Ninja Pig News
Mrs. Caldwell's Classroom
Feb. 6-10th
Weekly Hellos
We start our new PBL about entrepreneurs and up cycling this week! It's going to be so fun to start our way towards the Economics Fair in March. Please don't worry about this event. It's well planned and your children are going to learn so much from this experience.
On another note, we started a new Star Stallion process this past week. Sarah made a collection box and the class quietly nominates friends that show Stallion Pride across the week. They have to tell what they saw the person doing that showed Star Stallion expectations. I read the first notes out loud on Friday. They are so wonderful! I can't wait to reveal our first Stallions this Monday!
Various Things to Read and Respond To
Kindness Month and Week in February
Student Council will be hosting Sommer Elementary’s first ever Kindness Week the week of February 13th. We are hoping to show all of our students how easy it can be to spread kindness to others. We wanted to give everyone ideas about ways to spread kindness by creating a calendar for our classes that has ideas about being kind. We want to challenge you to complete these acts of kindness and to watch it spread around our school. We will have more information about the things we have planned for Kindness week soon.
A digital copy of the Kindness Calendar can be found in the email attached to this newsletter.
Valentine's Day Party
Our Valentine's Day party will be held on Feb. 14th.
The students discussed what they wanted and we are going to share valentines after specials and then enjoy party foods after recess. They gave me suggestions for the foods they wanted so I passed this information on to our Room Parents.
Watch for an email if you haven't seen it already!
Giving Gardens
We added compost to 6/8 of the garden beds last week! Next up is planting and watering seeds of carrots, peas, and beets.
My district connection came to see the garden area and help me figure out the best way to plan for the new beds!
STAAR Ready Practice Dates
We are going to give the math and reading STAAR release tests on Tuesday, Feb. 21st and Monday, February 27th. Please do not make any appointments for your children on these days. I also want to remind you that they shouldn't be working the STAAR release tests found on the TEA website. That's what we use to see where your children are excelling and where they are still needing support. If they've seen the tests, this gives us false data. A complete analysis will come home after the tests are given so you can see exactly how your child did. I will also send the tests home for you to look over and return. PLEASE DO NOT WORRY YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT THESE DATES AND THE TESTS!! Trust me. "We got this."
The Class Would Like...
**IF anyone wants to bring in his/her own fidget tools, that's fine as long as it doesn't become a distraction. Right now, chewy items and putty are the "cat's pajamas" of our classroom.
Homework News
**Keep working on boxes and valentines! They are due this Friday, Feb. 10th!!!
They will start to use the online service this week for HW.
There will be a reading/writing passage handed out each week for my Language Arts students.
The class has access to keyboarding practice on Typing.com -I encourage you to have your child work on this skill weekly. It's a valuable tool in their world of technology!
Class Events
Writing Workshop- Students are sharing their hero stories at the start of our week and then we'll work the rest of the week on grammar studies from their own works.
Each writer created a comic strip of one special moment they wanted to slow down and show from their story. We talked about how the pictures should match the words from that area of their stories.
We learned about using transition words to flash back or forward in a story. We used our revising and editing skills and revisited slowing down a moment to step by step show the action through strong verbs and deliberate word choice.
Grammar- We are really thinking about how we use pronouns and proper nouns in our writing. Students also started anchor charts about contractions and suffixes last week. We'll keep adding to these!
Math- We will use our multiplication understandings to work a variety of problems across the week. We are learning about the relationship between multiplication and division. We are setting up problem solving using strip diagrams and we keep going back to revisit equivalent fractions on a number line and subtraction (per student requests).
Social Studies & Science: We begin our economic unit this week! We will use recycled items to make something useful (up cycling). We'll begin the discussion of how we can create our own businesses that will help us make money for the Round Rock Serving Center. It's going to be a busy week!