April 11, 2025WE

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!! WE FINISHED THE MCAS TESTS FOR THIS WEEK. THE KIDS WORKED SO HARD ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS MCAS TEST!!!!!!!!! YOU SHOULD BE SOOOOOOOOO PROUD OF THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Big News- Mr. Stevens will be announcing my RETIREMENT from teaching at the Wednesday April 16th, 2025 Edgartown School Committee meeting. I have had the absolute joy to have taught children for the past 34 years. My last day as a teacher will occur on June 18th- which is the kid’s last day of school. It has been a pleasure working with you and your children for the past year.

I plant to tell the kids about my retirement next Friday April 18th, just before we start our April vacation.

Skating Field Trip- In your child’s backpack you will find a permission slip for our Field Trip to the Martha’s Vineyard Ice Arena. We will depart from the school at 10:15. I have allowed about 22 minutes to secure skate rentals, get skates on and to get helmets. We will be on the ice from 11-11:50. The cost of the trip is $6.25 per child for skating and $3.00 for skates and helmet rental. The total cost of the trip is $9.25 per child. We are requesting that ALL CHILDREN WEAR HELMETS WHILE ON THE ICE. If your child is bringing in their own skates and or their own helmet they will not need to pay the$3.00 rental fee. If they do need to rent a helmet or skates the cost again is $3.00 I also told the kids that they can bring their skates and helmets as early as Monday if they would llike.

I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY WEEKEND. PAM

April 3, 2025

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS MCAS TEST will occur this coming Tuesday the 8th and Wednesday the 9th at 9 am each day.

Please make sure your child has a great breakfast either at home or at school. A great nights sleep both Sunday and Monday will also help all of the kids with the stamina they will need for this test. When students complete the test they may read at their desk. They are welcome to bring in favorite books from home or they can use school or classroom library books.

I will be sending home skating trip permission slips on Wednesday the 9th. The trip to M.V. Ice Arena will occur on the 16th of April. Kids can bring their own skates if they would like.

I have two spaces available for chaperones for our May 19th of island field trip to Plymouth Plantation. Contact me as soon as possible if you are interested. You need to have a CORI

(which is a Criminal Background Check). If you don’t have a current CORI you will need to contact the Superintendent’s office as to how to proceed to get one. This would need to be completely taken care of before you join us on the trip.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Pam

March 26, 2025

Hello Families. I hope you are all doing well.

We have a lot of things coming up that I would like to share with you.

On April 8th we will be taking the English Language Arts MCAS test. This will be the first time that the kids will be taking an MCAS test. We will test them on Tuesday the 8th and Wednesday the 9th. We will begin the test at 9 am each day. The kids are usually done with the test each day after about 45 to 90 minutes. If they need more time they will be taken to the library to complete the test. Each child has until the end of the school day to complete each days test.

You will be seeing lots of materials coming home that focus on a variety areas of English Language Arts. We have been looking at paper based tests and will begin working on computer based sample tests. All of the children will be taking the MCAS on the computer. The kids will be provided with water and snacks that they can consume at any point during the test. They can also get up and stretch to help them with the stamina to complete the test.

SKATING FIELD TRIP- We have scheduled an ice skating field trip for Wednesday April 16th. We will board the bus at about 10:15 and will return to the school at about 12:30. The kids will have snack before we go to the ice arena and we will have lunch when we come back. If kids own their own skates they are welcome to bring them. The cost of the trip will be about 10 dollars. I will send home a permission slip next week. Kids who know how to skate will have free skate and new skaters will get a lesson and will be provided with walkers that they can hold on to as they attempt to skate.

May 2nd we will be taking a walking field trip to the Cooke House. This is a house from the 1700’s, it is located on Cooke St. in Edgartown. Inside the kids will get to see what life was like at that time period. We will be away from school for about 90 minutes. A permission slip will go home in a few weeks.

