Volume 20 May 2018

Dionne Warwick Institute’s Chronicles http://warwick.eastorange.schoolfusion.us

Dear Parents, Dionne Warwick Institute continuously strives for academic success. This is the premise that embodies the 2017-2018 school-wide theme, Great Habit Make Great Leaders. The theme represents the student behaviors that we promote daily through the 7 Habits of Happy Kids. Our annual theme serves as a motivational tool to help us achieve our mission and vision and support our sustained growth toward high student achievement.    In 2017 Dionne Warwick Institute became a proud member of The Leader in Me Schools. As a Leader In Me school we are “teaching 21st century leadership and life skills to students and creates a culture of student empowerment based on the idea that every student can be a leader. In 2008, Dionne Warwick Institute was named a New Jersey National Title I Distinguished School for exceptional student performance for two or more consecutive years. In 2003, our effective implementation of the model earned the school national recognition as an America’s Choice Demonstration School. In September of 2000, Dionne Warwick Institute became an America’s Choice School, a school with a solid curriculum that goes beyond the fundamentals of reading, writing, mathematics and science. In May 1998, Dionne Warwick Institute of Economics and Entrepreneurship was one of ten schools in the State of New Jersey recognized as a “Star School” by the Department of Education.   As a standards-based school, instruction is designed to enable students to use the basics as a springboard to make leaps, great and small, to master the most important concepts in each content area. The rigorous curriculum is infused into technology. The school’s curriculum is designed to empower students with the knowledge and skills to be: informed citizens; productive responsible professionals with a strong work ethic; knowledgeable consumers; financially astute as savers and investors; innovative problem solvers; and entrepreneurs with the desire to be business titans in the global economy.   Elements of technology education are also infused throughout the content areas, as well as, being used to generate advertisements, effectively utilize the range of Google app features, and generate multimedia presentations. Students learn word processing skills, use spreadsheets, incorporate graphics, and conduct online research.  Our students have access to three additional Apple labs as well as mobile workstations.  Each room is equipped with an Interactive Whiteboard and additional desktop computers and iPads to facilitate our endeavors to ensure that our students are technologically adept. Each student in grades 3-5 is assigned laptop daily and utilize Google classroom to demonstrate their prowess.   Additionally, our namesake, Dionne Warwick is actively involved in support of our school and goals. In 2010 and again in 2017, the legendary Ms. Dionne Warwick and her business partner, Mr. Dave Wooley, donated a state-of-the-art Hewlett-Packard computer lab and a set of Netbooks. The HP Learning Studio, in partnership with Digital Promise Global, is a place where learners communicate with students globally to define problems they want to solve and design solutions to address them. Leveraging powerful technology, students will engage in activities and projects that expose them to skills and concepts such as design thinking, three dimensional design and social entrepreneurship.    At Warwick Institute, parents and staff are committed to preparing our students to be responsible, resourceful, independent thinkers who are able to compete on a global scale. We encourage our students to earn their leadership each and every day because Great Habits Make Great Leaders! –Flore-Nadeige B. Lovett, Principal

Principal’s Message

“The seven habits are very important. To me it is like a map that I can follow to have a good life.” -Rakiyah Grove

“The seven habits can help me to listen better and make better choices.” -Demani Sutherland

“By learning the seven habits I can show other people how to use it.” -Emina Evans-Benson

“My favorite habit is to be proactive because kids can do the right when no one is looking.” -Liliana Roberts

“The 7 Habits mean make better choices. Do what is right and help somebody need.” -Keisha Isaac

“Balance is not something you find, it's something you create. It's all up to you!” -Nadirah Keith

“Education has changed so much over the years. We need to provide students with innovative opportunities to prepare them for the future. The Leader in Me 7 Habits give us the framework to develop essential life skills and characteristics for our students so that they can become the future leaders.” -Mary Inglis

“There is a Leader in Us All!” #gowarwick

“Great art work in hallways of Leader In Me. Makes the school a vibrant and happy place!” #warwickrocks

“Keep inspiring students to be more!!” #awesomequotes

“I love that you’ve genuinely incorporated the 7 Habits everywhere you look! It creates a very positive and warm environment.” #thisschoolrocks

“Warwick is doing an excellent job incorporating the Leader In Me throughout the school! #warwickrocks!

“Student work and conversation reflects understanding of the habits.” #kidshaveavoice

The Gardening Club

The Gardening Club was formed as the result of the North Jersey Chapter of The Links, Inc., and their partners ShopRite (Wakefern, Inc.), and E.L.Congdon Lumber after their generous donations of plants, seeds, gloves, watering cans, fertilizer, pressure-treated lumber raised garden boxes, and their time. Early April was the start of all three 4th-grade classes participating in workshops with The Links, Inc. and ShopRite to learn about healthy eating and gardening. However, a small group of students and one teacher volunteered to form The Gardening Club (TGC), and took responsibility for prepping the soil. Then, once-weekly, TGC foregoes their lunch period to tend the three boxed-raised garden beds located on the east side of the building, just outside the door to the parking area. In June, the last of the four workshops with The Links, Inc. and ShopRite will culminate into harvesting the crops. The onion and spinach plants are not cooperating. However, we anticipate a bounty of carrots and cauliflower.   TGC members have had lots of fun maintaining the garden! Truth be told, this project has also revealed a number of potential future farmers of America! In the paragraphs below, Tending to Our Garden, the students have penned details of their gardening experience and what they have learned. Also, checkout the raised garden beds when you get a chance. Perhaps the 4th-Grade garden will inspire you to plant one of your own.   Ms. Angela Randall-West, M.Ed, Doctoral Scholar The Garden Club Facilitator and Lover of all things Outdoors

