The Moreau Messenger
February 2016
Mrs. Delair's News!
Principal’s message
Walking through the doors of Moreau Elementary School for the first time is like walking into a family reunion even though you may not know a sole. That is how I felt on January 4th. I was anxious and excited to begin this new endeavor, yet every anxious feeling vanished and I was overcome with love and support from all of the staff and students. It is an amazing feeling to come to work each day and look forward to the greetings, hugs and laughter that I see each day.
I would like to thank the entire Moreau community for sharing these wonderful children with me each day. Each and every child is amazingly special and as I get to know every one of them, they have already added so much joy to my life. During these six hours each day, we consider your child our own. When I leave the building at night, I often go home to tell more stories about my day simply because I am so proud of what we have here.
In these few short weeks, I have studied math, writing, reading, science and social studies. I have watched teachers take simple addition lessons and bring them to life. I have watched students become overjoyed because they could tell me how contractions work or how to speak Russian. I have watched student-led discussions on a novel, student-led ideas on the Westward Expansion and student-led scientific hypothesis on magnetism. I am simply in awe of the collaboration, creativity and overall dedication teachers, staff and students exhibit.
Again, I am so very thankful to now be part of the Moreau family. Here is to another amazing month!
Laura
Kindergarten!
February is such a short month in Kindergarten! The children will be very busy writing and sending Valentines to their peers. This is a great time to teach your child about the mail system, and show them first hand how it works. The 100th Day Celebration will be coming up in Feb. Each day the Kindergarten classes count how many days we have attended school until we reach 100! We are also practicing counting to 100 by 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s. Please reinforce this skill at home so that your child can become a part of the “100 Club” in Kindergarten! On Thursday, February 11th, the day will be filled with exciting 100th day activities. Unless the weather does not cooperate and we have a snow day! It is amazing how quickly they learn how to count. February is also Dental Health month and we will celebrate President’s Day as well. We will be focusing on mastering all of the sight words and continuing Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop, as well as addition facts in math lessons.
We are very excited to have Miss Lauren Ruddy as a student teacher in Mrs. Johnson’s classroom. She comes to us from SUNY Oneonta and will be in our classroom for 8 weeks. Mrs. Howk, Miss Ruddy, and I are excited to collaborate and share new ideas in the classroom.
Please be sure to continue to review: rhyming, beginning, middle, and ending sounds, writing, and the math facts to 5. Keep up the great work! The children should continue to complete homework on a weekly basis to review and prepare them for first grade. This is an exciting time of the year where the children are reading on their own and excel very quickly. Thanks for all that you do!
Warmest Wishes,
Mrs. Johnson
Mrs. Howk
Miss RuddyFirst Grade!
Hello Parents and Happy New Year!!
First Graders are always doing interesting projects. One neat project we just did was called Bridging People and Places. Mrs. Lorraine Thompson is the coordinator for this organization. This is a non-profit organization that helps out children who may be sick, have lost a parent, or suffered some sort of tragic event. Bridging People and Places donates stuffed bears that have been dressed with love and hugged by people to all these children. Our First Graders were fantastic volunteers and dressed and hugged over 100 bears!!! The children had tons of fun dressing the bears and even more fun hugging them. It was a wonderful project.
We also started another project: our Flat Stanley project. All information came home already. We hope you have a reliable person, family member, friend, etc, who wouldn’t mind helping out your child with a special school project. All Flat Stanleys are due back home during vacation. We will then have a Flat Stanley Night on Wednesday, February 24th. More details to follow.
In closing, we would like to thank our parents for their continuing support with their child’s education. Remember, our doors are always opened!
Second Grade!
Happy New Year to our second grade families! We have started 2016 off with warmer temperatures and not a lot of snow. We are looking forward to some snow so that we can play outside and make snow forts at school! We will be going outside on Fridays during the the winter months. Please make sure to send your child to school with boots, snow pants, gloves, hats, and of course coats on that day.
We have been busy in ELA working on reading non-fiction texts and finding main ideas and supporting details. In spelling, we learned about r-controlled vowels and began our January spelling unit with words with silent letters in them. In the coming weeks we will be studying words with the long e sound that have a –y and and –ey at the end. We will also be practicing reading fluently on a daily basis and being able to comprehend text of increasing complexity. Please continue to read with your child at home and ask him/her probing questions about what he/she has read.
Our second graders have also been hard at work writing opinion letters about favorite characters in books. They have done a wonderful job of remembering to support their opinions with valid reasons. They are building their stamina as writers and are becoming expert proofreaders! We are extremely proud of all of their hard work!
In math we are working through Module 4. We will be composing and decomposing ones, tens, and hundreds as well as continuing to build our fluency with our math facts. Please remember to practice math facts at home as often as possible.
