Scenes from December

The fifth grade orchestra at the holiday concert

Fifth graders playing their cellos

Chorus members 

Kindergarten "Super readers" reading to their third grade buddies.

More reading buddies

Third grade students testing their original rollercoaster designs.

More original rollercoasters

The "fireplace" in the library media center

Coleytown staff enjoying the holiday gift from the PTA.  Thank you for the amazing toaster oven in the faculty room.  The bagels were delicious!

Happy Holidays Coleytown!

Hour of Code

Coleytown students are thrilled to be coding in December.  Classes are participating in the worldwide Hour of Code movement.

What is an Hour of Code? "The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts." 
-https://hourofcode.com/us#

Mrs. Syndercombe and the CES community have participated in the Hour of Code for several years.  This year, students explored various coding activities in the computer lab.  Students chose to build basketball games, animate their names, code with Anna & Elsa, or even build a Star Wars galaxy!  Various coding tools were used in these activities.  Teachers even joined in the learning.

Mrs. DiGiovanni coding with her fourth graders.

We were incredibly fortunate to have Dr. Kassay's sister, Amanda Kassay, come to Coleytown and work with our third graders today.  Ms. Kassay is a software engineer at Google.  She was interviewed on the TV studio about her job.  Click this link to watch her interview.  

Ms. Kassay helped the third graders make original Google Doodles using Scratch.  (Scratch is an online programming tool for students).  Students explored various ways to animate their doodles and learned how to add color, backgrounds, sounds, actions, and much more!  

Ms. Kassay introducing the Google Doodles to the third graders.

Mrs. Carothers and a student learning together.

A third grader sharing his sound with Mrs. Davis.

Ms. Kassay helping students with their original creations.

Thank you to Ms. Kassay for visiting Coleytown and helping our students learn more about coding.  Thank you to Mrs. Syndercombe for organizing this special event for our community.  If you are interested in learning more about coding, please visit the CES webpage.  Mrs. Syndercombe has linked various coding games and activities for children.  

Happy Coding Coleytown!

Art Around Coleytown

Have you ever noticed the incredible artwork at Coleytown?  All around the building we have original pieces of art by Westport artists. These pieces are part of the Westport Public Art Collection, which contains nearly 1,500 pieces on display in Westport's public buildings.  

Each month, on CES TV, Coleytown students will be highlighting different pieces of art in a segment named Art in our School. The first painting that we highlighted was American Heritage, the Stevan Dohanos painting in the main office.

This month two fourth grade students decided to highlight a drawing by Catherine Barr titled Young Bears. They researched this artist and created a video to share on our tv studio. The students also challenged the Coleytown community to create their own drawings in crayon that we can showcase in the building. Click on this link to watch the amazing video and to learn more about Catherine Barr.

Teachers College December Visits

Our staff developers from Teachers College were back at Coleytown!  They worked with teachers in Kindergarten through fifth grade and modeled small group work and conferences with our students. They also worked with grade levels to plan for upcoming units in writing.

Alissa modeling a conference with a third grade student.

Valerie leading a small group in Kindergarten

We celebrated our students’ writing progress with the staff developers.  We noticed students are writing for longer periods of time, planning and organizing using a variety of strategies, and employing different elaboration techniques.  In our classroom visits we read second grade “How To” guides (nonfiction), fifth grade literary essays, and first grade informational chapter books. I encourage you to ask your Coleytowner about Writing Workshop!