Eagle News

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 week was College Go! Week. Students had discussions in class about different career opportunities and education opportunities they could choose after high school! We discussed college, the military and different types of trades. Thank you to all the students and staff that participated in dress up days to make this a fun and exciting week!

This month we have been learning all about how to keep safe in our class lessons from the counselor. We have created and learned about rules to follow that will help keep us safe when we encounter potentially harmful situations. One thing we discussed in these class lessons is knowing our personal information to help keep us safe such as parent phone numbers and our home addresses. Please review these with your child to make sure that they know these pieces of information, and help them learn thor personal information if they do not know it.

Happy Fall!

I can’t believe it’s already October! With the change in weather, I am anticipating seeing an increase in sickness. That being said, I am looking for empty, gallon sized ice cream buckets to use when kids are vomiting. Buckets do not have to be returned when they are sent home with your child! Thank you to those who have donated already. 🙂

Also-as mornings start getting colder, please pack a sweatshirt or jacket in your child’s backpack so they have it just in case! Classrooms can sometimes be chilly as well.

As a reminder for Pre-K, Kinder and 1st grade kiddos-accidents happen! I have extra clothes if needed. However, if you’d pack an extra outfit in their backpacks, I (and their teachers) would greatly appreciate it!

The Lions Club will be here for vision screening on October 8th for both third and fifth graders. Parents and guardians, if your child wears glasses, please make sure they wear them that day.

Nurse Kelsey’s Tip of the Month:

Vision Health

Since vision screenings are being done for K, 3 and 5 grade, let’s talk about some tips to help keep your child’s eyes healthy!

• Get enough sleep so the eyes can recover.

• Spend time outdoors to help prevent nearsightedness.

• Use proper lighting, so eyes aren’t straining if it's too dark.

• Maintain screen distance by keeping an arm’s length between eyes and screen.

• Limit screen time and take frequent breaks.

• Wear sunglasses when outdoors, and protective eyewear when playing sports.

• Always carry sharp objects sharp side down.

• Avoid smoking.

• Eat a healthy diet that includes fruits and vegetables!

September has been a wonderful month! We have learned so much already at school! We have started introducing letters using Zoo Phonics. In October, we will be working on lowercase letter names. You can practice writing and identifying these at home. In math we have been working hard on counting and identifying shapes and colors. By fall break your child should be able to count to 5.

Thank you to everyone who came to Special Person’s Day! We had a great time making crafts and coloring with all the special people!

In October we will be assessing our goals for this quarter. The literacy goals include identifying their first name, tracing simple lines, and identifying 6 capital and 6 lowercase letters. The math goals include recognizing 3 numbers, counting 1-5, and counting 5 objects. Please work on these goals at home with your child!

We will be reading the following books in October: Harry the Dirty Dog, Watching the Seasons, Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie, and The Very Busy Spider. We are so excited to learn all about Fall!

September was such a busy month for Kindergarten! All of kindergarten had their hearing and speech checked by our Speech Department! Kindergarten students will have their vision screened on October 30th. Special Person’s Day was a big success! Thank you to all of our special friends who took time out of their day to come to help make this day special! We enjoyed coloring and doing crafts! Midterms went home on the 6th and grades have started being inputted into PowerSchool. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns! Parent teacher conferences will take place after Fall Break. More information will be coming soon!

We are still working so hard on learning all of our letters and sounds. The goal is to be a letter and sound expert by the end of October. We have so many kindergarteners who have reached this goal and are so close! We can do it! We are using our letter/sound knowledge and beginning to blend and read words! In reading, we worked really hard on asking and answering questions about a text. In math, we continued to build number sense within 10. We have learned how to count, represent, and write numbers 0-10. We are still working hard on practicing counting to 100 each and every day! In writing, we are still working on building our fine motor skills. We continued to be oral story tellers and illustrators.

• September has been such a fun month in first grade! We have been having so much fun in the classrooms and learning each day.

