Hello Families and Supporters,
Happy Friday! It feels like Spring is upon us, even as there are a few snowflakes in the air today. As you know, the weather in CNY Spring can be unpredictable and we have had some true CNY Spring weather this week. We had to cancel our field lesson to Heiberg Forest to learn more about the process of making maple syrup this past Monday due to the frigid and snowy weather. We are excited that it has been rescheduled for Wednesday, April 6th! The rest of the week was more seasonable and our students were able to get outside. The most exciting signs of Spring this week happened in our K1/, 1st grade, and 3rd grade classrooms where chicks that they have been incubating hatched. The students were so excited that their incubation attempt was successful. Between the three classrooms, we have at least 14 chicks so far and more may come over the weekend!
We have gotten rain which will be good for the garden we are planning with the help of the Rural Life Lab Committee. Our teachers have begun planning for time in the garden and next week, if the weather permits, we will begin doing some garden preparation activities. Families, please make sure your child has a change of clothes at school, along with boots, as it is likely we will get muddy in the garden. Once we have some gardening dates planned, we welcome families to come in and work with their child(ren)'s class(es) in the garden. Look for an invite from your child's specific teacher.
In other agricultural news, our hydroponic grow towers have really taken off and students were able to harvest kale, swiss chard, and lettuce on Tuesday to be used in the cafeteria lunch on Wednesday. Our herbs in the grow towers are looking good. We also have tomato plants in some of the towers that are looking large and healthy. We can't wait to see if they produce tomatoes for us!
Enrichment News
We finished up our winter enrichment program this week. Thank you to Mrs. Hull and Mr. Peter and Ms. Rickie for providing these extra learning opportunities to our students from January to April. Congratulations to our 4th graders who recently participated in the CNYSEF Science Fair, hosted by The Most in Syracuse last Sunday. All participating 4th graders designed original experiments and presented their findings to several judges, learning a lot about presenting scientific ideas to a larger audience. One of our students won the Terra Science and Education Award for an outstanding STEM project in the Junior Division (grades 4-8) and two of our students earned Honors in the 4th Grade Division!
We are Hiring:
We currently have openings for the following positions:
- Social Emotional Specialist (Social Worker or Social Emotional and Academic Intervention Teacher)
- Substitute Teachers
- Teaching Assistant
- Teacher of the Arts
All positions are posted on indeed.com.
If you know anyone who is interested, please ask them to send a resume and cover letter or letter of interest to sara.petitmcclure@truxtonacademy.org
Messages for Families
VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR FAMILIES FROM THE OFFICE: New York State Education requires us to conduct an annual Emergency Early Dismissal drill. Ours is scheduled for Friday April 8, 2022. We will begin dismissal at 2:45pm with PARENT transported students. Please SAVE THE DATE and remember to pick up your child at 2:45pm. We will dismiss starting at 3:00pm with BUS transported students. Please SAVE THE DATE and remember to expect your children home early from the bus. If you have any questions, please email Mrs Leaf at leaf.carmer@truxtonacademy.org.
Yearbook Ordering is happening now!!! 2021-2022 Yearbooks cost $8, (plus 40 cents as a processing fee). This year, yearbook orders will go through Isaf-Merkur, the company who is publishing the yearbook. To order a 2021-2022 yearbook for your child, visit: https://buytheyearbook.pictavo.com/PictavoSchool/FindSchool
Our school code is: 700844
Financial Assistance is available. We do not want any student to miss out on these memories. If your family needs assistance with purchasing a yearbook, please contact Mrs. Leaf (leaf.carmer@truxtonacademy.org).
Ways to Help Our School Volunteer to wash and return winter clothes from our borrowing closet As winter weather comes to an end, we want to wash and pack away the set of winter gear we have for students to borrow. If you are willing to wash and return some or all of our winter gear over Spring Break, please contact Ms. Leaf in the office. Sign up for and use Amazon Smile with Truxton Academy as your chosen charity Amazon Smile is a division of amazon that donates a portion of sales from many items to a variety of charities and nonprofits. Truxton Academy is one of those nonprofits. If you are purchasing items from amazon, please go to https://smile.amazon.com/ and choose Truxton Academy as your charity of choice. Purchases you are making anyway will benefit our school. Donations Needed: Eggs: We are doing a project using eggs in makerspace next week. If you can donate 1 dozen eggs, please send them or bring them into school on Monday morning so all classes have the eggs they need. Second Graders are in need of the following recyclable materials for an Earth Day Project. Please send these items in by Tuesday April 5th if you have them. Thank you for your help!-paper towel rolls -toilet paper rolls -any other light cardboard such as tissue boxes Upcoming Dates: 4/4- Lottery for the upcoming 2022-2023 school year (for NEW students only) 6PM in the school cafeteria or via zoom Zoom Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/97844018378?pwd=cis0NEluVGNmaSsrL1RvVks0U25UQT09 Meeting ID: 978 4401 8378 Passcode: 6bvqMB 4/6- Maple Syrup Field Lesson Rescheduled- Please plan to dress your child in layers as the weather in Spring is unpredictable. Let your child's teacher know if you would like to attend and meet the class at Heiberg Forest. 