Calvin Coolidge School
P.T.O. Minutes
March 5, 2008
www.wyckoffschools.org/coolidge/pto/pto2002/ptohome.html
The meeting was opened with the flag salute and Marni Scanlon welcomed the membership at 9:18am.
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Upcoming Events for March |
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Looking Ahead to April |
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5th
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PTO meeting at 9:15 am |
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2nd
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PTO meeting at 9:15 am |
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7th
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Family Bingo Night 7pm |
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11th
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Theme Day |
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8th
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WEF Dinner |
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12th
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Economy Shop 60th |
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12th
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Mathletes |
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15th
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Please Vote!!!!! |
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26th
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Mathletes |
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27th
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2nd Grade Multicultural Assembly |
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28th |
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Family Volunteer Night |
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28th |
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Spring Plant Sale Orders Due |
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PRESIDENT'S REPORT: MARNI SCANLON
Upcoming Meetings & Events:
Next Board of Education Meeting is on March 24th, 8:00 pm at Eisenhower. The Budget will be the first topic of discussion. The Budget will be presented at the April Board of Education Meeting.
March 28th, in the Coolidge Gym. The organization we will be helping is called Baby Basics. You can access their website at http://www.cafsnj.org/. We will be collecting Formula, Diapers, Sippy Cups. They will be packed and organized. There will be ice cream as a treat following this activity.
Spring Plant Sales Orders are due on Friday March 28th.
Next Coordinating Council Meeting is May29th, at the Larkin House.
Thank you: To Stephanie Racioppi and Wendy Coffey for the amazing assembly. Also thank you to Dan Plotnick for Mathletes.
Changes to by-laws : The changes in the By-Laws were
presented to the PTO. The changes will be voted on by the PTO at the upcoming
April meeting.
The names of the Nominating Committee for this year were presented to the PTO
voted on and accepted at the February PTO meeting. They are Stephanie
Racioppi, Anna Manfredi and Sue Blesow. The names of the nominees will be
updated and published on the website.
Newsletter:
You should be receiving the newsletter if you have signed up. If you have not
signed up to receive it, you may do so on the Coolidge school website at http://www.wyckoffschools.org/coolidge/index.html.
Please, also sign up
your spousesÕ work email address as well. If you have signed up and have not
received it, it may be due to it going to your bulk mail or spam folder. Please
check this out before contacting us. If you need to contact us, please email
Cara Goodrich at coolidgePTO@wyckoffschools.org.
Budget Awareness Committee: Annie Tubbs
Please join us on March 20th to a Cocktail party at my (Annie Tubbs) house. Please, check out the new coordinating council website at www.wyckoffschools.org/coordinatingcouncil/Coordinating_Council/Home.html.
PLEASE REGISTER TO VOTE:
Also remember to vote April 15th, 2008 between 2:00 Š 9:00 pm. It is important that each election is well attended to represent the needs of the citizens of our town. If you are new to the community or still need to register, please go to http://www.nj.gov/oag/elections/voter-registration-application.html to download an application.
Please sign up for igive.com the stores you purchase items from online will give a percentage back to the school.
FIRST VICE PRESIDENT'S REPORT: MEGAN ALYWARD
Coolidge Directory:
Directories are now available for $1.00 each.
Mrs. DiTursi is planning to have an art show at the end of the year. She needs help with the setup. A sign-up sheet was passed around during the meeting. Anybody interested in volunteering please let me know.
SECOND
VICE PRESIDENT'S REPORT:
VALERIE STEINER AND JILL SUSSMAN
Innisbrook:
You may still participate in helping our school raise more money throughout the year by purchasing from the Innisbrook website at http://www.innisbrook.com/NewIcom/homepage.cfm our school number is 101301. Our school receives 50% profit.
School Spritwear:
We still have some items available for purchase. Please let us know if you are interested.
Grocery Gift Cards:
Envelopes are due March 14th. If you do not receive an envelope this month please stop by the office or contact us. Anyone wishing to give us post dated checks till the end of the year can do so. Also for every $100 you may participate in a raffle to receive a gift basket of Coolidge Spirit wear. People who give us post dated checks can receive an extra raffle for each check as well. Chairs: We still
for the following committees.
THIRD PRESIDENT'S REPORT: MICHAEL ANDRULLI
Mr. Andrulli thanked the members of the PTO for the Teachers Select and the character building assembly. Two fourth grade girls came to present origami cranes. These were inspired by a story Sadako and the Thousand Cranes.
