Welcome back to a wonderful school year at Skinner North! The beginning of the year has been off to a great, but busy, start.
I wanted to update you on some of the programs I have planned for the upcoming weeks. I'm hoping these programs will help me build strong relationships with all the student and help them feel more comfortable coming to me when needed.
- Second Step should be starting in all the classrooms over the next two weeks. Now that we have taken the time for rule creation, learning and practicing routines and determining expectations, students should be ready for this wonderful program. In all grades, except kindergarten, the classroom teacher will be providing the Second Step lessons. Look for information to come home to help you support the teaching that will be going on in the classrooms.
- New Student Lunch Groups will be starting next week. If your child is new to Skinner North in grades 1-7 they will receive an invitation to have lunch with me or our School Psychologist, Chris Kleve. These lunch meetings will serve as a way for us to get to know the new students, for the new students to get to know each other, and will be a time when these students can ask us any questions they may have and discuss how the transition to a new school has been going for them. I hope to build relationships with all the students at Skinner North and this is a way to start that relationship building with our newest kids.
- Open Lunch Bunch will start on October 2nd. This year I am trying something new, and I am very excited about it. Over the course of the last couple of years I have had lunch groups that I have invited specific students to join, to work on a designated topic. Often I am asked by students that have not been asked to join the group if they can have lunch with me too. So, this year, I will be allowing any and all students to sign up to have lunch with me in my office. Lunch Bunches will be scheduled every Thursday and Friday and 4 students will be allowed to sign up for each lunch period. We will eat lunch together and play some "getting to know you" games. I see this as another opportunity for me to connect with more students throughout the school.
- Lastly, in October I hope to get into the 4th-7th grade classrooms to teach some organizational and study skills lessons. The curriculum I will use for these lessons is called Student Success Skills and is a research based program that can help kids be more successful with some of those "non-academic" skills, like studying, organization and self management.
I look forward to a successful sc