Wednesday, January 12 - 1:50 Dismissal

Monday, January 17 - No School

January 18 - 21 - Warm Clothing Drive

Wednesday, January 19 - 1:50 Dismissal

Monday, Janury 24 - LEC at 3:15

Wednesday, January 26 - 1:50 Dismissal

Link to Sanderson Academy calendar.

Greetings from the health office! We have been having quite a chilly week, please continue to send your child(ren) with winter gear and layers of clothing. If you are in need of any winter gear let me know as I may be able to help get that for you! If a student needs to borrow winter clothing from the health office I will be sending that home with them to be washed before returning it to school, or often they may just keep it. When it is too cold to safely play outside we will be having indoor recess instead, this will usually consist of playing games quietly or having free time to draw or read. Children are more prone to get frostbite than adults since they are less able to regulate their temperature. See this link for more info : https://www.aad.org/public/everyday-care/injured-skin/burns/prevent-treat-frostbite

If your child has received both doses of the covid-19 vaccine they are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second dose. Please continue to send in a copy of their card- the easiest way to do that is to take a picture of their card and email it to me, and I will update their health record at school. Please continue to keep any ill children home and reach out to me for guidance about their return to school, thank you!!

Many students throughout the grade levels enjoy reading graphic novels. Way back in the 1980s when I was an elementary student, the closest we had to graphic novels were comic books, and they certainly weren’t available in my school library. Many people assume that comic books and graphic novels are the same thing. They are both [mostly] works of fiction that tell a story in a series of panels. So what’s the difference?

For one thing, comic books are periodicals that are produced monthly, with one issue’s storyline leading into the next. Graphic novels read like a book. They delve into the storyline of characters and history, and they complete the full arch of a narrative by the end of the novel. In addition, there are also nonfiction graphic texts available, such as a new collection of biographies here in the Library.

Many students (and adults, including me) enjoy reading graphic novels not only for their entertainment value, but because many of them explore real and relevant issues in a way that’s accessible to a variety of reading levels. They help develop literacy skills such as reading comprehension, inference, and building new vocabulary, and they can also help build social-emotional skills, as readers decode the facial expressions of the characters. If your child happens to bring home a graphic novel to read, I encourage you to take a look for yourself!

This week we talked about winter and the things we like to do in the snow. Many enjoy sledding, making snow people and snowballs, and having snowball fights! Ms. Sue taught us about other winter sports and showed us yoga poses related to them.

Some preschoolers prefer to stay inside where they can be warm and cozy. Try making some snow dough, one of our favorites in the sensory table. The first photo shows a preschooler helping to make snow dough. The second photo shows 2 preschoolers enjoying it!

To make snow dough mix 8 parts flour to one part baby oil in a bin, tote or other container. It’s a little messy, but soft and moldable. Add a little glitter for sparkle! Have fun!

We’ve been enjoying a new activity during our morning meetings called “Turn and Talk”. In this activity, we work in teams of two, sitting cross-legged, facing each other. We hear a question and we talk with each other about it. After the conversation, we turn back to the group and take turns telling everyone what our partner said. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what our partners said, but we do. Recently, the question was: How do people keep warm in the winter? We had many good ideas presented by the teams. Among these thoughtful answers were: wearing coats, boots, mittens, and sweatshirts and using a woodstove. Another popular answer was drinking hot chocolate. We all agreed that all those things were good ways to keep warm—especially now that winter has finally arrived with snow, ice, and below-zero wind chills. Time to dress for the cold and embrace the season–keep warm everyone!

In math this week, we introduced subtraction equations and the minus sign. We played several games to practice solving subtraction problems by putting fingers away on our hands, instead of adding more like we did with addition. We also looked at how subtraction takes us backwards on our number line to find the solutions to the equations and played games to practice counting backwards. And we added a favorite subtraction story Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons to our puppet center!