TREASURERÕS REPORT: NANCY ZANKI
Financial Report from January 1, - January 31, 2008 was approved by the PTO. If you would like to view the reports they will be in the PTO box in the school office.
Reimbursement:
If you apply for reimbursement, your check will be left in the PTO box in the front office.
SECRETARY'S REPORT: MARNI HESS
February minutes were circulated and approved.
When attending a PTO meeting please sign yourself in on the attendance list. The minutes from the previous month will be circulated, please initial any area that might quote you. * From now on the PTO Minutes will only be electronically posted. We will let you know through the newsletter when they are posted. Please also check the PTO WEB site.
CO-TREASURER'S
REPORT: MARY ALLAIN &
BERNADETTE RAGUSEO
2nd Quarter checks were dispersed. The Coolidge PTO received a check for $1400.00. To celebrate the 60 Anniversary of the Economy Shop a Tasting Event will take place on April 12th, 2008 at 7:00pm. "Taste of Wyckoff Chefs Tasting Party". Cost is $20.00 per person. If you purchase wine from Cervino's Wine Cottage in Ridgewood for this, the PTO will receive 15% back, plus it will be delivered to this event.
Please continue to cosign shop and donate. Also please volunteer for one of the shifts. See our website to learn more about the Economy Shop.
http://www.wyckoffschools.org/coolidge/pto/pto2002/HDIGIexp/eEconShop.html.
COMMITTEE REPORTS
Class Parents: Annie Tubbs
For our Teacher Appreciation Project we will again be giving custom made cards to the teachers. The class parents will make sure to get participation of every child in the class when designing them. They need to be handed in Wednesday March 12th. The teachers will receive them at the Teacher Appreciation Lunch in April.
Playground Committee: Christina Gori & Stephanie Raccioppi
Engraved bricks are still for sale. Forms for this are online at http://www.wyckoffschools.org/coolidge/pto/pto2002/ptohome.html scroll down the bottom of the page where you see the playground and download the pdf file. Please see Christina or Stephanie if you have any questions.
Theme Day: Melissa Milbank
This years' theme is "World Festival 2008". Each classroom will be transformed into another country or culture. We have 17 workshops. Amy Fultonberg needs help setting up for lunch. Please contact us if you are interested in helping. The children will be bringing home a sheet with a flag on it to be recreated using marker or crayon. They will be displayed around the school during theme day. A link to see the flags is posted on the website.
May Dinner: Anna Manfredi and Jen Manteau
Save the date. The Dinner is May 15th. Please have donated items for baskets by April 16th. May dinner is our PTO's # 1 fundraiser of the year. Also anybody wishing to help solicit donations please contact us.
Family Volunteer Night: Dawn Coleman
March 28th, in the Coolidge Gym. The organiztion we will be helping is called Baby Basics. You can access their website at http://www.cafsnj.org/. We will be collecting Formula, Diapers, Sippy Cups. They will be packed and organized. There will be ice cream as a treat following this activity.
Fifth Grade Reps: Lynn Bruggemann, Jeanine Rossi & Maria Russo
Fifth Grade Moms: We need baby pictures, pictures of your child and group photos from this year for the yearbook. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Playground Partners: Mary Coughlin
We are in need of volunteers. Any one interested, please download the schedule off of the PTO website at: http://www.wyckoffschools.org/coolidge/pto/pto2002/ptohome.html
Cookbook: Diane Clarke & Stacey Frenkel
We are still selling cookbooks. They are $10 each. If you have not seen them they came out beautiful. Please contact us with any questions. You can access the order form on our website at http://www.wyckoffschools.org/coolidge/pto/pto2002/forms/cuisine.htm
PRINCIPAL'S REPORT: MR. FAMULARO
q I would like to welcome Ms. Holly Hansen as our new speech therapist. Ms. Hansen's first day will be Monday, March 17th. Thank you to Mrs. Teschon for serving admirably as our interim speech therapist.
q Parents are encouraged to submit comments to our 75th Anniversary Blog which can be accessed from the Coolidge website or at http://coolidgeschool75.edublogs.org/
q Mark your calendars for our School Budget Election on Tuesday, April 15th. Parents are encouraged to become educated voters and to exercise your right to vote. Absentee ballots are available at the BOE office for working parents or for those who will be out of town on April 15th.
