Mustang Roundup
April 2019
Principal's Pen
Please see the dates below for your reference. Thank you for your continued support of our school.
***Calling all volunteers***-We will hold a work session on April 12 at 12:00 to train new volunteers as Workroom Attendants. Lunch will be served. Please email me at nbarnes@rhmail.org if you would like to attend and learn more about the role of a Workroom Attendant and your importance to our students, teachers, and school.
Thursday, April 4-All of Mount Holly goes to Castle Heights to see school performance;
Performance for the community at 7 pm
Friday, April 5-Performance for the community at 7 pm
Thursday, April 11-Art Show at Mount Holly 5 - 6:30 pm
Friday, April 12-Spring Pictures (information to follow)
Friday, April 12-Work Session for New Workroom Attendants at 12 pm (Lunch will be provided)
Monday, April 15 - Friday, April 19-SPRING BREAK (No school for students or faculty/staff)
Monday, April 29 - Friday, May 3-Teacher Appreciation Week
Ms. Sadzakov's Class
We cannot believe that it is already March! The whole class is ready for spring! During the Morning message, we have done the Weather chart. Everyone is happy to see more sunny days on the chart! We were so lucky with the weather. We have been spending time outside, and enjoying it.
We have started learning about nature. We have read the book about nature, day, night and space. We have practiced the knowledge on the communication board, and through paper-based activities. Everyone has worked so hard during the work boxes time, and we are all so proud of them!
Mrs. Tomlin's Class
Mrs. Tomlin’s class learned our Earth, space, and sun through our science lessons taught with our Unique Curriculum. We learned about what it is like to travel in space. We also learned about our sun, how hot it is, and what it is made of. For Dr. Seuss’ birthday we celebrated by reading his books, decorating crafts, and making yummy snacks. While studying about Mardi Gras, we created decorative mask as well as studying the history behind this exciting day. For Saint Patrick’s Day, we looked all over for that elusive Leprechaun. He just couldn’t be caught! We all remembered to wear green so we didn’t get pinched! The first day of spring was absolutely beautiful. We have taken nature walks to observe the changes taking place in our environment. Trees are blooming and colors are changing all around. We have decorated our classroom for spring with colorful crafts! As a class, we really enjoyed getting outside and participating in the Fun Run! We were very lucky to have eight fifth grade friends to join us and cheer us on. What a fun day!
In April, we will be focusing on economics through our Unique curriculum. We will be discussing budgets, smart shopping, and categorizing our needs versus our wants. We will also be studying Passover, Easter, Earth Day, and Arbor Day. These topics will be explored through projects, interactive stories, arts and crafts, and experiments.
**This month we are looking forward to therapeutic horseback riding and participating in the spring Special Olympic games!**
Kindergarten
In kindergarten, we are getting ready for spring. You may want to check your child’s change of clothes and change them out for the spring season. If your child does not have a change of clothes please put a change of clothes in their book bag.
We will be having an Easter egg hunt before spring break, please look for more information to come. Your child will need to bring in 12 dozen plastic eggs filled with candy. We ask that you do not put chocolate in the eggs in case it melts. Thank you for helping with our egg hunt.
In Science we are learning about plants and animals. We will be studying about how plants and animals live and grow. We will observe fish and worms and chicks, and learn about how plants live and grow.
In math, we will be working on missing addends and fluently counting to five. We will be composing and decomposing numbers from 11 – 19.
In ELA, we are continuing in our reading groups. Please continue to read at home. In writing we are working on writing about a problem and how to fix the problem.
Please continue to do homework with your child every night.
Art
Mount Holly students have been working hard, finishing projects for our 2018-2019 school-wide Student Art Show. It is one of the most beautiful times of the school year as student Art work is displayed throughout the school. While the Art work will be on display from April 11th through May 9th, an Artists’ reception will be held at the school on Thursday, April 11th from 5:00 -6:30. All students and their families are invited to come see the Art work and to enjoy light refreshments. If you are unable to make it that afternoon, please take time, during the show’s run, to drop in and appreciate our children’s efforts and accomplishments on display. Thank you for supporting the Arts.
First Grade
Science
First grade is “growing” in many ways! Our Soil and Water Conservation program has begun, and all four garden beds have been planted with carrots, radishes, and lettuce. Each class waters them daily. This program directly addresses the First Grade standards Plant Unit, and the students really take pride in their gardens! We will observe the gardens and care for them until it’s time to harvest in May! We can’t wait to see “the fruits of our labor”! In correlation to our science units on plants and soil, we will have a field study to Glencarin Gardens on April 29 and May 1. More details will be sent home soon. Spring in first grade is the best time of year!
Math
Money and time, along with continued strategies to solve equations in subtraction
and addition will continue this month. We will explore coins by learning how to identify them as well as learning their values. We will also explore telling time to the hour and half-hour by using both analog and digital clocks. This is always an interesting focus for the students as there are many opportunities to learn using coins and hand-held clocks. Encourage your child to help you count money and tell time at home! We will also review lots of the math standards we have already covered this year, and go deeper with our understanding of place value as we add and subtract 2 digit numbers with tens and regrouping. The strategies we have learned so far will help us with these concepts.
