January 2, 2025

 

Dear Families,                                           

 

Happy 2025.

Before the December vacation, the national education website, Chalkbeat, wrote a long article about our school.  The article touched on CPE’s fiftieth anniversary, and what it’s like inside the school today.

(If you missed the article before, the quickest way to find it is to google chalkbeat central park east.)

Chalkbeat vividly portrays the sights, sounds, and smells of CPE1 classrooms.  The article also suggests just how special our curriculum seems nowadays.  

The article mentions a letter I wrote back in May (www.cpe1.nyc/letters) about our response to new citywide reading mandates.  We’re nearly halfway through our first year, and I am excited about what teachers have created.

This fall, we built on important features of the citywide curriculum.  We have been challenging children with complex texts.  We support them by reading and re-reading together.  Students practice using the demanding vocabulary from their reading. 

Recently, our K-1 children have been reading about the human body, such as the respiratory and circulatory systems.    It’s impressive to hear class discussions where young children talk about the lungs’ bronchi and bronchioles.  

Our 2-3 students have been reading about simple machines.  During work time, I’ve overhead second graders and third graders talking to each other about wedges, levers, forces, and loads. 

Our 4-5s have been reading and debating whether the electoral college system of voting for president is fair.  Their writing now includes phrases such as “protects the rights of political minorities” and “unfair to the majority of voters.”  That is sophisticated language, and sophisticated thinking.

CPE1 teachers selected interesting texts for children.  We also can match what we read to hands-on learning.  For example, our 2-3s will be constructing simple machines as they build during work time, and in the spring, when our K-1 students read about animal habitats, chicks will be hatching in their classrooms.

We have a long way to go in 2025.  We began developing formal assessments of how children think about what they learn from reading.  We have to help children write more fully in response to what they read.  And, of course, we have to keep planning new lessons with new books, week after week.

It certainly would be easier to follow the citywide reading program.  However, what we have created fits CPE1 well.  As that Chalkbeat article shows, CPE curriculum always has been special.  This new reading work continues to enrich that legacy.   

 

Meeting for Families about Investigations

Lately, families have had many questions about how schools handle investigations.  We will have a special meeting to share how more information and answer questions.

This meeting will take place in the library on January 9 at 8:30.

 

Skating Days Coming Up

We were able to reserve only one more day of skating at Riverbank State Park.  Fortunately, Wollman Rink, on the southern side of Central Park, can accommodate our K-5 students.

Here are the remaining K-5 skating days this year:

  • January 9

  • January 16

  • January 23

  • January 30

  • February 3

  • February 13

Almost all of these dates are Thursdays.  The one exception is Monday, February 3, when we will skate at Riverbank.

Wollman costs about three times more than Riverbank.  Thanks to the parent association for figuring out how to cover this extra cost.  Next year should be better, when the renovated rink near to us will re-open.  Our students, including pre-K, again will be walking to skate.

 

Happy New Year.  It’s good to be back in school.