Dear Students and Families,
We had our first morning meeting in October and introduced our Character Trait of the Month - Respect! So many of the children told us what respect is and gave great examples. We look forward to encouraging our students to be kind to each other and exhibit traits of respectfulness throughout the month. All students are completing their MAP tests this week and next. This is an assessment tool that we use to collect data throughout the year to inform us of where our children are struggling and/or excelling so that we can adjust our teaching strategies in both ELA and Math. I wanted to let you know that the dates for the end of the quarters and getting report cards was incorrect in the family handbook. Here are the correct dates as they correspond to our Student Information System:
Quarter End Date Locked in SchoolTool Print date Hand-out date
1 11/4/22 11/9/22 11/9/22 11/10/22
3 4/18/23 4/21/23 4/21/23 4/24/23
4 6/21/23 6/21/23 6/21/23 6/22/23
In addition, please note the new Student of the Month (SOM) breakfast date that has been cancelled from 10/21/22 and moved to October 27, 2022.
Upcoming Dates
10/17 Coffee with Kerryanne 10am-11am
10/18 Fire Safety Presentations 1-3pm
10/25 RLL Committee Meeting 7pm
10/27 September Student of the Month Breakfast 9am
10/28 Student of the Month Ceremony 8:45am
10/28 Trunk or Treat 6pm-7:30pm
10/31 Halloween Parade 10am-11am
Updates for the Classrooms:
Kindergarten
This week in kindergarten we:
*Were great listeners when isolating the initial sound of common objects
*Learned about the parts of a tree and a little dance to help us remember them
*Used our background knowledge about egg shells to figure out why the King's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again after his great fall
*Discussed the moral of the story called 'The Lion and the Mouse'
*Took Inventory of some of the materials in our classroom to practice accurate counting
*Learned more about how to care for our future class pet (Tuck) and started a calendar countdown for his arrival. 37 more days!
*Completed our MAP testing for reading and math
First Grade This week in first grade we:
-Completed our MAP testing for Reading and Math -Spent some time outdoors in the beautiful weather exploring nature with our sense of touch using descriptive words to identify different items -Learned a new Math game, Roll and Record! -Started practicing solving story problems and drawing pictures to show our work! -Learned about the vowel U! Ask your kiddos what trick they use to help remember its sound! -Blended and Segmented CVC words with the letter U -Used our segmenting skills to decode and spell CVC words! -Read the folktale 'Medio Pollito- The Half Chicken' -Met our student placement teachers from Cortland! Ms. Courtney and Ms. Sophia will be here for the month of October!
Second Grade
Ask your Second Grader about...
-finishing and self assessing their friendly letter,
-how to do a "stop and jot,"
-writing their first readers response about an idea, feeling, question or connection they had about their reading,
-creating their own writing rubric to self assess their reading response,
-using number strings to solve addition equations with multiple addends,
-using their addition fact cards to practice their addition facts 0-20,
-playing the subtraction math game Five in a Row,
-what respect looks like and sounds like in our classroom,
-working with words that end in -ng and -nk,
-their virtual field trip to Albano Dairy Farms and
-our upcoming PBL on dairy farming!
Third Grade
Ask your Third Grader about:
*sketchnoting and how it helps us practice our spelling words while being creative
*revising one of their narrative story writing pieces to complete a second draft of their story
*about the skip counting by 6s and 4s using our 100s chart
*the MAP test in Math
*what they learned about popcorn when we read The History of POP!
*the characters, setting, and plot of our new read aloud, A Wolf Called Wander
*how GROSS our tomato seeds were after the long weekend and how Ms. Holly helped us get them ready to be saved for the long winter
*how seeds are dispersed (spread) and about the seeds they found in our schoolyard
Fourth Grade
The fourth-graders read the historical fiction story Lewis and Clark and Me: A Dog's Tale by, Laurie Myers. The class worked on expository compositions, writing imperative and exclamatory sentences and practiced spelling words with long a and i spellings.
