We have made it to the end of the year and what a year it was! We have a lot to celebrate with completing our first year as a school and doing so during a world-wide pandemic. We thank you all for being an important part of that. On Friday, we celebrated our Kindergartener students with a Drive-In Graduation Ceremony. It was such a wonderful event and so nice to see so many of our students! Thank you to all of the teachers, staff, supporters, and families who made this event possible. We will be celebrating with all of our students with a Drive-Thru Good-Bye parade on Monday.
As the school year is ending, I want to express again, how proud I am of all of our students. During the Kindergarten Ceremony, I read this quote from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, "Promise me, you'll remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." I want to send this message to all of our students so please share it with your children when you receive this email. Our students have shown so much strength, bravery, and intelligence this year. I am so proud of them all and want them to be proud of themselves too!
This past week in All-School Meeting, we read a book called "A Kiss Goodbye," where Chester Racoon has to say good-bye to his home. He takes a piece of bark and lots of wonderful memories with him in his heart to his new home. Afterwards, the students and teachers all shared one of the memories they will be taking with them in their heart from this school year. You can see some of their wonderful memories in the attached picture.
Important Updates
End of Year Information:
Thank You to the PTO
I want to thank our PTO officers and all the parents who participated in the PTO events this year. Big thanks go to Grace Shilliff, PTO President, Erin Madden, PTO vice president, Julie Eaton, PTO Treasurer, and Eric Petit-McClure, PTO secretary. We greatly appreciate your service to our school this year. We invite all parents to join, or to step up to officer positions in, our PTO next year.
Summer Practice
We will be sending home a few ideas for keeping up students' academic skills over the summer via email next week. If you need these in a paper copy, please let me know. Please continue to read daily with your children. It is valuable to read to your child(ren) (of all ages) as well as having your child(ren) read to you, to themselves, to a pet, etc. Please do both of these throughout the summer.
Surveys
Community feedback is important to us. We are stronger when we are able to get input from all of our School Family. Information about surveys were sent to families. If you didn't receive that and are a parent, please let me know.
Next Year
Currently, we are creating tentative plans for different possible outcomes for re-opening in the fall. We are anxiously awaiting information from state and local officials with guidance for school re-opening. Once we receive the guidance, we will be in communication with our community as we make plans for what reopening will look like. Right now we know that Governor Cuomo has a task force working on reopening and they have scheduled 4 regional meetings throughout the month of June. The decisions for reopening will be made regionally. The New York State Board of Regents will have a meeting on July 16th to discuss the guidance from this task force. We will continue to keep parents informed and ask for input as we make plans for next year.
Learning Updates
Mrs. Francis' Class
We finished strong in our last week in Kindergarten! We read the book Sweet Summer together and talked about fun summer activities, summer sights and sounds, and summer safety. Then the students wrote a sentence about their favorite thing to do during summer. Our favorite activities are: riding horses, shooting bow and arrow, going to fairs, seeing fireworks, and many, many kids said going swimming! The students are doing a great job of writing sentences as they are remembering capitals at the beginning, punctuation at the end, and spaces in between words. In math we played Money Bingo. We practiced counting groups of dimes and pennies to see how much money was in each group. Transitions between counting by 10s and then switching to 1s can be tricky, but they worked hard and did great! They also did an especially good job of knowing how to write the amounts, particularly larger numbers (63, 27, and 80)! Thank you so much for all your hard work (kids and parents!) while we were distance learning. I was so pleased to see the kids on Friday at Kindergarten Graduation!!! Have a fun and safe summer!
Mr. D'Antonio's Class
This week our class continued to do an outstanding job during distance learning. We shared many fun facts about each other when we played "It’s me" during a class meeting. We also shared some very nice compliments about each other on national "Make Life Beautiful Day" on Thursday. The students also did some excellent reading and writing about summer. Our class also did great subtraction work and worked on measuring 2d shapes, and counting money amounts. There is a lot to be proud of. Thanks to all for their support and energy during this time!
Mrs. Hull's Class
This week was a good ending to a strange school year. Second graders took the time to say good-bye to each other this week and looked back on their beginning of the year goals. Most could say that they made progress towards their goals. We had friends make good bye messages, awards, and remembrances for each other. It is amazing to see how much we’ve grown this year even despite the disruption to our learning. Have a great summer all!
PE
This week in PE students went on a bug scavenger hunt and even made their own scavenger hunt to do with family! They also did some fitness videos and had a choice day of any activity they wanted to do and share with us! Keep up the great work being active and enjoying the great outdoors over the summer!
Spanish
This week students have reviewed some topics they have learned throughout the year. They practiced colors with geometric shapes, animal names with colors, clothes and food in our zoom classes. As a final practice they described the geometrical shapes, colors and counted the items that can be found in some countries flags. They found triangles, stars and others items in the flags. In the voluntary class the students had the opportunity to practice physical description of animals. The monthly project was focused on listening comprehension this week. Keep practicing Spanish over the summer!
Upcoming Events:
6/12- 6/26: Virtual 5-K
Registration for our Virtual 5k is up and running! Go to jmmcomplex.com and click on events to register and support our Truxton Academy community! Please share our event with family and friends. Here is the facebook page with the announcement: https://www.facebook.com/truxtonacademy/photos/a.846361425444621/2985482034865872/?type=3&theater
End of Year Drive Through Parade 6/15 3:00- 4:00 PM
- For all families
6/15- Last day of school for students
6/18- Last day of work for the teachers
Again, I cannot say enough, how grateful we are for the support you have given your children and our school throughout this school year. As we look towards next year, I am excited to continue to grow our school and welcome new students and families into our school family. We are a stronger community because you all are a part of it. Have a wonderful summer!
Thank you,
Sara and the Truxton Academy Team