Language Arts
With only a few months left in school this year, we continue to learn how to decode while reading and as well as looking for deeper meaning of text. Comprehension questions are crucial to moving forward in reading levels. Spelling tests of sight words will continue until the end of the year. Please continue to read with your child and sign their reading log every night. It is amazing at how much the students have progressed in their sight word knowledge and confidence! Thank you for helping at home!
Remember: Spring Break is April 15-19!!!
Physical Education
Field Day Shirts on sale March 25 – April 10. Look for the order form in your child’s Wednesday folder! Don’t forget to buy a shirt so that you won’t be left out of our Mt. Holly Field Day tradition. Remember we wear different colors for every grade level.
Field Day Shirt Colors:
Staff- Hot Pink
Kindergarten- Light (Carolina) Blue
First Grade- Red
Second Grade- Orange
Third Grade- Jade
Fourth Grade- Lime Green
Fifth Grade- Maroon
Parents, if you haven’t already planned to volunteer for Field Day, please plan to do so because we always need your help! Field Day Parent Volunteer Forms will come home right after Spring Break! Field Day is Friday, May 24!
Second Grade
A few friendly reminders:
· We still have a lot of learning between now and the end of the school year. Please encourage your child to come to school prepared each day, and ready to engage in learning.
· Please talk with your child about ways to resolve conflicts peacefully. Students need to learn how to communicate with others effectively and state their opinions without showing anger and aggression.
April is a fun month full of hands on experiences. We have scheduled a field trip to further enrich our teachings about animals, their life cycles, their adaptations, and their habitats. Our spring field trip to Glencairn Garden will provide us with opportunities to explore and learn about animals and their habitats using a more hands-on approach.
Not only is April an exciting time, but it’s also a time that our assignments become even more rigorous in preparation for 3rd grade. The students will continue to use evidence from fiction and nonfiction passages to construct essays. Their essays should include an introduction, middle, and conclusion.
Instructional Specialist
Your Child is Never Too Old to Be Read Aloud To!
Mount Holly Elementary School’s One School One Book experience reminds us that our children our never too old to be read aloud to. We adults often have the misconception that when a child is able to read a book by him/herself that we should stop reading to our children. But, this is the furthest thing from the truth! Anyone who loves reading knows that the BEST part of the book is getting to share it with a friend, a spouse, or a reading group! Reading is not meant to be an isolating experience that you do alone without any interaction. We are social creatures and crave interaction with loved ones.
When you read aloud, you are teaching your child so much more than just telling them a story.
When you read to a child, you are:
- enjoying literature together.
-bonding with your child (when you sit together in a comfy chair or in his/her bed reading together, that bonding time is critical for growth! Don't underestimate the importance of bonding in developing lifelong readers).
-relaxing your body and mind with a screen-free evening ritual.
-whetting your child’s appetite for reading so he/she will want to read
-developing an awareness of people outside your experience
-developing a sense of empathy
-increasing your child’s attention span
-helping your child address real-life issues
-building your child’s vocabulary
So…as you and your child/children “March” into spring, be sure to “March” into a good book you can read together!
Third Grade
We are so excited about our upcoming field study to the South Carolina State Museum! This trip will provide students the opportunity to get a first-hand experience of topics we have been studying this year in both Science and Social Studies. South Carolina history played a vital role in shaping our great country, and this field study will be an exciting look into all areas of South Carolina’s history with a touch of science mixed in!
If you would like to serve as a chaperone, please contact your child’s teacher. The fee is $5.00 for chaperones. Please send the payment to your child’s teacher. You MUST provide your own transportation as our buses will be at capacity.
Please remind your child to take his/her time when completing all assignments. We have been working diligently with text dependent analysis pieces to practice for end of year testing. Students are struggling with providing evidence from the text to support their response to questions, answering the question specifically, or with giving enough details in answering. Students also have to remember elements of grammar, spelling, and punctuation that we have been practicing all year. Practice makes perfect!
Our students continue to work hard to practice the Model Mustang way and earn “Mustang Money”. Students whose behavior and actions display any of the Model Mustang characteristics can earn Mustang Money from any adult in our building. Students can shop at the PBIS Mustang Store for items at the end of each nine weeks. We hope to have some extra special rewards for our final store to celebrate good behavior! Our district-wide hope is to see more positive, respectable, and responsible behavior in our students and that these character traits will foster better behavior in all areas.
Media Center
Fourth Grade
It is time for second semester conferences with parents so teachers will be contacting you soon to schedule these. This is an excellent time to discuss progress and any areas that need to be targeted so your children will enter 5th grade ready for success.
Students will begin Fountas and Pinnell end of the year reading level testing. This will determine their reading readiness for next year. April is National Poetry Month! Students will use their knowledge of figurative language to write innovative poems. At the end of the month, there will be a poetry slam where writers will showcase their best work.