• In writing, we have been learning more and more each day on what it looks like to be a writer. We are ready for our next unit coming up in narrative writing.

• In math, we have been working on using different strategies to decompose a number, using strategies such as counting on, making ten and so much more. We have been diving into our numbers and it has been a blast!

• In reading, we have been focusing on the main idea and key details. We have been learning about fire trucks and a lot of other cool things - ask your kids, I am sure they will tell you! We have been really focusing on vocabulary words as well when we are reading and the kids have done a great job at trying to remember those hard words.

We have been busy working hard and learning so much this month!

Students have transitioned into working in tier 2 reading groups. They have been working very hard and making growth.

We enjoyed celebrating special person’s day with all of our special people. Thank you to everyone that was able to attend. It was fun to play math games and read books together. 🙂

Parent Teacher conferences will be October 22 and 23. A signup sheet was sent home this week. Please return ASAP. We look forward to talking with each of you about your child’s progress so far this year.

Reminder - Grades are updated in PowerSchool weekly. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

What Have We Been Learning?

Our third graders were hard at work during the month of September and learned so much! Special Person Day was a huge success and our students had so much fun interviewing, drawing, and reading family recipes during the event. Thank you to everyone who took time out of their busy schedules to spend time with our third graders! We also enjoyed our BINGO for Books night. It is always a great event and our third grade families who attended had so much fun! Third grade will be hosting an important IREAD 3 night on Wednesday, October 9 from 5:00-6:00. We will discuss details about the test and share information about what we can all do to ensure your child passes. Parent Teacher Conferences will be coming up after Fall Break during the week of October 21-25. More detailed information about the conferences will be coming home soon.

Reading:

In the month of September, we worked on explaining how a character’s traits, actions, motivations, and feelings within a story contribute to the plot of the text. We also located evidence within a text in order to answer comprehension questions. This month we began locating more than one piece of evidence to support our answers. Another new question type that was introduced was multi-part questions. With this question type, students must locate and answer and then choose the evidence that supports it. Our second Reading Common Formative Assessment was taken using our online PEAR assessment system. These tests are designed to look very similar to the ILEARN tests that our third graders will take later this school year.

Writing:

During our writing time, we worked on encoding (sentence dictation). We continued to use our CUPS procedure during our encoding practice. The students use the acronym CUPS when writing their sentences. It stands for Capitalization, Understanding, Punctuation, and Spelling. We also continued to brush up on our grammar skills. Punctuation, capitalization, and types of sentences were some of the grammar skills we focused on. Each student also completed a narrative story during the month. The third grade teachers used narrative mentor texts (picture books) and read them aloud to their classes. Each classroom chose one of the mentor texts and modeled their narrative stories after that text. Their stories were very creative and included narrative elements such as a beginning, middle, end, characters, setting, a situation, a sequence of events using transition words, descriptive details, and dialogue.

Math:

Math was all about FLUENTLY adding and subtracting multi-digit whole numbers, problem solving, and determining the value of a collection of coins and bills. We also continued to complete our Daily Math Reviews. These are spiral reviews of previously taught skills. These are completed daily Monday-Thursday and then the students are assessed on the previously taught skills on Friday. The students have been working hard in their Math Problem Solving Notebooks too. These are used daily and the students show their strategy for solving a problem on one side of the notebook page and then we review the different strategies we could use to solve the problem on the other side of the notebook page. This daily problem solving allows the students to be exposed to those higher level thinking math skills.

We are so excited for the month of October 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.

4th graders have made it a fantastic start to the year! We’ve already had our first field trip that connected the great outdoors to some of our science standards. We attended the Farm Education and Conservation Camp which was held at Camp Cullom. We heard more than once, “This is the best day ever!” We’re so thankful that they had this learning opportunity!

Writing: Students are finishing up narrative stories they have been working on. They had been given texts to read–both fiction and non-fiction–then they had to write a narrative story based on those texts. This type of writing was a new experience for most. So although they were creating stories with characters, dialogue using quotation marks, and action, they had to be sure to include information from what they had read. Many are rising to the challenge and have developed some really good stories!

