Eagle News

This month, our focus was on careers. Class lessons from the counselor have focused on fostering ideas and aspirations for students when it comes to thinking about what career they would like to pursue when they are out of school. Third and Fifth grade students participated in Career Day on the 15th. Several members of the community came to tell students about their careers, what they do for work and how they got into the profession they are in. Students got the opportunity to speak to community members such as the Frankfort Fire Department, the Frankfort Police Department, Mayor Sheets, Clinton County EMS, Genda Funeral Home and Cody Hughes. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped with this event!

If you feel that your child is in need of counseling services, please fill out the referral form. Please ensure to answer each question to the best of your ability, as the more information I have, the better I can support your child. This referral form can be used throughout the year if at any point you feel your child is needing support

Referral Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfFb6porLNZ0juSuVQdg6-e1Wcodiis9wKO10QW_INzT5Adnw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cold weather is here! Please make sure kids are coming to school in long pants and coats. Recess is outdoors if the “feels like” temperature is above 20 degrees . During Thanksgiving break, throw those coats in the washing machine. Each break from school is a great time to wash coats and backpacks to get rid of any germs.

Recently the nurse’s office was awarded a grant by the Frankfort Education Foundation for new pants-hooray! These will be labeled “SC Nurse” or “Suncrest Nurse.” If your child has been sent home with an extra pair of pants or other clothing item, please send them back in as soon as possible so they may be used by others in need.

Community Schools of Frankfort now has a website for Health Services. This includes phone numbers to all nurses on staff throughout the corporation, and phone numbers for two of our local clinics. In addition, there are links to paperwork such as medication consent forms. As a reminder-Tylenol, Ibuprofen and cough drops require a signed consent form if you would like your child to have these things as needed. Otherwise, I will be calling home each time to get permission. Thank you for understanding!

Health Services – Community Schools Of Frankfort

Indiana code 20-24-4-2 requires all students to be vaccinated to attend school. Letters will be sent home if your child is needing up to date with vaccinations. Please call with any questions or concerns. Thank you for all you do to keep kids healthy!

Nurse Kelsey’s Tip of the Month: Stomach Aches

Many kiddos come in complaining of stomach pain. As adults, we get them too! To help prevent stomach aches before they start, try these steps:

• Getting enough sleep at night. School aged kiddos should get between 9 and 12 hours (ideally) per night.

• Eating breakfast

• Eating slowly and chewing food well

• Eating foods high in fiber to help keep digestion moving. Apples, carrots, popcorn, and bananas are some easy snacks that have fiber!

• Going to the bathroom

• Drinking water

• Exercise!

In November we have been working on writing their first name, identifying 12 capital and 12 lowercase letters, and answering questions about a story. You can practice these things at home by writing their name every night, and reading stories daily! In math, we have been working on recognizing numbers, counting 1 to 10, identifying shapes, and counting 1:1 to 10. We have read Where the Wild Things are, Bear Feels Sick, The Three Little Pigs, and Bear Says Thanks.

Please make sure to send a jacket with your child each day. Morning recess can be cold and we will go outside as long as the temperature is above 20 degrees. Please help your child practice putting their jacket on by themselves and zipping it. This is a skill we would like for them to do independently!

The Community Preschool Holiday program is December 11th at 10:20 am in the gym! We are looking forward to all of the holiday songs!

We are looking forward to all of the holiday events coming up! Thanksgiving break is November 27th to November 29th. Christmas break starts on December 23rd!

November 2024

Wow!! We cannot believe how fast November flew by! We had Rock Your School Day and our Charlotte’s Web themed parent night this month! Huge shoutout to everyone that came to Parent Night. We even got to pet some goats! We are loving all our turkey disguises that have been turned in. These turkeys will definitely be saved from being eaten on Thanksgiving!! We had so much celebrating Thanksgiving with our very own Kindergarten Thanksgiving Feast! Thank you so much to all of the parents that helped donate to our feast. Another huge shoutout to C&R Catering for providing us with turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, and rolls for us to enjoy! With the weather starting to become colder and colder, please be sure you are sending your child in appropriate clothing and a warm coat. If you need assistance in winter coats/hats/scarves, please let us know!

