Hello Families and Supporters,
Happy Friday! Our students had a great week during this short week of school. I can't believe how close we are to the end of the school year. Many completed their end of the year MAP testing in Math and ELA. We are excited to see the growth that students have made from the beginning to the end of the school year. We also had visits from our friends at 4-H in all of our classrooms and Ms. Sol's class had some fun lessons learning about bullying from the Cortland Child Advocacy Center.
This weekend our students have off Friday and Monday in honor of Memorial Day. This day is a day to honor those who have died while serving in our military. We thank them and their families and honor them by continuing to teach our students to work for liberty and justice for all.
Announcements
2021-2022 Application and Enrollment Our application period has officially ended, and we still have a few spots open in 1st, 3rd, and 4th 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 Smile 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. Bottle and Can Collection: 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! Donation Requests: Classroom Donations: - Electronic Wipes: Our teachers would love electronic wipes for the smartboards in the classroom to help keep them clean as they are used by multiple students throughout the day. - Glue Sticks: Our classrooms are running low on glue sticks. Please send in some if you can. Makerspace Donations: We would gladly accept the following items as donations for our makerspace and art room. Please make sure all donations are clean before dropping them off at the school. - empty paper towel rolls, - cereal or snack boxes, - bottle caps, - crayons, - colored pencils, - kids' scissors, - acrylic or tempera paints, - wood quality paint brushes, - watercolor paper, - canvas paper ***At this time, please no more egg cartons, yarn, large cardboard boxes, or construction paper. We have all we need for now. Upcoming Dates: May 28th- May 31st: Memorial Day Weekend- No School June 1st: - Cortland County Dairy Parade 6:30 PM We hope to see many students there! - Cortland City Farmer's Market starts June 2nd: New York State Charter Parent Council 6PM If you are interested in joining this statewide parent advocacy group, type in this link: https://bit.ly/2JFig2tJune 3rd: Last 4-H project of the year for students June 11th: Field Day (Rain date June 18th) Volunteers Requested, please reach out to Ms. Petit-McClure and Mrs. Boyden if you are able to volunteer June 14th: Board of Trustees Monthly Meeting 7PM Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/98161711210?pwd=THlYdW5wOGttWnllWE9VU1MvVWxmZz09 Meeting ID: 981 6171 1210 Passcode: SSN9b7 June 16th: Kindergarten Graduation 6PM June 23rd: End of the Year Celebration Picnic Lunch 12PM Families welcome, full details to come Updates from the classrooms: Mrs. Francis' Class This week in Kindergarten we took reading and writing on the road and went outside and to another classroom to do our work. We also got the chance to read and write with partners and to share our writing pages with our classmates. We have some awesome authors and readers in our class! In phonics we keep pushing to get the sight words memorized through practice. We also "Fed the Bunny" by matching CVC words to pictures. On Wednesday we read a book about a clever Hare who tricks a lazy Bear when we read Tops & Bottoms. We used knowledge we learned last week when we planted veggies to determine if the edible part of each veggie is on top of the soil (a top) or underneath (a bottom) the soil. In math we practiced addition, subtraction, and making number sentences. We also looked at the data from our May weather chart. We had 14 sunny school days in May!! Last week in science we made flags using different types of paper. We used our knowledge of what makes paper easy to write on and what happens to paper when it gets wet to each pick a paper sample to make a flag. This week we hung up our flags. We headed outside for science today to see what happened to our flags after yesterday's storm. Kraft paper (what paper bags are made from) held up the best. Corrugated cardboard and wax paper held up fairly well also. Tagboard and paper towel earned honorable mention, but the marker bled and it ripped a little bit. Nice job with this experiment, kiddos! We also made new paper from old paper and wrote about the steps that we went through. It was another busy week in Kindergarten. Enjoy the long weekend! Happy Memorial Day! Ms. Jess' Class This week in K/1 we learned about Memorial Day and how we can honor the soldiers who have helped keep our country safe. In science we experimented with different sounds, vibrations and pitches and investigated how they make us feel. We learned and played a new math game Plus Ten in math. In reading groups students analyzed characters and sequenced events. Students also took on the role of authors to add more