Katonah Elementary School

March 2023

Dear KES Families,

We hosted Inside Broadway’s Sophisticated Ladies on Monday morning. The cast dazzled us with their singing and dancing to Duke Ellington’s music. It was an exciting finale to Black History Month. Look on our website (soon) for pictures! Unfortunately, Monday night’s Science Fair was cancelled due to the weather; however, we have a new date- Monday, March 6. Please see the calendar at the end of this letter for all the events taking place this month. Thank you to the PTO for sponsoring so many enrichment experiences for our students!

New Secretary to Principal

Please join me in welcoming Tara Duffy back to KES! Mrs. Duffy worked as an Aide at KES for more than 5 years, and we are thrilled to have her return as Secretary to the Principal. Tara will work closely with Maria to manage the Main Office. Please stop by the Main Office the next time you visit KES to introduce yourself to Tara. She can be reached at tduffy@klschools.org or 763-7700.

Tri-States Consortium

The Tri-States Consortium Team, a learning organization comprised of a group of public-school educators from local districts, will be visiting the Katonah-Lewisboro School District on March 1-3. The purpose of the visit is to provide feedback about the District’s Learning Commitment: to create engaging, relevant, and active learning environments for our students. As part of the evaluation process, the Tri-States Team sends its members to the schools to meet with administrators, teachers, and students to ask for their feedback about our learning environments. We look forward to hosting the Tri-States visitors at KES this week.

Pick A Reading Partner- PARP

This month is PARP!!! We will be sending a separate communication with information as to how we will be celebrating PARP this year at KES. Stay tuned…

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Our identity is a combination of characteristics, attributes, experiences, or behaviors that make us who we are. For example: I am a principal. I am a mother. I celebrate Hanukah. I love to cook and sew. Sometimes I like to be social and other times I like alone time. I have lived and worked abroad. I used to be afraid of dogs and now I am a dog lover. These dimensions of diversity give meaning to my identity- it’s how I see myself and how others see me; my identity dictates what I notice and shapes my interactions. Identity evolves through a lifetime. Having an identity can give you a sense of belonging, which is important to a person’s overall wellbeing and confidence.

At the beginning of the school year, students at KES created their own Identity Maps in a variety of forms. This school-wide activity helped us get to know ourselves and each other- what we had in common (similarities) and how we were different and unique. During the month of March, students will revisit their Identity Maps to reflect upon how they have evolved and reconnect with their peers. This is an important part of our SEL and DEI work and supports our yearlong theme, “Building a Community of Belonging.”  At KES, we aim to create a learning environment where we can explore our differences in a safe and respectful way that helps each person understand and celebrate their value. You will read about how each grade decided to revisit Identity Webs this month in the ‘Curriculum Updates’ section below.

Curriculum Updates

Students in kindergarten will use their picture power to identify story elements, including the setting, characters, actions, and events. Understanding story structure gives the reader a framework to organize their thoughts about a text. Children will also start to practice blending and segmenting words with four parts as they explore consonant blends that glide together but keep their individual sounds. In their writerly life, kindergartners will explore the genre of informative writing. They will choose topics of expertise then tell, draw, and write to teach others. In math children will work with both addition and subtraction as they build fluency with both operations within 5 as well as explore ways to make 10. Then the counting sequence will continue with a focus on numbers 11 to 20 including multiple ways to represent this series of numbers. We have celebrated the 100^th day of school and now it is time for kindergartners to reflect on who they are and how they have grown by reimagining and sharing Identity Maps in class as we celebrate our community of learners. 

Students in first grade are ready to take on the "Big Job" of being the BOSS of their own reading! The children will be monitoring or paying close attention as they read, noticing problems, and using what they have learned about decoding to "fix up" their reading while working with vowel teams and R-controlled vowels in the words of their text. Re-telling work will continue as our readers check to be sure they are understanding what they are reading. Our next writing unit will have our writers expressing their opinions, with supporting reasons, details, "sparkly words" that describe, and in a friendly way! Math work in March will be focused on counting above 100 and place value! Our "Identity Maps" have been on display outside our classrooms! The children pulled keywords from the nonfiction piece they wrote about themselves and used these words to label their self-portrait diagrams!

