Northfield is proud to be a Start with Hello school!  Next week, from February 6th - 10th, in collaboration with our Start with Hello parent committee and SWH 5th grade ambassadors, we will be promoting Start with Hello all week long with announcements, special lunches, a spirit day, and more. 

Normally, we have Start with Hello lunches one Thursday per month, but the Start with Hello mission is so important that we will be joining hundreds of other schools across the country to promote the mission for a full week.  Start with Hello brings attention to the growing epidemic of social isolation in our schools and communities, and empowers young people to create a culture of inclusion and connectedness within their school.  This means no one sits alone at lunch, no one plays alone at recess, students greet one another pleasantly, and promote kindness amongst their peers. 

Each day during the week, 5th graders will be reading messages over the morning announcements.  Several students each day will also say "Hello" over the announcements in their native languages. 

On Tuesday, students will be given an optional writing assignment to be completed at home about the importance of the Start with Hello mission. The assignment will be due on Friday, February 10th.  Students will be given a small prize the following week for completion of this optional assignment.

On Wednesday, students will be encouraged to wear green to school.  Green is the official color of Start with Hello.

On Thursday, we will have our monthly SWH lunch.  Students will be encouraged to sit with someone new and strike up a conversation using the prompts/questions displayed each table. 

Our 5th grade SWH student ambassadors under the guidance of Mrs. Sandy Cosentino, will be leading a "Spread the Kindness" campaign.  Students in the primary grades will have prewritten sticky notes with kind words and phrases written on them and will be encouraged to take a sticky note and pass the kindness to a new friend.  Students in intermediate grades will be given blank sticky notes for them to write kind comments to pass to others. 

Please use the SWH week activities and mission as a springboard for conversations with your children at home.  We are looking forward to a great week!