We worked so hard during the month of November to grow our brain! In OG, we have been working so hard at decoding and encoding CVC words. We have learned how to read words with all of our short vowel sounds. As fluency passages continue to come home, please read these with your child! We are working so hard on building our fluency. In reading, we spent the month learning about predictions. We learned that we can make predictions before, during, and after our reading. We can use what we know and clues from the text to make those predictions about what might happen next in the story! November was all about addition in math. We learned what addition means and so many different strategies to add two numbers together. We used these strategies to help us solve word problems as well. Continue practicing counting to 100 at home! Our goal is for all kindergarteners to count to 100 by the end of the year! Our 100th day of school is coming up soon in January. Be on the lookout soon for more information about a 100th day celebration in Kindergarten!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us! :)

November has been a busy month for 1st grade. We’ve switched from personal narratives to persuasive writing. We’re also still working hard identifying plot, characters, and setting in a story during reading time.

To celebrate Thanksgiving this month, we read the book “Balloons Over Broadway”, which is all about the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade that is on TV Thanksgiving morning! To go along with the book, our 1st graders made their own balloons and will celebrate with a Thanksgiving Parade on Tuesday afternoon! This was so fun and the kids had a blast making their balloons! Now that we’ve read the book, make sure you watch the parade on Thanksgiving morning and ask your child all about what they learned!

As always, please keep checking your child’s folder every night, make sure you’re reading with them at home, and don’t forget to reach out if you have any questions or concerns. Happy Thanksgiving!

2nd grade has been working hard this month.

We started the month with Rock Your School Day on November 8. We celebrated Charlotte's Web. We enjoyed learning about spiders, building a "strong" pig pen for Wilbur, playing a quiz game about the book and more. We are looking forward to our next book. :)

We were fortunate to have ladies from the Purdue Extension Office visit 1st and 2nd graders and teach them all about pumpkins. We learned how they grow, what they are used for and other interesting facts about this plant.

We had so much fun learning about the history of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. We planned and created our own parade balloons and put them on display.

November's Pizza Hut reading log will be due on December 2. Please work with your child to keep track of how much they read each night. FREE PIZZA certificates will be given out to all students that reach that goal.

We will be taking a field trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum on January 10, 2025. More information will be coming home soon. BUT - if you think you may be interested in being a chaperone, please fill out a background check. It does take some time to come back, so the sooner you do it, the better. Be aware that we will only be able to take a limited number of parents so unfortunately not everyone that is interested may get to attend. Contact your child’s teacher for more information.

We will be taking NWEA in the next few weeks. We will be setting goals and talking about how to do your best on the test. We are looking forward to seeing all of the academic growth our students have made so far this year.

What have we been learning?

Reading - We started a new nonfiction unit this month. We are learning strategies to help us understand what we read. We learned about all of the text features and how they help with comprehension. At home, if you have magazines or other nonfiction texts, you could help support this unit by reading these with your child and talking about what they learn.

Math - We are adding and subtracting two digit numbers. We have learned model strategy, decomposing and number line. We will keep practicing to become more fluent.

Writing - Our personal narrative unit is off to a strong start. We learned all of the parts of a personal narrative and how an author plans what to write. We have started writing our own and the students are doing a great job.

OG (phonics) - We are learning more letter patterns to help us decode longer words. Keep reading and ask your child what patterns they notice in the books they read with you.

November:

The third graders were hard at work this month. We had so much fun during Rock Your School Day on November 8. The theme of the day was farming. The third grade classes did stations during this day and participated in a virtual field trip, Race to the Top multiplication, and an escape room. Our classes also enjoyed being able to speak with community members during Career Day on November 15. We are looking forward to more amazing learning next month too!

