On Monday September 8th, Mrs. Olson and I helped to present the first good character assembly with all the students of Wheelock.  We talked about the word of the month, Responsibility, and Mrs. Olson showed a really cute video clip.  I then read one of my favorite books, 'Have you filled a bucket today?' to teach the kids that we all have a responsibility to be 'bucket fillers'.  We can all be 'bucket fillers' by being nice to others.  Being nice and doing kind things helps to fill other people's buckets and in turn fills our own buckets.  I was thrilled to have the opportunity to connect the message in this story with the unveiling of the new 'Buddy Bench'.  The 'Buddy Bench' (as seen above) was donated by the CSA and spearheaded by the Fontana family.  With some help from a few third grade friends, we presented this exciting addition to the Wheelock playground.  Some people may remember this story trending on different websites last year. There is an adorable back story found here.  We hope to create a fun way to help promote inclusion and build friendships here at Wheelock!

Lunch Bunch at Wheelock

Hello Families of Wheelock, several classes received a letter last week from myself and Karen Alberts (the Speech Lang. Pathologist), about a program we offer here at Wheelock called 'lunch bunch'.  I just wanted to take a minute to make some clarifications.  Children who participate in lunch bunch have the opportunity to invite friends from their class to join them for this lunch bunch group.  The purpose of this letter was to ask permission to have your child be invited by a class mate every now and then.   This is a nice way for the students to work on social/friendship skills in a smaller, quieter setting. It's usually a big hit with the students and we are looking forward to starting the program!  If a parent does not wish their child to participate this will be respected and these parents are encouraged to contact myself or Mrs. Alberts (kalberts@email.medfield.net).  Thanks for your time!

Welcome Back!

Hello and Welcome Back/To Wheelock!  What a quick summer we had, I hope everyone enjoyed it!  It has been so fun to see all the students back again and meet lots of new students as well.  I enjoy utilizing this website to share some information about what we work on as a school to maintain a pro-social and positive school environment.  Today I made new 'expected' and 'unexpected' visuals (Thumbs up or Thumbs down) for teachers to have on their lanyards.  This is the same language taken from the social thinking curriculum to help create a universal approach to let the students know whether their behavior is expected in a certain situation.  This language was used at Wheelock last year and was well taught throughout Memorial School as well.  Soon, Mrs. Alberts (the Speech Language pathologist) and I will be conducting 'Social Thinking' lessons with all the second and third grade classes about being 'social detectives', giving others good/comfortable thoughts by using expected behavior and learning coping strategies taught through the 'Zones of Regulation' (see website section).  Stay tuned for more information about these lessons!

I hope to be a resource for any of the families here at Wheelock who may have a student who needs some help/support with worries, frustrations, anger, social skills, teasing etc.  I look forward to meeting and/or seeing many of you again this year!