Unexpected Beginnings!

Did you enjoy the Back To School assembly? We sure did! On September 9th, all students, staff and some special guests gathered in the gym to celebrate the start of our new school year. Some 5th graders presented the morning announcements and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

It has now become an annual tradition to welcome the new kindergarten students by singing our ‘Welcome Song’. Ms Pappas, Mrs. Barry, (our music teachers) and some fifth graders played some instruments as we sang while the kindergartners, new students, and new staff joined us in the gym.

Dr. Nugent, our principal, introduced the new staff. One of the new staff members is Mr. Crowley, a fourth grade teacher aide. She also mentioned some additional staff changes.

Mrs Spriggs, Superintendent of the Dover Sherborn Schools, told everyone about the storm and why we didn’t start on the first day of school. Due to Tropical Storm Irene, there were trees fallen across many roads and down electrical wires. This made it extremely dangerous for students and staff to travel safely to school.  She acknowledged our heroes in town who fixed up the awful mess from Tropical Storm Irene. They were Mr. Hughes, Superintendent of Streets, Mr. Ramsey, Town Administrator, Police Chief McGowan, and the NStar Company.

Representing Police Chief McGowan was Officer Harry. Officer Harry said lots of trees had fallen on buildings, which caused some damage. Roads were closed due to down power lines and trees which caused us not to go to school. Tropical Storm Irene made it too dangerous to travel on the roads and Chickering’s power went out. Most people in Dover lost their power for several days. More than 5 inches of rain fell on the streets of Dover. All those reasons are why we couldn’t go to school.

Dr. Reinemann, our Assist. Principal, talked to us about Blue Tickets. To earn a Blue Ticket, students are recognized by an adult for being good or helpful. If we meet our goal, PTO writes a check, which then sends kids to camp who are not as fortunate as we are. We set a goal, last year, for 5,000 Blue Tickets including Blue Ticket Awards. Blue Ticket Awards can be given by a student to another student for being nice or helpful. We earned 5,126 Blue Tickets last year. Our goal this year is 6,000 including Blue Ticket Awards.

After the Blue Ticket announcements we sang our new, traditional Chickering Song. Ms Pappas led us through the song. The new song really helped bring us together as a school community. We are off to a great year!

Reported by Coleman, Adam, Will G., and Matty

Did I Just See Students In Class? It’s Night!

Are those Mrs. Atkinson’s students? It’s 7:00 p.m.! Did the class get a 4-hour detention?  Did they miss the bus? Or did they pass out from the heat?  Wait! The students aren’t breathing, blinking, or talking!  They are 2-dimensional!  It’s Open House!

Each year, Mrs. Atkinson takes photographs of each of her students to fool the parents.  She makes the faces life-size and then she laminates them. The students mount their own face on their chair. To make it more realistic, we brought in a sweatshirt from home and we put it on the back of the chair. The result is, it looks like we’re in our seats.

To help with the illusion, some students put books on their desks. Other students put their sleeves on their desks in a position, as if they were reading or writing. Mrs. Atkinson only has a short time to tell our parents about 4th grade so she asked us to help her by writing letters to our parents, which were on our desks.

To welcome the parents, Mrs. Atkinson asked each student in class, even Mrs.B., Mrs.Welch and Miss Bush, to design a paper quilt square for the hall bulletin board. Her instructions were to include a photograph of ourselves, which she gave us and to add stickers, ribbons, and drawings to help people know something about us. In the end, it looked awesome! Each student had personalized their square in their own unique way. The finished bulletin board was like a giant puzzle, only with stickers, foam shapes, and colorful drawings. Our class was definitely ready for Open House!

Reported by: WB, Julia, Lindsey, and Nathan

Righting a Wrong

Do you like to eat with your friends? We do! BUT … at Chickering School the fifth graders have to sit by classroom, rather than with our friends. This is based on prior Fifth Grades’ behavior. We don’t think this is fair! To see if other fifth graders felt the same way, we developed a survey to learn their opinion.

We wrote two questions:
1. Would you like the chance to sit with whomever you like? [   ] Yes? [   ] No?
2. Are you willing to sign a charter promising to obey the lunchroom rules in order to not sit by classroom?  [   ] Yes? [   ] No?

We sent a note to each of the fifth grade teachers asking permission to have the students take the survey during morning work. We appreciate the teachers letting the students take the survey.

Here are the results of the survey:
Number of percipients:
87 responses / 90 students in the grade 87 \ 90 = .96666 … 97% participation
Question 1:
84 – yes for the first question, 97%
3 – no in the first question, 3%
Question 2:
83 – yes for second question, 95%
4  – no for second question, 5%

Before giving the survey to our classmates, we decided we needed at least 75% in favor of sitting with our friends at lunch. We were thrilled to get 97%! We scheduled an appointment with Dr. Nugent, our Principal, to present our request and our data.

 We also presented a charter (draft) for all fifth graders to sign. Dr Nugent was impressed with our data and asked us to present our findings to student council two days later. Student council made some suggestions for the charter and the lunchroom rules. We incorporated these ideas into the charter and lunchroom rules. Next we presented our data to the entire fifth grade  during the October Principal Chats. The fifth grade was really excited, because there was such a high percentage of them that wanted this privilege. Dr. Nugent told us she would make a decision soon. Dr. Nugent will present her decision next week.

(We have learned that she is granting permission to sit where we like at lunch.) The privilege will begin November 7, 2011 following the signing of the charter by the entire fifth grade. We are very proud of are righting a wrong, a decision based on prior fifth grades’ actions, and appreciative of the willingness of our principal to listen to our suggestion.
We’re very happy with her decision!

Chickering Reporters: Lucy, Andrew, and Jude

Is 4th Grade Different Than 5th Grade?

Biting fingers nails, butterflies in your stomach, chewing your hair, twisting your shirt, rattling change, and hands in pockets; all these behaviors were observed in the 5th graders on the first day of school. The 5th graders were concerned about the differences between 5th grade and 4th grade. Are there a lot of differences? Is it harder? Are the teachers nice?

4th / 5th grade wing

Now that we have been in school for a couple of weeks, we thought we should ask some students if 4th grade and 5th grade are different. We asked them the following 2 questions:

  • Do you think 5th grade is different from 4th grade? How?
  • Do you think 5th grade is harder than 4th grade? How?

We interviewed students in 5th Grade and these are some results:  One person said that it is different because you could be a lot more independent. Some of the most popular things mentioned were more homework and more independence. One person said that it different because we have more subjects. Another remark students made were that we all have new teachers and a different classroom.  Only one person said that it was the same.

When we asked how it was harder than 4th grade, most of the kids we questioned said  it was harder because there is a lot more homework. Only one student said that it was not harder because fifth grade teachers help you just like 4th grade teachers.

Are people still biting there finger nails, and having butterflies in their stomachs? Well one of the replies was NO! Now they feel so old and they are happy to be the oldest in the school. Another student said sure the tests are hard but 5th grade is still so fun. And Those are some the answers from our Chickering School fifth graders?

Reported By: Aryana and Griffin