All the news!

Parents of 4th graders already know this but I wanted to share it with the school community. Mrs. Jensen-Fellows resigned her position earlier this month and we immediately began a search for her replacement. I am very happy to share that MaryAnn Hawkridge has accepted the position. The timing couldn't have been better as she completed our Long Term Substitute position in 2nd grade on Monday. MaryAnn has extensive experience teaching and most recently as support staff over at Davis Hill. We feel lucky to have her! If you see her, be sure to say "hi." 

Last call for Acceleration Academy:

The Wachusett District is pleased to be able to offer your students in grades 3-8 a chance to participate

in the Math Acceleration Academy during the upcoming April Break, funded through DESE’s Math Acceleration Grant. This program will run 4 days from April 16th-19th from 8:00 am-2:00 pm.  Students will participate in activities that provide engaging, hands-on math lessons to promote math mastery of essential skills.  We are unable to provide nutrition services during this week and ask that students come each day with water, lunch, and an additional snack.  Transportation is not provided, and due to the nature of the program, space is limited.  

Daily Schedule:

• Student drop-off 7:45-8:00
• Lunch 11:00-11:30
• Parent pick-up- promptly 2:00

Please use this Google Form to register your student.  Should you have any questions, please reach out.

A note from the Nurse's office: 

School Dismissal Manager App Reminder 

This is a friendly reminder that if your child is going to be late or absent please remember to log it into the School Dismissal Manager app. Even if your child will be out consecutive days for the same reason, please note it in the application for each day they will be out so we are sure that you child is safe and accounted for, otherwise we will follow up with a phone call. Thank you for your cooperation!

From the TPS PTA: 

 Lights, camera, action! Get ready for an epic movie night next Friday, April 5th, at 6 PM in the TPS cafeteria hosted by the PTA. Join us for a special screening of the new classic, "Super Mario Bros"! Dive into the adventurous world of Mario and Luigi as they journey through the Mushroom Kingdom to rescue Princess Peach. It's a nostalgic trip down memory lane filled with action, humor, and plenty of fun. Don't miss out! Grab your blankets and pillows, and let's make it a night to remember. Admission is FREE, though we will be collecting school supplies for Staff Appreciation Week. Small concessions will be available to purchase. See you there! 

The spring track season begins April 1.  Dates for away meets are on the Athletics page of our website and will continue to be updated if additional meets are scheduled.   If your child(ren) are participating in track, please be sure to update their dismissal instructions in SDM to reflect this.  Setting this as a default is not an option but the exception can be set as recurring for the entirety of the season.  If set as recurring, please be sure to remember to update on any day that they may not be going to track.  If they're to go to Extended Day after track, track should still be their dismissal instruction with a comment about attending Extended Day after practice is over.  If you have any questions, please reach out to Tracy. 

I wanted to let you all know that the district is in discussion with Summit Academy. This small program services students on the spectrum and currently, approximately 50% of their student body is made up of WRSD students. The district is exploring leasing space at TPS for this program to exist as a "school within our school." I have identified three potential spaces, all in under utilizes spaces, that could be used for this purpose. I am excited about this opportunity as it will give our students the opportunity to practice empathy and understanding while adding neurodiversity to our community. Additionally, there may be some opportunity for TPS to access some of the support Summit Academy brings with them. Many logistics still need to be discussed and I'm sure you all have questions that there may not be answers for yet. However, these discussions will go public shortly and I wanted you all to hear it from me. 

Electronic Folder

New: WooSox Town Takeover, Specials Calendar, Movie Night, 

Week Ahead: 

• Monday (4/1) Day B
• School Council
• Track season begins
• Tuesday (4/2) Day C
• Wednesday (4/3) Day D
• Thursday (4/4) Day A
• STEAM Meeting
• Friday (4/5) Day B
• TPS Day! Wear your TPS gear or colors!
• PTA Family Movie Night
• Saturday (4/6) 
• Courtyard Cleanup  

Fun Friday!

It was a fun week at TPS with the book fair, play, and spirit week! It was too much to share in words so here are a few pictures from Spirit Week with many more on the Instagram account! 

The staff supported the cause with door decorating and by dressing up as some of their favorite book characters. We made it a little competitive and the PTA donated Book Fair gift certificates for the winners. 2nd grade took the door competition with their "Wild Robot" (pictured). I still think my "Clifford the Big Red Dog" door was underappreciated. The 5th grade team took the honors with an iconic rendition of Jack and the Giant from "Jack and the Beanstalk" (not pictured). All in all, a fun week at TPS!  

