Some important nuts and bolts!

Dates to note

Thursday, September 22: Open House-- 6-6:45pm  Join us to learn more about team Wizards. Your student will be walking you through their day and highlighting aspects of what we do on team Wizards.  So as your tour guide, they should be attending this event with you. 

Wednesday, September 28: Team Building Field Trip to the Audubon in Huntington-- We'll leave school at 8:45 and return back to campus around 2:15. This is a school-sponsored trip so there will be no cost to you. 

We are a NUT AWARE team

We currently have a student with an anaphylaxis allergy to tree nuts. It is preferred that you don't send in snacks that contain nuts. However, if your child does bring a snack containing nuts, please talk with them about handwashing and being mindful of not eating their snack around their classmate.

Please sign: Acceptable Use Form

Students met with Allison, our tech person to review the expectations for Chromebook use.  They have a form that both you and your student need to sign. This should be returned on Monday. They will start using CBs for classes next week. Chromebooks stay at school each night. They do not go home. 

MINDFULNESS

I’m excited to share with you that this school year, Wizards students will be learning and practicing mindfulness. 

Mindfulness is a research-based approach that supports students in building skills for attention regulation (focus and concentration) and emotional regulation. Mindfulness means paying attention in the present moment to our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, or surrounding environment. For the sake of simplicity, we can define it as noticing what’s happening right here, right now. It also includes the intentional nurturing of positive states of mind such as empathy and kindness.

 I have been trained to teach mindfulness to students by Mindful Schools. I have found over the years that sharing mindfulness with students helps to encourage healthy interactions and a positive classroom climate, and supports students’ learning readiness.

 

We will practice mindfulness frequently on our team. We've already learned about being mindful of our bodies.

Studies find that learning mindfulness benefits students in terms of improved attention, emotion regulation, behavior in school, empathy and understanding of others, social skills, test anxiety, and stress. Mindfulness helps students learn to take a pause when they feel upset or overwhelmed, during which thoughtful responses can replace impulsive reactions.

 Some examples of how we will use mindfulness in our class are noticing and naming our emotions, using mindfulness of breathing before test-taking to calm anxiety and improve focus, or pausing when feeling frustrated or impatient.

 

If you have any questions about our mindfulness program this year do not hesitate to contact me. I am happy to be in touch with you.

 

Warmly,

 Mrs. Michael

IDENTITY WORK

Middle school students spend lots of energy trying to figure out their identity and their place in the world. We do our best to support them in this work. During the second week of school we watched the movie Inside Out. We use this as an anchor point to continually discuss our values and what makes us who we are. After watching and discussing the movie, students then created their own Islands of Personality. (You'll get to see them all at Open House.) Once students completed their own posters, we did an activity where they made connections to other Wizard students. These connections are what help us build our team because students start to see the things they have in common with others. Another big theme we focus on is empathy and when you know about someone else's life, you have a greater capacity for empathy. The islands started us toward this goal as well.

OUR VALUES

We have spent a lot of time during the first weeks of school figuring out what makes a great teammate.  Students have participated in games and discussions to talk about how we can all act in a way that allows everyone on our team to feel welcome, safe, and able to learn.  Although this teaching and learning will continue for the next two years on Wizards, we were able to use what we've done so far to arrive at our Wizards' Values.  Students began by thinking about values that were important to them and then worked with others to come to a consensus about their values.  We ended with four sets of very similar values that we combined into our values for the coming year.  Lastly, students signed the poster to show their agreement to uphold these values.

T-SHIRT CONTEST DESIGN 

Wizard students are in the process of entering designs for our 22-24 Wizard t-shirts and sweatshirts.  We had a fashion show with students wearing past year's apparel.  Student designs are due 9/23 and from there we will vote and then begin the ordering process.  We will send out a specific email about orders once we have the design and costs.