Students in second grade are looking forward to new learning in March. In reading workshop, our readers will be exploring the world of stories. Our strategies will focus on character analysis, plot, settings, and problems. Students will write their own book series! It is a favorite unit focused on realistic fiction writing. Both units fit perfectly in March when KES is celebrating PARP! We are excited to enjoy a whole month of good books- as readers AND writers! In math, the second graders will be deepening their understanding of place value as they get ready to add and subtract double digits. We will also spend time revisiting the Identity Webs each student created in the fall. We are excited to see how we have changed or grown. Looking at our Identity Webs will help us further understand ourselves as we move toward the final months of our year together!

Students in third grade will begin the reading and writing test prep units. In addition to preparation for the NYS ELA Test, these units will provide opportunities to learn and practice skills that keep students on the trajectory of becoming life-long, confident readers and writers. Additionally, character study will be an important area of focus, including describing characters’ feelings and traits, describing the relationship between characters, character motivations, and the problem and the solution. In math, third graders will begin working with fractions. Students will learn to read and write factions for equal-sized parts of a region, use a fraction to represent multiple copies of a unit, as well as representing fractions less and greater than 1 on a number line. Third graders will revisit their Identity Webs that were created back in the fall. We will think about experiences this year that have impacted the way they think about themselves and each other. 

Students in fourth grade will commence an ELA unit on reading and writing strategies in preparation for state test in April. Students will be reading fiction and non-fiction passages and practicing inferencing skills, supporting their claims with text evidence, comparing texts, and applying their essay skills to answer extended response questions. In math, students will continue their work with fractions. They will learn adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers with like denominators. Mathematicians in fourth grade will multiply fractions by whole numbers and use the four operations to solve time problems. In social studies, fourth graders are learning about the causes that led to the American Revolution. They are using a variety of sources to research specific events and will spend time in Library talking and debating a stance (Patriot or Loyalist).  In mid-March, students will begin a new science unit on Waves and Information. In this unit students will be using information from several sources; they will develop models of waves that will help them describe patterns and what causes objects to move. Students will explore the evolution of patterns and codes used in communication. Also, they will apply what they have learned to solve an engineering challenge by designing and testing devices that convert energy from one form to another to communicate information over a distance. The students will use real world events and phenomena that will encourage them to explore these concepts and the role they play in the 21st century. Fourth graders will create a new Identity Web on their iPad through using the app Keynote. They will then compare their new Identity Web to the one they created in September. Students will add their reflections into their keynote creation. 

Students in fifth grade will be busily engaged in several new units this month. When finished with the literary essay unit, the fifth graders will commence an ELA unit on reading and writing strategies in preparation for state test in April. Students will be reading fiction and non-fiction passages and practicing inferencing skills, supporting their claims with text evidence, comparing texts, and applying their essay skills to answer extended response questions. In math, fifth graders will be multiplying and dividing fractions, and solving more complex word problems. The students will also be starting a new science unit on Matter. This is a new unit for fifth graders and promises to be very exciting. Finally, the fifth graders will be revisiting their identity maps to check in with themselves and make any revisions.

March Dates:

3/3      1^st Grade Non-Fiction Writing Celebration, 9:30-10:00am in Classrooms (Snow Date: 3/6)

3/6      3^rd Grade BOCES Biomes (PTO Enrichment)

            Rescheduled KES Science Fair

3/8      PTO General Membership Meeting, 7:30pm in the KES Cafeteria

3/9      Rescheduled A World of Difference JJHS Club Visit to KES (see last month’s newsletter)

BOE Meeting, 7:30pm in the JJHS Library

3/10    PARP High School Drama Club Presentation (Snow Date: 3/13)

3/14    3^rd Grade Engineering Up! (3/21 and 3/28) (PTO Enrichment)

            Kindergarten Author Visit- Nina Crews (PTO Enrichment)

3/15    1^st Grade Author Visit- Nina Crews (PTO Enrichment)

            Kindergarten Orientation (for incoming K parents) 7:00pm (Snow Date: 3/20)

3/16    Harlem Wizards Visit KES (Sponsored by the JJ Booster Club)

3/17    120^th Day of School

3/24    PARP “Wear a Word Day”

3/25    PTO Kindness Day

3/29    PARP “Starry Story Night” 6:00-7:00pm (Snow Date: 3/30)

3/31    PARP “Character Day”

Thank you for your continued support and partnership in providing our students with the best possible educational experience.

Sincerely,

Cristy and Kweon