Eagle News

Thursday, September 19, PK-2nd

PK- 8:30-9:00am

KDG- 9:30-10:00am

2nd-1:00-1:30pm

1st- 2:00-2:30pm

Friday, September 20, 3rd-5th

3rd: 8:30-9:00am

4th: 1:00-1:30pm

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

This month, I will begin going to classrooms to teach lessons to the students. These lessons occur once a month, and include various topics that can assist students in their learning and living healthier, safer lives. For our first month, we will discuss bullying and bullying prevention with our students.

It has been a wonderful start back to school! Our preschoolers are hard at work learning all about school. Along with learning all about the procedures and expectations at school, we have started right in academics! We focus on one book each week during literacy, diving deep into the characters, setting and vocabulary. So far this year we have read Cat’s Colors, I Like Myself, and Stick and Stone. We will be using Zoophonics to learn the letters and their sounds, each letter has an animal and name that helps the children make connections between the letters and their sounds (A- Allie Alligator). Our students took NWEA Reading Fluency this year. They will take it again at the end of the school year, we are so excited to see what growth they make this year.

Each quarter we will work towards specific goals. Each midterm we will send home an update of where your student is at and which skills they are still working on. These skills are great things to work with your children on too. This quarter we are working on identifying their first names, writing their name and counting to 5. You can practice tracing their first names, and writing in shaving cream. You can also practice counting daily with your child.

Kindergarten is off to an amazing start this school year! We are so excited for what’s to come this year! We have been working so hard on learning different procedures and expectations to help our year run smoothly! We learned all about CHAMPS and have been practicing how to show CHAMPS in all areas of the building. We took NWEA Reading and Math, along with NWEA Reading Fluency. Please remember to check homework folders nightly for any important information! We will be posting a lot on Parent Square as well, so please be sure you are connected! Let us know if you need any help with that!

Along with working hard on the beginning of the year procedures, we have also started strong with academics. During OG, we are working on learning our letter names and sounds, along with kindergarten sight words. Our goal in kindergarten is for every student to be a letter and sound expert by the end of October! We started reading by reviewing concepts of print, such as being able to locate the front/back cover, identify the author/illustrator, find the beginning of a sentence, and where to go at the end of a line. We’ve read a lot of books about the beginning of the school year and Kindergarten! In writing, we have worked hard on being able to ask/answer questions along with being oral storytellers. In math, we worked hard on learning to identify and represent numbers 0-5. We are practicing each and every day how to count to 100! We started stations in both reading and math!

Although we have only been together for a short time, we can already see how students are growing more confident and successful each day! We can’t wait to see how much everyone grows this year in kindergarten!

We have completed all of our beginning of the year assessments. Teachers will be using this information to determine next steps for our students and start meeting with small groups next week.

*NEW* Second graders will have letter grades on their report cards this year. Each week, we will update Power School with current assignments. Please check it regularly and contact your child’s teacher if you have any questions or concerns.

If you are interested in volunteering in our classroom, we would LOVE to have you!!!! We’re always looking for adults to read with, play learning games, help with projects, etc!! Please let us know and we will get it arranged!!! 😊

What have we been learning?

In reading, we just finished our unit on asking and answering questions. This is definitely a skill that we will continue to use everytime we read a book or passage. Our next unit will focus on the structure of a story. We will learn about plot, rising action, climax and falling action. We will use what we learn to retell stories in sequence.

In writing, we are writing complete sentences. We have added a little research to help us write sentences to answer a question. We continue to use our editing skills to be sure we have capitalization, punctuation, spacing and best guess spelling.

In Math, we will be using what we know about two-digit place value to help us read and understand numbers up to 1,000. We will also be looking at patterns to help us understand these larger numbers.

In OG we continue to learn decoding strategies to help us read and spell unfamiliar words.

The third grade teachers were very excited to welcome our students back to school during our Back to School Night and on our first day of school! August was a busy month for our third graders. We practiced our new CHAMPS procedures and we will continue to practice and review those throughout the school year. They took all reading, math, and language NWEA tests. Please look for your child's NWEA report to come home soon.

Reading:

In the month of August, we worked on story elements such as, characters, setting, and understanding the sequence of events. We also located evidence within a story in order to answer comprehension questions. Our third graders began the process of answering these comprehension questions by using the RACE method. This stands for Restate the question, Answer the question, Cite evidence from the text, and Explain your thinking. Our first Reading CFA was taken using our online PEAR Assessment system. Students will take one of these Common Formative Assessments every three weeks in reading. These assessments are set up to mirror the ILEARN assessments that the students will take in the spring.

Writing:

During our writing time, the students worked on writing a complete paragraph. This included a topic sentence, details, and a concluding sentence. From there, the students completed a Summer “Shorts” writing assignment by writing a complete paragraph with a topic sentence, descriptive details, and a concluding sentence. We will begin our longer narrative writing soon and that will be completed in the month of September.

Math:

Math was all about NUMBER SENSE! In this unit the students worked on understanding place value, decomposing numbers, writing numbers in standard and word form, rounding numbers, and comparing and ordering numbers. Our next unit of study is adding and subtracting numbers fluently within 1000.

We are so excited to share this school year’s learning journey with your child and can’t wait to see all of the growth they make!

We’ve enjoyed learning about our 4th graders over the past few weeks! We’ve been practicing procedures, diving into the curriculum, and working on some assessments such as NWEA. Having assessments early in the year help to give us an understanding of what we as teachers need to do to help each and every student grow to their fullest potential.

