Weekly Newsletter 11.22.13

This week KIS ACHIEVE continued to work on their Thanksgiving theme unit. We read Mash the Potatoes (Reading A-Z, Level C) and Maria’s Thanksgiving (Reading A-Z, Level H). The students completed a sequence on how to make mash potatoes. We incorporated our counting by 5's lesson by making our own classroom anchor chart. We all traced our hands and designed our turkeys. Thanksgiving is such a fun time to create themed activities for math!

This was an unusual week with back to back field trips Wednesday-Friday. Wednesday, we attended Playhouse Square with the 5th graders from Mrs. Austen and Mrs. Johnston's class. We learned Improv and how to act and dance using scripts and choreography from Wicked.

Thursday, Geauga ACHIEVE students, teachers and staff were fortunate enough to be treated to a movie day by an anonymous family. We saw Free Birds and everyone was given a snack of popcorn, lemonade, and Skittles. The kids enjoyed the movie so much. Friday, we went swimming with Ms. Katelyn and our Timmons friends. We ate lunch at the Y and was able to let some energy out.

This week we reviewed:

Word Wall: many, them, then, these, so

November Word Wall: Mayflower, Pilgrim, Indians, Cornucopia

Reading: Mash the Potatoes (Reading A-Z, Level C) and Maria’s Thanksgiving (Reading A-Z, Level H)

Phonics: blending words

Social Studies: Native Americans

Writing: Content

Math: IEP Goals

Science: Solar System

Dates to Remember:

11/27 - No School - Conference Break

11/28 - No School -Thanksgiving Day

11/29 - No School –Thanksgiving Break

Weekly Newsletter 11.15.13

This week, we continued our unit on Earth and Space Sciences. The students will demonstrate an understanding about how Earth systems and processes interact in the geosphere resulting in the habitability of Earth. This includes demonstrating an understanding of the composition of the Universe, the Solar System and Earth. In addition, it includes understanding the properties and the interconnected nature of Earth's systems, processes that shape Earth and Earth's history. Students also demonstrate an understanding of how the concepts and principles of energy, matter, motion and forces explain Earth systems, the Solar System, and the Universe. We are beginning with the Solar System and this week we studied the planet Earth. We watched the Nova episode on Earth, read an adapted book on Earth and completed a KWL chart. On Friday, the students made the planet Earth with playdough. To prepare for Friday's project, the students incorporated reading and math to make their own playdough to get ready.

Our goal was to apply what they learned from class by layering each Earth layers.

What the earth layers are:

RED – inner core

ORANGE – outer core

YELLOW – mantle

BLACK – crust

BLUE AND GREEN – land and water

This is how the project was supposed to look :)

This is what one of the finished products looked like.

We sure did have a lot of fun making it!

We studied Veteran's Day on Monday. We tied in our Social Studies standard of timelines. We read about the history of Veteran's Day, how it got it's name and completed a KWL chart. They learned that it was originally called Armistice Day. We cut and glued a timeline and wrote in our journal why we are thankful for military folks. One of our teacher's made an amazing "Veteran's Wall" with pictures, newspaper articles, and personal mementos from their family members. As a daughter of a Vietnam Veteran I am so blessed that we are teaching student to recognize contributions they have made to our nation, and for our students to see people who live here because they have done things. They have been a part of armed services. They have served our country.

This week we reviewed:

Word Wall: will, up, other, about, out

November Word Wall: Earth, Native Americans, Feast, Pilgrim,

Reading: "I Can Count Money"

Phonics: initial sounds

Language Arts: Noun Sorts and will be introducing verbs.

Social Studies: Veteran's Day

Writing: Thankful to our Veteran's

Math: Arrays, Counting by 5's, Money, Place Value

Science: Solar System

Dates to Remember:

11/18 - United Way Week

11/20 - Field Trip with KIS 5th Grade to Playhouse Square for behind scenes of Wicked! (Rescheduled- Please wear comfy clothes, tennis shoes for dancing and a bagged lunch)

