Congratulations to Jane Ramos who was recognized in Washington, D.C. last week as a 2021 PAEMST award winner (Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching)! This is the nation's highest honor for teachers of science and mathematics.
On Thursday, May 26, OCRS, PVES and LaPerche joined together to celebrate and recognize our young and unified athletes who attend our elementary schools. Special Olympics of Rhode Island joined us and officially kicked off the games! Athletes and their buddies participated in a variety of stations including baseball, basketball, bike riding, bowling, hockey, javelin and so much more. The fans in the stands were students from the schools who were there to cheer on the athletes while they each received their medal from Special Olympics of Rhode Island. Thank you to the Smithfield Fire Department for celebrating our athletes! A beautiful day was had by all.
For more photos from our amazing unified field day, check out this link
https://photos.app.goo.gl/tqKMGBiii1KTpSez8
Kindergarten friends at LaPerche are working hard on sounding out words, building them with popsicle sticks, putting words in order to make a sentence and using all lowercase letters. Our kindergarten friends are hard at work every day becoming readers!
Save the date! The Smithfield Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force is sponsoring a "Chalk the Walk" event on Saturday, June 11th, from 10:00-1:00 at Gallagher Middle School. Come and create positive chalk messages and art!
In fourth grade, they just started a unit on ecosystems. Today fourth graders took it outside to our garden space to observe their own ecosystem. After doing their own observation, the students moved into groups to share what they found. Next, the students dug into their science book. They scammed for nonfiction text features and then read and discussed the content. LaPerche students are so thankful for our outdoor green space.
Each morning in fifth grade at LaPerche, the students start the day with a morning affirmation. Saying affirmations is a great way to shift your mind into positive thinking. The affirmations are student led and include movements to get the whole body activated.
Good morning.
Eyes up.
Hearts up.
Minds sharp.
Compassion on full blast.
OKay.
Let’s go.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Try starting your day with a morning affirmation and see where it takes you.
Registration is now open for summer ACN courses! All Course Network (ACN) is a statewide course catalog that lets students take free courses. For more information and to register: https://enrollri.org/acn
Today students from the Bryant University Chamber Ensemble came to LaPerche to work with our fifth graders. The kids had the opportunity to work closely with each member and were introduced to the cello, guitar, flute, violin, trumpet and the piano. Their goal was to promote music in education and get the students excited to play an instrument in the future. There was some competition among the ensemble players about which instrument was the best. Ask your fifth grader what they thought. What a great experience!!
LaPerche students and families joined principal, Julie Dorsey, to clean up Mountaindale Road during Smithfield’s Earth Day cleanup. The kids were shocked at the amount of trash they found on the road side and determined to teach others never to litter. Thank you to all of our volunteers who helped make the earth a cleaner place today. Thank you to Melissa Chaput and the DPW team for their support and for organizing the event.
The LaPerche family celebrated our amazing secretary, Mrs. Bazinet, today. Each class stopped by the office to recognize Mrs. Bazinet and let her know how much they appreciated her. Mrs. Bazinet is a problem solver with a giant heart who goes above and beyond for each and every person who steps through the door. We love you Mrs. Bazinet! Thank you for all you do!!
Teaching and Learning night last night was a great success at LaPerche. Students all over the building taught their families how we learn at LaPerche! Thank you to all of the families who let their children be the teachers. It is never too late to learn something new!
Thank you to Chartwells, our food service provider, for bringing the smoothie bike and our students who worked hard to blend the smoothies. They were delicious! Families were sent home with ingredients for apple crisp. What a great night!
Favorite Character day was a big hit at LaPerche today! During our whole school morning meeting, we had a parade of characters. Charlotte and her pig, Waldo, Harry Potter and her crew, a Cool Bean, an alligator and so many more were cruising the halls of LaPerche. The creativity was amazing!
First graders use fluency phones to listen to themselves read. The student can speak in a quiet voice and the phone amplifies it. When they hear themselves read they can check to see if they are using expression, pausing at end marks, and sound fluent. Students understand that when your fluency increases so does your comprehension. Fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time. Our first graders are working hard at becoming fluent readers!
Walking club started last Friday. What is walking club? An opportunity to have fun with your friends while getting exercise. The volunteers set up cones around the inside of the baseball field so the students had a lane to run or walk. Each student has a punchcard and each time they arrived back at the beginning their card was punched. When you have completed 10 laps you get a necklace and your 1st foot, a plastic charm that goes on your necklace. It was amazing to see student after student run lap after lap determined to earn their 1st foot. Walking club will take place every Friday at LaPerche. Perhaps if we have additional volunteers, we can open walking club on Tuesdays as well. Let us know if you would like to volunteer!
Today in math block in kindergarten, students were practicing subtracting from 10. Mrs. Caswell posted the problem of the day on the board, read it to the students and then they discussed it with a partner. There were 10 butterflies in the garden and some flew away. Each student chose the number of butterflies that flew away and wrote a number sentence and picture to show that story.
Later she taught them a new math game where they had a cube train of 10 cubes. They broke the cube train into two pieces and created a number sentence. Partners switched off being the one to break the train or the one who created the number sentence. Kindergarten friends worked so well together, reteaching the concepts, supporting each other and sharing out with the class.
Grades 3, 4 and 5 started a pickleball unit in PE class. Pickleball is a racket sport that combines elements of tennis, badminton, and table tennis. It teaches hand eye coordination, teamwork and how to lose graciously, a skill that will serve them well in life.The fifth graders started a double elimination tournament today. Let’s go!!
In Mrs. Caswell’s kindergarten class, during the classroom morning meeting, each student thought of an animal and acted it out for the group. The friends in the classroom loved calling out the animal they suspected was being performed. There was a flamingo, a crocodile, a hamster, a rabbit, a cheetah, a dolphin, and so many more. LaPerche kids have so much fun in kindergarten!
Every morning at LaPerche begins with a schoolwide morning meeting run by the fifth grade student council. The schoolwide morning meeting is in person when it is good weather and over the intercom when it is not.This was only the third day that the March student council ran the meeting outside in person in front of all of the students. They did an outstanding job greeting the students, making the announcements, celebrating birthdays, sharing the joke of the day as well as one positive thing about school and ending with the Pledge of Allegiance. After all the students go inside, Mrs. Dorsey talks with the student council and each fifth grader shares one thing they did well and one thing they are working to improve. Being a confident public speaker is a goal for all students at LaPerche!
On Saturday, March 12, the Town of Smithfield is holding an amazing Recycling Event at the DPW.
Mattresses and Box Springs, Rigid Plastics, Shredding and Electronics can be recycled at the event. Let's work together to keep all of these items out of the landfill!
Today our second and fourth grade students met with Mrs. Dorsey, school principal, and Jim Corwin from Rhode Island Schools Recycling club to discuss the Cafeteria Rangers program. The students shared successes and problems they felt needed to be solved. They discussed the budget they would need to keep the Cafeteria Rangers program in place each year. Each second grader was paired with a fourth grader and they determined the overall cost for gloves, compost bags and hauling away the food scraps. The students used multiplication, division and repeated addition to figure out the cost of each item for 36 weeks. Next up, grant writing to fund the budget! The second and fourth graders are determined to continue the composting program which helps make the earth a healthier place to live.