I'd like to thank Mrs. Holwell and Mr. Nichols for their work with the middle schoolers on "The Enchanted Book Store." These productions are a huge commitment but the result was spectacular! Last night's opening was great and I'm looking forward to watching this evening's finale! Congratulations to all who participated in the play! 

A note from our Project 351 representative, Nick: 

Clothing Drive Alert

We're excited to share that Thomas Prince School is teaming up with Cradles to Crayons for an important clothing drive, spearheaded by our very own Project 351 Ambassador for 2024, Nick Brady! 
 Date: March 25th – April 5th
 Location: School Lobby
As part of our commitment to making a positive impact, we're collecting gently used or new clothing items to support children in need right here in our community. This initiative is a fantastic opportunity for us to unite and lend a helping hand!
Here's how you can get involved:
•        Bring in gently used clothing items in good condition, sizes newborn to adult medium (coats, shirts, pants, etc)
•        Donate new socks, underwear and pajamas
Let's show our compassion and generosity! Together, we can ensure that every child has access to the clothing they need to thrive.
As an added incentive, the grade that donates the most items will be awarded an extra recess. Collection boxes will be available in the school lobby.
Thank you for joining us in this meaningful endeavor!

The Wachusett District is pleased to be able to offer your students in grades 3-8 a chance to participate in the Math Acceleration Academy during the upcoming April Break, funded through DESE’s Math Acceleration Grant. This program will run 4 days from April 16th-19th from 8:00 am-2:00 pm.  Students will participate in activities that provide engaging, hands-on math lessons to promote math mastery of essential skills.  We are unable to provide nutrition services during this week and ask that students come each day with water, lunch, and an additional snack.  Transportation is not provided and due to the nature of the program space is limited.  

Daily Schedule:

• Student drop-off 7:45-8:00
• Lunch 11:00-11:30
• Parent pick-up- promptly 2:00

Please use this Google Form to register your student.  Should you have any questions, please reach out.

SEPAC has asked that I share with all of you that they are hosting an upcoming presentation that is being held virtually by the federation for children with special needs. It is April 10 at 6 PM, via Zoom. It will go over parent’s rights in the IEP process plus break down all of the elements of the IEP. 

Register below:

Host and Presenter Contact Information

Workshop: Basic Rights: Understanding the IEP

Contact: sepac@wrsd.net

Date/Time: 4/10/2024 6:00-8:00 PM

Registration Link          

The Electronic Folder

Cradles to Crayons, Girl Scout Event, SEPAC Presentation flyer, 

The Week Ahead: 

• Monday (3/25) Day A
• Tuesday (3/26) Day B
• Wednesday (3/27) Day C
• Half Day - Staff PD
• Thursday (3/27) Day D
• Friday (3/28) Day A 
• WRHS Guidance here for 8th grade
• Safe Schools Presentation (Grades 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8)

All the things!

The Middle School started the week off with a special presentation from Mr. John Frost. He travels the world witnessing and documenting eclipses. He shared his passion with the Middle Schoolers and explained the coming eclipse to them. The kids left excited about this upcoming phenomenon! Just a reminder that April 8th is a school day. 

The bus company has asked me to remind parents that any balls transported on the bus should be tucked into backpacks before boarding. Apparently, there have been some issues with loose balls rolling around buses and this can be a safety hazard. Thanks for your attention to this matter. 

As you may know, our courtyards are maintained by volunteers. They are due up for their spring cleanup. Ms. Santello will be leading a group of volunteers to tackle the Bangrazi courtyard on Saturday, April 6th from 9:00-2:00. Help clean up the raised garden beds, rake leaves, weed, and plant. Snacks and coffee provided. Contact Ms. Santello at elaine_santello@wrsd.net with any questions. 

For your planning purposes, we do have MCAS scheduled for students in grades 3-8. Please do your best to get students to school on time on these days. 

• April 9th and 10th ELA 3-8 
  
• April 30th and May 1st Math 3-8
• May 7th and 8th STE 5th and 8th 
• May 14th Civics 8th

The district art show will take place at the high school next week on Tuesday 3/19 from 6:00-7:00. We have the artwork of 6 students represented. Congratulations to Michael F, Katie P, Teagan M, Bragnae K, Sophie N, and Lilah D.

