Weekly Update for June 20th, 2016
In This Week's Memo
- Happy Father's Day
- Summer Tips
I hope this blog finds any and all fathers having had a nice Father's Day. As a father myself, I do my best to balance work and family. As I type this and do some other work related items on an early Saturday afternoon, I do so while my son is napping so we can spend the rest of the day and Sunday all together as a family. Sunday will be at the beach with other family throwing a football, making sand castles and building up enough courage to go into the cold ocean. Wherever you are or went this weekend, I hope that it was mostly outside and with loved ones.
As we approach the summer months away from Lynch I just wanted to pass along two very quick summertime tips. The items below are very unscientific and based on my experiences again, as a teacher and parent.
Enjoy!
1. Keep your Child Reading Frequently.
This can look many different ways. Reading an actual book, on a device, magazines, newspaper, etc.. Every piece of education involves reading. Literacy, science, social studies are all obvious areas that reading is vital. However, math is equally language-based. Gone are the days of adding two numbers together and writing the sum. Real-life, everyday problems involving numbers now are written out sometime in paragraphs. Students need to be able to understand the text, comprehend, compute and then write in sentence form not only WHAT the answer is, but HOW they got their answer.
Consistent reading exposes your student to training much like physical exercise and going for a run. The more frequent and often, the better the student will understand and identify vocabulary and parts of speech.
Plus, reading is FUN! I have mentioned in past writings to parents that I would devour sports sections in the daily newspaper as a child. Growing up in New Hampshire my father would get the newspaper every morning. I would read every section and story in the sports section. Mostly the statistics of the previous night's baseball games. I learned about percentages, averages, trends, adjectives, verbs, etc... When we would camp up in Quebec, I did struggle to read the French newspapers (and would make up most of the words, trying to sound French while reading out loud), so my father would translate for me. All great summer memories.
2. Monitor Screen Time.
I do not mean how long the child uses a device or television, but WHAT they are watching. At home, anytime we allow our soon-to-be kindergarten daughter to use an iPad, Chromebook or television - any and all restrictions, pass codes, "safety modes", etc.. are put in place. If she wants to watch something that has been "locked" due to not meeting her age requirement, she has to ask us to unlock or put in our pass code.
Monitor the language being used (and also the language that WE are using when speaking around our children), the appropriateness of the context being viewed and also our own use of phones and iPads. I catch myself using my cell to respond to work-related items almost too often and not giving my children their undivided attention as I should be. If we are staring at our devices while our children are talking and staring at us - the underlying message is that there are other things more important than what our child at that moment. When truly, there is NOTHING more important.
We will be sending out a summer update in the coming weeks about staffing for next year in an email to families. Mailings of classroom placement for students will go out for all elementary schools on August 12th.
Mrs. Phelan, Mrs. Leonard and I will be working in the building as we head into July, so if there are questions please feel free to call or check in. Once mid-July is here the Dupuis' family, friends and their children will on the beaches of southern Maine enjoying a much needed break. I also have two Pearl Jam concerts in bold print on my calendar for early August!
From all of us at Lynch to you and your family - have a healthy and adventurous summer!
Mr. Dupuis