Math: Students are feeling quite proud, and rightfully so, that they are able to multiply multi-digit numbers! They are accomplishing this by using the area box model. Yes, they will still be learning the traditional algorithm, but using the box method allows them to become successful quickly while gaining a solid understanding of the place values being multiplied. Please continue to support them at home by having them practice multiplication facts! Also in math, we are utilizing our computer program, Aleks. This program meets them where they are in math to help fill in gaps they may have or challenges them to continue succeeding at higher levels. They like watching their pie chart that tracks their accomplishments fill up!

Reading: Our reading has begun to focus on a unit titled “Cinderella Tales,” which involves reading various traditional literature stories and comparing characters, settings, theme, and plots of these stories. Our first story was an adorable tale, “Bigfoot Cinderrrrrella.” Students wrote summaries using the “Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then” strategy. They are also using context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words and making inferences.

We’re making great progress in our study of morphology. Those who were able to attend our Special Person’s Day got a brief glimpse into what they’ve learned so far! Knowing the meaning of prefixes, suffixes, and base words will give them a huge advantage when determining the meaning of unknown vocabulary. Another way to support their vocabulary growth is to have them read at home on a regular basis! 🙂

Science: We started the year with social studies, but recently during our “content” time, we’ve been working on science standards. Students have learned about types of energy (mainly potential and kinetic) and how energy is transferred. Classes have conducted trials to determine factors that affect motion using table tennis balls, Matchbox Cars, and ramps. After completing trials, students then used their math skills to determine averages. They also analyzed factors that may have affected their results.

Let’s keep the positive momentum going with our fabulous fourth graders! Thank you for all of your support at home. 💖

Reading:

Students have been working hard to master several 5th grade reading skills. These include theme, inferencing, and summarizing.

Writing:

We have wrapped up our writing unit over Informative Writing. Now we are moving into Fantasy writing. We can’t wait to see what creative writing pieces the 5th graders will create!

Math:

We just finished a unit over division and we are learning about place value, decimals, and rounding.

Content:

After learning about Ecosystems in Science we are going to switch over to Social Studies. Students are learning about Early Explorers and putting important events into a timeline.

Optional Practice at Home:

Do you want to extend your child’s learning at home? If so then please consider the following extension activities.

1. Read a story and then create a short summary

2. Practice math facts

3. Practice long division (Example: 2450 45 )

4. Have students create a timeline of their life.

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.

• 4th/5th Grade: We have started preparing for our Veteran’s Day Concert, which is November 11th, 2024 from 9am-10am. We are singing four songs, reading through a poem, and having a guest speaker attend. Here are links to the songs we are performing - PLEASE have your students practice at home! Having them practice makes this performance even stronger! If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out.

• Star Spangled Banner (Karaoke Version): https://youtu.be/99wDPgSJ9Ns?si=e3kUzVy5Xeiq3shv

• Grand Ole Flag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZuvUWJRRbc

• God Bless America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZMghygO2KA

• All 6 U.S. Military Branches Songs & Lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YeD4KmHBqw (Stop this recording at 3:25!)

• 2nd/3rd Grade: This month, we have covered a lot of new material about our common time signature, also known as 4/4! We have learned lots of new rhythms and notes, such as our half note and half rest. Students have been doing a great job being able to tell how many beats are in a measure depending on the time signature - awesome job!

• K/1st Grade: This month, we have been learning a lot about what it means when a song has a beat and what makes it different from rhythm. We have explored this by playing games like Charlie Over The Ocean, and by pretending to be flowers! This last week, we had also learned about four different voices - talking, singing, shouting, and whisper voices! The kids had a fun time using their voices while singing about a super scary monster.

• Preschool: We have covered many new things this month! We’ve discussed rain and bodies of water, how we eat our food, and what opposites are! We have pretended to be goldfish swimming in our sea, exploring the ocean in our yellow submarine, and saying hello and goodbye to one another.