This week first graders started a new science unit about space! In our first lesson we focused on learning about Earth’s place in space.We kicked off our unit by sharing some facts we already know about space and writing some questions we have or hope to learn more about. We learned that Earth is part of our solar system, which is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is inside the universe! First graders learned some new vocabulary words such as planet, orbit, solar system, Milky Way, universe and rotate. To solidify our Earth’s place in space learning, children made a simple, yet fun space map to take home and share with their families! To connect our science learning to our language arts time we read a story about an astronaut, Chris Hadfield titled The Darkest Dark written by Chris Hadfield himself! Chris Hadfield was fascinated by space and dreamed of going to the Moon someday, after watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 moon landing. With hard work and determination Chris turned his dream into a reality!

This week our Second Steps lesson focused on being assertive. After reviewing the previous lesson on using self-talk, the lesson on being assertive was introduced through a story and a discussion format. The class was shown a photo of a child who is experiencing the uncomfortable feelings of being worried, confused, and frustrated because he does not understand a math assignment. The discussion focused on who the child can ask for help and ways that he can ask for help. Students were then given different scenarios, such as a friend took your pencil that you need, and volunteers modeled how they could assertively ask for what they wanted or needed in a respectful, calm, and firm way. Learning to ask for what one wants or needs in an assertive way, along with the skills of focusing one’s attention, listening carefully, and using self-talk to stay on task are known as “skills for learning” in the Second Steps curriculum. The next unit on our Second Step program focuses on empathy, where the class will learn to identify and understand their own feelings and the feelings of others. They will also learn how to take another’s perspective and how to show compassion.

Below are the posters we use in class to as reminders for the above “skills for learning”:

The third grade classroom is graced with a wall of generous, south-facing windows, and the sunshine pouring in through them has been an absolute gift this week. We have a bird feeder suction-cupped to these windows, and it is a joy to have the sparrows, titmice, chickadees, and juncos fly right up where we can see the details of their feathers and expressive faces.

In math this week we have been learning about the intricacies of rounding numbers to the nearest ten and hundred. While rounding 78 to 80 might seem obvious, third graders also need to know how to round 478 to the nearest ten. We have discussed how this comes up in the real world, for example, when shopping. We tend to think of $2.89 as $3.00 when we are adding up prices in our heads. If you happen to be out shopping with your third grader, feel free to put this into practice aloud to reinforce these discussions.

How exciting, fourth graders began their formal study of division with and without remainders this week! We launched our unit by reading the book Remainder of One. Be sure to ask your child about this book and the fun activities we did while we were reading it. In reading, we are getting ready to begin our next novel study. We will be reading Glory Be, a historical fiction novel. Mrs. Upright is continuing to teach the students about the Southeast Region during geography. This week, they learned all about the land and water of the region and have already completed their scrapbooks for these sections.

Fifth grade wraps up our American Revolution studies this week. We finished our read aloud, Toliver’s Secret, and watched the movie, Johnny Tremain. The students caught a historical error in the movie, which is always fun to do. When Paul Revere was rowing past the British ship, the Somerset, he had wrapped his oars in cloth to muffle the sound they made. We learned about that in the story And Then What Happened, Paul Revere, and had seen that in a Liberty’s Kids episode. But his oars were not wrapped in the movie.

Sixth grade started this week off by taking a close look at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. We began by first, taking a look at some important background information about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We then learned some new vocabulary words that Dr. King uses in his speech. Afterwards, we read and listened to the speech. We will continue to find figurative language and discuss his use of persuasive language as well. We have also moved on to a new unit in math called “Let’s Be Rational” . We began this unit by discussing estimating sums and differences when adding and subtracting fractions and decimals. Last but not least, I want to remind families that your sixth graders book report is due this Friday! I cannot wait to see all of the wonderful cereal boxes they’ve created!

Winter math assessments are just around the corner! Students have the opportunity to show off all of the incredible skills and knowledge they have gained since September. It is always super exciting to hear from the students themselves how much they have grown and also, how much they have enjoyed learning! During our interview-style assessments, I ask the kiddos questions such as "Do you have opportunities to share your math thinking with your classmates and teachers?" I also ask kiddos to share their strategies and ideas for many content-specific areas such as conceptual place value and multiplicative reasoning. Assessments begin next week so be sure to ask your children about their check-ins. Ask them what they enjoy most about math class or what strategy they find the most useful for problem-solving. As always, please email me with any questions or comments. Enjoy! :) aprew@mtrsd.org