Mrs. Clarke

Happy Friday. What a wonderful week we’ve had in West Paris. We began discussing our garden expansion. This project will include eight new raised beds, thanks in large part to Healthy Oxford Hills and the Alan Day Community Garden. Each class will take charge of caring for one bed this spring. I wonder what vegetable students will choose. We will be adding fencing with the help of our spring garden club (more news on this enrichment opportunity to come). Many of our fruit trees survived the winter and are showing off their buds. Ms. Liz and Mrs. Paine worked with third grade students to create fairy houses in the woods behind the school. Next week members of student council and I will hike up to Berry’s Ledge to mark the trail with flagging tape so our students and staff can continue our spring hiking adventures. Feel free to use the trail on weekends as well. Take care and enjoy your weekend.
Beth

 Classrooms

• Pre-K – We have been enjoying the nice weather, finally. We have been talking a lot about things that grow and growing our own grass and bean plants. We have made bird nests and bird feeders that we hung outside in the playground so we could observe the birds. At the sensory table, we had worms and were able to explore and play with them for a few days. As the end of the year comes, we hope to have a year-end celebration. For the celebration, we need to come together and decide what we may want included in that day. Pre-K has been busy finishing up our last unit. This week we have been focusing on baby animals. We are learning about how they are born and how they grow. We also have been talking about life cycles of frogs and butterflies. Pre-K is so excited to watch our caterpillars turn into butterflies. The caterpillars are finally starting the process and are in the chrysalis stage. In about 10 days, they will be beautiful butterflies. Happy weekend.
Ms. Larracey

• Kindergarten – Please look into your child’s backpack every day as I’m trying to make sure your child is getting a new book every day for a couple of weeks. Please have them read it a few times, then put it right back in their backpack for the next day. For writing, we are getting better putting spaces between our words and adding a period at the end of our sentences. We are writing stories now and trying to add more and more details to our events. We will begin our science unit on Force and Motion, using lots of experiments next week. Lots of fun coming! The end of the year is coming right up. There are things we will need your help with: We are learning to tie our shoes. Please work with your child daily so he or she can become independent and earn a prize. Please practice counting to 100 with your child if he or she has trouble. We are also working on spelling our last name. Please make sure your child knows how to spell it from memory. We are doing lots of reading and writing daily. Recently, we checked to see how many noses are in our classroom. We made it a little harder by trying to record how many eyes are in the room.
Mrs. Biggers

• Grade One – Recently, I accompanied Mrs. Clarke and several other staff members on a visit to Ridge View Community School in Dexter. It was great to see lots of other first-graders hard at work in their learning environments. I am grateful to our guest teacher, Miss Morin, who, incidentally, was a former third grade student of mine, so she clearly knew my expectations of students in my absence. We visited our fifth grade book buddies, which is always a highlight of our week. Ms. Davis also hosted a Reading Recovery Family Night in our room and was happy to meet with those who could attend. We held a Firstie Family Luncheon, as well as a morning visit from Ms. Howe, from Woodstock Elementary, who came to observe our class. Please check folders daily, as there may be math homework pages to be completed. Also, 20 minutes of nightly reading will have a huge impact on word recognition and fluency. It all adds up. We finished up our Spring STAR testing in Literacy and Math by Wednesday. Our students put forth some great effort. We have been working on finishing up our realistic fiction unit in writing, in preparation for our writing celebration held on Friday, May 24. I was out of school until May 22, and the students looked forward to their three days with Mr. Dow as their guest teacher. Please chat with your child over the weekend about being a helpful, respectful member of our classroom community.
Mrs. Chafin