Reading: We practiced several skills during reading in November. We asked and answered questions based on explicit information found within texts. This is a great skill to practice when reading with your child at home. As you and your child are reading, stop and ask them questions about the text along the way. We also worked on finding the main idea of texts and using key details and the main idea in order to summarize. Understanding a text’s structure was another skill we practiced this month. Students worked on identifying a text’s structure and then used that structure to understand how it impacted the reader’s understanding of the story.

Writing: During the month of November each student wrote a persuasive essay by forming an opinion and using details from a variety of sources to support their opinion. In the essay, students wrote from the point of view of a turkey and tried to persuade the reader to eat something other than turkey on Thanksgiving. Each student has the opportunity to type their essay in order to practice how to format a 5 paragraph essay. It was great hearing the students share their essays with their classmates.

Math: November was a month of deepening our understanding of multiplication and finding the area of rectangles and composite shapes. We continued to decompose multiplication facts in order to help us solve problems. For example 9x6 can be decomposed into (9x5) + (9x1). We then moved into solving multiplication problems by multiplying a one digit factor by a two digit factor. An example of this would be 24x6. We used a standard algorithm approach to solve and then learned about decomposing the problem. We also continue to problem solve daily in our math notebooks and spiral review with our daily math boxes. Please continue to practice multiplication facts at home so that we have fluent third grade multiplication masters!

We are so excited for the month of December and can’t wait to see all the learning and growth that happens! As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to your child’s teacher.

Fourth grade had an amazing time at the zoo in November! We’re so thankful for the generous donation from Tornado Roofing that allowed us to have this experience at no cost to the students or teachers. We were the only school there, so that allowed us to move freely and see whichever exhibit we wanted to without any crowds.

Writing: Students have been using the comparing and contrasting skills to write an informational piece about Mars and Earth, using the texts, “Our Unusual Earth” and “Our Neighbor Mars.” For this writing, students constructed paragraphs while identifying which source they used to get their information. They also focused on making each paragraph focused on one main idea.

Math: FRACTIONS! Fractions of all kinds will play an important, consistent role throughout their schooling. There are so many things we will be doing with fractions, and the fun is just getting started! Some of the concepts we’ve been working on are using benchmark fractions, computation, fraction tiles, number lines, and models to compare the value of fractions. Students can work with fractions with more ease if they have a solid understanding of multiplication and division facts, so please continue to have your child practice at home.

Reading: Reading continues to have a focus on non-fiction, although we still incorporate fiction into our studies. For non-fiction, we’ve focused on identifying the main idea with supporting details and summarizing. Those go hand-in-hand because to summarize, they need to know what the text is mostly about!

We’re looking forward to starting NWEA and seeing all the growth that students are achieving! This test is just one of the ways for students to be able to see that their hard work pays off!

WELCOME TO PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Please check out the below schedule to find your student’s PE day! Your student will need to wear clothing and shoes to safely move in on their PE day. We do go outside if the weather is nice. If your student normally wears sandals,crocs, boots or “HeyDude” type shoes--please send tennis shoes on the PE days for your student.

Monday Benefiel (5th), Claxton (4th), Palmer (2nd), Arnold (3rd), Rupert (1st), Pompei (K)

Tuesday Vickary (4th), Woods (2nd), Jones (PK), Miller (PK), Fewell (3rd), Certain (1st) Alanis (K)

Wednesday Griffith (5th), Kidwell (4th), Paige (2nd), Mathis (3rd), Raley (K) Hoistion (1st)

Thursday Tiedeman (5th), Shore (4th), Hettsmansperger (2nd), Jones (PK), Miller (PK), Parvin (3rd),Tepehua (1st), Klyczek (K)

All students will be participating in Physical Education class unless the student has a doctor’s note excusing the student from participating.

Physical Education classes have been using the beautiful fall weather to work on cardiovascular fitness by running, jogging and walking on Suncrest’s walking path. Students then choose an activity of their choice for movement, these include: Soccer, frisbee, balancing on the playground equipment, climbing the playground equipment, swinging, jump rope, basketball, gaga ball or getting in more laps on the walking path.