On May 13th the kids will be taking the Math MCAS test. They will begin at 9 am just like they did for the ELA MCAS in April. Usually the kids are done in about and 90 minutes. A good breakfast and a good nights sleep the night before will help them have the stamina to work to their best potential. They will take Day 2 of the MCAS MATH test the following day on May 14th.

May 19th we have an OFF ISLAND FIELD TRIP TO PLYMOUTH MA. We will meet at the Vineyard Haven Ferry at 7:35 am. We will be going on the 8:15 boat to Woodshole. We will board a school bus and will be driven to the Historic Mayflower Ship. This is the ship the Pilgrims came on and we will also walk to visit the Plymouth Rock which has a 1620 date engraved on it. We will then board the bus to take us to Plimoth Plantation and Patuxet museum. We will arrive at the museum a few minutes before 11. We will have access to the entire area from 11-2:10. We will see what life was like for the Pilgrim people and the Wampanoag people at the time in history. The cost of the trip will be about $20 dollars. A permission slip will go home in a few weeks.

May 22nd- We have a field trip to the Marthas’s Vineyard Museum. We will be discussing the liberty pole incident that took place, way back when, during the American Revolution. The British needed a new mast for one of their ships. They were going to take a pole that stood in Vineyard Haven——–but two young girls made sure it was no longer available. Your kids will explain what happened to the pole after we have this field trip

That’s all for know but I have a few other ideas to share with you at a later date.

I hope all is well with all of you. Thanks, Pam

February 7, 2025

Thank you all for coming to our personal narratives writer’s presentation that we had last week. The kids were so happy to share their work with you. We are now about 7 lessons into our informational book unit. The kids will be picking a subject and will complete their project on a google classroom slideshow that we will be able to share with you. We have been going over the components of an informational piece of writing and the kids will include these text features into their final piece of work. We will end the school year working on opinion writing pieces of writing.

Important dates coming up-

Monday February 10 is our 100th day of school. We will be doing a lot of fun things in class to celebrate this special day. It is not necessary for you to send in anything.

Friday February 14th is Valentine’s Day. The kids are welcome to bring in cards for each of their classmates. If the cards they have purchased come with little erasers or stickers or something along those lines those are fine to bring in. Unfortunately we will not be having food as part of our celebration. Please enjoy those yummy treats at home.

Also Friday February 14th is our Play that we will be presenting to you. If you are able to join us you can meet us in the lobby at 1:35. We will hand out visitor passes to each of you. We will enter the cafeteria about 1:40. The show will start right on time at 1:45. Both my class and Ms. Meuse’s class will be performing plays. Please plan to attend both plays. Each play is about 10 minutes long.

Please have a lovely weekend. Pam

January 24, 2025

BRRRRRRRR it has been cold. I hope you all are enjoying this fine brisk weather.

Thanks for helping your child fill out the noise homework sheet that I sent home last night. Our Scholastic Weekly Reader article was about sound and how we hear sound and how sound is measured. We are going to take the information that you all sent in to determine what sounds are below an 85 decibel safe sound level and what sounds are above this safety level. I really appreciated how this article really explained this concept in such a kid friendly way.

Reminder- You are all invited to visit our class on January 31st at 8:15 am OR 2:15 pm. We will have our red carpet celebration of the kid’s personal narrative stories. You will be able to walk around the room and listen to different kid share a real story about their life. YOU ONLY NEED TO COME AT 8:15 or 2:15. We will send the masterpieces home on Monday February 2, 2025.

Math Night – What a huge success this was. So many of our school’s families were able to come and participate in a wide variety of geometry activities. I am so glad that the kids enjoyed this school wide evening event.

Ask me about – The Sheperd Boy and the Wolf

Ask me about our math work groups- For certain lessons the kids have been assigned to 6 random groups of 3. We discussed that when working in a group you need to be an active listener. An active listener looks at a person speaking, shows eye contact, stays on topic and has only 1 person talk at a time

January 16,2025

Happy Thursday! Just a reminder that we will have no school on Monday in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday.

