Circle Center News You Can Use: March 8, 2021

Week of March 8, 2021

Good Afternoon CCGS Families,

We had another great week of learning at Circle Center Grade School! This week our students enjoyed being outside for recess and the warming temperatures were nice too! Mrs. Anderson and I had a great time running and doing relays with Miss Holbrook's classroom at recess. We had several students get a "Good News Phone Call" this week too! We love being able to call our remote students and our in person families to share the great news and growth of our learners. Our goal board is quickly filling up in the hallway. Please continue to talk to your student about his or her reading and math goals and support them with this at home.

I am excited to share our Dreambox Leaderboard names with you for the month of February! Congratulations to the following students:

Kindergarten: Eleanor K., Declan L., Zoey N., Ashlyn K., Camariya C.

First Grade: Mitchell S., Rilynn T., Liam F., Anniston C., Owen W.

Second Grade: Vincent N., Travis F., Colin B., Kate K., Henry E.

Third Grade: Jordan M., Madison K., Chase A., Kyndall S., Amelia S.

On March 13th of 2020 we got the news that our schools would be closed and we would be doing remote learning. This past year has been full of challenges, but with the effort of our staff, parents, students, and community we have become stronger in the process. On Friday, March 12th we will be having a pajama day and a freeze dance party after morning announcements. Our afternoon students will also get to participate when they come into school. While the year has been difficult, there is also so much to be thankful for and we think it is time to celebrate all of the hard work!

Please watch our February CCGS video at this link. You can link your March photos to this album. I love seeing the pictures of our remote learners at home, so please continue to add them!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend with your family!

Mrs. Hamm

There are several important flyers and pieces of information below.

Do you know a future CCGS or Y115 kindergarten student? Please share this information with them if you do! We will be handling registration different in the past and each family will go to their home school. Circle Center's registration date is March 16th 4-7 p.m. Parents can bring copies of everything except the birth certificate or we can make copies for them!

We are excited to announce our next author visit! Shelley Johannes, author AND illustrator of the creative series Beatrice Zinker, will be zooming with ALL of our Y115 elementary schools on March 16th! If you'd like to order a book look for the order form that came home this week, and we hope you jump in to our sock puppet fun, too! Create your own one-of-a-kind sock puppet, and then post a photo or video with it to our Padlet at http://bit.ly/3dETCeV by March 15th, and you will be entered into a raffle to win a pre-order of Shelley Johannes's new picture book, More Than Sunny, releasing in May! (Make sure to include your name and school in the post!) If you have any questions about the above, please email Nicole Johnson [email protected].

HAPPY CREATING, and we are so very excited to "meet" Shelley later this month!

Congratulations to this student for being our Shout Out Winner and for following the 4 Cornerstones. She will get a chance to lead our school in the pledge of allegiance next week.

Congratulations to Ms. Curran's classroom for being the Golden Platter winner of the week! They were following our four Cornerstones and get to have the trophy in their classroom and a recess with Mrs. Anderson or I! We look forward to playing with them next week.

Due to the age of our students, if you send a jacket, they must wear it outside for recess and lunch. With the temperatures changing it would be best if you send a lighter jacket and a heavier jacket for your child. This way, they can wear one or the other to recess.
On Monday we will have our fire evacuation drills for our in person students. There will not be an alarm and we will be practicing in groups to maintain social distance requirements. This is a great time to talk about fire safety at home!
Please click HERE for the local library activities for March.
Join District 115's Bilingual Parent Advisory Council (BPAC) in a virtual travel excursion! The second annual Taste of Yorkville "Culture Matters," held during Celebrate Diversity Month in April, aims to help participants recognize and celebrate the diverse cultural differences and similarities between Yorkville CUSD 115 families. Visit: yorkville.il.us/TasteofYorkville
If your remote learner is walking or running at home towards our steps goal, please email [email protected] at the end of the week with the total miles walked. If you are walking as a family and your child comes to school you can send it on a note with your child.

Check out some of the pictures from this last week below!

Ms. Guzaldo's Classroom Highlight of the Week

Welcome to Mrs. Guzaldo’s e-learning class family! This week was extra fun as we welcomed PIRATE week to our classroom. We learned about the “ar” spelling pattern by making our phonics pal: “Captain SmARty”. To enhance the experience, we researched sharks and completed our informative writing paragraph with the facts we discovered. We also read about sharks and other ocean creatures in our guided reading groups.

In math we reviewed the different strategies we have used to add and subtract multiples of ten. The students are really becoming more comfortable sharing what strategies work best for them and which are more challenging. This week we had some autonomy to choose which strategies we like to use to solve equations. We were “talking toucans” as we explained how different strategies work best for different problems.

We are also full of renewed excitement due to our new “Virtual Playdates”. We held our first playdate last week. Students joined through Zoom and were assigned to a breakout room with 3-5 other friends. They enjoyed sharing their rooms, toys, playing charades, and reading stories together! A quick class vote was unanimous- we want to make these a permanent part of our schedule!

While learning through the e-learning modality, the infectious personalities of these students has made it feel like we are all together on a daily basis. To say I am proud of the tenacity and character of my students would be quite an understatement. We are very fortunate to have formed the community that we have and look forward to learning together more over the next few months!

Mrs. Guzaldo