Dear Family,

Our school flag is once again flying high! Our lovely front-office manager, Leslie Fielder, and indispensable custodian, Pat Barron, recently trained the Student Council how to raise and lower the flag. Students are now responsible for this daily task.

The council has also been busy writing and gathering articles for our first 2011edition of Eye on Edna, our student newspaper. The paper will include reviews of books, restaurants, movies and music, plus sports stories and other exciting features. Look for it at the end of this month!

I want to extend a HUGE thank you to Nancy Turner and Gideon Bernstein, parents of second-grader June Bernstein, for helping the Student Council run our See's Candy sale. The money raised will help fund the fifth grade's field trip to Walker Creek, fourth grade's trip to Sutter's Fort and other PTA activities.

Edna students recently participated in an All School Writing Exercise. Working in teams, students used pre-writing activities, such as reading aloud, looking at pictures and discussing vocabulary, before writing stories inspired by the prompt "Something Happens in the Forest." Our teachers will gather the stories and use them to discuss ways in which students can improve their writing through word choice, content, organization, voice, sentence fluency and other key elements of good writing.

All of our teachers are working to strengthen the common language they use to talk to students about their writing, and to share strategies for teaching writing. Teachers across the school are reading the works of different authors out loud to students. This is just one example of how they are encouraging kids to read like writers and write like readers! Our teachers will have the opportunity to hone their existing strategies for teaching writing--and learn some new ones-- when they meet with a writing expert during our next Staff Development Day, March 18.

Writing isn't the only part of our curriculum where exciting things are happening. On Thursday, March 31, we will hold our first Science Fair! This optional, independent event will give students in third through fifth grades a chance to practice scientific inquiry. They'll attend a presentation to get all the details and--only if they are interested in participating--a packet of information. Graduate students from UCSF will be at the fair to work with our budding scientists and provide feedback on their projects.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the Family Dance this Saturday. The amazing band, Close Enough, featuring Chris Newell--dad of Edna third-grader, Aidan Newell--will be performing! Come join the fun!

All the Best,

Lisa Zimmer

Posted by Dorothy Odonnell on February 7