We have now completed our personal narrative stories. We would love to invite you to come into school at either 8:15 in the morning or 2:15 in the afternoon on Friday January 31st. We will have the kids share the stories they have been working on. We will also go through the rubric (a scoring device that we used with the kids to determine how well they did with each skill we taught them). We will also discuss how a writer goes from what we call a watermelon story (big idea story) to a seed story (a story about 1 moment in time).

Our next unit of study in writing is about Informational writing. The kids will pick a subject that they are interested in and will be taught the steps to create an informational piece of work that will inform their reader about a subject they have knowledge about and have studied more in depth about. They are doing a similar project in library, with Mrs. Cole. In library they are specifically writing animal informational pieces.

In math we have started studying division. We are on day 3 of this unit. You will start to see some homework go home that involves completing division equations.

Updating Assessments- We are in the process of completing Winter assessments in a variety of different subject matters. I always love this time of year because the kids really are developing pride in themselves with the skills they have been learning about.

The play we will be performing with the help of Donna Swift is The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Donna will be casting parts for this show over the next few Friday lessons that she has with us. Each child is eligible to try our for any part that interests them. She will have them come up 1 by 1 and say THEIR NAME–THE PART THEY WANT TO TRY OUT FOR–AND THEY WILL BRIEFLY ACT LIKE THAT CHARACTER. The kids will be asked for their first, second and third choice of parts. Our plan is to perform this play for you on Friday February 14 at 1:45 in the afternoon in the cafeteria. Both third grades will be performing plays that day. Each play lasts about 6-8 minutes. All the children will have a part in their classes play.

Have a lovely long weekend. Pam

January 3,2025

First of all I want to thank you all for your holiday well wishes. It sounds like the kids loved their vacation time. We have been hearing all kinds of fun things that you all had done during the week.

A writing celebration is on the horizon for 3H. We are finishing up personal narratives that we have been working on. Each child chose a real event in their life to write about. We provided them with lessons on how to write a good beginning, ways to grab a reader’s attention quickly, how and when to use transition words, creating paragraphs, how to wrap up a story, and how to edit a story that has been created. I thought that I might offer multiple times in a day to invite you to come in and see their work, if your schedule allows. Am I correct that something 8:20 in the morning or 2:10 in the afternoon may be good times for you all? We could do one showing at 8:15 and another at 2:10. You would only need to come to one of the offered times. I’m thinking this will occur in about 2 weeks. I’ll let you know the date in next weeks update.

We have a lot going on here at school. We began our theater class today with a lovely teacher named Donna Swift. She works each year with grade 3, 4 and 5 students on Improvisational Theater skills. We will work with her every Friday from now until February 14th. At some point during the week of February 10 -14 we will perform a play for all of you. We are still confirming the day and time. In the past we have performed on a Friday and we have started the performance at 1:45. Two plays will be performed for you on performance day – My class and Ms. Meuse’s class as well. Today she talked to the kids of trying our different ways of moving their bodies to express different feelings and Ideas. The kids were nervous at first, but they quickly caught on.

We are currently updating some assessments that we had done earlier in the fall. We will be identifying the growth the kids have made in a variety of math and reading skill areas. I always like to see the pride on the kid’s faces when they notice how hard they have been working in school.

Our homework routine will be changing a bit. Please look for notices from me in the kids homework folders next Monday. We will be personalizing it more for each student. I think the kids will enjoy it.

Have a lovely weekend. Pam

December 13, 2024. Happy Holidays to each of you.

December 16-December 20 is going to be a very busy week here in school.

Monday – All kids in the school are invited to wear white tops if they would like. We are all going to make white snowflakes to decorate our classrooms for the winter season.