q Students in grades 3-4 will take part in state testing during the week of March 10th. Make up testing will take place during the week of March 17th. A letter with further information can be found on our Friday Folder page. Fifth grade students will take part in the NJ ASK 5 during the week of May 5th.
q As you know, our theme this year is Manners Matter. In support of this theme, fourth grade students recently completed Power Point presentations illustrating ways to show good manners. At a recent school wide assembly, fourth grade students shared these presentations with the student body. Our focus for the month of March will be on demonstrating how manners matter while working with others as part of a group.
q A huge thank you to our PTO for coordinating and funding a recent assembly program at Coolidge School. Inspirational speaker, Tami Luchow, recently presented three assembly programs at school. Tami reminded us all to actively think about and understand what it means and feels like to be different-and then enjoy the fact that we are all UNIQUE.Her program program included a workshop with the teachers and follow up sessions with several classes.
Be certain to check the Coolidge website for photos of recent school events!
Respectfully
Submitted,
Marni Hess
Meeting Adjourned 10:30am
Attendance: 39
TEACHERS REPORTS FROM FEBRUARY
Groundhog Day started our month with a lesson about how many animals hibernate in winter, which apparently will be around for six more weeks! Groundhog Day was followed with an appearance of Dinosaurs!! Mr. D and his Dazzling Dance introduced his sound as well as generating some fun lessons about Dinosaurs. The students learned more about fossils and even made their own out of Model Magic! The next week, Ms. V and her Vegetable Vest, which got us all, excited about naming our favorite vegetables and how they are part of our healthy diets! It also happened to be Valentine's Day; of course it's her favorite holiday. The children were excited about sharing valentines with their classmates and enjoyed a fun snack from our helping parents, Thanks! An Unusual Umbrella landed in Kindergarten and we found it belonged to Ms. U! This is our third vowel and besides learning about how it is used in the beginning of words, we also had fun with word building to create words like; bus, fun, tub etc.
"Good readers Visualize" so the children added another poem to their Poetry Journals coupled with some awesome illustrations.
The children have been learning addition skills in math and have been able to use different manipulatives for hands on learning. It was a math lesson all day long on our 100th Day of School as the children shared their collection of 100 things, counted to 100 by 5's, 10's and walked 100 steps. The children also created a trail mix snack by counting ten pieces of ten different snacks. It was a delicious counting experience!!
Our social studies lessons were centered on President's Day, specifically George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
We hope you enjoyed your vacation week and we have to say that we hope that Groundhog is wrong!
February was fabulous! We continue to read many wonderful stories. In addition to our text-to-self and text-to-text connections, we are learning that good readers visualize, infer, and ask questions before, during and after reading. Stories included The Stranger, Brave Irene and Grandfather Twilight. Students are learning about sentence structure, adding details to their writing, and are applying their grammar skills to daily writing during Writers' Workshop.
In math students completed chapter 7, counting to 100, just in time for the 100th day of school! We counted by ones and tens to make 100, sorted, and graphed our collection on 100 objects. We continue to practice math drills, and are doing a fantastic job!
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, important figures in American history were our focus in social studies this month. We also continued our unit on Chinese culture and traditions. Our culminating activities included learning to use chopsticks, eating fortune cookies, celebrating Chinese New Year, and our field trip to Montclair State University to see Dance Asia.
We would like to thank our parents for our Chinese New Year presentation and gifts, for accompanying us on our field trip, and for the delicious Valentine's Day treats!
Second Graders are proud to report that they have learned to write all of the lowercase letters using their new cursive writing skills!
We have begun working on the uppercase letters and everyone is excited to be able to write their first and last name in script!
Our Math work with two-digit addition is expanding to include two-digit subtraction with and without regrouping. The challenge is to keep those "borrowing and carrying" skills straight!
Our new Science unit about Weather began just as we started witnessing some real winter weather! Our students are enjoying their new role of classroom meteorologists as they keep track of temperature and weather conditions. Recently they learned to recognize three main cloud types which will help them predict the weather. Each student created their own cloud identification poster.
During our Health lessons, we have been learning about the structure and function of our teeth. We are also reviewing the ways that we can keep our teeth healthy.
All of the students are busy preparing for our Multicultural Program which will be presented on March 27th. The three classes will join together to share the songs, dances and interesting information they have been learning.
