May 2-6
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
May 4
WMS Annual Meeting
7 p.m., Zoom (using standard WMS password)
May 6
Lead Teacher Professional Day
No School. Pre-registered child-care only.
May 10
On-Site COVID-19 Testing for Registered Students & Staff
May 11
Virtual Admissions Open House
Noon
May 12
6-9 Concert
9:30 a.m.
WMS Gym
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In-Person School Tours Available for Families New to WMS (within the past two years)
Did you join the WMS community within the past two years? Have you been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to come inside WMS? If your answer to these questions is "Yes," you are invited to join Paula Sharpe for an in-person tour on May 9 or 12 at 9:30 a.m. We will meet in the Learning Commons and then start our tour. Please register here.
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COVID-19 Testing Schedule for the Week of May 9
Next Test Date:
Tuesday, May 10 (for Primary, Elementary & Middle School students and toddlers whose families opt to return to on-site testing - toddlers may also continue to test on weekends)
Test on-site through Quidel and submit results when received, or send off-site test results (taken on or after May 4) to covidresults@wmsde.org. If you are submitting a screenshot, please include the date taken. Testing will continue to be offered through the remainder of the school year.
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CLASSROOM NEWS - As Seen on Bloomz |
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Blossoming Friendships
Alyssa Ross, Lead Toddler Teacher
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As toddlers, our students come to us to learn the beginnings of friendship skills as part of the Montessori Social Curriculum. Skills like sharing, taking turns and using words to express their feelings take time to develop. This is an ongoing process with constant reinforcement in the classroom. Recently, we’ve noticed more cooperative (friendship) play amongst our oldest students, instead of the parallel play (side by side) they enjoy as younger toddlers. Students have been seeking out one another to play games and have conversations. They’re beginning to help each other and comfort one another. It’s been an awesome sight to see! |
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Earth Week in Room 19
Erin Wehler, Lead Primary (3-6) Teacher
We had the best Earth Day in Room 19! Our class has been learning about ways we can take care of the earth and habits we practice that will help us become stewards of our beautiful earth!
We enjoyed a gorgeous walk to our forest, listened to the sounds of nature, explored the creek and also picked up trash on our campus. Before we headed out for an adventure, we made homemade Earth pancakes! We discussed recycling, composting, the importance of clean air and water, and the very first Earth Day.
As we delve into our soil studies, we have started to experiment with planting seeds. During Earth Week, we learned the parts of a lima bean and enjoyed a dissection activity! Students learned new vocabulary words such as cotyledon, epicotyl, radicle and seed coat. We had a lot of fun counting the beats (syllables) in the word co-tyl-ed-on! We started another planting experiment to find out if we can grow lima beans in a wet paper towel in a ziploc bag (instead of soil). We will see if our radicles sprout into roots and if our epicotyls sprout into leaves! Some children are busy creating their parts of earth booklets, labeling the inner core, outer core, mantle and the crust!
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Lower Elementary (6-9) Program |
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"All About African Animals" Books
Melissa Connelly, Lead Lower Elementary (6-9) Teacher
Students have been hard at work creating "All About African Animals" books! After organizing their notes into categories, they’ve written sentence strips and then ordered these strips into paragraphs about each topic.
“This is just like the sentence scramble language activities we did!” one child exclaimed excitedly, as he realized that even within his paragraph, there were subtopics to put together before adding transition words to help guide the reader through his ideas.
Several are typing their own books, adding other features they’ve encountered in their reading groups’ exploration of non-fiction books such as a table of contents, glossary, maps, bibliography and an "about the author" page. As they complete this big project, they are also learning about the savanna, desert and temperate forest biomes of Africa, creating murals to help us visualize the landforms, plants and trees, and food webs within each of these biomes. We’ll begin building models of our animals’ habitats next week to go along with our books. It’s fun to tie together so many concepts we’ve been exploring this year!
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Upper Elementary (9-12) Program |
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Our 9-12 students were excited to take their first field trip of the school year to Winterthur! Along with exploring the gardens and museum, the students worked together to solve the mystery of whether or not George Washington actually sat in a particular chair in the gallery, connecting to their studies of the mystery genre, family trees and forensic science!
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Book Club "Monster"
Mandy Balanetsky, Lead Middle School Teacher
Our next book club book is Monster by Walter Dean Myers. This book explores the story of 16-year-old Steve who is on trial for a crime that he did not commit. As a way of coping, Steve transcribes his trial into a script (he is an amateur filmmaker). He writes it all down, scene by scene, the story of how his whole life was turned upside down in an instant.
In order to better understand the novel, we completed a pre-reading webquest that explored the author and his past, New York City in the late 1990s, the New York State Juvenile Justice System, legal vocabulary, and the case of George Stinney Jr. In addition, students were asked to answer the question: “Do you think juvenile offenders should be eligible for the death penalty?”
While this is a heavy topic, the students were full of maturity as they discussed their responses and provided reasoning for their thoughts. They are demonstrating both emotional and academic growth as they navigate Steve’s story and this distinctive style of writing.
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The Wednesday Weekly shares WMS news and events that are relevant to the families in our community.
Please send submissions to wednesday-weekly@wmsde.org 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.
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WILMINGTON MONTESSORI SCHOOL
WWW.WMSDE.ORG
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