Tending to Our Garden What is the DWI Gardening Club – Jordan Davis The DWI Gardening Club is a group of kids and a teacher named Mrs. West that partner up with The Links, Inc. ladies to grow plants. The Gardening Club is an organization that comes together to plant and take care of herbs and vegetable plants. The Gardening Club makes sure the DWI plants stay healthy. The Gardening Club is a group that helps our plants grow so we can take them home to cook and eat.   Why Create a Garden Bed? – Breanna Harris It’s important to create a garden bed. Garden beds are great for growing small plots of veggies and flowers. The wood around it will keep pathway weeds from getting into the soil, prevent soil compaction, provide good drainage, and serve as a barrier to pests such as slugs and snails. These are all the things that can destroy your hard work of growing a garden. Now you know what a garden bed is and why it is important.   Remove the Sod – Jordan Strickland Do you know why it’s important to take out the sod before you plant a garden? Do you even know what sod is? I read about people building sod houses in literacy and social Studies classes. Sod is the clumps of soil, roots, and grass. Sod is hard to dig up. But it is important to take out the sod before planting. When you dig up the sod you are left with the soil. The soil is the part you don't want to dig up. Then you need to till, turn it over and chop up, the soil. This way it will be easier to make the holes for the seeds. This how I raised garden bed begins and why it is important to take out the sod before you plant.   Why do we make rows for seeds? – Breanna Harris We needed to make rows for our plants. Why? Crop spacing is important. Crop spacing is about the number of plants in a particular area. It is about the distance between one plant and another. Overcrowding of plants may reduce the yields, or the vegetables, that grow. It may also lower the quality of the vegetables produced because of competition for light, soil, and nutrients.

  How to Plant the Seeds – Ernest Obeng To plant the seeds you need to dig holes with a stick. The holes need to be spaced out so that the plants have room to grow their roots. We also need to make sure that the holes are not too deep, or else the seedlings will die before they pop out the soil. We planted the seeds in the mounds. We planted different types of seeds such as carrots, onions, and spinach. The seeds are organized by planting carrots in one row, onions in the second, and spinach in the third row. Some third rows had cauliflower.   What Makes Plants Grow? – Ja’diah Nixon Our plants need sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow. Light is used as energy for making food through the process called photosynthesis. Too little light can make plants weak and leggy looking. They will also have fewer flowers and fruit. Too much light and hot sun can make plants die. We make sure our plants get just enough sun, water, and fertilizer.   Watering – Chauncey Virgil The Gardening Club watered our outside garden on Wednesday. The indoor, classroom plants got watered twice a week. We found out that raised garden beds  require more  watering in dry weather. Plants in  raised beds  grow  more  quickly and devour water and nutrients faster. The beds were drier in different parts. For example, the troughs of the beds were wet, but the mounds, where the plants were, were even drier than everywhere else in the bed. Wood of the raised garden walls suck up the water. So, the side of the garden near the walls got dry. Putting extra water in the garden helped to keep the plants watered and healthy.   Drought – Godwin Botobikpissi Droughts are very dangerous to most living things. But I think drought affect plants the most. Droughts occur when there is no water for long periods of time. Droughts are very had to predict. Plants need water to make food and grow. But, droughts injure plants. The plants roots might become hard, easy to break, and dark brown or in some cases it might turn completely black. In our plant boxes, droughts happen all the time. I also noticed that every time a drought happens huge cracks in the soil in the plant boxes begins to show. This is why we water the plants a lot before they quickly become dry again.   Fertilizing our Plants – Abdoul Kafado Fertilizer is the nutrients in soil. We use chemical and natural fertilizer in our garden beds. Chemical fertilizer is nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. We put a little in the garden beds when we put the plants in. Natural, organic fertilizer is the worms found in the soil. Worms keep the soil loose and turn waste into nutrients for the plants. So, when you see worms in the soil, don’t eat them! Plants need them to stay healthy.

The Gardening Club Members:

Abdoul Kafando Adama Noukouni

Ashley Buchanan Breanna Harris Chauncey Virgil

Diana Lewis Ernest Obeng

Godwin Botobikpissi Ja’diah Nixon Jordan Davis

Jordon Strickland Khan’yae Williams

Lana George Lussin Marcelino

Ms. Angela Randall-West  

“Synergize is a habit I use when I’m working with my table. I use every habit in school so I can be the best leader I can possibly be.” -Giovani Morrison

“The seven habits give me the courage to achieve any goal I have.” -Johnavan Yeboah

Leaders Caught in Action!