Fifth Graders celebrated Pi Day on Thursday with activities and challenges across their subject areas. From a Pi Memorization contest to a Pi Day read aloud to finding Pi with circular objects, it was a math-filled day! 

Next week we will celebrate the book fair, our MS drama production "The Enchanted Book Store", and the Student Council is hosting a Spirit Week! 

• 
  Monday - Sports Jersey Day. 
• Tuesday - Favorite Book Character. 
• Wednesday - Pajama Day. 
• Thursday - Crazy Day (crazy hair, crazy hat, crazy clothes, etc.) 
• Friday - Color Wars! 
• Kindergarten = yellow 
• 1st grade = blue 
• 2nd grade =  pink
• 3rd grade = red
• 4th grade = black
• 5th grade = orange
• 6th grade = green
• 7th grade = white 
• 8th grade = purple

"SAVE THE DATE: The PTA is proud to host the upcoming TPS "Small & Tall Glow Dance" for our K-5th grade students to dance the night away with a special adult in their life. The dance will be held on Friday, April 26th from 6-8 pm in the TPS gym. The theme for this dance is "Light Up The Night" and the amazing DJ "Neon Nova" will be handing out prizes and spinning hits that are sure to get everyone on the dance floor. Tickets go on sale soon!"

A note from Chocksett for Middle School Baseball and Softball tryouts: 

BB & SB Tryouts - Monday & Tuesday - 3:00-5:00

SB Tryouts - Wednesday-Friday - 3:00-5:00

BB Practice - Thursday & Friday - 3:00-5:00

Dear TPS Families,

The book fair week is nearly upon us! We hope to see you at one of our community nights. There have been some conflicting dates sent out via our newsletters. Please see below for the correct dates. We have a special theme this year and do hope that you will come check out the fair! 

Community Shopping Hours

MONDAY, March 18th, 4:00-6:00PM

TUESDAY, March 19th, 5:30-7:30PM

THURSDAY, March 21st, 3:00-5:00PM

Please see below for when your TPS Warrior is scheduled to visit the fair during school hours. We accept cash, check, credit card, and eWallet as payment. You can always visit our fair web page for more information or to shop online. Lastly, there are opportunities for the community to make donations in support of our TPS classrooms and our library STEAM collection directly, if you so choose. 

Class Visitations

Monday: Grade 1, Grade 4, Grade 6, Grade 2 (Hackett)

Tuesday: Grade 3, Grade 5, K (Santello)

Wednesday: Grade 7, Grade 8, Grade 2 (Hawkridge), K (Andre)

Friday: Grade 3, Grade 4 

Electronic Folder

Wachusett Football and Cheer, Art Show, Spirit Week 

The Week Ahead: 

• Monday (3/18) Day D
• Jersey Day for Spirit Week 
• School Council Meeting
• MS Student/Staff Basketball
• Family Book Fair (4:00-6:00)
• Tuesday (3/19) Day A
• Dress as your favorite Book Character for Spirit Week
• District Art Show (6:00-7:00)
• Playful Engineers (6:00-8:00)
• Family Book Fair (5:30-7:30)
• Wednesday (3/20) Day B
• Pajama Day for Spirit Week
• Thursday (3/21) Day C 
• Crazy Day for Spirit Week
• Family Book Fair (3:00-5:00)
• The Enchanted Book Shop at 6:00
• Friday (3/22) Day D
• Color Wars for Spirit Week
• The Enchanted Book Shop at 6:00

• **Last day of school is June 17th (1/2 day) 

Read here often?

Every once in a while, certain weeks these communications take on a theme. I found myself reflecting on literacy this week. 

I want to start off the communication much like we started off the week, by recognizing our wonderful Community Readers and our amazing library volunteers, Mrs. Abady and Mrs. Trowbridge, who brought the day together. If for some reason your students didn't come home Monday talking about their guest, every classroom or grade level had a community member join them Monday morning. Each guest shared their passions within the community as well as celebrated literacy with a story. As I walked around, I saw students enthralled. I often find that outside guests bring a certain gravity to a discussion and seeing so many people take time out of their day to read to our children was wonderful. We are lucky to be a part of such a supportive community. 

We followed up Community Reader Day with a full-day professional development day. All of our elementary school teachers were at Mountview learning about the district's new literacy program we will adopt next year, HMH Into Reading. This program, replacing Fountas and Pinnell, has a solid basis in the Science behind reading and gives our teachers all the pieces they need to teach our young readers, in one place. The implementation of this program will take center stage next year with additional professional development time set aside as well as extended literacy blocks during the day. 