The class also worked on gathering measurable data to compare and organize on line plots. We spent much of our time this week concentrating on practicing kindness, and refocusing on school and classroom rules and expectations. Fifth Grade
Ask your 5th grader about:
- The pneumonic to help them remember how to solve expressions with multiple operations. (Order of operations: PEMDAS- Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Shirley. We have an eccentric Aunt Shirley in class, so we chose Shirley over the usual Sally :) )
- Using "carrots" to help them organize and keep track of their problem solving in math. Try this together!: 3 x [10 - (4 x 2)] + 8
- A special mixture called a solution, and how to separate water and salt!
- Which multiplication facts are tricky for them, and the "tricks" they came up with to help recall them quickly
- How the author communicates their message in a nonfiction text (with main ideas and supporting details!)
- The "Final (k)" spelling pattern (when to use -ck, -k, -ke, and -ic)
- Examples, that they came up with, of what it means to show respect: walking quietly in the hall, being mindful of others' feelings, helping other solve problems in a calm and fair way, helping someone who needs help without judgement, using a kind tone of voice, appreciating each person's own unique way, recognizing that jokes have a time, place, and limit, giving attention to the person talking, giving people space, and asking permission.
- Word Jeopardy! :)
Rural Life Lab
In Rural Life classes this week, students: - explored a sunflower head - Narrated the book Thunderstorm with a storm's effect on a farm - visited and sketched their sprouting hydroponic strawberry rootlings -learned the difference between products and commodities
Spanish
In Spanish we read a story about a grandmother, an abuela, with too many cats, muchos gatos!
Art
The Edvard Munch "The Scream" inspired self-portraits created by K-5 are up on display in the cafeteria through Halloween!
PE/STEM
PE K-2 - we started our hula hooping skills and games with hula hoops! We also did our locomotor movement assessments! Fun week!
PE 3-5 - this week we started our fitness testing unit. This is where students do flex at hang or chin ups, pacer test, sit ups, push ups and the v sit and reach and we have this as our baseline and we will do it again at the end of the year to see if we have improved our numbers just through all of our activities! The students have loved challenging themselves! Proud PE Teacher!
STEM K-2 - we did another Elephant & Piggie Challenge for the book “I Really Like Slop” ask them what they made!
STEM 3-5 - we build our own play grounds! Be sure to ask them what and how they built it!
Send me any photos you may have taken from golf and the walking so I can share it on our facebook page. THANK YOU! 6073455384
Note from the Office: Now that the colder weather is here, please send in a cold weather extra outfit for your students in a ziplock labeled bag.
Last call for ski/snowboard club
Looking for those interested in the winter ski club. It is a 4-week program where 3rd and older can learn or better their ski/snowboard skills. We are looking at doing Tuesdays. Weekends could be a possibility but this cost more. The lessons and passes for students are $139 and $169 for adults. The season passes run $399 k-12 and adult is $569. These passes are good the entire season as well. They do offer additional meal plans and rentals if needed. I will send an informational brochure and signup forms to any interested.
The program is 6 weeks long meaning we will be there for 6 weeks. The lessons run for 4 weeks and start the first week of January. If you purchase meal plans and rentals these run for 6 weeks. I need a headcount so please let me know by next week and would love to see you on the slopes. Parents, it looks like they also offer a program for you as well. Anyone chaperones who would like to join are welcome as well.
Rural Life Lab Committee Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 25th at 7pm in person and via Zoom. We are looking for parents, grandparents, and community members that are passionate about agriculture and wish to help Truxton Academy Charter School. Additional questions can be answered by Courtney Harrington- Committee Chair at (607) 427-1108 or nharrington687@gmail.com
Have a terrific weekend! Stay safe and stay healthy!
~Mrs. S.
"Hi Friday! I've been looking for you since Monday!"-Author Unknown Kerryanne Schenck Head of School Truxton Academy Charter School