Champion Chatter

The end of the first nine-weeks was October 10th and the second nine-weeks began on October 11th, wow! The holiday season is quickly approaching!

With the first nine-weeks being completed, parent conferences will be held, primarily, on October 21st as this will be a day that school will be closed to students for the purpose of having parent conferences. Auburn City Schools will also be closed to students on Friday, October 18th.

October 21-25, 2024 / National School Bus Safety Week

School buses are the safest way for children to get to school. Their design is meant to be safer than any passenger vehicle in avoiding crashes and preventing injuries. Teaching children to follow safety rules on the bus is just as important as informing drivers about the laws regarding school buses.

Attendance
Code of Alabama (1975) §16-28-3 requires all children between the age of six (6) and seventeen (17) years of age to attend school for the minimum number of scholastic days prescribed by the Alabama State Board of Education. All laws regarding school attendance shall be strictly enforced by the Auburn City Board of Education.

Please review and be familiar with Auburn City Schools’ policy on attendance and excuses. It can be found in the ACS Parent and Student Handbook (pages 18-22) or by clicking here.

Celebrations

Richland received the honor of being ranked #3 for the Best Public Schools in Alabama according to Niche. (Click Here)

Super Powered Fall Fundraiser

HUGE thank you to all our students, parents, and Richland Staff for your participation and collaboration in our Annual Fall Fundraiser! We are off to a great start and have already secured a little over $15,000 in donations. Your generosity does not go unnoticed and we are so grateful and expectant to meet our goal of $30,000! A few reminders/updates below:

- October 17 - 21 Weekend Challenge: over the Fall break weekend, we are hosting a Weekend Challenge! Any student who secures a donation during this timeframe will be rewarded with a Special Edition Golden Keychain and a lollipop on Tuesday, October 22.

- Fundraiser Celebration Help Needed! On October 24, we will be in need of volunteers to prepare the Multi Purpose Room for the Glow in the Dark Dance Fit Challenge the next day. Sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0545AEAB22AAFD0-52423367-prep#/

- October 25: Glow in the Dark Dance Fit Challenge! All students will be invited to participate in a Glow Dance Challenge to celebrate all the hard work put into this year's fundraiser. All students will be provided with glow necklaces and glow in the dark tattoos to use during the celebration.

-October 25: Additionally, if we meet our $30,000 goal, all students will also get to bring a blanket/sleeping bag/nap mat to school to enjoy a movie and popcorn party to celebrate our success!

- November 7: Lunch in a Limo! If your student secured a business sponsorship or is one of the Top 15 Fundraisers of their grade level, they'll be invited to have their lunch in a limo during their regularly scheduled lunch time.

BUSINESS SPONSOR SPOTLIGHT!

We would like to extend a HUGE thank you to our Platinum Business Sponsor, The Mint Julep, for sponsoring our fundraiser at a value of $1,000! Be sure to check out Shop the Mint and Mint Julep Girls for all your women's and girl's clothing needs.

Spirit Night- October 24

Our October Spirit Night location is Guthrie's on October 24! More details to be posted on Class Dojo, Facebook, and Instagram. Mark your calendars!

Kindergarten continues to be an exciting and busy place!! We work hard to be CHAMPIONS in all that we do. We demonstrate and discuss daily how to be respectful, responsible, prepared and safe. Students are looking forward to our field trip to the Pumpkin Patch on Wednesday, October 16th. Champions will enjoy their first behavior celebration on Thursday, October 17th. We are looking forward to raising funds for our school through our upcoming fundraiser!!

We are very busy in our classrooms! During Phonics, we have focused on letter and sound identification; we will venture into learning about the short vowel sounds in CVC words and diagraphs (th, sh, ch, wh) this quarter. We will continue practicing rhyming, first sound identification, and blending/segmenting CVC words. During Shared Reading, we will continue to grow our comprehension skills by discussing characters, setting, BME (beginning, middle, end), predicting, and problem/solution. Students are working hard to apply these skills daily!

During Writer’s Workshop we will begin our weeks with “Me Monday,” writing and illustrating a personal narrative each Monday about a personal experience. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, students will take turns each day sharing their Share Bag, and then the class will learn how to write sentences about each other. We will finish our weeks with “Fiction Friday,” writing and illustrating our own fictional stories.

During theme, students have been learning all about apples and pumpkins; upcoming units of study include bats, spiders, turkeys, and holidays around the world - we LOVE this time of year! We will read all sorts of books (non-fiction and fiction) on these topics, made projects, conduct research, and expand our writing skills by writing facts we will learn on these topics.

