Hello Families and Supporters,
We had a great week this week at Truxton Academy. We had 4 instructional days with a lot of great learning in all of our classes. The week ended with the students being off and our instructional team (including me) working together to continue our learning as well. Our classroom teachers, teaching assistants, and special education teacher spent the morning learning more about doing small groups during Reader's Workshop. Our team learned about using flexible grouping to help develop reading strategies in students and targeting the strategies to specific students' areas of need.
In the afternoon, our whole instructional team learned about Community Circles. Community Circles are an important way of ensuring we build a strong community and help every child know they are an important part of our community. It is a relationship building opportunity which helps improve interactions between students and helps practice important skills. Most importantly, Community Circles are fun! Our classrooms will start implementing Community Circles one time per week. Some will focus on relationship building. Some will focus on academic content. Some will focus on behaviors. All will follow the same structure which provides predictability for students.
This month, we have been focusing on the character trait of Responsibility. Many classrooms have read the book, "What if Everybody Did That?" by Ellen Javernick. The book helps us focus on the idea that we may think our actions are little and have no impact, but that if everybody did those things, it would have a big impact. Here is a video you can watch of the book if you want so you can discuss this at home with your child(ren): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=811dQ_OisK0 In discussing it after listening to the book, you can also ask your children to give some examples of responsible choices they can make at school and what would happen if everybody did those things.
From the PTO: Enjoy Trinity Valley’s Annual Corn Maze and raise money for Truxton Academy Charter School at the same time! Throughout the month of October you contribute to the Truxton Academy community when you use the code TRUXTON when you purchase your tickets online here: https://trinityvalleydairy.mazeplay.com/. All Kids Bike Donation We have raised almost half of the money needed to buy the strider bikes and add a biking unit to the kindergarten and first grade PE curriculum. Biking is a lifelong skill that is fun and healthy. Help our kids get a good start at it by helping raise funds for this equipment https://support.allkidsbike.org/truxton-academy-charter-school.
Upcoming Dates:
10/ 29- Book Character Parade 10:00 AM
10/ 29- Trunk Or Treat 6:00- 8:00 PM - please email Mrs. Boyden if you want to decorate a trunk to participate heather.boyden@truxtonacademy.org
11/11- Veterans Day- NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS
11/12- Parent Teacher Conferences- NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS
Updates from the classrooms: Ms. Elliott (K): This week our kindergarten friends were stimulated while learning lots of new things. We've been working very hard on practicing our letter sounds during phonics and Reader's Workshop, making great progress at learning how to count forwards and backwards for numbers 1 - 20, and we've had lots of fun investigations during science and will be starting a new unit on Monday. Mrs. Francis (K/1): We had an exciting week in K/1! Ask us about:*Letter sounds Tt and Ss *Starting reading groups during ELA *Presenting our teaching books and learning from each other *Double counting for accuracy *Planting our apple tree *Being responsible and respectful Ms. Smith (1st): Ask you 1st Graders: *What are the different parts of a plant and what is their purpose? *What is one strategy you can do when you are stuck reading a tricky word? *What does it mean to be Responsible? Have your 1st Graders: *Write a simple sentence about clowns using spaces, capitalization, and punctuation! *Solve the following word problem using a picture to show how they got their answer: Codie ate 7 bones on Monday and 3 bones on Tuesday. How many bones did he eat altogether? Ms. Jess (2nd): Ask your Second Grader about: -their Runaway Pumpkin story, -making number strings, -their virtual field lesson with Sunrise Dairy in Minnesota, -and what they learned about pumpkins from Ms. Kay. Ms. Madysen (3rd): Ask your third graders about… -what an array is, -the story What If Everybody Did That?, -edible and non-edible items that are made from cows, -and how writers use descriptive words to show what they want to say instead of telling. Ms. G (4th): The fourth graders had a blast during math this week when they worked together to measure each other’s heights and graph that data on a line plot. They are also looking forward to next week when they will get the opportunity to measure the 1st graders’ heights and compare the two different data sets. Señora H (Spanish): In Spanish, K. K/1, 1 and 2 learned about body parts and learned a new song. The 3rd and 4th graders learned about items we find in our school and classroom. Mrs. Boyden (PE): In PE thi week, grades K-2 began our hula hooping unit and they are getting good! 3rd & 4th grade did our beginning of the year fitness testing to help set goals for the end of the year, they worked so hard! Thank you for your continued support of our school family! Have a great Sunday! - Sara and the Truxton Academy Team