloud, check out books, and access resources to bring home to share with their families.

We hope you and your family will take the opportunity to explore this new space and the many resources within it! Questions? Please email [email protected].

photospopup

Classroom teachers will share the specific photo day schedules for each room. 


Did you know that 10% of the price of print photo orders goes back to WMS ?
Green Apple Day of Service
  
Join us for a Green Apple Day of Service this Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon and stay for the afternoon's Homecoming festivities!

Alumni and current families are invited to join in the effort to clean and maintain the beautiful garden spaces at WMS. Participating alumni will receive letters verifying their community service hours. 
 
Please email [email protected] if you plan to attend the Green Apple Day of Service.

Rain Date - While Homecoming will be held rain or shine, the rain date for the Green Apple Day of Service will be Saturday, October 22 from 10 a.m. to noon. Please check our website for information on the status of this event by 3 p.m. on Friday if rain is in the forecast.


mtadThe Montessori Teachers Association of Delaware (MTAD) Presents:
Montessori Education: A Logical Intervention for ALL Children
Thursday, October 6 at 7 p.m.
at Wilmington Montessori School

Parenting children with unique needs can be a challenge.
Parenting children in a world with greater demands can be exhausting.
Parenting children with increasingly available technological distractions can be confusing.

Come see why a Montessori education helps all children to learn and minimizes the negative impact of so many issues that parents today are facing!

Contact the Front Desk to reserve a spot.

About the Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Aiken Fulton, a Montessori teacher with 18 years of experience at Wilmington Montessori School, made a career change to practicing school social work in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. Jennifer recently combined her two interests in her doctoral dissertation "Evidence Based Social Skills Interventions for Young Children with Asperger's Syndrome and the Montessori Educational Method: An Integrative Review," which awarded her a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice.
WMS Dads' Group Meeting - October 6 at 7:30 p.m.dads
by WMS Dads Brandon Wehler and Matt Harris 

Come out to the Wilmington Riverfront  Iron Hill Brewery (2nd floor)  on October 6  at 7:30 p.m. to meet other WMS dads. This first meeting of our WMS Dads' Group will focus on setting up a schedule of fall events.
 
The goals and objectives of the WMS Dads' Group are to:
  • Have FUN and grow a supportive community for WMS dads and families
  • Identify and participate in fun volunteer events at WMS to give back and earn Co-op hours
  • Engage in fun learning activities that enrich relationships with our children
  • Build a network of support for dads and families
  • Coordinate at least one activity per month involving dads and kids
  • Coordinate at least one activity per month involving just the dads
  • Identify a quarterly activity that involves the whole family 

You don't have to be a dad to join us - all grandparents and guardians are also welcome! 

For more information, contact Brandon at [email protected] or Matt at [email protected].

Today's Learners learners
Read Aloud in the Elementary Classroom
by Lead 6-9 Teachers Arlene Wason & Susan Kenney

Read aloud time is treasured in the 6-9 classroom. It is a time when the pages of a book open windows into the world of mystery, magic and wonder.

Many of us can remember the precious time we spent sharing and talking about stories as children. We can recall relating to the friendship between a little girl and a teddy bear named Corduroy in a book of the same name by Don Freeman. We related to the friendship between a spider and her pig friend in E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. We connected to the characters, their situations or the settings in which the stories took place. Little did we know when we were making such connections, we were learning to think and act like good readers.

Reading aloud is considered to be the single most important activity for reading success. It provides children with a model of fluent and expressive reading. Children can listen on a higher language level than they can read, so reading aloud makes more complex ideas more accessible and exposes children to vocabulary and language patterns that are not a part of everyday speech. It allows them to develop key understandings and skills, such as an appreciation for how a story is written and familiarity with book conventions, such as "once upon a time" and "happily every after." Read aloud reveals the rewards of reading and can develop the child's interest in books and desire to be a reader.

Read aloud time is an opportunity for teachers and other adults to model how good readers think about their reading and problem-solve as they read - in effect, making the invisible act of reading visible. Within the 6-9 classroom, we use our read aloud time to not only share the joy of reading with our students, but to model for them "think alouds" - in other words, how we think about our reading while reading. Three "think aloud" strategies we use to support reading comprehension and help children become more knowledgeable readers are:
  • Connecting the book to their own lives.
  • Connecting the book to other literature they have read.
  • Connecting what they are reading to universal concepts.
The book Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman provides opportunities for readers to make such connections. For example, Grace loves to pretend to be characters from stories. Asking the question, "When you pretend, who do you like to be?" allows children to make a personal connection to the story. The story then reveals that Grace wants to play Peter in her class's production of Peter Pan, but the other kids tell her she cannot - Peter's neither African American nor a girl. Thinking out loud, we might make a connection such as, "This reminds me of the time I was told I couldn't play soccer because I wasn't fast enough." We ask the children to share their experiences and predict what Grace might do next. Later in the story, Grace's grandmother takes her to see an African American ballerina performing as Juliet from  Romeo and Juliet . Grace begins to see that she can be anything she wants to be, helping the reader relate to the line from the story, "I can be anything I want?" 

Reading aloud to children helps them make connections with their lives and better understand themselves and others. Thinking aloud with children as we read helps them learn how to use these strategies that are important when reading independently.
Tomorrow's Leaders leaders
Homecoming 2016 -  Join us on Saturday!

 

1-4 p.m.

Wilmington Montessori School

1400 Harvey Road

Wilmington, DE 19810

 

Note: Homecoming will be held rain or shine!

 

Come catch up with old friends and connect with newer members of the Wilmington Montessori School community at WMS's Homecoming celebration!

This year's event will feature:

  • Food from Capriotti's Sandwich Shop, Berri Yummy and Philly Pretzels 
  • Photobooth from Barnyard Photography
  • Face-painting by WMS alum Lucy Smith of Snow Princess Parties
  • Starting at 2 p.m. - Soccer game (or another indoor athletic event, in case of rain), led by current and former WMS staff
  • Starting at 3 p.m. - Classroom visits/school tours (featuring our newly renovated gym, lobby and Learning Commons)

All current and former WMS families and staff are welcome! Please RSVP at www.wmsde.org/homecoming by noon on Thursday, September 29.

 

To see who else is coming and receive event updates, visit our official Facebook event page. For more information, contact [email protected].
The Wednesday Weekly shares WMS news and events that are relevant to the families in our community.  

Please send submissions to [email protected] by 4:30 p.m. on the Friday prior  to the issue in which you wish to include your information. Content may be edited for length   and style and may be held for a future issue due to space constraints.  

For more information, contact Noel Dietrich, Director of Communications.
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