I hope you got to go to the Tomato Show! It was my first year and I greatly enjoyed how our community comes together for the Tomato Show. Our teachers facilitated a lot of learning focused on the Tomato Show. Our students were engaged and excited as they made salsa, wrote paragraphs about "mystery" fruits and vegetables, and created tomato creatures.
Students have the opportunity to view a live theater performance through, The Youth Enrichment Services Theater Series (YES). Our second and third graders went to see The Little Mermaid Jr. this week. The rest of the students will go throughout the year to see a variety of age appropriate performances.
Thank you for your patience and help as we changed our drop off and pick up procedures to help ensure safety. This has been going well. I appreciate everyone's help.
Stay curious and keep reading,
Gina Sackman
Principal, Fredericktown Elementary School
Creating Community and PAX Leaders
Kindergarten has been working on school rules and procedures so far this nine weeks. Each class has created their own PAX vision stating what they want to see, hear, feel and do at school along with what they do not want to see, hear, feel or do at school. They have been focusing on learning friends' names, the letters in their names and numbers 0-5. The kindergarten students are excited about having their own chromebooks, taking books home from the library, singing in the music room, learning in the STEAM room and using desktop computers in the learning lab.
Spicing up Learning!
Creating Community and Belonging
As many of us know, the first month of school consistently is about introducing procedures and establishing a classroom community. Miss Curry, Mrs. Hoover, and Mrs. Carpenter’s classes read the story “Our Class is a Family” by Shannon Olsen to their students, incorporating it in equally engaging and supportive ways. Mrs. Hoover and Mrs. Carpenter’s class made connections about families and classroom communities while the students created name tags to be displayed on the door or on their desks. Miss Curry’s discussed the importance of a classroom community, created their own “home” with expectations for everyone to follow, and to refer back to several times throughout the year. The students signed it as a promise that they will follow the classroom family member expectations.
Using Imagination and Artistic Talents
The students in Mrs. Weber's class started their poetry notebooks! They study a poem, glue it into their poetry notebook and then illustrate it themselves. This week they read a poem called, "Apples." Students in Miss Curry’s class do a “Think Outside the Box” image every Thursday for their morning work. Beforehand they read the story “Not a Box” by Antoinette Portis to explain to students the significance of exploring their imagination. In the image below, they start with a design that could be a cloud but the students are challenged to create something else. This student created a sheep from the half cloud image.
Wondrous Words!
Our vocabulary has graduated! We are currently learning about character traits in reading. We talked about “basic” traits like good, nice, and mean and how we can use more descriptive & detailed synonyms like delightful, pleasant, & impolite! Our vocabulary has graduated to these stronger words to utilize in our reading and writing.
The students worked in groups to find synonyms for the basic trait they were assigned. We talked about the difference between synonyms & antonyms, and we utilized our dictionary skills as well. They worked together to decorate and present their projects. After they presented, they were given a “graduation cap” for their basic word.
Animal adaptations
