Saturday evening Volleyball update:
Our Varsity Volleyball team played hard, with determination and tremendous grit, winning one out of three matches at today's NYSPHSAA Volleyball Championship Class AA semi-finals, but the team will not be advancing to tomorrow's final meet. But! The team earned third-place honors...the third best Class AA team in New York State!
This team achieved a level of achievement not seen in 24 years at Minisink Valley, and there's much to celebrate!
Please join us in congratulating the players and coaches for a magnificent season.
THANKSGIVING-THEMED MUSIC FUN!
Cliff Loretto's ES kindergarten music students have been working on keeping a steady beat and using their singing voices to sing simple songs. "Five Fat Turkeys" is a song where they can do both while playing a fun guessing game!
Students take turns being the "cook" and covering their eyes while "five fat turkeys" are selected. When they open their eyes they are tasked with keeping the beat on the bass bar while the class sings the song.
They then go on a "hunt" to find a turkey amongst the group. Once they find a turkey, that student becomes the new "cook" and the game starts again until everyone has had a turn to play the instrument! What a fun, seasonal way for them to learn about steady beats!
The big parade is just a few days away!
Jennifer Levin’s ES second-graders have been learning about how the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade originated! After hearing Melissa Sweet's story “Balloons Over Broadway,” which tells the story of the master puppeteer who invented the first balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, students designed their own parade balloons. These will be used in the creation of their own Thanksgiving Day Parade poster, complete with awesome balloons.
Otisville Elementary physical education teacher Stephanie Giufre’s Grades 2-5 students are seeing how feeling grateful can be part of physical education class!
First, she and students talked about what gratitude is and things they are grateful for. Then, she tasked them with creating a “Gratitude Wreath!” The object was for teams to work together to create a unique gratitude wreath.
On the start signal, one student from each team rolled the 🎲die.🎲 The entire team performed the activity determined by the number rolled/exercise identified on the activity card.
The team’s movement “earned” them one item to add to their gratitude wreath. One student from the team went to the center of the activity area and brought one item (bean bag, scarf, deck ring, yarn ball, etc.) back to add to the team’s wreath and says something he/she is grateful for. Every student had a chance roll the die and choose (and place) the item added to the wreath.
Students continued this process until wreaths are complete or until they heard the stop signal. What a creative class tied to this season of being grateful!
AND....THEY"RE OFF!
What a great, fun CLAP OUT! Go get 'em, ladies! We're rooting for you You got this! Good luck at the NYSPHSAA Volleyball Championships!
A special thank you to Megan Earl Sullivan, a member of the 2000 Varsity Volleyball team ---the last time our Varsity Volleyball team went to the NYSPHSAA Championships --- who stopped by (wearing the silver medal the team won that year, btw)) to give a pep talk to the 2024 team! SO COOL!
THANK YOU to everyone who made this evening possible and who joined us! We appreciate you!
HANDS UP!
Who needs jazz hands when you have “white board hands?”
Adrianna Ciccarelli’s IS fourth-graders are using “white board hands” to quickly answer rounding questions during math review. What a fun way to do work!
District second-graders, like Joseph Ferara’s second-graders, are learning about the concept of place value during their math lessons.
In this recent lesson, students take their knowledge of how three-digit numbers get split into hundreds, tens, and ones and apply that knowledge to learning how to manipulate these numbers.
Here, this lesson teaches them each place value can’t “exceed 9 dots,” and if it does, they have to trade those dots for the next place value. This is really an introduction into the reasoning behind addition with regrouping and teaches them how to exchange place values to create numbers in their standard form. These are important math skills to know!
When doing this, Mr. Ferara’s students use the word “transport” to show that they’re just moving the dots to a new place value, and not eliminating them all together. Think of it like cashing in 10 ones for 1 ten and 10 tens for 1 hundred.
Members of the Middle School’s Pet Club recently welcomed another guest speaker who shared her expertise and experience with them!
Retired vet technician Crystal Sovak, who worked in the field for 20 years, shared stories and real-life experiences with students. This also included showing students x-rays and dental images from different species!
But the real star of the gathering was Marvel, Ms. Sovak’s dog, who was a rescue dog! Marvel happily allowed Ms. Sovak to brush his teeth and trim his nails, which are both an important part of healthy pet care. It was a great opportunity for students to learn tips from a professional as well as to learn more about careers in the animal care field.
November is National Men’s Health Awareness Month! Join us and wear purple attire to help bring awareness to unique health issues of men!
Please join the efforts of the district's Buildings & Grounds team to bring awareness to important men's physical and mental health issues!
November is also "No-Shave November" and "Movember," movements created to encourage conversations about cancer awareness among men.
Call for photos: Share your student's purple attire for a forthcoming photo gallery by emailing to communications@minisink.com by 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22!
GET WINGS and support the Class of 2025!
Buffalo Wild Wings in Middletown will donate 10% of your purchase on Saturday, Nov. 23 to support Class of 2025 initiatives. Make sure you bring this ticket!
Lynda McKeon’s and Taryn Richards’ IS third-graders are getting really skilled at rounding two and three-digit numbers to the nearest 10 on a vertical number line!
During a recent lesson, students began by renaming numbers in unit form to help round to the nearest 10. This practice helps students to understand how many 10s are in the number and what the next 10 is. Then, they established the halfway mark between 10s. Students have to decide if the number is “more” than halfway or “less” than halfway. This practice helps the students round to the nearest 10 more efficiently.
This skill helps students to develop a greater foundational understanding of place value, estimation and simplifying numbers to make calculations easier in real-world situations where exact precision isn't always necessary.