In math, we have learned how to read, make, write, and compare numbers 0-5, with terms such as greater than/less than/ equal to. We have dipped into some of our geometry standards by learning about 2D shapes (circle, rectangle, square, triangle, hexagon). This upcoming quarter we will read, make, write, and compare numbers 6-10. We will also explore our Data Analysis standards by classifying, sorting, and counting data.

‘Tis the season of “pun kin” patches, gathering with friends and family, and learning about the gift of giving. That’s what first grade days are made of. Thus far, our little first grade families have been sewn together with little moments of discovering new friendships, lifting up our classmates when times get tough, and encouraging each other to turn the corner and turn over a new leaf.

Reading fluency is key this time of year as students become more familiar with first grade sight words while reading. First graders will be expected to apply what they know about spelling patterns in a variety of phonetic based words using short and long vowels, initial and final blends, and digraphs to tackle a word like the star of the football team. First grade classrooms will be filled with readers that are discovering story elements in fiction texts-learning to compare and contrast characters in different ways and even observing how they themselves can relate to characters too. Learning to identify the problem and solution will become a focus as students learn more about the plot in the story. In addition, readers will use what they know about text features to use informational text as a resource for writing. Writing topics of turkeys, Thanksgiving past and present, and making hot chocolate for those winter days ahead will cover the pages of first grade books as students become informative writers. As if that isn’t enough, first graders will also be weathering novel strategies including learning how addition and subtraction facts are related. First grade students will master the concept of “fact” families and how they look alike and work together making life easier for every mathematician alike. First grade mathematicians will sharpen their math skills by counting forward and backward and hand picking just the right strategy to add two and three addends. Problems will be solved using pictures and models and explaining those strategies through writing.

We find ourselves in a new season of learning and the time has come to apply all that we have learned as we strive to become more responsible and independent learners.

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Second grade is gearing up for a busy fall!

In math, we are learning 2-digit addition and subtraction strategies with and without regrouping. Students are also getting more practice with word problems. We are excited to start fantasy writing this 9 weeks! After our fantasy unit, we will move into personal narrative writing.

In reading we will continue to learn what good readers do when they are reading books, passages, and various types of text. We are going to continue to build on multi-paragraph texts across all genres. Students will be held more accountable for asking and answering questions while they are reading. We are excited to identify and talk about historical figures and study some of the most famous Americans and how they contributed to the founding of the United States!

We can’t wait to see even more growth during the 2nd nine-weeks of second grade!

Happy Fall RES Families,

In Counseling, during the month of October, we are talking about keeping our bodies safe and healthy. We will be discussing medicine safety, eating healthy, exercising and we will soon discuss Erin’s Law. Erin’s Law is a mandatory child abuse prevention lesson. We will discuss safe adults, strangers, and how to use a strong voice to tell people “no”. Across Auburn City Schools, we use the curriculum “Safer, Smarter, Kids” if you would like to preview this material.

We will also celebrate “Healthy Living Week”.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Anne Busbin

Counselor

Richland Elementary School

(334)887-1980

ajbusbin@auburnschools.org

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Can you believe we are now in the holiday season?

Our champions have been working on a lot of different skills: login with RES password, scrolling, click and dragging with the trackpad, how to open and close an internet browser, how to access the computer lab choice page through the RES homepage two different ways, parts of the computer and how they work together. We have just started working on typing and will continue for the rest of the year, along with learning more about OSMO.

Kim Moore

Richland Elementary School

Computer lab

334-887-1980

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In the art room, we have been so busy drawing, painting, and collaging. We are now gearing up for new art materials and harder projects. We have also just celebrated our first nine weeks, class behavior. All RES classes earned a Free Art Day, where students have the freedom to create art of their choice from several different art centers. This is a very fun day that they work hard for with good behavior and look forward to.

Coming home to you soon will be your child's custom catalog for the Square 1 Art fundraiser. Students create beautiful artworks that can be placed on just about anything; stickers, water bottles, towels, etc. My favorite is the Christmas ornaments, they make a great gift. All orders benefit the RES art room by providing funds for purchasing art supplies that we use every day. Orders due by November 11th.

Thank you so much for your support and GO Champions!

Rebecca Wall

The students and I continue living, learning, and loving to read together!

During the 2nd 9 weeks of school, we will complete our unit on story elements (characters, setting, and plot) and start our unit on elements of nonfiction (main topic, key details, and text features). We will also host a Scholastic Book Fair November 18-22. This is the same week as Thanksgiving lunches. A Sign-Up Genius link for book fair volunteers will be shared closer to the date.

Our Champion students have been doing excellent work in PE. We have been and will continue to spend the majority of our time outside. Please send your student to school with a sweatshirt/jacket to bring outside as the weather begins to get cooler. Please write their name somewhere so we do not lose personal items. Also, please be reminded that tennis shoes are expected everyday in PE.