Writing will focus on getting ready for the end of year SC Ready Test. Students will take a second practice test at the end of the month. They will also return to opinion writing in class, using the RACES (R-Restate question, A-Answer the question, C-Cite evidence, E-Explain/Extend, S-Sum it up) method.
In Math, this month we will be learning about geometry! Students will be looking at lines, points, line segments, rays and angles. We will do a project where they go around the school and look for these geometric figures in real world applications. Students will also learn about quadrilaterals and triangles. We will be classifying these using rules. After geometry, students will go back to learning about patterns. This brief unit will focus on shape patterns. Lastly this month, students will build from their third grade knowledge of line plots and will create line plots to display data of different lengths. We will measure different things and then create real life line plots in class! We are looking forward to a great April!
In Social Studies, we discuss our founding fathers including our First 4 presidents, the PARTY PEOPLE--men who created our first political parties -- Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists. Then WE MOVE WEST (this should be the last week of April). We discuss the Explorers that went over the Appalachian Mountains and Mapped the Western USA. We'll discuss methods and motivations of migrants and immigrants who moved west for economic reasons that included Manifest Destiny and religious freedoms.
In science we have left our orbit of the solar system. Our students should have a solid understanding of the moon, shadows, seasons, and all those abstract concepts that we encounter on a regular basis.
Next up, students will hear sound and see light in their studies. In their exploration of light students will attempt to split white light into different colors. A new “classmate” will be introduced- ROY G BIV. They will also create rainbows in the classroom! Finally they will try to bend light. Can it be done?
Obviously light is energy, but what is sound? Is sound energy as well? This is a concept students will study both quietly and noisily. How does sound change? Does the thickness or type of material affect the sound heard? Why can you hear the ocean in a sea shell? What is a vibration and what does it have to do with sound? These questions and more will be explored in this unit featuring Light and Sound.
In addition, to all of that, students will be going on 2 field studies – one to the Schiele Museum in Gastonia, and another to the Riverbanks Zoo. We will also be cheering on our fellow actors for the Alice in Wonderland play and go to Dutchman Creek to see Anne of Green Gables. So, you can see that April is jam packed!!!
Fifth Grade
Our fifth grade trip to Washington, D.C. is fast approaching. As a result we are having our final fundraising event to help support the trip. We will be sponsoring “Dancing into Spring Family Style” on Friday, April 12, 2019. This will be a fun family dance and will include a DJ, cake, punch and an opportunity to have a family picture taken (for an additional cost). Please check your child’s weekly Communication Folder for more information.
For the next several weeks, students in fifth grade will be switching up math teachers to learn about patterns and coordinate grids. To prepare for SC Ready testing in May, all students will be focusing and strengthening their writing to provide evidence from text they have read to support their thinking. At the end of the month, students will go to Carrol School to support concepts they have learned in Social Studies. Permission slips will be sent home next week.
Thank you to fifth grade students, Khyah Patterson and Kintyn Sutton for presenting and sharing at our Family Literacy Night on March 14th. Their discussion provided important thoughts and impressions about “Save Me a Seat” and how it impacted their view points on bullying and not judging people before you truly know them.
Computer Lab
In Computer Lab…
Typing skills are essential in almost every job and essential in every grade at school. If your kids has any extra time on computers or laptops, please feel free to let them go to any of these websites below. We really need them to practice their typing skills as much as possible, especially 3rd -5th graders for their state testing in May. We work on typing skills beginning in K5, they should know “homerow keys” by 1st, but several don’t. Please encourage typing sites instead of fun sites.
Tell them to try and beat a level in Typing Quest or Dance Mat Typing in 10 minutes.
Here are 3 that we do in Computer Class:
Dance Mat Typing : https://www.bbc.com/bitesize/articles/z3c6tfr
Typing Test: www.Typingtest.com 2nd – 5th graders do this all the time. They take the 1 minute test. Parents take typing test yourself!
TypingQuest: https://online3.typingmaster.com/login?id=b46ayfrb8 2nd -5th graders do this quite a bit in class. This is a typing site from the State and District. It is a very specific web address and requires a user and password, which they hopefully know from doing this in class.
Guidance
Our Mustangs have been busy as we gear up for our last 9 weeks of school! Pennies for Patients was a great success!! Thank you to all of the families who donated their spare change and more to this important cause. Because we were able to meet our schoolwide goal, at our Fun Run eight brave teachers were pied in the face. The kids loved it!
In guidance, we are continuing to work through our Safer, Smarter Kids lessons. In just a few weeks grades 3-5 will be prepping for our upcoming statewide testing. In addition, fifth grade classes have begun discussions on prepping for middle school. There is no doubt that this is a busy time of year for our children and especially our fifth graders. Encourage your fifth grader to discuss with you their concerns about middle school. Having an open dialogue with your student can help give them that extra support they need during this time of transition.
Kaci Kawakami
School Counselor
Email: kkawakami@rhmail.org
Office: 803.985.1668