Danielle Zamorski's high school health classes have been working on building their stress management skills. Students have been learning different techniques such as guided imagery, sticker painting, progressive muscle relaxation, time management, adult coloring, journaling, meditation, and other calming activities to help them practice and prioritize self-care.
Stress management is important because it can help you maintain your mental and physical health and even improve your quality of life:
•Prevent health problems: Chronic stress can lead to serious health issues like diabetes and heart disease. Stress management can help you prevent or ease stress-induced symptoms.
•Improve mood: Stress management can help you feel better and get along better with others.
•Improve sleep: Stress management can help you sleep better and rebalance your emotions.
•Improve concentration: Stress management can help you improve your concentration.
•Improve resilience: Stress management can help your mind and body adapt to stress, so you're not always on high alert.
Sally Mankoo's ES kindergarteners are working on fine motor and social/emotional learning skills using Play-Doh!
Students "found" a face they wanted to decorate with Play-Doh and used their fingers to make lines, shapes to put onto their face to show they are feeling that day! Plus, who doesn't love playing with Play-Doh?
District third-graders, like Holly Pason’s Otisville third-graders, often use a technique called “repeated reading” to help them further develop reading fluency. Repeated reading can also help students improve their comprehension and understanding of what they read. It’s also is helpful in building vocabulary and learning to read aloud with expression.
In-school instrument lessons are in full swing in all our buildings! They are important role in increasing skills and aptitude in the playing of a particular instrument. Take a peek these Intermediate School fifth-grade trombonists, who, under the guidance of band teacher Andrew Hulle, are using software called MusicFirst. Mr. Hulle uses this all-inclusive music platform with all instruments.
In this instance, students were working with the PracticeFirst tool. It allows students to play along with sheet music and the program listens to them and assigns them scores based on their performance. They are scored on pitch accuracy and rhythmic accuracy. The better they score the more stars they receive and students are holding a friendly competition to see who can collect the most stars!
Friday is Pizza Day in our elementary buildings! Take a peek at these adorable, little Otisville Elementary students, who are showing their preference for pepperoni. But! There's other nutritious options to choose from if students prefer something else. Remember breakfasts and lunches are free to all students!
Leyla Johnson’s ES K-2 physical education classes have been working on practicing locomotor movements, which involve moving the body through space from one location to another in different ways. Take a look!
Some locomotor movements include walking, skipping, galloping, sliding, running, jumping, leaping and hopping. Students have also been working on learning different pathways, which are the paths that people take as they move from one place to another A pathway can be “straight,” “curved,” “zigzag” or a combination of these.
As part of their physical education class, students get to take turns “following the leader” to music! They get to choose the locomotor movement and the pathway while the rest of the class follows along. Not only are they learning, they’re having a chance to be creative and silly!
JOIN US!
Join us!
It’s a big deal when you can pick out a library book and check the book out of the library by yourself! Kindergarten students, like Mia McLean’s ES kindergarten library students,, recently had their first chance to do just this! Mrs. McLean reviewed the process for picking out a book and how to check out that book with her. Take a peek! Now, with every visit to the library, these little students will be taking a book home to read.
REMINDER: Breakfast and lunch are free to all students! These sixth-graders are ready to have a fresh, nutritious meal with their friends. Lighten your morning load and ask your student to take advantage of our varied dining options!
GOING GOLD! Thank you to everyone for bringing awareness to the need for more research dollars to fund research for cures to pediatric cancer. The district glowed in various shades of yellow and gold!
Visit our Facebook page to see photo galleries of our students, faculty and staff in their gold/yellow attire! https://www.facebook.com/MinisinkValleyCSD
ES art teacher Ilana Kaufman is introducing her kindergarten students how to properly use a paint brush as part of their initial project work creating and coloring abstract lines using oil pastels and watercolor paint.
Ask your student how they know “if the paints are sleeping,” “how to wake up paint” and why they need to hold a paint brush as if it were a “ballerina on her toes!” They know what this means!
Why does belly flopping into a pool hurt while diving gracefully pierce the surface?
