From Mrs. McCoy: May 2010

Dear McDole Families,

It was so nice to see such a good turnout at our Open House in April. We are so proud of the accomplishments of our students and pleased to be able to showcase some of their work for you. You may have had the opportunity to see the mural in the front hallway. Our art teachers, Laurel Anderson and Erin Livermore, have worked to procure an artist in residence, Pam Maxwell, to complete the mu-ral. Each student at McDole has a clay piece included in the panel. Ms. Maxwell includes cut glass pieces to create the mural. It is truly beautiful and a special way to provide a keepsake for the stu-dents who make McDole such an outstanding school! The mural has been made possible through the money raised from Art to Remem-ber over the last several years. Thank you again, for your support to our school.

May is a busy time in a school. Teachers are working to administer local assessments to students. Some of the assessments are given to students individually. These assessments provide benchmarks for us to measure our curriculum as well as show stu-dent growth over time.

Our annual field day is planned for June 2. This is the last day of school and school hours are from 8:50-11:50. Report cards will be sent home on June 2.

The summer is a terrific opportunity for students to prac-tice the skills they have learned this school year. Parents can help by developing a routine that plans for time for reading each day. The McDole school library will be open during the summer on Wednesday evenings from 6:00-8:00 p.m. Thank you to the teach-ers who wrote a grant to make this opportunity available to our stu-dents!

Enjoy a relaxing, fun summer!

Martne McCoy

Calendar of Events May 24 Roderick - First Grade Fairy Tale Play

2:30 p.m.

Math Explorers Club Room 227

3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

May 25 Schieber - First Grade Fairy Tale Play

2:30 p.m.

May 26 Steimel - First Grade Fairy Tale Play

2:30 p.m.

May 27 Kindergarten Celebrations

A.M. at 10:30

P.M. at 2:30

May 28 One Hour Early Dismissal @ 2:30 p.m.

May 31 NO SCHOOL—Memorial Day

June 1 One Hour Early Dismissal @ 2:30 p.m.

Last Day of School for Early Childhood

and Kindergarten

June 2 Field Day

Report Cards Go Home

Last Day of School

Dismissal at 11:50 a.m.

Messages from McDole

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KINDERGARTEN We are finishing up our unit on Oviparous animals watching our chick eggs hatch. The students are learning how to hold and care for our newly born chicks before they move to a farm. We will be learning about mammals, farms and plants as we finish up the busy month of May. We look for-ward to many fun activities over the course of the month, including celebrating our Kindergarten graduation on May 27th. Just a reminder that the last day of Kinder-garten is June 1st. Have a happy and healthy summer.

SECOND GRADE Second grade has a lot of activities going on in the month of May. We had our annual Tea for Two concert on May 6th. The students gave a very entertaining per-formance for family and friends. Thank you to Mrs. Plattos and Mrs. Borelli for all their hard work in get-ting them ready. And lastly, we are wrapping up Animal Research. Each student chose an animal and is finding information using books and articles. A few topics they are looking for include habitat, predators, body charac-teristics, and diet. Overall it has been a great year for second grade!

FIRST GRADE

Once upon a time, the Lords and Ladies of McDole Kingdom embarked on a journey through the dangerous realm of Fairytales. They encountered story elements, play parts and comparisons. They hoped to return victo-rious and with a new wealth of knowledge. The Lords and Ladies would also like to wel-come Sir Finnley Michael Roderick to the Kingdom. Lady Roderick is happy and healthy.

THIRD GRADE Open House was a wonderful success! The students enjoyed sharing their biographies and other projects with you. We are in back in our homeroom math classes and learning all about volume, weight, capacity, mean, median and grids. The final unit of science is coming to a close, and we will finish the year con-tinuing on with social studies. The third grade team would like to thank all of the parents for their sup-port in helping to make this an amazing year for each and every student.

EARLY CHILDHOOD We’ve been going a little buggy in EC (and not just because it’s the end of the year!) We have been learning about insects and have been enjoying lots of bug-related activities. We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and discovered that butterflies begin their lives as fuzzy caterpillars. We played a great sensory game during which each child curled up in a lycra blanket (chrysalis) as a “caterpillar” and, after we sang a song about the caterpillar changing, the child emerged as a beauti-ful butterfly! Our p.m. kids, after enjoying the story Old Black Fly by Jim Aylesworth, played a game in which a fly buzzed around and landed on different letters of the alpha-bet. The kids identified the letter then tried to swat the fly with a fly swatter before it flew away. That fly is quick. Check out our bulletin boards to see some of our beautiful in-sect art activities! Have a wonderful summer!