• Grade Two – Thank you so much to everyone who was able to join us for our family luncheon. The students always look forward to our monthly lunches with you. I will be doing one more before the end of the school year. I’ll keep you posted on the date. Second grade is celebrating the last few weeks of school by doing the ABC Countdown to Summer Vacation. Each day we will do something for that day’s letter (i.e., B for bubbles). A calendar of each day in May and June will be sent home so you can be aware of what’s coming up. Some days include wearing a hat in school, PJ day or wearing a certain color. I understand sports have begun for the season and know how busy life gets this time of year, but please remember to check your child’s folder for any work that needs to be completed. Please ensure your child continues to read 20 minutes each day; it really makes a huge impact. It’s been busy in second grade as we enter into the last weeks of school. Students have successfully completed both reading and the math STAR tests. I’m extremely proud of each student and how hard they worked. We have been working more with telling time to five minute increments in class, as well as learning the difference between a.m. and p.m. Please continue to work with your child to tell time with an analog clock. Students have begun to bring their handwriting books home to do a daily handwriting page. Please check their handwriting to ensure neatness, and initial the page after they complete the work. I will be checking daily. Thank you for the continued support of your child and their education.
Mrs. Puiia

• Grade Three – We have welcomed a new classmate, Walker Fogg. Walker comes to Agnes Gray from Massachusetts. He likes football, and Harry Potter. Walker is also a very good math student. The class explored the concept of “home” with Ms. Liz. With such beautiful weather, they were able to get out and build fairy houses. Perhaps some will be appearing in your backyard soon. We had a fabulous experience on Education Day at the Maine Mineral Conference. Each year in May, students in grades three through 12 attend a free day of fun and education. Between 50 to 100 volunteers help staff 20 to 30 different education stations where students engage in learning. Some are hands-on, such as sluicing for minerals and breaking rocks. Ask your child about the experience. And, keep your eyes out for some amazing minerals, found right here in West Paris.
Mrs. Cooper

• Grade Four – Our read aloud is now “Charlotte’s Web.” We read one chapter a day and complete comprehension questions. We took our STAR end-of-the-year reading assessment and are excited to see how much we’ve grown as readers. In social studies, we started to put together our explorer PowerPoints. Mrs. Toita will return to fourth grade part-time on Monday. We shared our explorer presentations and learned a lot from each other. In Math, we continued to work on double digit multiplication. Please help your children with this at home. Ervin won this week’s spelling bee. Finally, we began our projects on the Revolutionary War.
Mrs. Parent

• Grade Five – Please note: As the fifth grade has so successfully completed a unit on journalism, we will have a weekly guest writer help out with our Bobcat News each week. Last week’s guest journalist was Willow. Fifth grade has been doing math and we have been using graphs and we have been doing writing and reading about the Revolutionary War. We also made a timeline on the Revolutionary War outside the fifth grade near the library and we are learning how to do chemistry soon.
Willow Tanner
Our guest journalist this week is James. This week we were multiplying fractions in math. In science, we did a project where we put pennies in salt and vinegar water in order to clean them. In writing, reading and social studies, we learned a lot about the Constitution. This week, in the Turtle group, Emma won our spelling bee.
James Mason
Mrs. Timm

• Grade Six – Greetings. Our last month will include consistent hard work and fine tuning those essential skills our team has worked so hard this year to develop across all subjects. Practice helps make us proficient. The sixth grade has been in consistent contact with me through their school email. I am truly humbled by their multiple well wishes and genuine compassion as I continue my military commitment. I know that sixth grade has a great new substitute (Mrs. Abbott) and I am confident our team will set the bar high these last few weeks. Each of your children this year has shown commitment, generosity and most important, resiliency, on so many occasions. These are all words I wouldn’t write if I, for a second, didn’t mean them. Keep working hard, sixth grade.
Mr. Onofrio

We are learning how to convert fractions to decimals. In social studies, all of us are doing slideshows on the Mexican and American War. We all have two days to finish up and then we have to present them to the class. We all have been working hard this week and hope to work harder the rest of the year.
Cheyenne and Izzy

Upcoming Events

• Monday, June 3 – Chorus and instrument concert in the gym at 1:45 p.m. This spring concert, directed by Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Potter, will be put on by students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades and will feature the chorus and instrumentalists.
• Monday, June 10 – West Paris Explorers dinner and show fundraiser from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Tickets are $8 per person and $25 for a family. We hope you can join us for a wonderful night.
• Wednesday, June 12 – Celebration of Learning from 5 to 6 p.m.

Just a reminder to parents who had to get a superintendent’s agreement for their child to attend this year. You must also request one for next year in order for your child to attend Agnes Gray/Legion Memorial Schools. We look forward to seeing everyone in the fall. Thank you.

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