The PTA has asked me to share the following about our upcoming book fair:

The Scholastic Book Fair starts in two weeks! The PTA sent out an email to the TPS community today that contains lots of important information about our upcoming book fair. If you did not get this important email from our amazing PTA, you can email tpsprincetonpta@gmail.com to ensure that you are on the mailing list. I'm including a link to it here. We have lots of fun planned for the week of the book fair so please be sure to access the newsletter! 

A reminder that TPS Track and Chocksett Baseball/Softball registration has opened. 

Electronic Folder

New: Enchanted Bookstore MS Play Flyer, Book Fair Newsletter, 

The week ahead: 

• Monday (3/11) Day C
• Special Town Meeting (TPS Cafeteria)
• Tuesday (3/12) Day D
• Monty Tech Interviews
• Wednesday (3/13) Day A
• Thursday (3/14) Day B
• Spring Pictures
• PTA Meeting
• Friday (3/15) Day C
• Safe program in Gym (grades 4,2, & 3)

I was reading over the communication from the High School and wanted to highlight their Science Fair! They have a dozen students heading to WPI for the Worcester Regional Science and Engineer Fair. I recognized a handful of these names from Princeton. Students competing include: Abigail Lei, Jocelyn MacDonough, Ekaavli Daga, Megan Darmanin, Annika Cranson, Matthew Lyubchik, Abigail Blechner, Sasha Litvak, Alyssa Kruger, Avery Kremer, Sasha Teymurazyan, Sierra Kelch. 

Leaping into March!

Mrs. Dolat is at it again this month with her reading challenge. Check out the electronic folder for the March reading challenge as well as the MS challenge! 

TPS Reading Challenge Update from Mrd. D

We had 88 students from K-5 participate in the challenge for the month of February! That is a total of 264 books read by K-5 students just for the challenge!  In Middle School, we had 7 students participate and they read a total of 9 great books! While I'd love to see more 6-8th graders participating, it's great to have some middle schoolers reading with me this month!  Participation prizes for February will be distributed next week. The K-5 monthly raffle winner for the month is Parker Bottomley & the raffle winner for middle school is Brynn Cranson. Their prizes will be given out next week as well! A big shout out to the PTA for providing the prizes!

Looking ahead to March, the new forms will be passed out to students next week. K-5 students are encouraged to read books about magical settings, dragons and listen to audiobooks this month! Middle school students can join the Google Classroom for the challenge to find the book bingo board and send me messages about any books they read. Digital copies of the student forms are available in the electronic folder!  I hope to see more readers join the fun in the next four weeks! (Join code for MS ncnwrfp)

This week we were lucky to have a visit from Jiji! I imagine the elementary students came home talking about this penguin walking through the cafeteria and were met with some disbelief. They were telling the truth. TPS has been lucky to be afforded the opportunity to implement ST Math for the last few years. This visual online math instructional program allows students to use their spatial-temporal reasoning skills to develop a conceptual knowledge of math. The kids love it and the mascot, Jiji the penguin. Jiji entered the cafeteria with cheers, high-fives, and hugs! 

This week we celebrated Leap Day! Thank you to the PTA who provided cute frogs to help us "Leap" into the day. Throughout the building, classes celebrated this special day that only comes every four years. And of course, the 8th graders "celebrated" with the NAEP assessment. It may not have been as special for them. 

Next week, we open up the registration for 5th-8th Track and Field. The registration will be open on Monday with a firm deadline of Friday the 22nd. The season will begin on Monday, April 1st. Practices normally occur daily but the coach is flexible recognizing that many students have other commitments from time to time. You can review his recruitment letter in the electronic folder here. It looks like the groundhog knew what he was doing and spring is on its way. It should be a great season!  

For those interested in Baseball and Softball, we don't have enough students to field a team. However, TPS students are invited to join the Chocksett teams. You can register here starting at 5:00 today. They don't have start dates yet as they await field availability but do anticipate having indoor practices leading up to the season. 

Electronic Folder

New - March Reading Challenge, MS Challenge, 

Looking ahead: 

• Monday (3/4) Day C
• Community Reader Day
• Tuesday (3/5) 
• Election Day - No School for students - PD for staff
• Wednesday (3/6) Day D
• Thursday (3/7) Day A
• WRHS 8th Grade Parents Night (6:00-7:30)
• Friday (3/8) Day B