All students have wrapped up their projects for Hispanic Heritage Month. It was so much fun to see their work come to life and all their little interpretations. However, now it is time to move on to their first unit of fall.

Preschool students are listening to the story “The Grumpy Pumpkins” and using what they have learned about warm and cool colors to create a multimedia paper plate pumpkin.

Kindergarten’s first fall unit is centered around the children’s book “Gustavo: The Shy Ghost.” After describing the character, setting, plot, and main idea of the story, students set to work on a chalk ghost to create a piece that represents “what makes them glow.”

First graders are busy learning about Monarch Butterflies and what an important symbol they are in regards to The Day of The Dead. After learning about the butterfly, students will create a multimedia monarch butterfly focusing on what they have already learned: differentiating between warm and cool colors.

Second grade is learning about value (the lightest lights to the darkest darks) and how value helps create 3D forms with depth. Half of them will be using this skill to make a value ghost with acrylic paints, and the other half will be using chalk pastels to create a 3D pumpkin.

Third grade is busy turning Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” into a Halloween version “Scary Night.” After studying how Van Gogh used vibrant colors, thick brushstrokes, and used color to create emotion, the students will work together to create their own oil pastel “Scary Night.”

Fourth Grade is actually still working on their Hispanic Heritage project (sorry, I lied!). They have begun painting their paper mache luchador masks and are loving every minute of it.

Fifth graders are learning about three significant and classic authors of scary stories: Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, and Stephen King. Each fifth grade class will focus on one of the authors while learning a little bit about their life before moving onto how to create a caricature. With this information, each student will create a caricature of their author and choose a quote that inspires them to accompany their caricature.

As always, if there are any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. It is a pleasure to work with your little artist/s.

Multilingual Students:

Mrs. Fresch and Mrs. Normann are the two multilingual teachers at Suncrest. We work with all of our multilingual students. It’s been great seeing our students returning and getting to hear about their summers. We’ve started working with our groups. We pull students to our rooms for about 30 minutes each day to work on building those English language skills. We’re excited to get back in the swing of things and look forward to a great year.

Don’t forget to join our Multilingual Parent Square page. This is where we will keep in touch with you about what is going on with our multilingual students, where we will tell you about upcoming events that you’re invited to, and also where you can reach out to us if you have any questions! Thanks so much and we’re looking forward to a great year!

Multilingual Students:

Don’t forget about our Multilingual Family Fun Night this week on Thursday, October 3rd! We have so many fun things planned for the evening and can’t wait to see all of you. We’re celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month and we hope all of you will attend. The evening starts at 5:00! Snacks, fun, games, and prizes–you won’t want to miss it!

Kindergarten Multilingual parents—we are working hard on our letters and sounds, but we still have quite a few students that are struggling. Please make sure you’re practicing these at home, too. If you need us to send letter cards home, just let me know and I”ll get them to you. It is very important that you also practice with your child at home!

Our 3rd grade Multilingual students are working hard to sharpen up their reading skills for our IREAD test this year. We have a very important parent meeting for our 3rd graders on Wednesday, October 9th from 5:00-6:00. Please make sure that all 3rd grade parents plan to attend that night.

Keep Your Students Writing at Home!

Encouraging your child to write at home can be both enjoyable and beneficial for their development. Here are some simple and engaging ways to get started:

1. Create a Writing Space: Set up a cozy corner with paper, pencils, and crayons where your child can feel inspired to write.

2. Daily Journals: Encourage your child to keep a daily journal. They can write about their day, their favorite activities, or even their dreams!

3. Grocery Lists: Involve your child in making the grocery list. It’s a practical way to practice writing and spelling.

4. Letters and Notes: Have your child write letters or thank-you notes to family members. This helps them understand the real-world importance of writing.

5. Story Time: Use family photos or favorite toys to create stories together. This can spark creativity and make writing fun.

By incorporating these activities into your daily routine, you can help your child develop a love for writing and improve their skills in a fun and meaningful way!