11/21 - Geauga ACHIEVE Movie Day

11/22 - APE Field Trip Swimming

11/27 - No School - Conference Break

11/28 - No School -Thanksgiving Day

11/29 - No School –Thanksgiving Break

Weekly Newsletter 11.8.13

This week, we continued our November unit on Thanksgiving. We wrote why we are thankful and what it means. The students had it displayed in the hallway. We watched a National Geographic video on The Mayflower. The kids were very fascinated with the large ship. This is the second week of our new calendar routine and the students morning binder. They are doing amazing memorizing their months, days of the week, and numbers. The students were also introduced to arrays and place value. We began our Big Idea unit on Money. We all read "I Can Count Money" from Reading A-Z and integrated counting by 5's to count pennies to make the coin. This is good because they all know and will tell you the reason they need to count by 5's is to learn to tell time on an analog clock. I am very proud of all of their progress of memorizing and fluently counting. Our goal is for some of our students to count by 5 by Winter Break.

In Social Studies, we read "Duck for President." We learned about voting, rules, and even did a mock election in class. The students had to vote for Duck or Mr. Carroll. The students learned that what they put on the ballot was private and nobody's business. We tallied up the votes on the Smartboard and announced the winner. The winner was Duck.

We participated in the Scholastic Book Fair this week at KIS. The KIS PTO was generous enough to include Geauga ACHIEVE in allotting all teachers $50.00 to spend on books for the classroom. I was so humbled by the Kenston PTO's generosity and how much we are all included. We purchased National Geographic Meerkats, Animal Picture Books, Ripley's Believe it or Not, and Leveled Readers. I also wanted to thank The Lynden's for buying our class a book. Thank you so much. :)

This week we reviewed:

Word Wall: she, do, how, if, there - Read the High Frequency book "She will be".

Fall Word Wall: Pilgrim, Mayflower, feast, celebration

Reading: "I Can Count Money"

Phonics: welded words

Language Arts: Noun Sorts and will be introducing verbs.

Social Studies: Thanksgiving History and Election Day

Writing: "What am I thankful for?"

Math: Arrays, Counting by 5's, Money, Place Value

Science: Insects

Dates to Remember:

11/11 - Veteran’s Day

11/12 - Field Trip with KIS 5th Grade to Playhouse Square

11/13 - KIS PTO Mtg. 9:30 AM

11/18 - United Way Week

11/21 - Geauga ACHIEVE Movie Day

11/22 - APE Field Trip Swimming

11/27 - No School - Conference Break

11/28 - No School -Thanksgiving Day

11/29 - No School –Thanksgiving Break

Weekly Newsletter 11.1.13

This week Mrs. Marshall's fifth grade friends wrapped up their spiders and bats unit. The week just flew by (no pun intended). We started the week off excited about Halloween. We were invited by Room 212 from KMS to make cupcakes and play games. Mrs. Schweickert and her class did a lovely job on making us feel welcomed. To prep my kids for going to a new place, we did a social story about KMS, the teacher, the rules we will follow, and to have fun. I am so proud of the students. They were very well mannered and we all had so much fun.

We will be sure to write out thank you cards on Monday. We are hoping we can get together again with Room 212. We were lucky that KIS Achieve was able to make connections with our units of bats. We made bat cupcakes!

KIS goes all out for Halloween. Mr. DiCello was dressed a fox and the PTO made our hall look like a real haunted house! Mrs. Robertson invited our kids to make slime and we made a scarecrow in Mrs. Marshall's class.

My brave girls even went past the scary haunted house to have their face painted.

This week we reviewed:

Word Wall: there use, an, each, which (Reiterated not the same witch from Halloween) Reviewed past sight words and made sentences.

Fall Word Wall: bats, nocturnal, life-cycle, Indians

Reading: Farm Animals

Phonics: consonant digraphs

Language Arts: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words

Social Studies: Plain Indians

Writing: Writing a thank you letter

Math:Geometric Shape Sort, time, money, Touch Math addition,

Science: Bats

Dates to Remember:

11/4 - Book Fair Week

11/6 - Gr.4 Breakfast & Books 7:15AM

11/7 - Gr.5 Breakfast & Books 7:15AM

11/11 - Veteran’s Day

11/13 - KIS PTO Mtg. 9:30 AM

11/18 - United Way Week

11/21 - Geauga ACHIEVE Movie Day

11/22 - APE Field Trip Swimming

11/27 - No School - Conference Break

11/28 - No School -Thanksgiving Day

11/29 - No School –Thanksgiving Break