IMPORTANT- We will be having our Holiday Concert on Monday Evening. It will take place in our school gym. The kids will be singing 3 songs. Please arrive in our classroom that evening at 5:35. We will head down to the gym about 5:55 and the show begins at 6. When the show is over about 6:45 ish, the kids will line up with me and we will return to our classroom. You can pick up your kids from my class.

Tuesday- We will be learning about the African American Celebration of Kwanza. We will be given red bracelets from the Student Council and will be making construction paper mats, using a weaving technique, that can be used at the holidays under a festive food being served.

Wednesday- We will be learning about Hanukkah. We will read about the origin of Hanukkah and will play the Dreidel Game.

Thursday- We will be allowed to wear holiday pajamas and will be watching the Polar Express with our 3rd grade peers.

Friday- There will be a fun run at 8:30, followed by a community meeting in the gym. We will be making Christmas cards for family and friends and we will be dismissed for our Christmas Holiday break at 12noon.

November 21, 2024

Hello Families,

I hope all is well with each of you. It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is next week.

We went to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and learned all about life of the Wampanoags of Massachusetts and Pilgrims when they first arrived here. The kids were able to touch artifacts, look at photographs and diagrams, and hear a presentation about what life was like. We have been discussing what a day would be like for a man, a woman, and a child in both cultures. We are completing our unit by creating shadow boxes of that time period. These will be hung up on our hallway bulletin board. We will send them home just before Christmas.

In Math – We have worked our way up to multiplying by 6 and by 7. We have learned that quickest way to solve a multiplication problem is to use a “count by” method. If I am multiplying 6 x 5 I can solve it by counting, 5-10-15-20-25-30 (which is 6 groups of 5.)

In Gardening- We had a great time going to the Island Grown Farm property to pick carrots from their large pasture of carrots. The kids were so fast at their jobs. They took great joy trying to figure out who found the largest carrot. It was determined we picked about 200 pounds if I remember accurately. When we came back to school that day, Maggie our garden teacher taught us how to make hummus with our carrots.

In Writing- We have been working on all of the components of a good writing piece. Our focus has been on enhancing our lead in a story, transitions, word choice, dialogue, spelling, and punctuation. It has been fun to see the kids change a line in their stories from something like “It was a good day” to “It was a great day, the sun was shining, and I felt great.”

Please hold this date- Our holiday concert will be at 5:00 pm on Monday Dec. 16th. The kids have been practicing some really cute songs for you.

I hope you enjoy Thanksgiving with your families.

Pam

October 31, 2024

Hello Families. Happy Halloween to those of you who celebrate this holiday. There will be no homework tonight due to the fact that many children will be out trick or treating. Have fun and be safe.

Important Information- The kid’s have a permission slip in their backpack. We are scheduled to visit the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on Tuesday November 5th. We will be learning about Wampanoag Life and Early English Settlers in the 1600’s.

Math- We have begun working on multiplication. The kids are so excited. We have learned about multiplying by the numbers 0, 1, and 2. We are also working on counting by 1 (easy) and 2’s (2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24)

Writing- We are continuing our personal narrative writing pieces. This week we talked about being specific about small moments in a story. A trip to a Zoo could be a major topic, seeing the animals is a bit more specific and feeding the goats is a very specific part of my trip to the zoo. I then would write all about how I feed the goats.

Reading- The kids are devouring books. They are all slowly starting to expand the types of books that they enjoy reading. I find it so sweet to see them curled up in a corner of the room reading their books.

Upcoming Events- I will send a permission slip home next week for an upcoming trip we have for going to a local farm to pick excess potatoes or carrots. This trip will occur on Wednesday November 15. Please wear boots on that day.

I hope you all get out this weekend and enjoy this beautiful weather.

Thanks, Pam

October 3, 2024

Hello Families,

Reminders- There will be no school on Friday October 11th due to a teacher’s professional development day. Please enjoy your long weekend.

Upcoming Events We will be going to Felix Neck on October 21st. We will be learning about pond life. Winter boots or rubber boots will be great clothing items to wear on that day.