When the weather pushes us inside we will be working on cooperative games, balance and basketball. Please know we may need to go out on some colder days if the gym is used for other events.

Please be mindful of your student’s footwear. No boots are permitted for PE class. Also, Crocs are just not working! This week we have had two sprained ankles as students tried to run and play in crocs. Boots are generally not a safe choice. Boots can damage the gym floor along with other student’s as we play games in the gym.

It was a whirlwind, but pre-K-5 have all now completed their first units that are tied to natural science. Well, that’s not quite true. Our fourth graders are in the middle of their spider units. They are loving learning about arachnids, how they are different from insects, and being assigned their classroom spider to draw. This will allow them to apply their growing knowledge of values and texture, as most of our spiders are very hairy.

Library News!

Young Hoosier Books

The Young Hoosier Book Contest is continuing until April. The 4th and 5th grade students are encouraged to read the twenty books that the Indiana Library Federation has recommended for them. These books are chosen to encourage self-selected reading.Students who read at least 10 will receive prizes. The featured book this month is Shine On, Luz Veliz! by Rebecca Balcarcel.

SHINE ON LUZ VÉLIZ tells the story of a sixth grade soccer player dealing with a knee injury and family changes. She starts to figure out who she is when she can't play soccer, finding new interests, like coding.

The top readers so far are:

1. Torin Pritzer- 5th grade- 6 books

2. Carlos Vasquez-Figeroa- 4th grade- 5 books

3. Angel Maravillo-Pozos- 4th grade- 4 books

3. Jendra Martin- 5th grade- 4 books

3. Angel Lopez-Bautista- 5th grade- 4 books.

November has been a busy month in the ML world! We are working hard and continuing to grow and learn. We are getting excited for our next multilingual parent night, which will be all Christmas themed. Mark your calendars now for Tuesday, December 17th at 5:00! Be looking for information to come home about that parent night. We want all of you to come!

We’ve also had many parent meetings this first half of the year and it has made such an incredible difference in how well our students are doing. We can tell that you are working with your children at home on the things that they’re struggling with. Thank you so much for helping at home. We’ll continue to have in person parent meetings if we have concerns, but you are always welcome to call a meeting if you have questions or concerns.

As always, stay connected and reach out on Parent Square if you need anything!

Intervention:

November has been a busy month! Reading groups have been working hard on decoding skills and reading strategies to help read texts and comprehend what they are reading! Next month students will have the opportunity to show all they have learned by taking NWEA! NWEA is a test on the computer that students take three times a year to show the growth they have made in reading, math, and language!

Reading tip of the month: Read with your student and ask questions! Ask them questions about their books BEFORE they read, WHILE they are reading, and AFTER they have read their book! This helps check for understanding of the story they are reading throughout the whole book, not just at the end!

• Some questions you could ask BEFORE they read: What do you think will happen in this story? What might be the problem? What do you already know about this topic? What does the title tell you?

• Some questions you could ask WHILE they are reading: What do you think will happen next? What can you tell me about the story so far? What questions do you have?

• Some questions you could ask AFTER they finish reading: What was the problem/solution in the story? Why do you think the author wrote this book? What was your favorite/least favorite part?

As always, reach out if you have any questions or concerns!

-Mrs. Hazlett

Writing Wishlists!

It’s the perfect time of year to help your student write a wishlist! This could be a personal wishlist or even a wishlist for our community. Spend some time talking with your child about all the different ideas that they can dream up. At school, we tell students that if they can think of it, they can say it. If they can say it, they can write it! This is important because we want our students to feel successful.

For younger students, you could help them by giving them a few ideas and keeping the sentence simple. For example, you may start with “I wish for a ______.” For older students, you want to have them elaborate by expanding on their wishes and why. Older students may say something like, “Our community would really benefit from a new piece of equipment at TPA Park. This would add something new to the area for children to enjoy for years to come.”

This is a fun activity that you can do together as a family and give purpose to much of the learning that students are doing here at school. It involves a lot of speaking, reading, and writing-skills needed for life!