Winding Down in the

Classrooms

Springfield, Abe Lincoln and Illinois...Oh My! McDole fourth graders had the experience of a lifetime on our trip to Springfield, IL on April 16th, 2010. Each stop on our journey highlighted areas of curriculum that we have studied this year, making it all come to life. Connecting our studies to real life enhances the learning we do each day. According to the students, these were some of the best moments on the trip: touring Lincoln’s home, rock-star tour buses, seeing Lincoln’s stovepipe hat and gloves, pizza and nachos at Ryan’s, the giant geodes at Illinois State Museum, seeing the capitol building, New Salem’s blacksmith and general store, souvenir shopping, bathrooms on the bus, coming to school so early, Mary Todd’s ball gowns, the slavery exhibit at the Lincoln Library, both theater experiences…. As you can see, the day was positive for our stu-dents. We were also able to bring two students, Ian S. and Sienna C., over to the governor’s office in order to interview his staff for Mtv. They were able to sit at Governor Quinn’s desk and both took home pens he used to sign official business with the day before. We want to thank parents, principals, PTO and students for supporting and working hard towards this trip. As we finish our scrapbooking project this week, the children continue to talk about this amazing day!

This is a busy time of year for the 5th graders. The 5th grade Chorus Festival was Tuesday, May 4th. The students worked on a variety of songs in music class, then they joined with the other schools around the district to put on an incredibly polished show. This year’s program featured music from Broadway, jazz, traditional American songs, and good old rock and roll. Later in the month the band students came together and created another night of wonderful music. Our music teachers and our 5th graders are truly a talented group of people.

Fifth grade also went on a trip to check out what life will be like at the Mid-dle School. They had an opportunity to ex-plore the library, play games in the gym, navigate the hallways, and try their hand at unlocking a locker. This was an exciting day to help ease the transition from McDole to Harter Middle School.

If that was not enough, they have also been investigating area and volume, writing poetry, and reading some great books. Many of the students are working on final book projects and sharing their learning with each other. April and May are packed months if you are in 5th grade.

Fifth Grade

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Fourth Grade

We are finishing up the school year with a review of all comprehension strategies. Students in 3rd through 5th grade are taking an end-of-the-year assessment. This assessment will show me that they can apply their comprehension strategies while reading a short story. Kindergarten stu-dents are reviewing visualizing. Both first and second grade students are working on author’s message and inferring. Ask your child to share their thinking while you read with them at home.

Literacy Class

Thank you to everyone who shopped at our Spring Book Fair. Once again it was a huge success and we will have funds to purchase books for the LRC next year!

We are excited to once again be able to have our library open on Wednesday evenings for summer check-out . We received money from two different grants which allows us to fund this program. Information re-garding times and dates will be coming home with your student in the near future.

Finally, you may see overdue notices coming home on a regu-lar basis for the next few weeks as we attempt to get all library material returned. If you are unable to locate any material that is checked out to your child by May 21, please send in money to cover its replacement. You will find the price of each item on the overdue notice. If you have any questions, please contact us in the LRC.

News from the LRC

Many acts of kindness were taking place at McDole this year. The staff and students took time to show their good character through community service projects that helped people throughout the community.

Many staff members participated in Feed My Starving Children. A non-profit organization committed to feeding starving children. The staff hand-packed meals formu-lated for starving children and helped send meals to nearly 70 countries around the world.

The kinder-garteners took time out of their busy day to pick up garbage around the school on Earth Day.

First grade assisted in pa-per recycling. They, with the help of all of the McDole families and commu-nity members, helped stuff the bin for our Paper Re-triever program.

Second grade classes planted flowers around the building to help beau-tify our school. It looks Great!

Our fourth graders help the Annual sockball event around the winter holi-days. They collected socks, participated in the fun sockball activity and donated all the socks to Hesed House. Our fifth graders participated in year round paper recycling to help keep our Paper Re-triever bin as well as the Haiti fund-raiser and the shoe collection following the earthquake in Haiti.

