Halloween Celebration & Fundraiser at The Roosevelt Island School

Annual Halloween Fun House/Costume Party at The Roosevelt Island School was another successful community celebration.  The PTA is grateful to the many community organizations and volunteers who partnered with P.S./I.S. 217 to make this event possible!  A special thank you to the firefighters, the Seniors, Parents and others who volunteered their time to man the event.

October Birthday Lunch with the Principal

Our class has a student born in October - congratulations to David! Kids received congratulations from the school Principal and enjoyed pizza, cake and juice at the cafeteria.

REMINDER: Next month birthday lunch is on Wednesday, November 18 @1:30 pm. If you want help with setting up for the event, please come earlier - around 1:15 pm.

New York City Kindergarten Social Studies Scope & Sequence

Below is the NYC Kindergarten Social Studies Scope & Sequence for the months of November and December provided by the Department of Education.  Gifted and Talented acceleration will be provided in The Roosevelt Island School K003 class through curriculum compacting and differentiation of instruction to maximize learning for advanced students. As part of this module students in K003 class will have "Winter Holidays Around the World" Social Studies Workshops, where parents from different backgrounds will share their culture's traditions, and thus illustrate cultural diversity for the children.  To enhance children's understanding of holidays and traditions, students will also participate in class creative projects (e.g. create ginger-bread houses), and see the Nutcracker ballet.

November-December
UNIT 2
SELF AND OTHERS

Essential Question:  How are people unique?
Identity and Diversity:
- All people share common characteristics
- All people have needs (food, clothing, shelter) and wants (toys, games, treats)
- Needs and wants are satisfied in a variety of ways
- People are diverse
- People are unique
People can be characterized by:
- gender (boy, girl)
- physical characteristics (height,eye and hair color, age)
- ethnicity/culture (Spanish, Jewish, African-American, etc.)
- language (English, Korean, Arabic, Spanish, etc.)
- beliefs (cultural beliefs, religion)
Developing Identity:
- Culture
- Family values
- School, teachers
- Friends
- Environment
Self as Learner:
- Learning is important
- People learn in different ways
- People learn from families and teachers
- People have various talents and abilities
- People change and grow as learners
Developing Civic Awareness:
- Students help each other in many ways
- Considerate classmates are good citizens
- Being a citizen involves rights and responsibilities
- Communities/organizations identify/elect leaders

The Roosevelt Island School (P.S./I.S. 217) G&T Program Brochure

Mystery Readers

Our Mystery Readers initiative is shaping up to be a success!

This is such a great volunteering opportunity for all, if you work, stay at home, are a mom or a dad! Thank you to all our Mystery Readers for coming to class and reading to our children!

REMINDER: Fridays @12:30 pm

10/23 Steven & Marcia (Elijah's parents)
11/6 Yuriy (Sophia's dad))
11/13 Rebecca (Maya's mom)
11/20 Cari (Lilli's mom)
12/4 Micka (Shai's mom)
12/18 Talia (Xavier P's mom)
1/8 Colette (Zara's mom)
1/22 Janine (Olivia’s mom)

Harold and The Purple Crayon

Children are going to see "Harold and the Purple Crayon" at the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. Here's the information about this show from the LAGCC website:

"One evening, after thinking it over for some time, Harold decided to go for a walk in the moonlight.” So begins Harold and the Purple Crayon, the first of seven delightful picture books by Crockett Johnson, following the zany adventures of an inventive young boy.

Enchantment Theatre’s production will take your school and family audiences on a wild ride as Harold jets to Mars (shooting stars, space ships!), joins a circus (he walks a tightrope!) and meets a king in an enchanted garden (of course, there’s a dragon). The “Harold” books have captivated families for more than fifty years, celebrating the imagination of children and the unique way they see the world.

Using all the elements of its signature style, which combines life-size puppets, masks, magic and music, Enchantment’s production will delight and amaze your audiences, from children starting at Harold’s age, all the way up to grandparents — anyone, in fact, whose heart is young and adventurous."

Professional Development Presentation at The Roosevelt Island School PTA Meeting

In response to some of the parents query and concerns in the previous PTA meeting regarding the budget allocated for professional development, The Roosevelt Island School selected two of its teachers to give a detailed explanation of how the professional development program has vastly improved the learning capacities of the students as well as the teachers skills in teaching.

Ms. Feldman (2nd grade teacher) presented the PTA with an overview of the work that she has done and discussed how she was happy with the development of the students in her class, a result, which she has attributed to the implementation of professional development training. Ms. Feldman showed us examples of her students' work to illustrate great improvement in reading, writing and comprehension, as well as mathematics.

Ms. Rubenstein (4th grade teacher) stated that the professional development program focuses on the Judy Davis Guidelines for the training.  The guidelines have helped in making teachers' work more innovative, exciting and challenging for all the subjects.  It provided teachers with a lot of teaching techniques to make their subjects more interesting to the students.

Update from "LINKS" (P.S./I.S. 217 The Roosevelt Island School Newsletter)

K003 class is working on establishing good reading habits. They are reading independently and with partners on a daily basis and increasing their reading stamina each day.

In writer’s workshop they are writing stories from their lives.

In Fundations they are practicing letter sounds so that they all know the sounds automatically to sound out new words and improving their handwriting.

In math the class has been focusing on daily math routines and have begun their unit on Numeration.

They are looking forward to a great year together!

New Parent Meet and Greet at The Roosevelt Island School

It was great to see all parents of the children from Gifted and Talented class in The Roosevelt Island School at the "New Parent Meet and Greet" meeting! Parents from our K003 class are just as talented as their kids. They are highly educated, ambitious, very enthusiastic about their children's education, and looking to find more ways to participate in the school life. During our group meeting with the G&T class teacher we learned about Ms.C's teaching philosophy, our children's curriculum in reading and math, her approach to differentiating between kids' with different talents at the same classroom. So far, parents were very pleased with the way G&T program is developing in P.S. 217. Our children progressed tremendously since the beginning of the school year, their reading and writing skills improved so much, and their creativity is obviously encouraged in the classroom. Children love their weekly homework, and even ask for more activities that their teacher is glad to provide.

At the general PTA meeting the Principal told us that this year P.S./I.S. 217 is building upon the last years school goals which included more communication with the families, working with teachers on developing their skills of differentiated instruction so they can needs of every individual student, and to examine small learning groups within and across grade levels to further challenge the students.

Ms. Beckman told us that this year again, the teachers will be working with outside consultants who will provide the Roosevelt Island School staff with professional development. It is key for the success of any school to continue to provide on going training to staff, that they can implement in their classrooms. The Principal explained to us how Professional Development comes in the form of the consultants observing in classrooms, meeting with grade levels to plan, co-teaching lessons in classrooms, providing teachers’ feedback and focusing on the school goal of differentiated instruction. Professional developers will be using many professional texts with P.S./I.S. 217 staff to further their expertise. The Principal thanked the PTA for helping to fund professional developers in the school this year.