The answer is cohesion... water molecules stick together! Carolyn Russell’s freshman Biology class began the year exploring the Scientific Method, hypothesizing which side of a penny would hold more water: Heads or tails? Students discovered the properties of cohesion allow water molecules to be attracted to one another allowing them to deliver an impressive 260 drops of water to the tails side of a penny.
Cohesion refers to the property of molecules of the same substance sticking together due to attractive forces between them, essentially meaning "the ability to stick to itself." This is primarily caused by the polarity of the molecules, where positive and negative charges within a molecule attract opposite charges on neighboring molecules, creating a bond like in water where hydrogen bonds are responsible for its strong cohesive properties.
When they added a surfactant, a substance that lowers the surface tension of water and limits cohesion, they observed those numbers drop dramatically. Some students were only able to deliver 13 or 14 drops of water after adding a surfactant. It was an impressive exploration into the properties of water and steps required to carry out the Scientific Method.
Victoria Ingrassia’s eighth-grade FACS students have made delicious Focaccia bread, a type of flat Italian bread made with yeast and olive oil and flavored with herbs. Focaccia is one-half to one-inch thick with a light crust on the top and bottom. It's often described as "flatbread" or "Italian flat bread," but unlike the flat bread, it’s not isn't flat at all, but thick and fluffy.
Even more fun: Students took their recently learning kitchen cutting skills to cut up raw vegetables to create one-of-a-kind vegetable artwork on their breads! Take a look at their amazing creativity!
A beautiful and majestic bald eagle watched drop-off students arrive to the Intermediate School campus today! Bald eagles can be found in New York year-round, with large numbers often congregating in winter. In the 1970s, there were believed to be just two bald eagles left in the entire state of New York. Now, there are close to 1,000, and they're no longer considered endangered.
District sixth-graders were treated to a special assembly which ties into the work they’re doing in their science classes: Seeing how science is all around us as they continue to investigate, experiment with and observe how our universe works.
Pathology Manager Lisa Everle spoke to students on Sept. 25 about the field of clinical pathology and how a clinical pathology laboratory works!
A clinical pathology laboratory performs tests on bodily fluids, tissues and cells to help diagnose and/or monitor diseases. Laboratory specialty areas can include: Blood bank, clinical chemistry and biology, toxicology, hematology, immunology and serology and microbiology.
District fifth-graders, like Mike Conklin’s IS fifth-graders, are practicing how to round numbers in math. Rounding in fifth-grade math is important because it teaches students how to estimate answers quickly and accurately in real-life situations where exact precision isn't always necessary, making calculations simpler and helping them understand the relative size of numbers, especially when dealing with large numbers or complex problems. Rounding also serves as a valuable tool for students because it allows them to check and see if their final answer is reasonable
Tracey Salinardi's ES second-graders are learning about the metric system. They’re using tools such as meter sticks, centimeter rulers and centimeter cubes to measure different objects. Students are learning to choose appropriate tools according to the sizes of the objects. For instance, students measured the door with a meter stick but measured their markers with a centimeter ruler!
The metric system is a system of measurement that uses the meter, liter, and gram as base units of length (distance), capacity (volume), and weight (mass) respectively.
The High School’s Career Achievement Program (CAP) students provide weekly assistance to teachers and educators in various buildings throughout the Slate Hill campus. It’s a great inter-school collaboration! Students recently helped ES reading teacher Valerie Zubikowski prepare for her lesson by gathering, organizing and cutting letter sounds cards. Using these letter sound cards, students will be practicing being able to fluently say the sounds of letters to help build their phonics skills!
Letter sound cards are a tool used to help students learn the relationship between letters and the sounds they make. They can be used to help children learn to automatically associate letters with sounds; to review letters and sounds to help students become more fluent; support phonological awareness by helping students sound out letters and combinations of letters; and support spelling through the review spelling sounds!
Reminder: We're GOING GOLD on Monday, Sept. 30! Please join our efforts to bring awareness of the need for new treatments and hopeful cures for pediatric cancer. Thank you to the High School's Youth Against Cancer Club for spearheading this initiative.
CALL FOR PHOTOS: Share photos of your student's gold/yellow attire! Email to communications@minisink.com to be included in a forthcoming photo gallery!
