Author: The Saklan School Friday Blog

Dear Saklan Community,

AT Flag this morning, our first graders shared what they had learned from their study of Communities. One of the highlights of this unit was a field trip to the Moraga Safeway Supermarket, where they were able to observe and learn about goods and services. Each student shared an important idea that they had studied. For example, Maximillian told us that “communities are where people live, work and have fun.”  To make the presentation more interesting, the audience was treated to three short poems titled, ‘City, Suburbs and Country.’

Next week, we will hold our first Parent-Teacher Conference Session of this academic year. This is an important opportunity for you to learn about your child’s progress and development at Saklan. To accommodate the conference schedule, school will officially end at 12:00PM on Thursday and Friday, with the afternoon dedicated to meeting with your homeroom teacher or advisor. Please note that there will be no hot lunch on these days. The school bus will leave school at 12:00PM and follow the regular route. Arrival times can be found on our website under Transportation. Due to the conferences, there will be no bus monitor in the afternoons. We will have extended day until 6:00PM as usual, and there will be no enrichment classes on these days. All parents coming to the school for a Parent-Teacher Conference will be offered coffee and snacks provided by our Development Office.

Please remember that school will be closed on Monday for a holiday.

Have a great long weekend!

Peter

Dear Saklan Community,

This week, we had our first Family Group session of the year. Our ten Family Groups are made up of 7 or 8 students ranging from 1^st to 8^th graders. Each group is led by one or two 8^th grade students, who are responsible for running the group activity for the session. The Family Group activity presents a wonderful leadership opportunity for our senior students, helps to build a cohesive school community, and is a vehicle to promote the themes of our SEL program. In this session, the activity was focused on self-regulation, which for students is defined as recognizing or identifying that you need to help yourself to achieve a goal, task, assignment, or being able to get yourself back on track. The Family Groups did a number of activities around this theme and each group produced a poster with suggestions and tools on how to handle a variety of common issues that students are confronted with in school.

Please have a look at these posters that are displayed on the bulletin board in the entrance way. Here are some samples of what our students came up with:

If you have problems with focus – have a good night’s sleep.

If you have problems with stress – meditate.

If you have problems with silliness – take a deep breath.

If you have problems with anger – walk away and talk with a friend.

If you have problems with giggles – relax and drink some water.

If you have problems with regulation – stop and count to ten.

I was able to visit many of the Family Groups and was highly impressed by the leadership abilities of our 8^th grade students. Part of the activity involved taking the Family Group through a tour of the Moraga Community Gardens which is located just down the street from us. Our 8^th grade leaders did an outstanding job in describing the organization of the gardens and showing good communication and leadership skills.

This was a great way to start our SEL program for the year. Compliments go to Vickie Obenchain, who is our Family Group Coordinator, and all the teachers who supervised the Family Groups. Our next theme is perseverance and I look forward to seeing how this theme is presented over the next month.

Have a great long weekend!

Peter