The Otisville fourth-grade teaching team of Jenna Colman/Victoria Frascone, Erica Alders/Alexa Roach, Susie Balfour and Adriana Eichwald celebrated the end of ELA Unit 2, “Empires in the Middle Ages,” with a themed medieval celebration for their students!
During this unit, students learned about castles, knights and other topics. After taking a virtual tour of a medieval castle’s Great Hall, students learned about the long tables that the nobles would gather at for meals.
Sitting at these long tables under "candlelit chandeliers," students created beautiful stained-glass windows. During the unit, students learned about "rose windows," a type of stained-glass window that looks like a flower. Students used tissue paper and laminating pockets to make their own stained-glass creations that look beautiful when the sun shines through, just like a real stained-glass window.
Students also sat by the Great Hall’s roaring "fire" and created family crests, similar to what would represent a noble family during this time. What a fun and creative way to reinforce Middle Age lessons!
Studying the Middle Ages in fourth-grade is important because it provides a foundation for understanding Western civilization and introduces key concepts like feudalism, the role of the Church, and the development of early European societies and more, which significantly shaped the world we live in today. It also allows students to explore fascinating stories and imagery from this period!
It’s a huge deal to qualify for and participate in State Competition! Please join us in congratulating Senior Ryan Capo, who represented Minisink Valley and Section IX with distinction and finished in 62nd place at this past weekend’s NYSPHSAA Cross Country Championships with a time of 16:34. As a team, Section IX finished in second place!
“We want to take a moment to celebrate his incredible achievements and dedication,” said Varsity Coach Nichole Gaucher. “This season has been a testament to his hard work, determination, and passion for the sport.”
Candace Gale’s and Cecilia Kosowicz’s IS third-graders, like all district third-graders, are perfecting their plotting and labelling skills during math lessons. This is important because it teaches students how to organize and visually represent data, allowing them to analyze information, identify patterns, and draw conclusions which is a crucial skill for understanding and applying math in everyday life. Students also have the opportunity to work on their critical thinking skills by interpreting data and communicating findings effectively through graphs.
While it's not the outcome everyone hoped for, we're beyond proud of the grit and determination our Varsity Football team showed in this evening's loss to Cornwall, 27-26. The team fought until the last seconds of the game and their tenacity and resolve are examples for everyone to follow.
Please join us in congratulating the players and coaches for a great season.
Lindsey McKernan’s ES kindergarteners have been learning to group numbers by 5 using cubes! Manipulatives, like cubes, allow students to interpret, comprehend, and represent a wide variety of math concepts and can make learning fun! Later, her students used clipboards on the carpet to complete the writing portion of the lesson.
Manipulatives are physical objects that students can touch, move, and play with to help them understand abstract math concepts. They come in many shapes and sizes, and research shows that using them has a positive effect on students' understanding.
Congratulations to the incoming 2024-25 Otisville K-Kids officers, who recently assumed their new roles during the group’s Fall Installation, where 21 new members were inducted. New officers are Jillian O'Sullivan, president; Quinn Lattimer, vice president; Peter Caputo, treasurer; and Ariana Rodriguez, secretary.
The Otisville K-Kids Club is sponsored by Minisink Valley Kiwanis, and is a leadership program for primary/elementary school age students. Club members improve their schools and communities — an experience that helps them develop a passion to serve, a desire to lead and the ability to engage and collaborate with others.
Minisink Valley Kiwanis President Grace White and K-Kids Advisors Andrea Yager and Logan Reggio attended the ceremony to support the club, its achievements, and vision for the future.
The group’s recent projects were the Little Free Library, Treats for Troops, "Souper Seniors", raising money for Room to Read and a local animal shelter, playground signs for the playgrounds at Otisville, and cards for patients at Garnet Medical Center.
"We are looking forward to a busy year of community service,” said School Club Advisor Danielle Ulbrich.
Joan Giardina’s IS fourth-grade art students are learning about the importance of scale in composition, using cat stencils! In art composition, scale refers to the relative size of an object or artwork in relation to another object or the viewer's body. It can also refer to the relationship between different parts of an image.
Ian Walker’s ES second-graders, like all district second-graders, have spent ELA time reviewing “the long a sound” during phonics lessons.
The "long a sound" in second-grade phonics lessons is crucial because it reinforces a foundational reading skill, allowing students to decode words with different spellings that produce the "long a" sound (like "a" in "cake," "ai" in "rain," or the "ay" in "play") which are commonly encountered in grade-level texts, helping them to read more fluently and accurately.
As part of their review, students paired and played “Roll and Read,” a phonics/reading activity where students have a 6x5 grid with words inside each square. They roll a die based on what number they roll, and then read a word from that column. Students also read “Spelling Bee” from their Kids Excel student readers, which was also tied to the phonic skills they’re learning about in class. Partners go back and forth reading words aloud. Working with friends makes phonics lessons fun!
Lillian Preziosi’s Otisville fifth-graders have been working with their reading partners to learn about an ancient Maya myth that explains the creation of the Earth and its people. Afterward, they continued working together to answer comprehension questions about the chapter and discuss the characteristics of a myth. Kudos to them for their hard work to develop their partner reading skills and learn how to work together in order to complete activities in a productive and efficient manner.
Their reading and comprehension work focused on learning that large complex civilizations, including those of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca, developed in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. They learned about the geography, climate, flora, and fauna of the Americas as well as the overall history and timeline highlighting the rise and fall of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. Students also learned the innovations and discoveries of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca; and their reading unit featured myths from these ancient civilizations.
