Sycamore Canyon Family News

Parent-Teacher conferences will be conducted for grades TK-6 during the week of November 4-8. Dismissal times for all students (Preschool-6th) will be affected. Please come to conferences prepared for a 15-20 minute meeting. Please arrive at the classroom at your designated time. When someone arrives late, it throws off the teacher's schedule for the rest of the day. The teacher will be discussing academic progress, report card scores and next steps for support and challenge. If you have any specific questions that can be sent in advance of the meeting via email, that will help to ensure all questions will be addressed. Please remember that there is no audio or video recording of conference meetings without prior written notice to the teacher and principal (Education Code 51512).

Parking and pickups will be BUSY as dismissals are not as staggered as they normally are. Your patience is appreciated.

Our goal was to collect 1,000 pairs of socks for the homeless and our students really went above and beyond that goal. On Monday, Sycamore Canyon will be donating over 3000 pairs of socks to the Alpha Project of San Diego. What an important lesson we are teaching our students in empathy and generosity, over 6000 feet will be warm during the coming winter months. Thank you!

Our students are problem solvers! Starting as young as preschool, they are presented with math scenarios and tasks. We support students as they "do the heavy lifting" in mathematics. This productive struggle teaches children to make sense out of a task and persevere as they model with various materials to create a viable solution. They are then asked to engage in discourse, where they explain their mathematical reasoning and clarify their understanding.

If you are wondering about things you can practice in Mathematics with your students during school holidays, here are some suggestions:

• Money (in ALL grades): Practice naming coins, and their value, adding and subtracting with coins, as well as exchanging (ex: How many nickels do you need to trade for a quarter?)
• Skip Counting (grades K-2): Skip counting supports multiplication and money skills in the upper grades. Students begin skip counting by 2s, then 5s, and 10s.
• Create word problems involving math skills (addition and subtraction in K, 1; regrouping in 1, 2; multiplication in 3-6; division, fractions and decimals in 4-6).
• Have STUDENTS create word problems to be solved.

The major difference between the Common Core State Standards and the way we learned math (algorithms) is that our students are now getting mathematics instruction that focuses on deeper understanding of number sense and conceptual understanding. When I was in school, I memorized a lot of formulas and I had NO IDEA why they worked (We flip over the second fraction and multiply...why? I have no clue!). Fact fluency and knowledge of algorithms is important, but to truly understand mathematics, and be able to explain and manipulate numbers in the way our students do, they are taught a variety of strategies with a strong foundation in each concept. If your student is telling you, "That's not how my teacher does it" when you show him/her a strategy, simply inform them that your way is ANOTHER strategy for their tool box and learning it gives them more choices when solving complex problems.

November:

11/1 End of Trimester 1

11/4-11/8 Parent/Teacher Conferences (minimum days)

11/11 Veteran's Day (No School)

11/14 PBIS Meeting (open to public) 3pm

11/15 DELAC Meeting

11/15 PTA Movie Night

11/22 Popcorn & Pickles

11/25-11/29 Holiday Week (No School)

December:

12/4 PTA Association Meeting & Science Night

12/6 ELAC Meeting

12/6 Popcorn Recess

12/9-12/13 PTA Holiday Shop

12/17 YALE Holiday Performance

12/17 School Site Council Meeting @ 3pm

12/22 PAWS Awards

12/23-1/5 Winter Break (No School)

January:

1/6 School Resumes

1/20 MLK Day (No School)

1/27-1/31 Kindness Week

1/31 PAWS Awards

1/31 Popcorn & Pickles

Email: summer.locke@santeesd.net
Website: www.santeesd.net/sc
Location: 10201 Settle Road, Santee, CA, USA
Phone: (619)956-5400
Facebook: facebook.com/syccan
Twitter: @ssdsyccan