Writing: Students are currently working on developing the narrative stories. Students are incorporating the main elements of a good narrative– plot, characters, setting, conflict, and theme. Fourth graders work to try to find a good balance of dialogue and action as they write.

Math: We’ve been focusing on place value of digits in numbers up to the hundred thousands. Having a clear understanding of the value of digits will help students all year long…and beyond! Students have been comparing numbers, estimating by rounding, and using multiple strategies for adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers.

Reading: Together we have read and analyzed several realistic fiction stories while focusing on comparing and contrasting themes, characters, and plots. Graphic organizers are used to keep our thoughts, well, organized. Students have also practiced responding to questions in their reader’s notebook, using complete sentences and evidence from the text. We’ve recently started writing summaries, so students are needing to determine the most important parts of the story or information that they are reading.

Social Studies: The focus of 4th grade social studies is learning about the great state of Indiana! We’ve learned about the three main regions of our state and how each one has some landforms unique to the area. Many students were surprised to learn that it was GLACIERS that created the flat land that we see surrounding us everyday! Thank you to all the families who were able to share photos of your child and family exploring our state. Students are using those photos and other photos from around our state and writing captions for them. Those and their creative license plates that they’ve designed make a captivating arrangement in the display case at Central Office for visitors to admire.

We look forward to continuing to grow together throughout the year!

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)

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

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

🎶August🎶

Happy 2024-2025 school year! It’s been an absolute pleasure so far this semester working with all of your students. I hope they have had as much fun in class as I have had teaching them. Here’s a recap:

• **Most of this month has been spent allowing students to learn the rules and expectations of the music room, as well as letting me learn about all of them! We have had fun playing games and making music together. 🎵**

• 4th/5th: This month, we have started to explore the term ‘dynamics’, what this means and sounds like, and what it may look like in music. We have started to introduce vocal warm ups as well by using tongue twisters!

• 2nd/3rd: So far, we have explored instruments from different parts of the world: Djembe from Africa, Conga drums from Cuba, and this week we have focused on the Cabasa from Africa! Students have played games using these instruments and have seen the many different ways these instruments are played.

• 1st: First graders have started to explore the difference between beat and rhythm and music. We have played games to find out if certain sounds have rhythms, and which songs have a beat (spoiler: all songs have a steady beat!)

• Kindergarten: In Kindergarten, we have started to explore the different ways we can move our bodies to music. We have acted as squirrels, dogs, and many other fun animals! We enjoy listening to and making music while dancing together.

• PK: These last two weeks, we have been learning about many different songs about animals! They have sang about a creepy crawly spider, danced to the song ‘Scamper’ to act as a mouse, and we have read books about ducklings running over hills!

It feels like school has been in session much longer than four weeks, but everyone is starting to get into a routine and settle into classroom expectations. As in previous years, please make sure your child is dressed appropriately for art. I do try as hard as I can to prevent students from getting paint and other materials on their clothes, but it still happens. I want them to stay as clean as possible, too, because it means that the art room is clean as well.

In an effort to support school-wide reading comprehension skills, I have been working to include their grade level reading comp standards in art. This means that students are learning to analyze art, or “read” art. This uses reading comp skills such as locating the main idea, setting, characters, and key details. To start off the year, second grade focused on fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood) and then used an artistic representation of the setting or character in the story. Second grade did this as well, but with the folk tale of Robin Hood.

Third graders were each given a small and funny poem for children and set to the task of finding the key details. What is this poem about? Are there characters in it? How can I create an artistic representation that accurately represents my poem? They are currently wrapping up the painting part of their project before moving on to their next unit.

Fourth graders “read” the famous artwork by Waterhouse of “The Lady of Shalott.” They spent time thinking about the setting and character; the mood of the painting; the time of day; what might have happened in a scene before this painting; what might have happened in the scene that would follow. They have worked on their projects in teams. Each team was given a different part of the poem “The lady of Shalott,” by Lord Tennyson. Then they worked together to illustrate the scene, paint the scene, and, hopefully, when all the pieces are displayed in order, they can visually walk the poem. I’ve been impressed with their literature analysis skills and proud of their work.

Kindergarten wrapped up learning about primary colors and were each given an uppercase letter or a lower case letter. They told me the letter name, what sound it made, and then painted it in one primary color. These will be used for a collaborative alphabet cereal display.

AND….

Fifth Grade. Fifth graders were given an old book that was on its way to the trash. They flipped these books into customized sketchbooks that they will be graded on through the year. Then they shifted into a unit of natural pigments. They observed various pigments made from nature such as a deep orange water paint that was made from the Cosmos flower. Then we talked about how we could change the pH of the single color in order to make three different tones. They discovered that adding lemon juice created bright orange and baking soda created nearly a blood red. The students made color swatches with all the pigments that they will tape into their sketchbooks. Next week they will create an art piece with the pigments.

Welcome Back to the Library!

I am so glad to see the students begin to check out books from the library. The fourth and fifth graders have been introduced to the new Intermediate Young Hoosier Books. This is a group of books the Indiana Library Federations chooses as ideal books for students in Indiana to read to foster reading of quality books. As we did last year, there will be a challenge for the students in grades 4-5 to read at least 10 of these books by April. They will receive rewards for reading.

Classes 1st-5th have also been working on how to use the internet safely.

Keep Reading!