Clarksville News
A Letter from Your Principal
February 26, 2010
Okay, so Old Man Winter called my bluff and won. I guess winter weather is not on the wane and I will have no further weather commentary until April! I hope everyone had an enjoyable vacation. I know if you went to Florida, especially northern Florida, it was not as warm as most of us would like, but at least it was warmer and sunnier than here. When I told several folks just back from Florida that they had a nice tan in spite of the temperatures, they said they thought it was wind burn! But now we are all back in the great Northeast and voila,’ a snow day as soon as we get back.
As I write this letter Thursday evening the snow has stopped falling, rain is coming down in buckets, and I hope we are not in the “elevation” path for the next round of snow they are predicting for tonight! We will get right to work with Mrs. Wander and Mrs. Goldberg to look for a make-up date for our Science Fair. Thank you to our PTA for sponsoring our Science Fair and especially to Paula Wander and Joanna Goldberg, Science Fair Chairpersons, for organizing and coordinating this favorite annual event. Thank you also to Mrs. Haege for her support with communication and logistics, to Mrs. Relyea and Mr. Stephany for their set up and tear down of our event, to our teachers who teach and coach our young scientists daily, and especially to you, our parents, for nurturing your children’s scientific spirit. To whet your appetite for our Science Fair, Mrs. Kimes’ third grade scientists ask, “Did you know… that Bakugans operate on magnetic force, that an egg will sink in fresh water but float in salt water, that some molecules will dissolve in water and some will not, and that the moon once had a twin but it crashed into the atmosphere during prehistoric times?” I hope you have the opportunity to get more information on these topics and more at the 2010 Science Fair. Be watching for our new date!
Also this week Mrs. Jones’ and Mrs. Ward’s/Mr. Burn’s fourth grade classes came together again for another Sister Schools’ Fourth Grades Connect activity. Using the web cam and wiki technologies, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Ward and Mr. Burns led their students through part one of a new math project in which our students established their plan for creating web-based instructional videos for teaching/reinforcing fourth grade math concepts. During this joint lesson, students viewed and critiqued models of more and less effective student math videos from the web and determined the characteristics they believe their videos need to have to optimize learning. While Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Ward were leading this work via web cam, Mr. Burns entered discussion notes on the fourth grades connect wiki. Then Mrs. Jones simply had to “refresh” her computer and our Clarksville students could immediately see Mr. Burns’ work on the wiki! There really is no way to overstate how engaging these technologies are and the power they have to transform our instruction. There is also no way to overstate the power of such twenty first century teachers as we have at Clarksville and Slingerlands, teachers dedicated to using technology as a tool for exceptional learning. Please check out our web page and our Photo Gallery for more about Team Jones’ and Team Ward/Burns’ math project.
Next week we begin the long month of March. We jump start the new month with a Sister Schools Fifth Grade activity, our Sister Schools’ Coin Drive Presentation Assembly on Wednesday, March 3rd. Mrs. Clarkson’s, Ms. Conners’ and Mr. Betor‘s fifth grades will travel to Clarksville to join Ms. Bush’s and Mrs. O’Shea’s fifth grades to present our Sister Schools donations to the residents and staff of Marillac Shelter and the students of the R. and E. May School. Our fifth grade students will also present a monetary donation for any other unmet needs the programs may have. Congratulations to all our fifth grade benefactors. They know, as did Albert Schweitzer, that “Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.” We thank our fifth graders for responding to such need with great caring, generosity and respect.
Enjoy the last two days of February everyone!
Dorothy McDonald
Principal
Sign up for the district's e-mail
news
system!
