Greetings Fairmeadow Community,

 

Students at last Friday's Buddy Assembly honored influential African American leaders through a lively presentation that included songs, artwork, and powerful quotes. Words from Frederick Douglas to Barack Obama, George Washington Carver to Rosa Parks, captured themes of community, inclusion, power, and hope to celebrate Black History Month. The first and third graders on the stage commanded the audience's attention through their confident and passionate performance, and following the presentation many children shared with me what they had learned about the person responsible for their assigned quote.

 

Buddy Assemblies at Fairmeadow provide wonderful opportunities for our children to share their energy and passion, to practice speaking and performing to an audience, and to work hard with their 'big' and 'little' buddies to present a show for their peers. I'm proud of the firebirds who have performed their assemblies thus far, and I'm excited for the performances to come in the final weeks of winter.

 

Thank you to the many volunteers and organizers who helped to make Family Math Night at Fairmeadow a huge success. Children and parents alike persevered through challenging puzzles and engaging problem solving. I spent the majority of my time trying to conquer a math puzzle called 'Line Up', where black and red pegs are to be moved across a game board following specific patterns and rules. To be honest, last year I attempted this puzzle and ultimately gave up prior to solving it. This year, I was determined to solve the puzzle, and with a little help and encouragement from a 3rd grader, Summer, I eventually solved the puzzle!

 

This experience brought the 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice to mind, especially standard 1, make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Through this simple math puzzle I experienced standards 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7! Summer and I reasoned abstractly and quantitatively, we looked for and made use of structure, we modeled with mathematics, and much more during a simple, engaging exercise with a wood block and pegs. Students and parents across the room had similar experiences throughout the night. The 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice drive math experiences and instruction in our classrooms across the K-5 continuum, and while the domain standards require greater depth than a wood board and pegs can provide, we strive to create that same sense of engagement, excitement, and curiosity through experiences with mathematics in our classrooms.

 

This coming Thursday teachers, administrators, and staff across the school district will engage in a day of professional learning with colleagues. At the elementary level, we will continue our learning about the Next Generation Science Standards, as well as learn to use a new reading assessment system. So while Thursday is not a school day for students, there will still be a lot of learning going on at Fairmeadow! This will lead in to the long Presidents' Day weekend, with school resuming on Tuesday, February 21st.

 

Do you know a student or family who will join the Fairmeadow kindergarten community for the 2017/18 school year? Please encourage family participation in our Kindergarten Visitation Day next Friday, February 24th from 9:15 to 10:15 am in the Fairmeadow MP Room. I'm excited to meet next year's kindergarten parents for this initial introduction to kindergarten at Fairmeadow.

 

Enjoy the Presidents' Day weekend, and keep an eye out for information from our PTA about our plentiful online auction, starting February 19th! I look forward to seeing you at Fairmeadow soon!

Grant Althouse

Principal