Caught Reading Charlotte's Web

Everyone is reading Charlotte's Web at CES!

One Book, Two Schools

March 1, 2019

Dear Coleytown Elementary School Families,

We are excited to start a whole school event at Coleytown Elementary School! In March, we will kick off a “One Book, Two Schools” experience. Every family will receive a copy of the same book- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White- to read at home over the next few weeks. We aim to build a community of readers and have fun doing it. Students, parents, teachers, administrators, and all other staff will be participating.

This year, we are partnering with the James J. Curiale School in Bridgeport for this reading experience. After the CES community has finished reading Charlotte’s Web, we will collect the books from families and staff members and share them with this school. The students at CES and at James. J. Curiale will participate in some shared reading activities together.

Today we had a special whole school meeting introducing the program and the book. After the meeting, the youngest child in every family received a copy of Charlotte’s Web. Included with the book is a tailored reading schedule to follow at home. For your reading pleasure, Coleytown celebrity readers have recorded chapters of the book. Please click on the link for information about how to access the calendar and celebrity readings. This link takes you directly to the website for One Book, Two Schools.

Reading professionals recommend reading aloud content that is beyond a child’s own reading level. We also believe that you should continue reading aloud with older children, even when they are able to read on their own. We have selected a title that can be followed, understood and enjoyed by younger students, but still captivate and stimulate older children. You will want to make sure your family keeps up so that we can talk about Charlotte’s Web as a community.

We look forward to the school-wide reading of this exciting adventure!

Sincerely,

The One Book, Two Schools Committee

Kindergarten Heart Hop

All you need is love...and a Kindergarten Heart Hop!  Enjoy some photos from our special Kindergarten event on Valentine's Day. 

Valentines for Veterans

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” -AESOP

On Friday, the entire CES community created valentines as part of CT’s Valentines for Veterans initiative. Buddy classes met to design and create original cards that will be shared with veterans at Home for the Brave in Bridgeport and other service organizations. Special thanks to all of the parents who donated supplies for this event. The students truly enjoyed the stickers, glitter, pipe cleaners, and other supplies that helped make the cards so creative. Also, thank you to Mrs. Paprotna for delivering the valentines to the state office.

Take a look at the pictures below to see the joy in the children as they made the cards and wrote heartfelt messages to the veterans.

Four huge boxes of cards to deliver!

Guest Bloggers: Getting to Know Mr. Andrews

I am excited to introduce some guest bloggers for The Coleytown Chronicles! Alexa and Georgia are two fourth grade students at CES. They are writing a series of blog posts about fourth grade orchestra. The first post is based on their interview with our orchestra conductor, Mr. Jim Andrews. Please enjoy their writing below.

All About Mr. Andrews by Alexa & Georgia

Do you know which Coleytown staff member loves golf, murder mystery books, fishing, and most of all Beethoven? It’s our own Mr. Andrews, the fourth and fifth grade orchestra teacher. He has been a member of the Coleytown community for 34 years! We took some time to interview Mr. A to find out more about him. So let’s get started!

Mr. Andrews was born in Germany but spent most of his childhood in Massachusetts. There are five children in his family and he is the second oldest. Growing up, he liked to play baseball, golf, and most of all, the bass! He studied music at Yale before becoming a teacher and playing professionally.

As a musician, Mr. A has played all over the country with a lot of famous musicians. In fact, he said there were “too many to count!” In his performances he plays the bass. He plays the bass because it has a beautiful low sound and because not many people play the bass. We asked him if he would rather play or conduct an orchestra and he said that he would rather play in a orchestra but he likes to do both playing and conducting.

One of the many questions we asked was, “What is the hardest thing about teaching? ” His answers were about having patience when dealing with children and adults. It is hard work learning an instrument and practice is so important. Having parents and students support this makes a big difference. Recently the fourth grade just had their first orchestra concert. We practiced a lot for this show. Mr. A practices for hours to ace his performances!

One of the reasons that everyone loves Mr. A is because he is considerate and generous. Whenever he has a free moment, he helps his students by writing out songs, practicing with them, and being a good listener.

William Arthur Ward once said, “A mediocre music teacher tells. A good music teacher explains. A superior music teacher demonstrates. A great music teacher inspires.” Mr. Andrews tells, explains, demonstrates and inspires each day.

Fantastic Friday at CES!

February began with two special celebrations at CES.  Today is World Read Aloud Day.  Each classroom was gifted a new picture book to read together to celebrate our love of literacy.

Mrs. Metke's class read The Remember Balloons by Jesse Oliveros.

Mrs. LaRaia's class read The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld.

Mrs. Nicolo's class read Lulu is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom.

Mrs. Brown's class read The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson.

All of these picture books were chosen for their special messages and themes.  Please ask your child what was read in class today!

We also celebrated our annual "Souperbowl" spirit day.  On the Friday before Superbowl, CES celebrates by wearing sports gear to school.  In addition, we collect cans of soup for a local food pantry.  Thank you to all who donated for this special cause.

Coleytown celebrated today and will continue to celebrate tonight at Movie Night.  I hope to see many families at SES this evening!

CES Learns

Friday was an amazing day at Coleytown. We had our first CES Learns event!

What is CES Learns?

CES Learns is based upon our district professional development day called Westport Learns. At Westport Learns, teachers offer different workshops to their peers on a variety of topics in education. Each teacher gets to choose what workshops he/she wants to attend that day. I have attended workshops on many different topics, such as mindfulness in the classroom, engineering practices in NGSS units of study, and purposeful play in the primary grades. We successfully copied this model for our first ever CES Learns!

The Coleytown community offered 19 different workshops for our students. Students voted on their top three choices and were guaranteed one of these three. The following workshops were presented:

For grades K, 1 and 2: Origami, Irish Step Dancing, Fundamentals of Basketball, Math Adventures, Makerspace, Engineering Challenge, Winter Mural, Building Fun, Singing Silly Songs, and First Aid Basics.

For grades 3, 4, and 5: Drawing Cartoons, Cooperative Games, Scrapbooking, Making Collages, Learning about Composers, Yoga, Reader’s Theater, Juggling, and Math Adventures.

Students were so excited to transition to their classes and work with students and teachers from other grades. Smiles and laughter filled the building, and at the end, multiple students asked me when we would be having our next CES Learns. Please be sure to ask your child about this special day!

Check out some photos from the day:

Math Adventures

Reader's Theater

Creating a winter mural

Makerspace creations

Basketball

Origami

Building fun

Yoga

Cartooning

Creating scrapbooks

Making collages

Engineering-will the Big, Bad Wolf blow the house down?

First Aid

Juggling

Irish Step Dancing

Final mural