Hello Families and Supporters,
Happy Friday! What a wonderful week of Spring weather we had again this week. It was a busy week here at school for our first week back after Spring Break. Many of our classes spent time learning outside. Some of our third graders got to use the pavilion outdoors for presentation of their writing pieces which are now published in the Cortland Voice thanks to owner and publisher, Timothy Bennett. (See Mrs. Hull's update for the link.)
We had a visit this week from 4-H as well and all of our students worked on quilt squares that represent themselves. Robin Bartholomew from Onondaga County 4-H will be sewing the squares together. We can't wait to see the final product!
In All- School Meeting this week we talked about Respect. Our students listened to the story Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes, and discussed how respect or disrespect impacts feelings. We had also listened to a song about respect that shared some examples of how to be respectful. We will continue focusing on respectful words and actions this month in all of our classrooms.
April is Kids Gardening Month! If you garden with your children, or want to start, check out this contest they can enter. https://kidsgardening.org/kids-garden-month-2021/?mc_cid=7c2bfe5542&mc_eid=77df440ec9
Wednesday Afternoon Enrichment
This was the first week we were back to school on Wednesdays in person. We started our optional afternoon enrichment program for in-person students. This program is staffed by Ms. Ashley, who is subbing for Mrs. Boyden in PE, Ms. Bella, and Senorita Jasmine, along with Ms. Molly and Ms. Kelly who have both subbed for us in the past or are currently subs with us. Ms. Kelly teaches music, Ms. Ashley teaches art, and Senorita Jasmine teaches Spanish during this time.
2021-2022 Application and Enrollment
Our application period has officially ended, and we still have spots open in some grade. Please continue to spread the word about our school and encourage interested families to apply.
If you know of any interested families, please encourage them to apply for their children to attend our school next year. Applications can be found at our website, www.truxtonacademy.org.
Ways to Help Our School
Amazon
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.
Bottles and Can:
Our partnership with T&T Redemption in Riverside Plaza is active! Spread the word that people can drop off bottles and cans, let them know it's for Truxton Academy Charter School, and we'll get the credit!
Upcoming Dates:
4/12- Board of Trustees Meeting 7:00 PM
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/98161711210?pwd=THlYdW5wOGttWnllWE9VU1MvVWxmZz09
Meeting ID: 981 6171 1210
Passcode: SSN9b7
4/14- Walking Field Lesson to release our trout: Remote students welcome to join
4/16- Baby Goat Visit at the school (outside): Remote students welcome to join
4/16- End of the 3rd Marking Period
4/21- Purple up for Military Child Month: Wear purple to honor the children of our military service providers and their families
4/23- 3rd Quarter Report Cards sent home
4/30- In-house Field Lesson with animal visits
Updates from the classrooms:
Mrs. Francis' Class
This week in Kindergarten we refreshed ourselves on our routines, procedures, and expectations after having last week off. We also reviewed our letter sounds and read CVC words. We took turns being the teacher and telling our classmates the sight words we have learned so far. We continue to practice the sight words so we will know all 25 words automatically by the end of Kindergarten. We also practiced conventions of writing, capital letters, spaces, and punctuation. We read books about animals movement, crops, and places we might see dogs.
In math we began to think about addition and subtraction with visual stories, a game called Racing Bears, and another game called One More, One Less. These games will help us think about breaking numbers into smaller pieces (5 is a group of 2 and a group of 3). In science we started our unit on materials. First we will learn about wood. We went on a wood hunt both inside and outside and found many, many things made of wood. We also read a story about a chair which was made of wood. Lastly, we enjoyed an activity with 4-H. The students decorated quilt squares which the 4-H leaders will sew together and then we will hang in our school. Have a nice weekend! Ms. Jess' Class This week back from Spring Break we did a great job of remembering our rules and routines! In math we are practicing telling time and will be starting to learn about fractions. We are reviewing all our phonics skills with new phonics games. Students are doing a fantastic job reading and identifying characters, setting, problems and solutions. In writing we have become news reporters describing what is happening in pictures. The students are doing an amazing job writing sentences! In science we are investigating seeds and learning about pollination. This week we read Miss Maples Seeds and made our own maple seeds! Keep up the great work kiddos! Ms. Smith's Class This week we learned that the letter 'r' is bossy and when paired next to a vowel, it makes a new sound. This week we learned the 'ar', and 'or' sound! We wrote about our Spring break experiences in our writing journals and had our first spelling quiz! Everyone did such a great job! In Math, we have been measuring everything! From, our heads to things we find outside! We also recorded the favorite colors of each class and made some beautiful colored bar graphs! In Science, we have been learning from one of our remote learning families about how to build a chicken coop. Our class has started to design and construct their very own chicken coops out of recycled materials! Ms. Sol's Class This week we started ELA with the Mother West Wind Why Stories. We acted out some of the stories, we used the stories for our writing workshops and for oral narration. We also had some Eureka moments with the daily word scrambles of the day. We also had a visit from 4-H and made some quilt squares. Phoenix's grandmother came back to our class to continue teaching the students how to do finger knitting. In math we continue to work with subtraction and skip counting. Mrs. Hull's Class Third grade happily welcomed more Spring weather this week as we finished up pre-break projects and began brand new learning. Thursday, we gave a live reading of our articles about ourselves to Mr. Timothy Bennett of the Cortland Voice. You may read the articles and learn more about our experience at https://cortlandvoice.com/2021/04/08/truxton-academy-charter-schools-third-graders-get-published/ We were so excited to use our outdoor classroom for this presentation and hope to find new and exciting ways to continue using the pavilion for learning and presentations. In honor of Earth Day, third graders began a PBL to answer the question, "How can we reduce food waste in our school?" We are hoping to plan and implement ways to reduce and reuse food waste in our school. Ask a third grader why reducing food waste is so important. In mathematics, we are revisiting multiplication and division. Yay! Have a great weekend. Spanish This week in in-person and virtual K/1, students went a sonic speed as they played in a body race! I said a body part and students raced to repeat and point to the body part I said. We also work out creating and labeling a life sized version of ourselves! In second grade, we started to learn about insectos - insects! We did a scavenger hunt around the gym to help us find all of our new works. We also began to learn about basic, human subjects in grammar(I, we, you, etc.)! In third grade, students continued to learn about bebidas y comidas - food and drink! We worked hard on our picture dictionaries to help us visualize the words we are learning. We learned about basic human subjects in grammar (I, we, you, etc.) as well! In virtual third grade, we are learning about la transportación y lugares - transportation and places! We also learned about basic human subjects in grammar (I, we, you, etc.) along with how to conjugate in the “Yo” (I) form! As a reminder, we have a public facebook page where we share many pictures and stories of our students learning. Please check it out to see some of the wonderful work our teachers and students are doing every day! (https://www.facebook.com/truxtonacademy) Feel free to share our posts to spread the word about our school! Additionally, the PTO has a parent specific facebook group. If you are a parent and wish to join this group, you can find it at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/truxtonacademycharterschool Thank you for your continued support, Sara and the Truxton Academy Team