We want to thank you for all of your support this year! We believe that a child cannot be successful in school unless there is a good relationship between home and school. Please feel free to contact us if you ever have any questions or concerns. Thanks again for all you do!
Third Grade!
Dear Families,
We’re working hard in ELA. We’ve been reading various fiction and non-fiction texts and looking a finding and citing evidence. We’ve also been discussing character traits, and character motivation to see how it keeps the story moving forward!
We’re still working hard learning all about fractions in math. While it can be a tricky subject for some, we love it! There are several websites on our district’s math corner webpage if you’d like to have your student practice at home. We hope you’ve enjoyed your math fact jars, and hopefully they are emptying rapidly. Please encourage your student to practice their math facts at home daily.
In Science and Social Studies, we’re still learning about the different biomes all over the world. We’re learning fun and interesting facts about all the animals, their adaptations, and even the people that live in the region. Thank you for all your support at home.
In writing, we’re working hard to develop different opinion and persuasive essays. If your students are trying to persuade you for an increase in their allowance, are their arguments well supported? (If so, you can thank us later!) ☺
Thank you as always for your support!
Mrs. Becerril and Ms. BakerFourth Grade!
Happy New Year to all of our 4th grade families! We have been so busy since returning from Christmas vacation! Here is what we have been up to!
Reading: We have been reading tons of nonfiction books! We also became part of research teams and became experts on extreme weather events. Our teams researched droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. We learned some pretty amazing facts about these weather events!
Writing: We are in the middle of our opinion unit and have been working really hard on our personal opinion essays. We learned all about developing reasons and examples to prove our opinions! Next up is a persuasion piece where we will be combining research and our opinions to persuade our readers!
Math: Our unit on multiplication and division is quickly coming to an end. Next up is a short unit on measurement and a unit on geometry.
Social Studies: Colonial life has been our focus during Social Studies Class! Each child has researched what life was like during the time of the 13 Colonies. To show off what we learned, each student is creating a Prezi presentation! We can’t wait for you to see our Prezi’s!
Science: The next two weeks in science will be electrifying! We will be performing lots of experiments with electrical circuits and learning about properties that conduct and insulate.
Fifth Grade!
In social studies, reading and writing fifth grade students have spent some time learning about westward expansion and the growth of the United States. 5th Graders created Lewis and Clark Trivia Books. They are on display in our fifth grade hallway. Come and check them out!! To reinforce our theme of Westward Expansion, we are also reading a wonderful book titled, By the Great Horn Spoon. It’s a great book that teaches us about life during the California Gold Rush.
Our mathematicians have been learning how to multiply and divide fractions and mixed numbers. We are amazed by the deep level of understanding our fifth graders are demonstrating. They are handling word problems that would have stumped 5th graders five years ago.
In science, we have been learning about our circulatory system. We modeled the heart and learned all of the main parts of the heart. We also designed our own labs for investigating how exercise affects heart rate. We are looking forward to a visit from Dr. Martin Breen, who will be dissecting a deer heart for our classes.
Our explorations block has been a great success. One group of fifth graders have been creating movie trailers for books that they have read. Another group of fifth graders are learning the finer points of chess. If your child is involved in this group, be warned. They are likely to beat you in a game! Our last group has been designing and programming robots using LEGO EV3 robotics kits. The robots they design will compete against other groups to complete various challenges that have been established.
Our month of raffles fundraiser was a great success. Thank you to all of the parents who made it a success. Special thanks to Mrs. Brown, who brought this idea to us and organized us. Mrs. Loftus is also to be thanked. She is organizing our second fundraiser; a take and bake pizza sale. They money raised will support our fifth grade trip to the Bronx Zoo.
Makerspace!
Bottle Letter
I personally want to thank you all for all your support towards our foster student in Chad, Africa. Many of you have brought in bottles, and I can’t thank you enough. More bottles are still needed however, and every nickel helps! Her birthday is April 9th, and she will be ten. She is currently in school because of Moreau’s generosity. I was hoping that if each student in our building could bring in one bottle each week, we would reach our goal. Can we do it? Again, thank you so much, you’re a wonderful school and our Moreau Community is AMAZING! ☺ Karen Baker
Through World Vision we’ve changed her life!
She is in school!
We sent her money to have a birthday party last year.
We’ve sent: games, books, letters, notebooks, pens, pencils, markers, etc.
She loves to draw bicycles.
She has a dog named “Vive” or Life.
She has one younger sister.
Her parents are farmers, and she helps by babysitting.
She loves to play board games.
She wants to grow up to be a teacher!
If you’d like to drop off your bottles at Nickleback behind the SweetFrog’s in South Glens Falls, they have an envelope for Rebecca. Thank you!