We wish to thank the P.T.O. for presenting the recent assembly, Character and Caring Count. We all enjoyed meeting Tami Luchow and she presented an inspiring message to everyone.
Third Grade News
A few of us have aleady seen the return of the robins! That means the third grade is eagerly looking forward to the coming of spring.
Community Spirit has been the focused theme in the Spotlight Reading series. After reading the story Miss Rumphius, a story about making the world a better place, and The Fruit and Vegetable Man, a story about helping your fellow man in need, the three classes gathered together to hear a presentation on volunteerism. Each child received a packet informing them about a Community Service Project that is required of them through the third grade curriculum. Our students will be selecting a project that they wish to work on and then spend three hours volunteering their time. Students will create a poster about their experiences with captions and pictures and then share their work through an oral presentation.
For the Balanced Literacy portion of the curriculum, we have worked on the strategies of questioning and inferring. Our students continue to be exposed to rich literature highlighting those themes. Then they wrote their questions, made inferences, and shared ideas with partners and the class.
In Writing, students learned about transition words. Given a choice of ideas, they selected a topic and wrote a three paragraph Explanatory story using their new words and phrases. We have also practiced writing to a picture prompt in preparation for the ASK test.
In Math we are working on multiplying two digit numbers by a single factor. We are also learning about the concept of remainders in division. Additionally, we have explored geometry concepts; specifically, symmetry, area, perimeter and the study of different angles, triangles, congruent shapes, flips, slides, and turns.
We continue to investigate Science concepts and activities involving the metric system for linear measurement. The students are working together in pairs or in groups and enjoy the hands-on experiences as well as recording their explorations in their science notebooks. In Health, we have been introduced to the heart organ and its importance to the circulatory system. The entire third grade will be wowed by a wonderful presentation about the heart given by Dr. Joseph DeGregorio MD, an interventional cardiologist and father of third grade student, Isabella. Additionally, Mrs. Kochanek has visited our classes to teach lessons about infectious diseases.
Third graders are also looking forward to their school trip on May 16 to West Point. Happy Spring!
The fourth graders have been working diligently this winter, and the month of February was no exception! We have been working on research projects that highlight the lives of famous African Americans for Social Studies.
We used our Reader's Workshop skills by incorporating picture books for our mini-banner projects. We are now studying the beautifully diverse landscape of the United States. Narrative stories are coming to life as we continue to use our amazing vocabulary words and skills to write to a picture prompt.
In math we are moving into geometry and exploring the many facets of polygons.
Water experiments have made science a splash! We are learning about the properties of water in different settings.
In health we have been discussing ways to deal with stress in many areas of life.
Mrs. Borelli came in to present an interesting lesson on how to cope with stressful situations. ASK testing is March 10-14 and we have been familiarizing our students with tips and strategies. We hope that everyone enjoyed the well-deserved break!
Fifth Grade News
Fifth Graders celebrated Read Across America Day by being immersed in literature. Mrs. DeMase, our former art teacher, was our fabulous mystery reader. The students enjoyed listening to Swordbird by Nancy Yi Fan, a twelve year old author. Mrs. De Mase generously donated a class set of this book to the Fifth grade, and she encouraged any student to continue reading this book independently. Our students have been enjoying read-aloud during class time such as, The City of Ember and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Fifth graders have been working hard to practice their reading strategies in both independent reading and in read-aloud.
In our Math classes, students completed the M&M Distribution Analysis and will be presenting this week, while other students completed circle art.
We would like to thank the PTO for their character building assembly that inspired deep conversations in our classrooms.
Keep up the great job Fifth Graders!
Computers
We have been very busy during the month of February in our Computer Lab and continue to provide cutting edge learning opportunities for all of our students.
In first grade we concluded the children's study of China by going to the Zoom School Website and filling in a scavenger hunt all about the country. Then the kids enjoyed doing the Chinese tangram puzzles interactively.
Second grade has been complementing their weather unit in Computers by watching United Streaming videos on clouds, storms and the water cycle.
In third grade the children played a math review powerpoint game that I created, where they showed their math knowledge and teamwork skills.
Fourth grade has enjoyed working on www.mrnussbaum.com/usagames.html where they played all interactive games about the United States including hangman, word search, where in the country is..., jigsaw puzzles and more.
Finally, fifth grade has been learning how to insert a hyperlink into a Word document by doing a creative and enjoyable activity.
Be sure to ask the kids about all of the cool activities that they complete in Computers.