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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Weathersfield School Newsletter - 4/4/2014


Weekly News Letter from The Principal’s Corner
April 4, 2014

Matthew Fisher
Weathersfield School Student Named 2014 Vermont State Geographic Bee Semifinalist by National Geographic Society.  7th grader, Matthew Fisher, is one of the semifinalists eligible to compete in the Vermont State Geographic Bee, sponsored by Google and Plum Creek on Friday, April 4, 2014, at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont.  
Congratulations Matthew!     
Cathleen Karaffa, National Geographic Bee Advisor

School Improvement and Schoolwide Action Plan Team to Meet
Mark your calendars, please!  Time to schedule the last School Improvement and Schoolwide Action Plan Committee Meeting of the year.  This meeting is open to the public.  Light Refreshments will be served.

Wed. June 11, 2014  2:45 to 4:00 in the WS Conference Room
Agenda:
1.  Year in Review - as a Year 2 School in Need of Improvement
2.  Did we meet goals 1 and 2?
3.  Setting goals for FY 15 – creating a new plan
4.  Open Floor

VKAT
Weathersfield Vermont Kids Against Tobacco will be hosting an assembly for the Weathersfield schools grade 5th through 8th grade in May to inform the students about the different impacts tobacco and nicotine usage has on the body, the environment and society in general. After our presentation the students will host a Jeopardy competition with the winning grade receiving a pizza party. To help the students get ready for this Jeopardy competition we will be sending home weekly tobacco facts as well as posting these facts around the school. We encourage parents to go over these fact sheets with their children and have an open discussion about tobacco usage with them.
VKAT will host an assembly for grades 5-8 on Friday, May 2, 2014 from 1:30 to 2:15 pm in the all purpose room.  The assembly will be a jeopardy competition about the perils of tobacco and nicotine.  This event will be open to the public.  For more information, contact Rachel Chas Williams, WS VKAT Coordinator, at williams.youthcafe@gmail.com

PTA Sponsors GREAT Social Media Presentation
Please mark your calendars! Thanks to a grant from the PTA, on Tuesday, April 29th at 1:00, Grades 4-8 will have a presentation on Social media by Jennifer Frank, Investigator with the Plymouth State University Police Department.  Jennifer Frank and her presentation comes highly recommended by schools and organizations across the region.

The presentation covers an introduction to what Social networking is, the history of it, how it is being utilized, the liabilities of various social networking sites and your use of them, Cyberbullying, Social Media outlets and your privacy, legal and personal implications of use of this site, Cyberstalking, and an opportunity to view the digital footprint left behind by the use of these various Internet sites. Websites such as: Chat Roulette, Snapchat, Askfm, Google Street View, Club Penguin, Instagram, Tumblr, Youtube, Twitter, Places, Latitude and many others will be discussed during this presentation with an emphasis on the social networking website: Facebook. Thank you PTA!

PTA Sponsors Blackberry Jam: Singers / Songwriters, Twins
Blackberry Jam performed at WS on Thursday April 3, 2014 for K-8 students, faculty, staff and community at 1:10 pm in the gym, thanks to our PTA!  The purpose of this program is to motivate students to pursue music...and here is how:  Adrian and Julian are 17 year old identical mirror twins who competed on the X-Factor and The Voice. They told stories about performing in front of 4,000 people and seeing the behind-the-scenes “Hollywood” antics. With over 2 million hits and 13K subscribers on YouTube, the twins explained how they developed a growing fan base of “Jammers”.  WS Students learned about the music industry from these two incredible kids who are chasing their dreams.  The twins sang harmony and played their ukulele and guitar.  The WS students sang along to popular songs by One Direction, Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, and Bruno Mars. They also performed positive and motivating original songs from their upcoming first album. Everyone got to participate as Adrian and Julian taught the chorus of “The Man” and encouraged the whole crowd to sing together.  Students were allowed to ask questions; lots of super questions were asked of the twins.  Keegan Murphy asked if they knew any Beatles songs and Adrien sang and played Blackbird….truly amazing! When several students were interviewed about the concert, all of them said that Adrian and Julian were amazing, entertaining, inspiring and fun!  For more about Blackberry Jam:
Blackberry Jam

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/BlackberryJamMusic
Website at 
http://www.blackberryjammusic.com.
Facebook at 
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Blackberry-Jam/211556162211754
Tweet at BlackberryJamAJ
Instagram at blackberryjam_music


Weathersfield Hosted Math Meet on April 1
On Tuesday, April 1st, we hosted the 4th Twin State Math League Junior Division Math Meet of the 2013-14 school year.  162  middle school mathletes and their coaches from 11 different Upper Valley schools joined us to compete in four math categories.  For our part, we provided testing rooms, meeting places and refreshments for all participants. Weathersfield Math Team came in 5th in the meet of 20 teams and placed 7th of 22 teams for the entire season. We had two students do exceptionally well this year:
Rand Frazer placed 17th of 162 middle school mathletes
Skylar Swan placed 10th of 162 mathletes.  She will be receiving a special certificate from the Twin State Math League recognizing this accomplishment.

Happy April,
JeanMarie K. Oakman, WS Principal

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