pages and illustrations to guided reading books! We had our friends from 4-H come to make tornadoes! Enjoy your long weekend! Ms. Smith's Class This week students spent their ELA time taking the MAP assessments exam. All students did a great job taking their tests and then reading and working quietly to be respectful to the other students while they finished their exams. During snack, we are continuing to read our Magic Treehouse story. Ask your kids what a 'moat' is and what an 'armory' is. Two big words that we learned while reading our story. A fun movie to watch that would reinforce this story would be, A Kid in King Arthur's Court. In Math, we are continuing to work on word problems and have started our unit on fractions. We are working on halves and fourths. In Science, we are finishing up our second round of engineering our contraptions to protect an egg from a long fall. We will make our final contraptions and test them out when we return from the long weekend! We were also lucky enough to be visited by 4H who made bottle tornadoes with us! Thank you to 4H for doing such an awesome job and for coming in to teach our class! This week we also said goodbye to our baby chicks, Ms. Frizzle Vampire and Fluffy, as they went back to the family who lent them to us. We miss them dearly but we want to thank the Harringtons again for providing us with such a wonderful experience! Enjoy the 4 day weekend! Ms. Sol's Class This week we started MAP testing for ELA. Students had an anti-bullying 1/2 day workshop where they had a read aloud, discussion, two writing activities and a fun game to get to know their classmates. We also had a visit from 4H where the students learned about tornados and created their own mini tornado model in a bottle. We cleaned and disinfected our lockers. Next week we will do the year end math assessment. We did a funny creative writing activity with choice boards & die which the students enjoyed a lot. We have been using teacher-led writing prompts and some students created their own writing prompts to make their own stories in addition to the writing activity of the day. Mrs. Hull's Class Third graders enjoyed getting back into the swing of in-person school this week. We are working on putting together a performance of "Chicken Little." Once complete, we will include this play on our school StoryTime Channel. We also worked on fractions and are starting to learn how to use a balance in science. We will once again dive into our investigation of the properties of water and weather.This week we had the chance to have a virtual visit to a beef farm. Students brought home the different types of cattle feed that they learned about. We also learned a Moo Cow dance in honor of the upcoming Dairy Parade in Cortland. If you would like your student to be a part of Truxton Academy's float, please let us know. The event is Tuesday, June 1st at 6:30 pm. Have a great weekend. PE All students did a phenomenal job this week! They enjoyed 3 fun-filled days at the "Truxton Mini Golf" course, which included playing alongside a partner at 6 colorful stations in the gym.As students have been wearing sandals lately, please make sure your child(ren) have sneakers packed in their bags to change into for P.E. as we head into warmer weather. Thank you! Enjoy your long weekend families. -Ms. Ashley Spanish In K/1, Students made their own mini-posters for each of the estaciones - the seasons! We also practiced a new poem to help us remember what each estacion and created little booklets with el tiempo - the weather that corresponds with each season.In second grade, students continued to learn about comidas y bebidas - food and drink! We visited Senorita Jasmine's restaurante to help name all the foods on the menu! In third grade, students are continuing to work hard at learning our insectos - insects! They also are working super duper hard at learning how to conjugate -ar/-er/-ir verbs in the present tense. In virtual third grade, students wrapped up their comidas y bebidas unit and are starting their insect unit! They are working equally as hard to learn how to conjugate in Spanish! Music Hello Wonderful Families! This week in music class we put our dancing shoes on and practiced the Moo Cow dance for the Dairy Parade! Want to see the song and dance? Here is a link to practice at home: CLICK HERE. In addition, kindergarteners continued learning about and playing percussion instruments while first graders focused on iconic music notation. Students in first grade also figured out how to write down the rhythmic notation for a known song on their own! In second and third grade music classes we wrapped up our unit on ABA form with a little review and a few student performances. All in all, we had a fun week moving and grooving in music class. Musically yours, Miss Kelly 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 of our school family! Have a great Memorial Day weekend! - Sara and the Truxton Academy Team