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Fall 2007

Dear Parents,

 

We are pleased to have had such a great start to a new school year. We thank all of you, our wonderful students and our dedicated staff for making sure the start of the year went smoothly. As mentioned in the summer packet letter, we are in the midst of some very exciting changes at Unqua. We welcomed a good number of new staff members, including Mrs. Catapano, our new Assistant Principal. As expected, she has strengthened our Unqua team with her strong instructional background in reading. We both look forward to working with our PTA Executive Board, led by Mrs. Slezsynski, on the many new ideas they are implementing this year.

 

We are also entering our second year using the Second Step program to foster prosocial behavior in all children. Regular classroom instruction is supported by follow-up class discussions and role plays that allow students to apply their learning. This year we will work to strengthen this carryover of skills into the special areas of physical education, art, music and library.

 

We are entering our first year of work with Columbia University’s Teachers’ College Writing Project. Classroom teachers K-6 will be working with staff developers to strengthen our instruction in a Writers’ Workshop format. This is likely to be different than the instruction we all received in writing as children. There is a tremendous emphasis on students’ generating ideas that are valuable and meaningful to them. Teachers will take students through their development as writers through exposure to various writing genres like personal narrative, essay, informational writing and poetry. Of course, the focus on structure, style and the mechanics of good writing are still expected and valued.

 

We will continue to support our Character Education program through the work of our Shared Decision Making team. This team is comprised of parents, staff and administrators. Last year we began the work of identifying a book for each grade level to support each of our monthly character education themes. These titles are meant to be read aloud to a whole class to spark discussion of that month’s topic. We will complete this project this year and be able to purchase these titles as another link to fortify our expectation of exemplary character in all our students.

 

As always, we are grateful for your continued support as we work to make every day better than the one before for our students.

 

Sincerely,

 

Mrs. Haanraadts     &          Mrs. Catapano

Principal                                  Assistant Principal