What we are learning- In Math we have been working on finding the difference (subtracting 2 digit and 3 digit numbers). We have been using a total- part/part strategy to determine the answer.

What we are learning – In Language Arts we are on Week 2 of our Solving Problems Unit. We have been focusing on how we can learn from others.

What we are learning- In Writing we are working on personal narratives, which are true stories about ourself. We are trying to be very detailed in our writing, which gives our reader a clear picture of our story.

We have been asked to have the kids names put on their lunch boxes, coats and water bottles. Once an item is lost it goes to our lost and found. Without names we have no way or returning the item to the owner.

Have a great weekend. Pam

September 26, 2024

Hello Families,

We have had a wonderful first few weeks of school. I have really enjoyed seeing some of my old kindergarten friends from a few years ago as well as my new 3rd grade friends. Our focus over the past few weeks has been going over classroom procedures, usage of materials, learning our schedule and meeting new staff members. We also have been assessing your children’s skills in the area of math, reading and writing. We will use this information to direct our teaching. All lessons are designed to meet each child where they are at.

We have introduced our Magnetic Reading Program our Tang Math Program and our Lucy Caulkins’ UP The Ladder Writing Program to the kids. The kids seem really excited to work on each of these programs. All of the programs involve small group, large group and individual practice components. During parent conferences in a few weeks I will walk you through these programs so that you have sense of what are lessons look like each day. Our conferences will last about 20 minutes each.

I will be scheduling field trips to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum as well as in class speakers from the Museum, over the next few weeks. We will be learning about Native Americans and the Pilgrims passage to Plymouth and the Puritan’s visit to the area 10 Years later.

I will be updating this website each Thursday afternoon. I will include what we have learned, what we are about to learn, new things that our happening in our class, projects that we are working on and in general the fun and cool stuff that Mrs. Hurley’s class does each day.

Please know that you can contact me by email at phurley@mvyps.org. I check my email multiple times a day. My last check of my email is around 2:20 each afternoon.

I look forward to working with you and your child this year. Pam Hurley

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August 2024

I can’t wait to meet each of you. I want to learn about things that you are interested in and things you want to learn more about. We will be a class team. We will begin the year with lots of fun activities that will help us get to know each other.

Here is a little information about me. I have 11 brothers and sisters. I grew up in Cambridge MA, which is a city right next to Boston. I live in Edgartown with my husband Mike and my two children Colin and Rita. We have 2 pet guinea pigs named Lilly and Smores.

Ms. Linda Wanamaker will be my assistant this year. This will be our fourth year working together. She loves to read stories and she is passionate about horses.

I want to say welcome to the second floor of our school. I know you are going to love it.

The supplies you will need this year will be 1 pencil box (you’re welcome to use ones from previous years), 1 package of black dry erase markers thick ones called chisel tip I believe and 2 packages of 12 colored pencils. I have everything else you need. You do not need to have these supplies by the first day of school, any time during September works.

The best way to reach me is through my email at phurley@mvyps.org. I check my email often and I also check it at 2:00 p.m. each day to see if there’s any changes to the kid’s dismissal plans.

Can you please email me to let me know what your child’s plans are for coming and going to school each day. You can reach me at phurley@mvyps.org

Can you also let me know if I have your permission to include your email address in a full class email list. This will allow me to contact you all with updates about our class.

Our specialist schedule is as follows

Monday- Health Tuesday-Music and Technology Wednesday- Gardening and Gym (sneakers needs for both of these lessons) Thursday- Art and Gym

Friday- Library

Snack- Please send a snack and water bottle with your child each day. Fruit is always available if you would prefer your child to have that from the cafeteria each day. It is helpful when the kids water bottles are not super large.

Over the next few weeks, I will be sending you more information about this school year. For now, continue to enjoy the rest of your summer. Mrs. Hurley and Ms. Wanamaker

phurley@mvyps.org