Acts of Kindness at McDole

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Hello Parents, We want to say “thank you” for joining us and fully participating at our March 23rd Bilingual Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting. There was an amazing turn out of parents. Shelley Hueber, principal from Shields Elementary and Brian Graber principal from Stewart Elementary will share Everyday Math tips at this meeting. Katie Henigan, Coordinator of ELL program, shared information about signing up for the conference for members of Bilingual Parent Advisory Councils (PAC) which will be held at the Marriot Re-sort Oak Brook Hills in Oak Brook on May 8th. This year, two parents and one teacher will be attending the conference. As the year comes to an end, we wish you have a healthy and happy summer! Please keep the children reading throughout the summer. See you next school year. Sincerely, The ELL Teachers from McDole Mrs. Doherty Ms. Valdovinos

Hola Padres, Queremos darles las "gracias" por estar con nosotros y por participar en nuestro último Comité de Padres bilingüe (PAC) que fue el día 23 de marzo. Vinieron muchos de nuestros padres. En esta última junta, tuvimos a Shelley Hueber, directora de la escuela primeria Shields, y el director Brian Graber de la escuela primaria Stewart; ellos compartieron consejos a los padres en cómo poder ayudar a sus hijos/as con el pro-grama de matemáticas, Everyday Matemáticas, que usan en la escuela. La Sra. Katie Henigan, Coordinadora del programa de ELL, intercambio información con los padres sobre la conferencia para los miembros del Co-mité de Padres bilingües (PAC) que se llevará a cabo en el Marriot Resort Oak Brook Hills en Oak Brook el 8 de mayo. Este año, asistirán dos padres y una maestra a la conferencia. ¡Otro año escolar va llegando a su fin, le deseamos un verano feliz y saludable! Por favor, mantenga a los niños leyendo durante todo el verano. Nos vemos el próximo año escolar. Atentamente, Las Maestras de ELL de la escuela McDole Sra. Doherty Sra. Valdovinos

English

Language

Learners

Page 5

K N I G H T S

of the

R O U N D T A B L E

Below are the students that were invited to sit at the last KNIGHTS of the Roundtable monthly luncheon. These stu-dents joined Mrs. Moeller and classroom teachers for lunch at the table after they were presented with a sash. Fol-lowing lunch, students got their picture taken as the rest of the classes clapped for them.

First Grade Garrett Borter Katie Camm Bryce Ford Bryanna Ortega Dakota Bednowicz

Second Grade Garrett Hoeft Kendall Nore Tatiana Vila

Third Grade Jackson Clark Aidan Lodwig Leo Espinosa (last month) Caroline Herrera Dounte Dextra Emily Savarese

Fourth Grade Jack Lasater Gedi Njoya Alex Montalbano Nick Zoppa

Fifth Grade Danielle Clay Kyla Daley Jimmy Pullano Miguel Silva

6

CALLING ALL KNIGHTS Do you have a KNIGHT sash? Have you ever sat at the roundtable? Have you had your picture taken on the stage?

If you have already been KNIGHT’d for being:

Kind to others

Neat and organized

Including all kids in play

Giving respect to adults

Helping others

Telling the truth

Please bring your lunch and your sash and join us at the

“ALL KNIGHTS” Knights of the Roundtable

in the lunchroom on

Tuesday, June 1st.

School Improvement Goals for 2009-2010 School Year Goal 1: During the 09-10 school year, use established rubric and probes (from 08-09 SIP) to develop grade level base-lines for measuring student improvement of comprehension skills on the reading extended response for the purpose of facilitating student learning.

Goal 2: Increase student awareness of consistent school-wide behavioral expectations to promote a safe and positive learning community measured by the completion of the following activities: expectation walks, knight tickets, and the use of a safety patrol during the 2009-2010 school year.

Goal 3: Maintain community awareness of student successes at McDole during the 2009-2010 school year by communi-cating monthly with the district, parents and the local community.

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HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!

The last day of school for Early Childhood and Kindergarten will be Tuesday, June 1. The last day of school for First through Fifth Grade will be Wednesday, June 2. It will be a half-day and will dismiss at 11:50 p.m.

TEACHER: What is the chemical formula for water?

STUDENT: H I JK L M N O!!

TEACHER: What are you talking about?

STUDENT: Yesterday you said it’s H to O!

TEACHER: Morris, your composition on “My Dog” is exactly the same as your brother’s. Did you copy his?

STUDENT: No, teacher, it’s the same dog!

KIDS SAY …………

……… THE DARNDEST THINGS