Heart-warming Moments

Throughout every week at Dryden there are countless moments that fill my heart and inspire me to do my very best for our students, staff and families. Here are a few highlights from this past week...

Our Book Buddies Club is underway! It is such a treat to see our older students (and possibly future teachers!) helping our younger students develop their reading skills by playing games, making words and reading books together. 

How wonderful it was to have so many families and teachers meet up to walk to school on Walk to School Day this past Wednesday! It was a beautiful spring morning to appreciate our environment, get some fresh air, and exercise. Our safety patrols and crossing guard commented that with having so few cars at morning drop-off, it felt safer and calmer as everyone made their way to Dryden. 

Our music teacher, Mr. Deptula, and the kindergarten students sang to Mrs. Kelly on her birthday.
Music is a special gift that brings people together, helps us celebrate, and fills our hearts with joy. 

Mr. Deptula is also hard at work rehearsing with our fifth grade students for their upcoming musical performance, which is both joyful and bittersweet. This is the time of year we celebrate the wonderful accomplishments of this special group of students and prepare to send them off with many well-wishes as they head to middle school. We are so proud of the growth they have made at Dryden, and we will miss them!

This is also the time of year we are welcoming the Class of 2029. That's the year our incoming kindergarteners will be graduating from high school! We were thrilled to meet so many nice families at Kindergarten Information Night. This was a special night for incoming kindergarten families to get to know each other, visit our school and learn about the kindergarten program. 

This is a very exciting time for transitions and celebrations for all of us at Dryden!

Happy & Healthy

A rigorous academic curriculum is essential in ensuring that our students have opportunities to reach their full potential. It's also important that we provide opportunities that encourage students to discover ways they can lead a balanced life that includes being healthy and happy. 

Dance has been a fun, creative outlet for some of our students. Mrs. Pemberton is working with 5th grade students before school in preparation for their musical performance. 

This picture says it all!

I had so much fun with this group at an after-school origami party. We laughed and worked together as we tried to figure out how to make different objects by folding paper. 

The entire fifth grade worked together to raise funds for a gift to the school in a basketball shoot-out. Their efforts were very successful. The funds will go towards furniture for a new seating area in our LMC. Thank you, PTA, PE Teacher Mr. Gries, and all fifth grade students!

Clubs are a great way to explore and connect with others who have similar interests. Here, some students are tinkering and sharing ideas during our Maker Club.

Giving back to the community can be very rewarding. What a generous donation to the Wheeling Food Pantry from the Dryden School community!

The PTA Family Skate Night is always a highlight of the year. This is a wonderful evening for friends and family to come together to socialize, relax and get some exercise while skating!

The arts bring much joy to our lives. Bravo to the fifth grade Fugleflicks Film Club! Their short film, "Movement" was a finalist in the Tribeca Student Screen Test Film Fest at the Prairie Art Center in Schaumburg.

What a wonderful experience for them to go through the entire movie production process with Art Teacher Mrs. Fuglestad. 

It was a thrill to see their movie played on the big screen with other finalist entries from across the world! You can read more about the entire movie-making experience on Mrs. Fuglestad's blog post here.  

The slideshow above features some Dryden Dolphin sightings at the Just Move It! Challenge this past Saturday. We were so happy to see families and staff from Dryden come out to participate and volunteer for this fundraiser that also promotes a healthy lifestyle and wonderful community connections. It certainly was a beautiful spring morning to be outside! 

Engaging Engineering & Design Thinking

It's been exciting to see engineering and design thinking experiences that our teachers are incorporating into classrooms! 

Students have been identifying and reflecting on problems characters encounter in the books they have been reading. 

They then collaborate with their peers to brainstorm possible solutions. 

Bringing these solutions to life requires a lot of creative problem-solving, careful planning of details and steps, and being open to the suggestions and feedback of others. 

The students demonstrate very high levels of ownership and engagement in their learning. They seem to be having fun but take these challenges very seriously at the same time. 

Trial-and-error and creatively using familiar materials in new ways is also part of the process. 

Students share their inventions, discoveries, and struggles with their peers. Peers provide valuable feedback and ask probing questions to help one another improve upon their original solutions and creations. 

These enriching experiences are building habits of mind in our students that will prepare them to be innovative, creative, and persistent problem-solvers of the future! 

Currently, paper tubes from paper towel rolls, gift wrap, etc. are in hot demand as we delve into these engineering and design thinking experiences. We'd greatly appreciate any donations of these items. They can be dropped off at our school office. Thank you!

Passion for Poetry

All across Dryden, students have been immersed in reading, discussing, and writing poetry. 

Poetry is a wonderful genre to explore in-depth...

Students can explore the use of figurative language such as similes, metaphors alliteration, idioms and onomatopoeia, and then experiment with applying these literary devices in their own writing. 

Through repeated readings of a poem, students identify the mood and tone, make sense of vivid images, and discover layers of meaning and interpretation. 

Students analyze the poet's purposeful word choices. They gain a deeper understanding of rich vocabulary and multiple meanings.

The focus of the PTA-sponsored book clubs this month was also on poetry. Our students greatly enjoyed reading and discussing in this forum!

We thank the many parent volunteers who facilitated poetry readings and discussions with our interested students during the lunch hour. 

This was a wonderful extension of classroom learning!

In the LMC, students listened to poetry readings and recitations. 

They experienced how rhythm, rhyme and music influence the emotion, imagery and message of a poem. 

As a culmination, our PTA brought local poet Bill Buzcinsky to Dryden. Bill brought a wide range of poems to life with music, movement and active student participation. Thank you, PTA!!

Bill shared the haiku poem below with our students as he ended our time with us at Dryden. It speaks to the beauty and wonder poetry brings to our lives, and the powerful impact words can have on us. 

Thank you, Dryden teachers and PTA, for giving our students this enriching and enlightening experience with poetry!