GO CHAMPIONS

Greetings Champions,

The second nine weeks is upon us and we will be covering a variety of content in music. Our music classes will continue to compose music using quarter notes and rests. We will continue to have an instrument of the month: October/tambourines, November/maracas, and December/hand bells. Also, students will have an opportunity to enjoy our musical body movement activities. Lastly, each grade level is preparing a specific Winter musical for their family and friends.

The Winter musical dates and times are listed:

Kindergarten, December 18th at 1:00PM

1st Grade, December 18th at 8:30AM

2nd Grade, December 18th at 10:00AM

Thank you for supporting RES and Go Champions!

Musically yours,

Joseph S. Rowser, III

Apple Teacher

RES Music Specialist

jsrowser@auburnschools.org

Happy Fall!!

Here are a few reminders for the upcoming weeks/months:

· Our Kindergarten and second grade students completed their vision screens with Vision Research on September 23rd. The results should be coming home soon. Be sure to check your child’s folder.

· Our Health Hero flu vaccine clinic will be held on October 24Th. Permission forms will be sent home soon. This clinic is voluntary, OPT-IN and the form must be completed in its entirety for your child to participate. Please be sure to complete the insurance information portion and parent signature at the bottom. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Let’s work together to keep our students healthy and in school!

Go Champions!

I am sure you have heard your child talking about Lexia Core 5 at home! I just wanted to take this opportunity to let you know more about the program.

Join us in welcoming your child to Lexia Reading Core5®, a dynamic, fun computer program that has helped millions of students develop reading skills through personalized learning. The activities and instruction in Core5 are aligned to rigorous English Language Arts standards, including the Common Core State Standards. Our school is using Core5 as part of our curriculum in reading and language arts –and we want you to share in our excitement!

Here’s how this award-winning, computer-based reading program works:

• Students complete placement activities in Core5 to determine their appropriate, individualized starting level.

• Students work independently and at their own pace on activities in Core5 several days a week.

• Students develop fundamental literacy skills in six areas of reading instruction that have been identified by national reading experts: phonological awareness, phonics, structural analysis, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

• Students receive scaffolding, corrective feedback, and direct instruction in Core5 when needed.

• Your student’s teacher will monitor his or her progress and performance in the online activities through data reports. These reports help teachers to determine if a student is struggling with a specific skill and requires targeted, teacher-led instruction.

• Students may also receive paper-and-pencil activities that provide offline practice to further improve and expand their skills

We hope you enjoy participating in your child’s reading acquisition and success! Watch for the weekly school stories for grade level leaders. Students will also receive a certificate and recognition on the RES News from me each time they LEVEL UP! Something new we are doing this year is that I will be giving out a Lexia Brag Tag for every level that they complete!

Lastly, I am providing the link to our LEA Consolidation Plan for our school system. The purpose of this plan is “to ensure that all children receive a high-quality education, and to close the achievement gap between children meeting the challenging State academic standards and those children who are not meeting such standards.” Please click on the link below.

https://www.auburnschools.org/Page/5952

Thanks!

Mykia Duncan

RES Title 1 Teacher

Hello Richland Champions!

Our Richland Champion Reading incentive is underway. For every 20 minutes your child reads independently or you read to your child at home, sign that log. Once it is complete, just send the log back to school and a new log will be sent home. Then your child’s name will be placed on the Champion Readers Wall at school. By the end of the school year, we want every student to “medal” by completing the Bronze, Silver or Gold Reading Logs.

Our list of Champion Reading Logs follows: Semi-finalist (blue log), Finalist (orange log), Bronze Medal (purple log), Silver Medal (red log), and Gold Medal (green log).

Thank you so much for your support and encouragement to develop your Richland Champion Reader. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at akhigginbotham@auburnschools.org.

Many thanks,

Mrs. Higginbotham

October –
18th – October Holiday (School Closed)
21st – Parent Conference Day (School Closed) / Report Cards go home
24th-11th – Square 1 Art Fundraiser
28th-1st – Healthy Living Week

November -

1st – Dad’s League Meeting at RES 7:00 am
8th – Veterans Day Parade at 9:30 am
11th – Veterans Day (School Closed)
18th-22nd – Fall Book Fair
19th-21st – Thanksgiving Luncheons
(Kindergarten-19th, 1st grade-20th, 2nd grade-21st)
27th-29th – Thanksgiving Holidays (School Closed)

December –
13th – Behavior Celebration (tentative)
18th – Winter Program / Class Parties (tentative)

Kindergarten: 1:00 p.m.
1st grade: 8:30 a.m.
2nd grade: 10:00 a.m.

19th – Literacy/Movie/PJ Day (tentative)

Kindergarten: Frozen
1st grade: Polar Express
2nd grade: Grinch

19th – End of 2nd nine-weeks