4/8- Emergency Early Dismissal Drill- Parent pick-up dismiss at 2:45, buses dismiss at 3:00 4/4- 4/8- Make-up ELA testing for grades 3 and 4 4/11- 4/15- Spring Break- No School 4/18- Board of Trustees Meeting Board Meetings are held in person at Truxton Academy Charter School in the pavilion, weather permitting, or in Room 105. You can also join via Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/91567143586?pwd=cGM3bjZlemxGTGVtUmMwRk5WdG5iQT09 Meeting ID: 915 6714 3586 Passcode: 9ia1fw Updates from the classrooms: Miss Elliott (K): *Asked questions and learned about chickens in their early stages of life from the first graders *Finished our science investigation on goldfish and guppies and will be adding to our mini aquarium- Ask your kiddos which animal we are learning about next : ) *Created a dance to learn about vowels and consonants *Worked on showing 1 or 2 more than in math *Sorted and classified objects using different attributes *Played sight word bingo *Practiced our writing skills and sounded out each part of a word before asking for help Mrs. Francis (K/1): This week in K/1 we:*started learning several different R blends (br, cr, fr) and checked in on the FLOSS rule *read several books about Spring and the signs of Spring *read and wrote about the frog's life cycle *practice building numbers up to 100 with 10s sticks and ones units (beans) *practiced adding three or more numbers together *learned how to write "how to" books and practiced using our First, Next, Then, Finally writing papers when we thought of the steps to making a PB&J sandwich, doing the monkey bars, and finding buried treasure! *looked at 11 different types of paper and compared them to each other *worked with the 3rd graders and learned what the chicks will need once they hatch and how that compares to the needs of people *harvested greens from the grow tower and made seed necklaces *got to observe the 9 chicks that hatched in our incubator!!! Miss Smith (1st): This week in first grade we: *Learned the difference between math equations that are True and False. *Learned that 'er', 'ir', an 'ur' words have the same sound! They say eeerrrrr like we are mad! *Created a Personal Improvement Form that will help us to monitor our own behaviors and think about how we can do things differently to change those behaviors. *Learned about what we would need for a chicken's perfect home. We then designed and built our own chicken coops! *Finished our Miss Rumphius story and discussed ideas that we have on how to make the world more beautiful. *Had 4 baby chicks hatch in our incubator! *Taught kindergarteners and 4th graders what we learned about chickens! *Learned about the area of a shape, how we measure area and then made a chart to track how big our feet are! ****Please note that our field trip to Heiberg Forest has been moved to April 6th! We will be leaving at 9am! Any parents who are interested in joining, please contact Ms. Smith via email to let her know!! ********Please continue to have your students bring weather appropriate clothing. We may still get more snow and will definitely have lots more mud. ************Please also, have your students bring a snack and a water bottle daily! Ms. Jess (2nd): Ask your Second Grader about...-harvesting lettuce, swiss chard and kale from our grow tower to use in our school lunch of chicken wraps, -their collaborative project with Third Graders on kindness, -"tasting" different types of books such as realistic fiction, biographies, mysteries, graphic novels and comics, -solving word problems with a missing number, -making a "living" necklace, -what experiments they created to learn more about mealworm's five senses, -what type of book they are going to write, -their project on how to protect and care for our Earth. Miss Madysen (3rd): Ask your third grader about...-using Quizlet Live to help them learn and practice their vocabulary words. -what the attributes of a triangle, square, rectangle and quadrilateral are. -reading about the space hotel and what it would be like to take a vacation in space. -writing about our favorite parts of spring. -what imaginative writing is and what they rolled for the character, setting and problem for their story. -our first chick that hatched on Friday! -what the blue planet is and what they learned about water from the space creature. -what happens to water when it falls on different surfaces (paper towel, aluminum foil, wax paper and lined paper). Congratulations to the third graders on finishing the NYS ELA Assessment. They worked so hard and tried their best the entire time. Way to go! Ms. Chelsea (4th): Ask your 4th grader about:- Growing crops hydroponically - How the brain learns and what to do if your brain is bored - Equivalent fractions: what they are and how to find them. We played a game where we practiced by building the largest wall out of fraction bars! - Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking. - How baby chicks hatch and their life before, inside the egg! The first graders taught us all about how chickens grow and hatch, how to tell if they're boys or girls, how they keep cool, and more! Señora H (Spanish): In Spanish we read a story about "Caperucita Roja" (Little Red Riding Hood). We also reviewed food vocabulary.Some of the children requested the login information for Rockalingua, so here it is: www.rockalingua.com Login: Truxton, Password: 12345 Mrs. Boyden (PE): This week in PE 3rd & 4th graders started a team building unit "Survivor" where they have a tribe and each challenge they win they recieve beads for their tribe necklace. They have been doing great so far! K-2 are also working on team building games and are great at encouraging each other! Mrs. Boyden (Makerspace): This week in Makerspace one of our 4th graders, Michaela, taught each class how to make illusion art. She did a fantastic job teaching! Check out our facebook and instagram pages for pictures of our students' learning throughout the year: https://www.facebook.com/truxtonacademy
Thank you as always for your support of our students and our school family! Have a wonderful weekend!
- Sara and the Truxton Academy Team